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[Tackywheat1]

I used these big bulk space coffins extensively. They are more usable once you have some industry skill and fleet fighter doctrine.
DP/deck is low so you can cram in lots of fighter spamming. cheap source of low op fighters and bombers.
The drawbacks are
1) fleet/logistical:
higher fuel cost, larger signature due to larger size and civ hull, lower burn level. mitigating them needs cruiser level hull mod (usually 1.5x of destroyer level)while colossus mk.3 don't have enough OP. more crew needed, even more when you milisub them.
2) combat load out:
drover can have a teeth full of reaper, full high-end bomber build suits even better with its system and condor can spam regenerative missiles to stall enemy.
Colossus mk.3's gun mounts are mostly a waste if you use fighters. Hull mods are once again very expensive for cruiser. remaining points should spend on capacitors.

I use them so that my drovers can go full-on bomber while fighters on colossus distract pd(broadsword) and apply emp(thunder). They should hide pretty far behind, fighters can afford the distance more than bombers do.

Optimal Drover usage uses fighters to take advantage of its system.

It was too op with bombers so it doesn't affect them anymore

[Arcagnello]

I used these big bulk space coffins extensively. They are more usable once you have some industry skill and fleet fighter doctrine.
DP/deck is low so you can cram in lots of fighter spamming. cheap source of low op fighters and bombers.
The drawbacks are
1) fleet/logistical:
higher fuel cost, larger signature due to larger size and civ hull, lower burn level. mitigating them needs cruiser level hull mod (usually 1.5x of destroyer level)while colossus mk.3 don't have enough OP. more crew needed, even more when you milisub them.
2) combat load out:
drover can have a teeth full of reaper, full high-end bomber build suits even better with its system and condor can spam regenerative missiles to stall enemy.
Colossus mk.3's gun mounts are mostly a waste if you use fighters. Hull mods are once again very expensive for cruiser. remaining points should spend on capacitors.

I use them so that my drovers can go full-on bomber while fighters on colossus distract pd(broadsword) and apply emp(thunder). They should hide pretty far behind, fighters can afford the distance more than bombers do.

Optimal Drover usage uses fighters to take advantage of its system.

It was too op with bombers so it doesn't affect them anymore

And it still is OP, even just using cheapo interceptors and not Sparks. I always felt like 12 fleet points was too little for a carrier with these capabilities. Bumping it up to 15 or even 18 would feel more appropriate.

[TaLaR]

Optimal Drover usage uses fighters to take advantage of its system.

It was too op with bombers so it doesn't affect them anymore

Reserve Deployment partially works with bombers - can't go above wing size, but still restores destroyed or empty ones.
For Cobras with wing size of 1, this can be useful enough.
The only problem - AI doesn't actually understand any of this, and simply uses system on cooldown, whether bombers are empty or not.

[Tackywheat1]

Reserve Deployment partially works with bombers - can't go above wing size, but still restores destroyed or empty ones.
For Cobras with wing size of 1, this can be useful enough.
The only problem - AI doesn't actually understand any of this, and simply uses system on cooldown, whether bombers are empty or not.

Which is why interceptors/fighter wings are the best use for the drover

[Plantissue]

Collossus MK.III has a Converted Cargo bay hullmod (the only one to have this mod), in which fighter speed is reduced by 17% and damage taken is increased by 25%.

Survivability for Carriers is their speed and Collossus MK III speed (50) is slower than Drover (75) and Heron (80). It is faster than the Condor (40). It's also significantly larger than any destroyer. Of course, if your carriers are never in a position to get shot at that doesn't matter, but that's a poor assumption to make. If you are happy with the Condor, you would be happy with the Collossus MK III.

Drover and Heron is better, but at least it isn't a total waste of supplies and fuel to recover it since fighters are useful. I suppose in theory, you can try to make it into a combat carrier with a pair of light mortars and light dual autocannon, but you will probably have to remove militarized subsystem, by which time if you don't care about your sensor profile, you would probably have better options.

[xucthclu]

Listen to the guys praising Drovers, they aren't kidding. You get about 15 of those, load them up with spark interceptor drones, slap some hardened subsystems on them, and you can take on 3 remnant ordo fleets at a time, mostly limited by the peak uptime and CR degradation. The ship system is absolutely superb.

[Plantissue]

Depends. On smaller battlesizes they aren't as good. Also they also tend not to fair so well if you are deploying undermatched so the enemy gets 50% more DP than you.

[Igncom1]

I've had about 8 drovers supporting my capital fleet before, but found them to be kinda underwhelming.

Maybe I've just not used them right or something like that as it seems like you need most of your fleet with carriers to get full saturation.

[TaLaR]

As long as you have any non-carrier ships, interceptor carriers will mostly prefer to escort them. It's useful in it's own way, but only up to a limit. Past that point I prefer to add strike carriers into mixed fleets.

If your whole fleet is carriers, they engage by default. Critical mass of Drovers simply drowns the enemy in Sparks.

[xucthclu]

My battlesize is 300, iirc. I've taken full-on 3 Ordo fleets starting with 10 drovers, since it wouldn't let me deploy over 120DP. Those fleets included stuff like Solar from SWP and the Timeless droneship from Tahlan SW. Lots and lots of brilliants. Also had managed to beat up 3 invasion fleets from Diable Avionics with these. Even when I've been undermatched, the drovers performed surprisingly well.

In the entire time of farming up about 70 alpha cores through endlessly massacring remnant ordos one after the other, I lost maybe 5 drovers or so.

TaLaR is right. I was using basically only drovers, no gunships. Just the drovers. If you need to go against battlestations, bring something else along, but the drovers can handle absolutely insane amounts of ships thrown at them.

Depends. On smaller battlesizes they aren't as good. Also they also tend not to fair so well if you are deploying undermatched so the enemy gets 50% more DP than you.

[Lucky33]

And to get at least 20 Spark LPCs you need to defeat alot of Remnants (about 1000 fp w. Rec. Op./Salv. and its still random). Without Drover+Spark spam. This way you either have working strat which doesnt include aforementioned Spark spam and you dont need it or you are using the console.

[xucthclu]

Before I got spark interceptors, I had Diable Avionics Fractus combat carriers with wanzers, a bunch of other LPCs, went to a medium danger system to get sparks. They did destroy all my fractus carriers eventually. I could probably switch to some other chip instead of sparks and still be quite efficient, haven't messed around with it that much.

And to get at least 20 Spark LPCs you need to defeat alot of Remnants (about 1000 fp w. Rec. Op./Salv. and its still random). Without Drover+Spark spam. This way you either have working strat which doesnt include aforementioned Spark spam and you dont need it or you are using the console.

[Lucky33]

As I said, it makes the whole Spark spam thing irrelevant. You will get it when you already dont need it.

[bobucles]

This seems less about carriers being amazing, and more about Sparks being amazing. Are they really the best bang for the OP? Is it an element of the self healing shield, high agility and potent energy weapon that helps them reach critical mass?

[Lucky33]

Nope. You can do the spam with the Broadswords and Talons - most generic and readily available fighters.

But Sparks are something like Tachyon Lance w. 4k range and partial shield bypass.

Per Drover.

Do the math.