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Author Topic: The Care and Feeding of Carrier Groups  (Read 3790 times)

JDCollie

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The Care and Feeding of Carrier Groups
« on: April 23, 2014, 01:58:35 PM »

Honestly, I can't figure out how to make a carrier group work, especially on the logistical level. For approximately the same quantity of supplies, I can field several far more powerful cruisers that can handle the same enemy fleets, all while suffering significantly less damage, losing less CR, and without losing crew almost at all. Carriers also tend to have burn speeds about as slow as said cruisers.

Clearly I'm doing it wrong, but I don't know specifically what it is I'm missing. Can anyone give me hand? I love the idea of carrier groups, but I just can't seem to make them work for me.  :-[
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Metroidude

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Re: The Care and Feeding of Carrier Groups
« Reply #1 on: April 23, 2014, 03:15:29 PM »

What is your current fleet setup? And your character level/skills? A screenshot would be useful. Then I could advise you on how to (maybe) create an effective carrier group.
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JDCollie

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Re: The Care and Feeding of Carrier Groups
« Reply #2 on: April 23, 2014, 03:24:18 PM »

What is your current fleet setup? And your character level/skills? A screenshot would be useful. Then I could advise you on how to (maybe) create an effective carrier group.
Honestly, I don't really have one right now. Every time I try, it fails miserably. I guess what I'm asking for is how to get started with an effective group, and what should I be aiming for? What makes an effective carrier? What should my fighter composition be (like, fighters, bombers, interceptors, etc)?

Seriously, I have no clue what I am doing in regards to carriers.
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Cosmitz

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Re: The Care and Feeding of Carrier Groups
« Reply #3 on: April 23, 2014, 04:11:27 PM »

Sadly the lack of a dedicated fighter skilltree does make it hard to field fighters. As for comp, sort of use a 1-2-3 ratio. For every 1 heavy wing, Xyphos for example, i field 2 bomber wings and 3 drone wings.
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HELMUT

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Re: The Care and Feeding of Carrier Groups
« Reply #4 on: April 23, 2014, 04:24:33 PM »

Personally i think carrier based fleets are the most powerful kind of fleets you can field. Of course a good player with its flagship will always be better but i think fighters are more viable than other ships because they are basically "immortals" thanks to their carrier.

I prefere low-tech fleets as high-tech toys are very expensive and not that good. Tridents are pretty bad, longbows are horrendous (you can try the Starsector+ mod, they are better balanced). Wasps, while they are excellent interceptors, that's the only thing they can do effectively. Xyphos are pretty good but cost way too much to be cost effective, also they are big targets. The Dagger is perhaps the only very good high-tech craft that you will find, 3 reapers in the enemy's face never disappoint.

Low tech fighters are much more handy in my opinion. The Talon is dirt cheap, it's a decent interceptor, it's fast, its vulcan will rip open shields and tear the hull of bigger ships, they are the perfect cannon fodder for your fleet. The Broadsword is basically a bigger, fatter Talon but it's also more expensive. Definitely a good fighter early on but i tend to prefer the more "swarmy" Talon for end game fleets.

Fewer armored fighters however have the advantage of losing much less crafts in battle, resulting in less supply cost. If you prefer fewer but stronger crafts, the Gladius is a good bet, it's tough as nail and the dual IR pulse can tear through anything. Not the best Interceptor though. The Warthog is even tankier and its LAG make it very good against low-tech vessels that lack shields. Unfortunately they are horribly slow and will get distanced by the rest of your fighters, keeping tight formations is really important to avoid the focus fire of enemy PDs.

The Thunder is one of the most important fighter for any fleet. Early game its single harpoon make it a decent bomber against frigates and destroyers. What make the Thunder awesome is its incredible speed, making chasing scenarios and capturing strategic points very easy. The ion cannon will also make sure that any big ship won't be able to use their full firepower and hamper their mobility. Not your core fighter but the most important support craft of your fleet.

Piranhas are pretty bad early on because they are slow and can't properly hit with their bomb bays. Later however they are probably the best bomber available. They are though, bomb bays hurt like trucks and you can field a lot of them. Hitting a destroyer can be difficult but a cruiser or a capital ship usually can't escape the first wave of Piranha bombing.

Mining drones are civilians ships, they don't have their place on the battlefield.

