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[Thaago]

Allright, just checking. This is an endgame speed test then, no other considerations.

I would honestly be more interested at different power breakpoints - how does carrier spam do with 5 carriers? 10? At what point does the power exceed what warships can do?

[Megas]

I can say that five Spark Drovers do not mean very much in my battleship and Doom fleet.  It is probably a critical mass thing.  Not enough, and you waste your time.  Exceed critical mass and you steamroll everything.

[TrashMan]

I only dislike fighters because 1) if I want to pilot a carrier, I must get the three personal fighter skills in Leadership and lock myself into two or three of the useful dedicated carriers and run away while fighters kill all, and 2) they slow my several year old computer more if there are too many, and player needs too many. 

I dislike them because you have so limited control over your carrier/fighters.
And because you can spam them endlessly (but not missiles, something that would be smaller and cheaper to fabricate).

[Goumindong]

There is 100% no way that a carrier fleet out performs a battleship fleet player piloted.

1 Odyssey piloted by the player
X dooms piloted by steady AI officers up to your deployment limit.
Y tempests/omens to fill in the deployment difference between your cap and your normal fleet. (Ideally also piloted by officers)

[Agile]

The issue isn't carrier spam, its Sparks.

Sparks do multiple things that, in critical mass, make them absolutely broken.

A) They have shields. Now, five sparks having shields doesn't matter because they get bursted down, but when you have 50 sparks, it gives every Spark a chance to breath, which allows them to regen shields... which essentially makes them unkillable, unlike most other fighters that run on armor + hull values instead.

B) They have Burst PD, which is THE best anti fighter and missle defense... with 5, not so bad, with 50 Sparks, this translates to disabling all enemy ships of two of the most effective weapons the AI can throw at you. Pilliums, Reaper, Astropos, Bombers; all of them are disabled by the swarm of Sparks.

C) Burst PD, unlike normal PD, is actually effective at both defense (point defense) AND offense. Which means when you let Sparks control the battlefield, they are like a swarm of bee's. Burst PD on 5 Sparks isn't too bad as it never really breaks shields, but 50 sparks spamming down a single target is like 10 frigates firing at your ships simultaneously every few seconds. That wipes out almost everything in the game except Ordos. But when you get 100, or even 200 sparks? Its essentially game over for everything you fight; even Radiants have trouble against this, and they have some of the best PD for a Capital.

D) Finally, they cost NO CREW. This means even if you suffer losses, there is no downsized to this strategy, unlike Talon + Broadsword spam, which is good but has heavy attrition costs after the battle is over.

All of this coupled together makes Sparks very good at early game, very good mid game, balanced for late game, but ONLY in limited numbers. Once you hit critical mass levels (200 sparks, which is 20 drovers) then its essentially game over. You have won; nothing can stop you. Bonus points if you have 10 level 20 carrier officers and put them on 10 of the drovers.

[Megas]

There is 100% no way that a carrier fleet out performs a battleship fleet player piloted.

1 Odyssey piloted by the player
X dooms piloted by steady AI officers up to your deployment limit.
Y tempests/omens to fill in the deployment difference between your cap and your normal fleet. (Ideally also piloted by officers)

Would this work against double or higher Ordos fleet, especially with less than 300 DP?  goduranus has that video showing Drovers wiping out four Ordos fleets in a single encounter.

Maybe Drover spam is not the fastest way in terms of playing time, especially if player gets more slowdown.  However, a slow-acting fleet that wins is faster than a fast-acting fleet that crashes and burns against a wall.

[Pappus]

There is 100% no way that a carrier fleet out performs a battleship fleet player piloted.

1 Odyssey piloted by the player
X dooms piloted by steady AI officers up to your deployment limit.
Y tempests/omens to fill in the deployment difference between your cap and your normal fleet. (Ideally also piloted by officers)

Would this work against double or higher Ordos fleet, especially with less than 300 DP?  goduranus has that video showing Drovers wiping out four Ordos fleets in a single encounter.

Maybe Drover spam is not the fastest way in terms of playing time, especially if player gets more slowdown.  However, a slow-acting fleet that wins is faster than a fast-acting fleet that crashes and burns against a wall.

Yes it works and it is faster, but it is not without losses. It is magnitudes faster if you do 4-5 huge ordo fleets in succession and that is also lossless. Fighting the whole 100 at once is at least 5 minutes faster for me with some losses, but I am not built to give ship advantage nor specifically against ordo

Edit: to maybe go a bit deeper - the remnant capital ship negates the biggest advantage the odyssey has. It cannot disengage against it so if anywhere on the battlefield an odyssey becomes high flux and there is one of those there it can die to it. It will never happen if you have the deployment advantage numerically wise. but if you are in a 200 to 300 battle it will. After all the remnant capital is basically a paragon in firepower, onslaught in armor and so on and an odyssey in speed.

