On the validity of only fielding carriers

[Guardian54]

What is the general opinion on having carriers as one's first (and ONLY) military ship type?

I see the following advantages:
1. You can put up to, at best, 80-some% of a normal ship limit's size in hardware (a lot more engines than normal though) and fill the rest with fighter bays. (40% of a carrier must be fighter bays). I don't say 90% of standard size as life support...
1a. Ackdarians in particular get to cheese the size, a lot (180% nominal size limit LOL), and build fast enough anyhow (even without Bukkake... er, Bakkuras Shipyards).
2. They aggro, unlike dreadnoughts (resupply ships).
3. Standoff = fewer ships to replace/repair.

Running Ackdarian lets me put up 414 size carriers after researching the first researchable size tech. Loathe as I am to admit it, I actually need to build 10 of these just to form a fleet that can defend my homeworld from pirates. Each expansion colony will require 5 more in a fleet guarding that colony's system. I'm 7 years in and still limited to my own system, with only warp precursors, because I stupidly did energy collector, proton engine, Ackdarian engine AND shields before researching Warp Precursors, instead of leaving the improved engine for later. However, at least I can fend off the pirates now.

I also cheated by putting myself in an Excellent home system and everyone else in Harsh, so that I could get used to the SLOOOOOWWWW pace of Very Hard PreWarp starts.

I am currently trying to do a carrier-only run, since while Dreadnoughts (resupply ships) are great for smashing enemy fortifications and all, they lack the auto-aggro carriers have i.e. will not clear a system of enemy resource bases and other colony defences. Dreadnoughts require too much micro, while carriers.... carriers are easier to cheese size with without being TOO tedious.

Btw Aeson if you see this, I apologize for being brusque last time regarding StarBurners being, indisputably, the best engine in the game.

[Retreat1970]

Never had it as only, but I don't see why not since they've always been OP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy6h-5XrevM

[Aeson]

Carriers are very strong against immobile targets and things that they can outrun (assuming that you've set the carriers to evade or standoff; while I'd like to recommend evade due to it resulting in the carrier trying to remain beyond enemy weapon range, evade has some flaws - most notably that ships set to 'evade' will close with enemy ships to be just beyond the range of enemy weapons, and since turning isn't instantaneous this can result in your carriers getting caught). Fighters also tend to be quite strong when you're not watching the battles, as it appears as though some form of less complicated resolution system is used when the engagements are not within view on the main screen.

However, against similarly-advanced (or, often worse, more advanced) opponents using decent ship designs, carriers can fare quite poorly in observed engagements if they cannot control the range or did not invest heavily in shields. With most drive components other than Turbo Thrusters, Starburners and Vortex Engines, you need to spend 30% of a ship's total size to get cruise speeds up to around 25 to 30. This means that a carrier using an early- or mid-game standard drive component will need to spend roughly half of its available size on sublight drive components simply to match speeds with similarly-advanced standard warships (a full-size carrier needs to spend 50% more size on drive components to match speeds with a full-size standard-limit ship, so it needs 45% of the standard size limit to be spent on thrusters and has only 90% of the standard size limit to spend on components other than fighter bays, with additional losses incurred through the need for additional life support and habitation modules fitted into that space and through issues with how well the fighter bay requirement meshes with the carrier size limit). This can be quite problematic if you do not want your carriers to be slow. Further complicating matters is that going heavy on the defenses is not necessarily a good alternative; protracted engagements against numerous enemies can break even strong defenses, and a slow ship, particularly if caught in an interdiction field, has difficulty escaping.

It should also be noted that carriers tend to have relatively high static power requirements, which mean that if you do not have energy collectors on them or if the carriers for some reason cannot make use of their energy collectors (e.g. the carriers are in deep space or maneuvering), carriers can burn fuel relatively quickly and have somewhat more limited range than similarly-large standard warships (though since standard warships can usually burn a lot more fuel in combat, this tends to be a bit of a wash).

There is also the issue that carriers are quite expensive if built to full size (roughly 50% more expensive than standard-size ships), and it's not clear that you can really afford to have less of them per fleet action than you would have had in other ship types, especially early in the game when individual carriers are not all that strong.