For the carriers, the Gemini is the king. It's cheap, it can provide long range support with Pilums lrms, it have a nice cargo capacity, PD drones plus 2 mediums mounts for flaks prevent enemy fighters from reaching it. It's pretty beastly. The Condor isn't bad either but the Gemini is just too good.

In the cruiser category, the Heron is also a very good choice for a "pure" carrier. If you feel like playing less passive, the Venture is a decent battle carrier too, not as efficient at resupplying your fighter though. Going to the front line is also a big risk as losing a carrier is a huge blow to your fleet.

I pretty much never use capital carriers, way too expensive for my taste. The Astral, while it have 6 launch bays, will also probably be the sole carrier in your fleet, losing it equal defeat. It's atrociously slow too.

For the skills, getting 5 points in mechanical engineering will grant 10% hull for your fleet, very useful, the additional OPs help your carriers too. Construction is very good if you use a lot of low-tech ships as they mainly use armor and the boost granted by the Construction skill is very powerful. Navigation skill is always needed, no matter what kind of fleet you need.

Leadership skill is obviously the most important, maxing fleet logistic is what make a carrier fleet scary. You can also skill command experience, at 10 points your unlock the juicy "making do" perk, which will reduce tremendously the supply cost of your fleet, very expensive to get though.

Also a trick that you should use, always place your carriers at the bottom in your fleet screen. Carriers don't benefit much from the experienced crew, fighters does. An elite crewed Talon will always be better than a regular crewed one. You don't need Aces to fire those Pilums anyway.

Edit: Mega text wall of doom!
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Metroidude

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Re: The Care and Feeding of Carrier Groups
« Reply #5 on: April 23, 2014, 04:25:17 PM »

I'm not the most educated on the exact mechanics of carriers, but here is my basic understanding of it.

I would say the basis for a good carrier fleet would be:

1) You need ships with flight decks.
The choice of which is yours, but every fleet requires this to maintain fighters in battles. Otherwise after the 2-6 fighters are disabled, they don't come back in that battle. I'd maintain a ratio of 1:2 flight decks to fighters. Or maybe 2:5, depending on which you choose.

2) Buy lots of fighters. A variety.
Obviously, you're going to need many fighter wings. You can find the exact details of what they're good at in the Codex, but generally:

Interceptors are fast, but weak. They're good at chasing down small ships and fighter-to-fighter battles, but they lack the overall firepower required to hurt bigger ships.
Bombers have a good mix of destroying slower or bigger ships and overwhelming targets with a barrage of damage, but should be escorted by interceptors.
Fighters are typically all-round decent at most things. They're usually multipurpose. You can use them to chase down fleeing ships, harass bigger ones, and capture points. They're also good at killing other fighter wings, like the Broadsword fighters.

You can make up whatever composition you want depending on the enemy ships.
Find out what each fighter is good at, and what each enemy ship's weakness is. Then exploit it.
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Megas

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Re: The Care and Feeding of Carrier Groups
« Reply #6 on: April 23, 2014, 04:56:08 PM »

Read this post by Thaago.
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JDCollie

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Re: The Care and Feeding of Carrier Groups
« Reply #7 on: April 23, 2014, 07:21:38 PM »

Thanks guys!

From reading your various suggestions (and the linked thread) it looks like I haven't been focusing enough on logistics in the skill tree, and as a result I simply cannot field enough fighter wings to overcome point defense. I guess that makes sense, since having eight wings on the field is significantly more twice as effective than having four due to PD saturation.

Definitely given me some stuff to try :D
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CopperCoyote

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Re: The Care and Feeding of Carrier Groups
« Reply #8 on: April 23, 2014, 07:23:45 PM »

If you don't deploy your bombers right away (in a normal fight) you can deploy them later like a cavalry charge. This helps piranhas the most (and they need the help).

So what this does is basically makes offscreen your (temporary) rally bomber nav point. After they've dropped their bombs they'll circle you carriers for a while waiting to rearm. While they're traveling to your target it'll give your other fighters plenty of time to build up flux on the enemy shields and distract their PD. Most destroyers are mobile enough that this is less effective, but cruisers and capitals are in trouble. I like to use 4 on cruisers and 5 or 6 on caps (depending on bomber). I think the AI defaults to 3 and 4 for each.