Dooms are also not that great against big ordo fleets cause the bombs just melt and the capital ship seems to be allowed to port onto the bombs without dmg.

[Megas]

Picking off Ordos one by one is more optimal.  Any good endgame fleet can do that.  But a fleet (like optimized Spark Drover fleet) that can chew up and spit out four or so Ordos at the same time in one encounter without too much difficulty is impressive.  (Meaning such an overpowered fleet does not need to bother separating Ordos.)

The fleet I use can pick off one Ordos at a time without much difficulty.  Two is doable, but hard without taking losses.  Three is not doable with the fleet I use without too many losses.

[intrinsic_parity]

My experience is similar with fighting multiple ordos with conventional fleets, 3 is the point where numerical disadvantage prevents me from deploying enough ships to cleanly win the initial battle. It makes some sense that spark drover spam wouldn't have the problem as much, but I doubt my computer can really handle that many fighters.

[Pappus]

Picking off Ordos one by one is more optimal.  Any good endgame fleet can do that.  But a fleet (like optimized Spark Drover fleet) that can chew up and spit out four or so Ordos at the same time in one encounter without too much difficulty is impressive.  (Meaning such an overpowered fleet does not need to bother separating Ordos.)

The fleet I use can pick off one Ordos at a time without much difficulty.  Two is doable, but hard without taking losses.  Three is not doable with the fleet I use without too many losses.

You are missing the point though - this is about speed in realtime Doing it one by one isn't a problem for the contest. You can even bring a station if you so see fit.

[TaLaR]

Is there a point in trying to compete against a hands off carrier fleet in terms of real time? If you don't pilot anything personally, you can just put it on 2-3 time multiplier with 'speed up' mod.

[sotanaht]

The issue isn't carrier spam, its Sparks.

Sparks do multiple things that, in critical mass, make them absolutely broken.

A) They have shields. Now, five sparks having shields doesn't matter because they get bursted down, but when you have 50 sparks, it gives every Spark a chance to breath, which allows them to regen shields... which essentially makes them unkillable, unlike most other fighters that run on armor + hull values instead.

B) They have Burst PD, which is THE best anti fighter and missle defense... with 5, not so bad, with 50 Sparks, this translates to disabling all enemy ships of two of the most effective weapons the AI can throw at you. Pilliums, Reaper, Astropos, Bombers; all of them are disabled by the swarm of Sparks.

C) Burst PD, unlike normal PD, is actually effective at both defense (point defense) AND offense. Which means when you let Sparks control the battlefield, they are like a swarm of bee's. Burst PD on 5 Sparks isn't too bad as it never really breaks shields, but 50 sparks spamming down a single target is like 10 frigates firing at your ships simultaneously every few seconds. That wipes out almost everything in the game except Ordos. But when you get 100, or even 200 sparks? Its essentially game over for everything you fight; even Radiants have trouble against this, and they have some of the best PD for a Capital.

All of this coupled together makes Sparks very good at early game, very good mid game, balanced for late game, but ONLY in limited numbers. Once you hit critical mass levels (200 sparks, which is 20 drovers) then its essentially game over. You have won; nothing can stop you. Bonus points if you have 10 level 20 carrier officers and put them on 10 of the drovers.

Lots of fighters have shields.  Spark shields aren't even particularly good, and they can easily get 1-shot by large weapons.  Burst PD are also only the best small energy pd.  Ballistic or medium+ energy PD outperforms them easily.  Flack cannons and the like can (in numbers) create a wall that absolutely no missiles can bypass and will kill fighters en-mass (critical mass of AOE damage cannot be defeated by sheer numbers).  Actually, I think that if you wanted to test for this builds weakness, you should try fighting a Hegemony fleet.  Tons of Ballistic PD and high armor on their dominators and onslaughts should give them enough advantage to slow down your assault compared to a more specialized fleet.

[Pappus]

Is there a point in trying to compete against a hands off carrier fleet in terms of real time? If you don't pilot anything personally, you can just put it on 2-3 time multiplier with 'speed up' mod.

Yeah finding the mixed fleet that is quicker and does it hands off.

[Goumindong]

Is there a point in trying to compete against a hands off carrier fleet in terms of real time? If you don't pilot anything personally, you can just put it on 2-3 time multiplier with 'speed up' mod.

Cause combat is fun and you enjoy piloting yourself. So AFKing in 280 DP of drovers might get boring?

[TaLaR]

Is there a point in trying to compete against a hands off carrier fleet in terms of real time? If you don't pilot anything personally, you can just put it on 2-3 time multiplier with 'speed up' mod.

Cause combat is fun and you enjoy piloting yourself. So AFKing in 280 DP of drovers might get boring?

I'm not disputing that combat is fun. But if you just want to optimize 'time spent' metric - AFKing in Drovers is clearly the way to go.