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[Megas]

Most, if not all, carriers are like that, not just Astral. It's just that carriers are supposed to use fighters, so it's logical to spend everything on them, and you can spend a lot on them.

That used to be not the case.  I almost want to go back to fighters-as-ships just so carriers can arm themselves like warships like they used to.  I would be totally on fighters-as-missiles if it did not mean carriers give up their guns just to do their job of being a carrier.

The only carrier that can sort of get away with arming like a warship is Legion, but even that often needs to leave many mounts empty, although that is in part due to horrid dissipation (not unlike Onslaught) rather than lack of OP alone.

Condor, Drover, Heron, Astral... no guns! or maybe just few PD beams.  Mora can get by with some cheap guns, but it cannot afford both ITU and Expanded Deck Crew.

P.S.  Assuming fighters remain as missiles, I kind of want to see the return of the hangar space stat from early Starfarer releases, and have that represent fighter-only OP, instead of drawing from one OP pool where carriers must give up guns to use most fighters.

[TaLaR]

Carriers have low OP, need to equip fighters themselves and the pretty much mandatory Expanded Deck Crew, and to use weapons you also need ITU + vents on top of that. Which doesn't really fit.

Whether carriers *need* that extra OP to be able to properly use weapons is another question though. Carriers are powerful enough as is.

[Megas]

Carriers are strong, but it stinks that in order for carriers to be their best, they need to focus on fighters and nothing else.  If carrier needs to eschew guns to do its job, then that is what gets done.  Before fighters became missiles, player could not do that, nor needed to do that if he could.  (Of course, fighters had no skills back then and were no match for warships with skills.)

For something like Astral, I would like to put pulse lasers or heavy blasters on the medium energy, put missiles in the large mounts, and beam PD in the smalls.  Instead, I may put few burst PD in the medium mounts, maybe salamander pods for missiles.  Or just put nothing but high-end bombers and use no guns on Astral.

However, adding OP will probably do little good.  Carrier will just get bigger fighters or get more hullmods or vents.  That is one reason why I suggested hangar space.  Have OP be for guns and hullmods, and something else for fighters, or just drop OP costs from fighters altogether (and do something about Converted Hangar so it is not auto-pick for warships).

[sotanaht]

Carriers are strong, but it stinks that in order for carriers to be their best, they need to focus on fighters and nothing else.  If carrier needs to eschew guns to do its job, then that is what gets done.  Before fighters became missiles, player could not do that, nor needed to do that if he could.  (Of course, fighters had no skills back then and were no match for warships with skills.)

For something like Astral, I would like to put pulse lasers or heavy blasters on the medium energy, put missiles in the large mounts, and beam PD in the smalls.  Instead, I may put few burst PD in the medium mounts, maybe salamander pods for missiles.  Or just put nothing but high-end bombers and use no guns on Astral.

However, adding OP will probably do little good.  Carrier will just get bigger fighters or get more hullmods or vents.  That is one reason why I suggested hangar space.  Have OP be for guns and hullmods, and something else for fighters, or just drop OP costs from fighters altogether (and do something about Converted Hangar so it is not auto-pick for warships).

Drop OP cost for guns as well.

Hanger space for fighters, OP for Hull mods and vents/caps, and only flux stats and mounts to regulate guns.  Granted this method is all about taking away control from the player, but in the current version the player prioritizes one to the exclusion of all else.  I think the current method leads to LESS real build variety because most options aren't viable by comparison.

[Thaago]

It's too obviously vulnerable to Salamanders. If Medusa uses Salamanders, then Hammerhead build changes by -8 caps + 2 Vulcans.

Again, this kind of min-maxing is not something that's relevant to the main game or to the balancing. You don't overhaul your ships on the fly to optimize them for a duel against single enemy ship.

Point is trying to find a Medusa that can defeat a Hammerhead no matter what it does with it's build. Which is why exploiting easily fixable flaws doesn't count.
From what I've seen Hammerhead usually wins.

SO with max caps, 2x pulse laser, 2x ir pulse, 2x ldmg, a few points in vents will beat that Hammerhead 80% of the time, especially when it has the (required) vulcans. The AI uses Salamanders constantly.

Any time the hammerhead isn't perfectly lined up and able to both activate its system and fire from maximum range, it dies. Sometimes in the sim duel, it will take several tries for the Medusa to accidentally dodge the opening Needler burst (which it is capable of doing 100% of the time, but the AI really doesn't know how to use phase skimmer). In real fleet battles though, where fighters and other ships can distract the hammerhead, this kind of opening happens far more frequently. Likewise, if the medusa ever can teleport in while the Hammerhead is high on flux, the Hammerhead dies. Not something that happens much in a duel because there are no outside influences, but something that happens extremely frequently in real battles.

This is a classic example of how a sim duel is a really *** test of ship performance. The ships always approach head on and there are never any asymmetric opportunities for the faster ship to take advantage of. And even then, a duellist SO medusa build wins most of the time.

Finally: why does it matter if a Medusa can win 1v1 against an optimized duellist Hammerhead? The Medusa is so much faster, obviously you are going to use it for hunting small ships or ganging up on larger ones. Its like saying a saw is bad because it can't pound a nail in as well as a hammer.

[intrinsic_parity]

I think the biggest problem with the medusa for me is that it gets into bad/isolated spots with its mobility and dies. That also doesn't show up in a 1v1.