Another thing to improve effectiveness is to micromanage your fleets. In the tactical map you can select (deployed) ships and use CTRL + # to create a group of that number (so CTRL + 2 would make group 2). This allows you to quickly and easily select the right ships for the job. One example is pairing broadswords with thunders. This allows you to make sure you have what you need after a target.
Do keep in mind that the AI is a little strange sometimes. For example when you tell it to capture a point and you select half your ships to go there (including the one automatically assigned) the AI will assign another ship to cap the nav point in addition to the ones you've manually assigned.

It is also important to use the right command. Most of them are explained just fine in the pop-up, but may need more explaining.

Against smaller ships interCept is the only option, but you can use it against larger ships. Using this command will make your ships mostly ignore anything that isn't their target. This is particularly good for fleeing  ships, but also useful when you need to keep pressure on a specific ship. Bombers won't use their bombs with this command though. The other command is Engage. This it the default for larger ships. It tells your ships to kill it and all it's friends in the area. Your ships do not focus fire, but if you want to kill them like peeling layers off an onion this is for you. Bombers might also use their strike weapons with this command (don't count on it though).

A finicky, but useful command is rally tack force. Ships assigned to rally task force won't leave it for any reason. So if you want then to capture a point you've lost you'll have to either manually send them or cancel the nav point. It also has a kind of long leash to it. If there is a point i really want to keep i put a really task force a little behind it and toward the outer edge so the ships hover over the point while waiting to fight preventing enemy ships from swooping in and taking it. By having it about a grid square back it also leaves some room for the ships to backpedal if an overwhelming amount of enemies roll in.

The number of flight decks you need per fighter wing depends on the type of fighters you have. If you have ships that explode often (like wasps and talons) you'll want more decks. If you have bombers you'll want more decks. I can't recall ever needing more than a 1:1 ratio of decks to wings. The lowest (regularly successful) ratio i've had is 1:3. That was with mostly gladiuses and thunders. The fighters from some mods allow you to go as low as 1:4 (like from Shadowyards (which i'm using right now)).

I think the most important part of using a carrier fleet is knowing what your ships are good at killing. This is admittedly important for any fleet, but because the fighters are more limited in scope than larger ships it's easier to get blindsided by the wrong type of enemy. Instead of leaping in the deep end you could wade in a little more slowly by having half your fleet be carriers and fighters and the other half normal. That way you can more easily get a feel for what the different wings are good at, but not risk losing every thing. Don't use vanilla tridents or longbows. Alex (the developer) said they aren't right yet (i'm paraphrasing). Piranhas are a little lackluster, but somewhat functional. Most of the others are pretty good at what they do.

If you have a fleet composition you want to use specifically I'm sure we can direct you at the best things to hunt.
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Thaago

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Re: The Care and Feeding of Carrier Groups
« Reply #9 on: April 23, 2014, 08:09:43 PM »

Another tip for the fighter fleet: I often set a capture on every tactical point, but then remove them if I encounter heavy resistance. It wastes a few points, but the scouting is worth it to know where the enemy is coming from (to set up bombers or concentrate forces...). One of the greatest assets of fast fighters is that you can rapidly redeploy your forces by changing and removing objectives. The lone enemy destroyer at a nav point really doesn't like it when you turn off all the other points and change that one to "Assault".


...
Another thing to improve effectiveness is to micromanage your fleets. In the tactical map you can select (deployed) ships and use CTRL + # to create a group of that number (so CTRL + 2 would make group 2). This allows you to quickly and easily select the right ships for the job. One example is pairing broadswords with thunders. This allows you to make sure you have what you need after a target.
Do keep in mind that the AI is a little strange sometimes. For example when you tell it to capture a point and you select half your ships to go there (including the one automatically assigned) the AI will assign another ship to cap the nav point in addition to the ones you've manually assigned.
...

As an addition to this excellent advice, it also pays to match your fighters to specific enemies with orders, especially against low tech ships. Thunders wreck Hounds and Cerberus' cause they don't have shields, while Broadswords have some trouble with the armor. Gladii are surprisingly good against Lashers.

My biggest piece of advise: every once in a while just set your carriers to autopilot and watch how your fighters are doing.
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Aereto

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Re: The Care and Feeding of Carrier Groups
« Reply #10 on: April 26, 2014, 10:05:14 AM »

While using a carrier fleet is something I am not yet used to, the suggestions are worth considering.
« Last Edit: April 26, 2014, 10:06:55 AM by Aereto »
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