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[Temstar]

There's been tons of suggestions asking for a dedicated cruiser sized carrier that fits the gap between Condor and Astral. Something fast with two flight decks and only marginal defense that will serve as a good carrier for a small fast fleet with a lot of fighters.

That got me thinking, suppose we get this cruiser carrier in the future, why would anyone then ever bother to actually use an Astral? If you need more hanger space just get more of that cruiser carrier. Yeah sure Astral got some pretty impressive defense, but if your Astral had to break out the guns to defend itself something's already gone wrong with that battle.

Odyssey and Venture got the weapons to differentiate themselves from pure carriers but we'll need something to make capital class carriers like Astral worth taking in the future. I suggest those supercarriers should gain the ability to "Repair & Refit" frigates. Looking at Astral's graphics that massive space in the middle with the catapult certainly seems big enough to hold a frigate. So I suggest frigates should gain the "Repair & Refit" ability as well as the fighter AI (return to carrier when hurt/empty on ammo) when a supercarrier with 3 or more flight decks is on the map.

Frigate repair & refit should take much longer than fighter and use up 3 decks at the same time, preventing Astral from servicing fighters while a frigate is docked. This then also opens up a new niche for a 4 deck supercarrier that could dock a frigate while still servicing fighters at reduced capacity.

This also opens up many new builds for frigates utilizing strike weapons like Sabot SRM and torpedoes. Hell we could even have new classes for frigates that are dedicated "torpedo boats" with low OP and something like 4 small missile mount and 1 wide arc small energy that are worthless alone but deadly carrying Sabot SRM and single torpedoes working with supercarrier support. We could even have new defensive strike weapons like anti-frigate torpedoes or single shot ABM missiles so that the carrier could alternatively use its fleet of frigates for fleet defense.

[UrbanGiraffe]

Being able to repair frigates with the Astral would be amazing. There's hardly any point in spending the FP on it as-is, and it certainly appears graphically capable of it. Its new un-uselessness would make Tri-Tachyon fights much more interesting, with the Astral a reasonably important strategic target early on (Holy crap, what's that giant ship on the radar?! Oh, Astral. Have fun, Tempest.)

In its current state, I'd say the Astral is directly inferior to the Venture, which is kind of sad. Fielding two Ventures for about the same cost is much more useful for long range support and even direct combat than Astral, making it extremely difficult to justify deploying it. Compared to the Paragon for 3 more points, it might as well be a Condor.

[SgtAlex86]

have to agree resupllying tsrike frigates would be nice... 

[Thaago]

It would be really cool, but I don't think the game is balanced for it. Giving a frigate the ability to rearm missiles and repair hull would just be so huge. Then again, if it takes a pretty long time and takes up 3 flight decks... thats also dedicating a lot of resources.

[Temstar]

It would be really cool, but I don't think the game is balanced for it. Giving a frigate the ability to rearm missiles and repair hull would just be so huge. Then again, if it takes a pretty long time and takes up 3 flight decks... thats also dedicating a lot of resources.

I don't think balance would be a problem. Art work already exist for frigate and destroyer sized munitions ships and I hear people have found artwork inside the game depicting repair drones, so I think it's safe to say the developers want to put mid-battle repair and rearm ability for ships into the game in some form in the future. Having supercarriers able to do it for frigates would be just an extension of that.


Plus when you think about it, frigates are not that useful in the big battles that involves capital ships. They're fantastic and great fun to fly in small games but in the biggest battles there's just too much firepower being thrown around for them to survive for long enough to make meaningful contributions. Giving them fighter AI would be a huge boost to their survivability.

At the end of the day, it's not like an Astral can save you from getting oneshotted from across the map by 4 Tachyon beam before you can put up your shield.

[hadesian]

It would be really cool, but I don't think the game is balanced for it. Giving a frigate the ability to rearm missiles and repair hull would just be so huge. Then again, if it takes a pretty long time and takes up 3 flight decks... thats also dedicating a lot of resources.