[TaLaR]

@Thaago

Yeah, your Medusa build mostly works. I keep forgetting that AI can't do without caps.
In a fleet setting, while Hammerhead may end up more vulnerable if you wait for it, it's not like SO ships can afford to wait.
 
It's trivial to counter if try to piloting the Hammerhead as well - just need to backpedal to prolong approach phase.
Can be countered in AI vs AI too, by changing both front mediums to HAC (OP-cheaper and has almost no risk of being dodged like HNeedler). By doing so Hammerhead has finally to sacrifice at least something. Despite being a kinetic-only build, it's surprisingly viable.

Overall, an AI Medusa is just sad to look at. It could do so much better with proper use of skimmer.

[Goumindong]

That is nonsense TaLaR. We're not arguing what is better or worse just that the Medusa indeed does not need more OP to be strong. That SO is a strong build on it etc. Its not about constructing a situation in which the hammerhead or medusa wins because you want it to be better

[intrinsic_parity]

Ships are balanced against one another and they are competing for slots in your fleet. The strength of a ship is always relative to other ships. Medusa costs more DP, more money, more supplies per month, and is rarer than the hammerhead, so it should be stronger, but it's clearly not IMO. The only thing it is better at is killing frigates which is nothing to write home about. I can't really justify buying one when I can easily get ships that are clearly better, that's the problem.

Also, SO hammerhead is much better than SO medusa at killing anything other than frigates, and it's still pretty decent at killing frigates. If I am going for hyper aggressive SO fleets, medusa is not my choice. If I am going for steady sustained fleets, medusa is not my choice.

[mvp7]

Legion, especially the XIV variant can be equipped as battleship first and a carrier second and it will perform great in fleet combat setting. In most other cases it makes more sense to invest highly to fighters/bombers and leave weapon capacity to minimum but I don't think there's any sensible way to avoid that being the best approach.

If the ship could be both a great carrier and battleship at the same time it would be almost unavoidably overpowered. If you consider the history of real world carriers they quickly evolved into dedicated aircraft serving role with only defensive weaponry. Apart from some seaplanes/helicopters on smaller ships that are meant for recon and utility, carrier-battleship hybrids never really became a thing.

[Plantissue]

Medusa is fine. We use sim 1v1 as a basis for comparison, but that all goes out of the window anyways when Talar uses his own personal Hammerhead anyways, thus taking away our common judgement. So we have to go back to our different individual perspectives. Hammerhead seems to be great for facing off other Destroyers. It can take the range 1000 ballistics as support for when you are using Cruisers and larger. Medusas are better outside of an artificial sim environment. Back when it when Medusas were more available, I found Medusas more valuable for longer than Hammerheads. A Hammerhead faces a Capital or a pack of fighters and has to retreat or die. A Medusa faces a Capital and a pack of fighters and also has to retreat or die, but the important difference is that the Medusa can simply get away a lot more easily without dying and can shoot without having to face a particular direction. So localised superiority can be achieved. The Hammerhead is "fast", but it it isn't as survivable as the Medusa and its Phase Skimmer. It also doesn't help that by the time you are using Cruisers, you will be wanting to transfer the rarer medium ballistics to your better ships, leaving the Hammerhead without those elite ballistic weapons and so it may lose its function as support in the fleet, whilst no longer being as useful for a straight combat..

[TaLaR]

At least fighters part is false. Hammerhead has enough dps to handle some fighters and armor to survive the process, at least with an officer.
AI Medusa will never be able to decently fight a carrier with interceptors.

Take sim Condor with Talons as example: Hammerhead can win on autopilot with moderate armor damage using standard build. Medusa needs either SO (and takes tons of damage) or specialized anti-fighter build (extended, accelerated, front-conversion) that isn't good against other ships.
Medusa may be better at surviving single overwhelming bomber strike (if it reserved skimmer charges, which AI often doesn't), but that's about it.

Player-piloted Medusa is *way* more survivable than a player-piloted Hammerhead, sure (in sense that it's near impossible to corner or catch with unexpected alpha strike). But AI just isn't smart about using skimmer.

[mvp7]

Take sim Condor with Talons as example: Hammerhead can win on autopilot with moderate armor damage using standard build. Medusa needs either SO (and takes tons of damage) or specialized anti-fighter build (extended, accelerated, front-conversion) that isn't good against other ships.
Medusa may be better at surviving single overwhelming bomber strike (if it reserved skimmer charges, which AI often doesn't), but that's about it.

I ran the sim and it took my Medusa about 90 seconds to destroy the Condor with Talons and it took less than 5% hull damage in the process. The second run took longer and the Medusa suffered almost 50% hull damage. My Hammerhead build with Heavy Armor did much better which is unsurprising considering fighters are pretty much the only thing that armour is really good against.

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[Plantissue]

Is this your "standard" or"special" hammerhead? You can't have it both ways. You can't have your own personal specialised Hammerhead for dueling sim and then claim that your Hammerhead can now handle fighters. What are the fighters? What happens in a fleet battle? Maybe a bunch of Talons are depleting your shield whilst something else is shooting your Hammerhead? The Medusa has many turrets and can fight off the fighters. The Hammerhead generally doesn't have many. Maybe you are facing off a fleet with proper bombers? What can the Hammerhead do then?