What other weapons does it have?
PDs and flak, specifically 8 small PDs and 2 flaks.
You've listed off a Large Ballistic with a Gauss, a Large Synergy with some form of missile, and four bays of fightercraft. If it's using all of that at (near the) max range of the Gauss, then there's no reason for it to close in further. Do you have medium (or small) anti-ship weapons? If you swap out the Gauss with something shorter-ranged, does it close to use the shorter-range weapon?
I listed the Gauss as "the only weapon that is within the goldilock zone that the carrier stays in", which is to say it is the
only weapon that the carrier shoots, because of its range. I'd estimate the carrier stays at ~2000su from the target, in a controlled 1v1. So no, nothing with less than 2000 total range is useable because the carrier never closes in. Medium weapons included.
The AI does say "this is a carrier, it has to spend OP on its fighters that it doesn't get for guns, so it doesn't want to get in a brawl with a gunship if it doesn't have to". Large Gauss + Large missile (+ nothing else) does not exactly say "can win a gunfight against a Dominator" (2 Large ballistics, 2 Medium ballistics, 3 Medium missiles) to me.
That's a problem, because even if it those 2 big mounts are 50 OPs, it still has another 60 OPs in bombers (in the variant I'm testing, there are others and the result is the same). That has to count for engagement decisions if the carrier is set for direct combat, it is the definition of a battlecarrier.
For reference of the main testing variant:
1 Mjolnir, 1 Cyclone, 2 flaks, 6 taclasers, 6 pdbursts, 1 small gazer, 4 modded bomber wings (see below)
The bomber wing:
2 bombers, 2 gorgons each, 15 OPs
you also need to give it NO_AUTO_ESCORT unless it might spend entire combat attached to some other ship in the combat engagement
Already has it.