Running Ackdarian lets me put up 414 size carriers after researching the first researchable size tech.

Kind of. Be aware, however, that there are a couple of reasons not to build to full size. The obvious one, of course, is cost. Less obvious is that a size-414 carrier requires 4 standard fighter bays (200 size), leaving it with 214 size for other components, whereas a size-375 carrier requires only 3 standard fighter bays and has 225 size available for other components, and so the smaller carrier can be faster and have more powerful defenses than the larger carrier (though obviously at a cost to fighter capacity; note that which size of nearly full size carrier has the most space available for non-fighter bay components can differ depending on the exact size limit and whether you use all standard, all advanced, or a mix of fighter bays). Also not obvious is that a size-375 carrier requires 5.95 unupgraded life support and hab module pairs (so really six, making full use of 5 and 95% use of the sixth, or about 99% efficient use of the support components) while a size-414 carrier requires 6.55 unupgraded life support and hab module pairs (so really seven, making full use of six but only 55% use of the seventh, or about 94% efficient use of the support components), so at least with unupgraded support components there are some efficiency gains to be had in using a smaller carrier. This is not a particularly wasteful example, as that seventh life support and hab module pair still bought you 33 size for non-support components (or 36 relative to using the smaller carrier), and it should be remembered that changes in support size can change which carrier makes more efficient use of its support modules. A far more wasteful example can be seen with Ackdarians that have a standard construction limit of 300 (so max size 360 for standard warship types) and the first upgrade of support components (so support size 85). As support components do not count against the support size limit (though they do count against the overall size limit), a ship with 4 life support and hab module pairs can be built to a maximum size of 352. If you want to build out to the maximum size of 360, you need to invest 3 more size into life support and hab modules and so only gain 5 size for other components.

[HerpInYourDerp]

Another, perhaps more practical reason why fielding massive carrier fleets may not be completely wise is that large numbers of deployed strike craft will absolutely kill game performance.

[Edmesa]

In my experience my early to midgame carriers have a talent for getting caught and destroyed by the enemy unless i micromanage them. My carrier designs are always focused on speed and agility and by doing so they tend to stay relative small to designs of other players ive seen. Those focus points keeps carriers usually out of the game until mid to late game, sometimes i dont even bother to build carriers. I do deploy "hybrids" early on, which are designed as normal warships fitted with a single fighter bay.

[Guardian54]

Dear Aeson: Well, that's why I play Ackdarian now. Turbothruster is practically cheese given it doesn't need as many reactors, and I'm beginning to wonder if the number of hyperfusion reactors you'd need to add (1-2 more) to afford large Starburner banks would actually be better spent on a purely Turbothruster loadout. I'll have to do some math to check, but it should not be TOO far off (i.e. if I cannot steal Mk 2 or 3 Starburners off the Sluken that I put in every match I play...)

My not caring about max speed nearly as much as cruise (which affects fleet refuel time and such) also contributes to that.

ORIGINAL: HerpInYourDerp

Another, perhaps more practical reason why fielding massive carrier fleets may not be completely wise is that large numbers of deployed strike craft will absolutely kill game performance.

I think the most strike craft I've had onscreen at a time was 200, with no game delay whatsoever, and that was one 10-carrier fleet out of about eight that I had defending my systems at the time, so many thousands were flying around just fine out of sight and out of mind.

On the other hand, just building a 900-ship navy once out of paranoia about what would happen if Eruktah Refugees declared on me managed to make my game a slideshow. None of those ships had any fighters on them.

ORIGINAL: Edmesa

In my experience my early to midgame carriers have a talent for getting caught and destroyed by the enemy unless i micromanage them. My carrier designs are always focused on speed and agility and by doing so they tend to stay relative small to designs of other players ive seen. Those focus points keeps carriers usually out of the game until mid to late game, sometimes i dont even bother to build carriers. I do deploy "hybrids" early on, which are designed as normal warships fitted with a single fighter bay.

Hmm, I tend to just spam shields so much that my carrier fleet will rip apart any possible attacker long before they can kill more than one carrier. If I kept up in size tech and have at least Deucalios shields this isn't an issue.