At the kind of level in game you'd be seeing/fighting/fielding an Astral, anything short of a very lucky tempest gets annihilated frigate wise.

Generally I must agree with everyone in this topic, the Astral is crippled by simply not being good enough. Somebody point me in the direction of a decent long ranged fire support carrier version of the Astral - oh wait, the Odyssey (OK, maybe not long ranged but do you really need 3 flight decks? Currently no).
I'd also like to point out just how epic the Astral looks too. I just recently owned one with my Paragon but if the Astral had weapons the way it looked
Holy hell

[Upgradecap]

They nerfed the astral really good in .5a . Before it had reapers and autopulsers , now it only has pd lasers.

[hadesian]

So I recently installed Starfarer Expanded (great mod BTW) and I noticed the Scarab class frigate would be the saving grace for the Astral. It's relates brilliantly - it has one large ballistic mount but it's a weedy little frigate. Stick it with a hellbore and let it run rampant around ships dealing hellish amounts of damage, stick the Astral with great PD weaponry and that fleet could do a lot...

[arwan]

i like this idea for a carrier. but i have a few thoughts on it.

first off if it ever came to be.

if frigates took longer to rearm than a fighter i think it would be quite pointless as it is i quite rarely repair my fighters in a fight currently anyway. and when i do. its usually right at the end of an engagement and so they never come back out.

also i dont think your frigate should be getting repaired. just re-armed. just my personal opinion but i dont see a carrier having the capabilities to quickly repair armor and what have you to a larger ship during battle. also i quite like the way fighters are handled during combat as it is with the replenishment. for reasons i would rather not get into in this thread.

third. how would you work the collision. would you just toss frigates into the fighter category AKA. they ignore all collisions except weapon fire. because thats the only way i see it currently being implemented.

if you say it should only ignore collisions during docking that to me is kind of bogus. because if they could do that in the first place... why dont they do that always.

anyway just my thoughts.

[Dreyven]

because that would only be possible for capital carriers... you could alter their collision...
if you take a luck at the atlas... you could make it that ships can't collide with it where the Landing stripes are
so that frigates could fly into there

[Iscariot]

I don't like this at all. Of course, I don't like battle repairs either.

[Dreyven]

I don't like this at all. Of course, I don't like battle repairs either.

while i don't like battle repairs (not even in the carrier)
i think that a refit (reloading weapons and ammunitions) might actually be a good thing

[MidnightSun]

Thinking about this with a present-day analogue: fighters are like the aircraft on an aircraft carrier, while frigates are small sub-destroyer support ships, such as this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_23_frigate

Yes, a carrier can resupply a fighter jet in perhaps half an hour or so (restock ammo drums and attach underwing missiles), and it is plausible that there are additional "fresh" planes that haven't been damaged. But restocking and repairing a warship? That takes days or weeks, respectively, even with the proper facilities (a dry dock).

And besides, if you have frigates that can be repaired and restocked, what would be the point of expensive, high-FP fighters like the Xyphos? Yeah, there are two Xyphos, but I can't think of many situations where I'd take a wing of Xyphos over a repairable Tempest.

Also, the Astral is hardly a useless ship. The number of simultaneous fighter wings it can effectively support is tremendous, especially if you stagger it. You can continuously bombard enemy crafts with a series of fresh fighters, supplemented by Hurricane MIRVs.

[Temstar]

I don't think blue water navy is a very good comparison. The difference in size between a carrier aircraft and a frigate is huge while the size difference between a carrier and a frigate is small (blue water carrier certainly can't fit a frigate inside of it). This is the opposite in starfarer where heavy fighters are half the size of a frigate while capital carriers are so much bigger than frigates that they can fit one and then some inside their hold.

[arwan]

fighters are not drawn to scale in the game so that you can see them...

also i would have to argue the "frigates" fitting inside the carrier. just because its 2D doesnt mean it would fit. and to me it would be rather weird if it disappeared into the carrier.

if this were to happen i think it would be better if the frigate would pull along side the carrier for refitting.