In the past I never built carriers when playing Quameno. Then I got tired of the ridiculous micro needed for my Dreadnoughts (resupply ships) and realized halfway during my Ancient Galaxy PK-jacking (though I never used one) run that +50% size was a great way to cheese the size limit. Then I was curious as to how my Ackdarian ally was rebuilding his fleets so often and so quickly, and, well, a good gander at Ackdarian bonuses meant I started playing as them.

You gave me another idea on cheesing: Load the carrier up with only fighter bays and point defence, set engagement stance to Evade/Standoff, and load them full of tractor beams. You have 0 base firepower so you push everything away where they are at a disadvantage compared to your fighters.

Alternatively you could just load up on plasma thunderbolts or assault missiles once you have the room, but hey... how the hell does armor even work in this game anyhow?

[Aeson]

I'm beginning to wonder if the number of hyperfusion reactors you'd need to add (1-2 more) to afford large Starburner banks would actually be better spent on a purely Turbothruster loadout.

Nope. Using max power to determine the maximum number of thrusters per reactor, a HyperFusion I can support ~16 StarBurner IIIs or 36 TurboThruster IIIs, giving an effective max/cruise thrust per size of 367.5/230.0 with StarBurner IIIs and 288.8/178.0 with TurboThruster IIIs; using a HyperFusion III instead of a HyperFusion I pushes that to ~23 StarBurner IIIs or 52 TurboThruster IIIs giving an effective max/cruise thrust per size of 382.0/239.1 with StarBurner IIIs or 294.2/181.3 with TurboThruster IIIs. Using cruise power to determine the maximum number of thrusters per reactor, a HyperFusion I can support 30 StarBurner IIIs or 90 TurboThruster IIIs, giving a cruise thrust per size of 244.2 with StarBurner IIIs or 184.6 with TurboThruster IIIs; a HyperFusion III can support ~43 StarBurner IIIs or 130 TurboThruster IIIs, giving a cruise thrust per size of 249.6 with StarBurner IIIs or 186.0 with TurboThruster IIIs. Even if you compare using TurboThruster IIIs and StarBurner IIs instead of StarBurner IIIs (giving the TurboThrusters an upgrade advantage) the StarBurners still come out ahead. (Note that I rounded the number of thrusters per reactor down if a non-integer number of thrusters could be supported, which reduces the thrust per size computed, and that only using StarBurners were non-integer numbers of thrusters supported by the two reactors examined.)

This isn't even unexpected; better reactors can generally support more thrusters per reactor (compounding this, higher-tech reactors are also generally smaller and always have more output per size than lower-tech reactors), which means that the size of the reactor tends to have an increasingly insignificant impact on the thrust per size invested as the reactors become better, i.e. the effective thrust per size invested into drives and required reactors becomes more similar to the theoretical maximum thrust per size of the drive component as reactors improve. Basic Space Reactors are actually the reactors most likely to make TurboThrusters a better deal than equivalently-upgraded StarBurners, though I don't think even they have a sufficiently large impact on thrust per size to allow TurboThrusters to be better than equivalently-upgraded StarBurners.

(As an aside, caring more about cruise speed than sprint actually favors StarBurners rather than TurboThrusters when comparing cruise thrust per size, as the number of thrusters supported per reactor is higher using the cruise limit than the sprint limit and so the cruise thrust per size of the reactor+thrusters system is closer to that of the thruster alone. Max thrust will be negatively impacted by using the cruise thrust limit, at least in scenarios where the ship requires its full reactor output, but on the other hand the max power requirements of TurboThrusters are higher relative to their cruise power requirements than the max power requirements of Starburners are relative to their cruise power requirements, meaning that the max thruster per size using TurboThrusters should be more negatively impacted by using the cruise limit than would be the case with StarBurners.)

how the hell does armor even work in this game anyhow?

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[Guardian54]

Well thank you for that.

Still think Turbothruster is better than Vortex IIRC. Now if only I can actually steal techs on Very Hard without cheesing the saves/reloads N times to get spies to actually make the theft properly.

Somehow, this time my initial spy was both Weak AND Energetic (ttly legit... and he picked up a Poor Speaker later) and didn't have enough actual stat bars moving (only PsyOps), and my second one was Corrupt to begin with, so I was spamming reloads from the moment I met my first pirate faction to make sure the guys could actually make some successful steals.

Now that I have a few size 720 carriers and size 400 frigates (yeah, okay, so I caved on this matter since I wanted something that would react faster than carriers in a firefight, and draw attention off the carriers ideally) running around I can stop cheesing quite so many times when robbing pirates because it wouldn't matter if they get detected now, as I'm only robbing pirates that I'm unfriendly with, so getting detected doesn't matter. The only problem is that since the Pirates are no longer ahead in energy and construction, I'm shafted into stealing tech from the Ancient Guardians... which means I'll have to reload cheese until they get the tech without being detected (25% chance for each one, hurrah, thank goodness they're separated far enough in time of year they finish to not blend into one program tick, or this would be EVEN MORE RETARDED)

[Aeson]

Still think Turbothruster is better than Vortex IIRC.

It is, and you don't need to include reactors to arrive at that conclusion; the initial version of the TurboThruster is comparable to initial version of the Vortex Engine in max and cruise thrust per size (relative to the Vortex Engine I, TurboThruster Is have 3.2% less max thrust per size and 2.3% more cruise thrust per size, ignoring all considerations but thruster output and size), the first upgrade of the TurboThruster is marginally better than the first upgrade of the Vortex Engine in max and cruise thrust per size (relative to Vortex Engine IIs, TurboThruster IIs have 1.1% more max and 6.3% more cruise thrust per size), and the final upgrade of the TurboThruster is somewhat better than the final upgrade of the Vortex Engine (relative to Vortex Engine IIIs, TurboThruster IIIs have 5.0% more max and 11% more cruise thrust per size); if the drives are fully powered and the ships are equally large and spend the same total amount of size on thrusters, those percentages also represent how much faster the ship using TurboThrusters is than the ship using equally-upgraded Vortex Engines (percentages given are rounded to two significant digits). Accounting for reactor size would favor TurboThrusters due to the lower power costs, and as the TurboThruster is already at worst comparable and generally superior to the Vortex Engine there isn't really any need to do the analysis while incorporating reactor requirements. There are some cases where the superior thrust per component of the Vortex Engine might nevertheless matter more than the superior thrust per size of the TurboThruster, for example with very small ships.

[Edmesa]

Ive tried carrier only game, i didnt finish it as it became so damn tedious to nano-manage the carriers, even in situations where u have clear firepower advantage. The damage it can apply isnt bad but it doesnt feel really aggressive. The major reason i dont like it is that carriers that are under attack are pretty much defenseless unless they happen to target the ship that is attacking the carrier. Another thing which really adds to your losses is that a carrier that is under attack will retrieve the fighters before jumping out even if this causes the whole ship to take so much damage that it is unable anymore to flee. Fighters and bombers on bases are almost useless if the base isnt fitted with a hyperstop-area module, they drop right on top of the base and start applying damage almost instant while your fighters needs time to deploy and / or travel.

I prefer to have carriers in a support role in a fleet and have them fitted with some long range weapons like torps or missiles as defensive measure.

[Hattori Hanzo]

never tried a "Carrier only game"..

it sound an interesting subject for my "DW-U experiments games", I will give it soon a try.

[Retreat1970]

"Carrier only" doesn't just mean carriers. Think instead of fighters only. All ship classes are "carriers". It's viable.

[Hattori Hanzo]

ORIGINAL: Retreat1970

"Carrier only" doesn't just mean carriers. Think instead of fighters only. All ship classes are "carriers". It's viable.

thank you Retreat1970, as an old wargamer (a "grognard" in fact..) for me the terms "carrier" and "fighters" are virtually synonymous [8D]

[Blabsawaw22]

I played a game once with Escorts with 1 small laser gun and 1 carrier bay... I think I built 90 ships of them.. it was kinda funny to see the AI handle 90 ships with 4 fighters each roam around..

[amariah]

I usually avoid putting fighters on my ships but have them on bases. When the enemy has fighters I add point defense weapons and build one specific design to go along with fleets that can rip fighters and bombers to shreds. Not to say fighters and bombers aren't useful. A fleet without point defense weapons attacking an enemy base that launches a few squadron of bombers will ruin the attack plan especially if enemy ships are present.