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[Thaago]

I've been doing some testing with carriers lately, both for Support Doctrine builds and just to gauge their effectiveness, and one thing I can't determine is how the carriers task their fighters. Watching the AI fight, they don't obey the usual rules for players. The fighters do not go towards the target that the ship has selected.

One consequence is that the AI will often "split" its fighters and missiles, if using a ship with both, which is often a bad call.

The AI will often also prioritize sending fighters after farther targets rather than closer ones if the target is vulnerable (maybe? I'm not sure), even though it is doubtful that the target will remain vulnerable once the fighters get there. This is also the #1 way that carriers lose fighters, because the fighters will move past/over unfluxed enemy ships and get destroyed. It doesn't help in this case that if a "wing leader" of a fighter pack gets disabled, the entire strike will slow to match it rather than leaving it behind.

Case in point from a sim battle of an Astral vs an Eagle and a Falcon:
The first image is the situation: a heavily damaged Falcon that has been targeted by the AI and had missiles attacking it, and next to it the Astrals fighters. But they aren't going for it, but rather an Eagle entirely off screen. The eagle had been badly damaged and high on flux, but at this point it has retreated far enough that it is certainly at 0 flux.

The second image shows how the Falcon is picking the fighters off as they travel past, and how it has been targeted and is still under missiles assault. I did not apply that target designation: the AI did. If the fighters followed it, they would have quickly killed the Falcon with little to no losses.

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[BigBrainEnergy]

Often it seems like carriers hate switching targets, which makes some sense because it would be very frustrating if they were constantly switching targets before the fighters/bombers even arrive, but in their current state it causes them to do things like this a lot.

[Goumindong]

In my experience carriers need constant micro in terms of setting the fighter strike tag. My guess that what you're seeing is a "don't switch targets when fighters are in progress" which makes sense because this would really complicated bombing runs. But its possible that because your fighters are not all the same type they could potentially "chain strike". I.E. the longbows return and start their run because the daggers are still firing/on the run. And then the daggers get back and rearm and start their run and...

edit: testing seems to indicate that this is particularly prevalent when fighters die. Bombers on a run do not set their "should i do this run or hold" based on fighters that are dead.

So just a handful go off as they get remade and then the rest follow along as they get remade

[Thaago]

I agree with the micro to get them to perform! So far my best way of controlling them has been to set escort commands to handle their positioning (behind something of suitable toughness/mobility) and then doing fighter strike commands (without right clicking! Right clicking will ruin the escort order positioning).

[Goumindong]

I know that this is the wrong thread but you're clearing doing carrier stuff in here.

I take back the "you cannot build this to have a strong shield tank" comment..

You can and its not even that bad.

build is 2 Graviton + 1 Ion Beam on the converging side, HRS and ITU(or something else but you gotta have ITU) built in. 6 Longbows + 2 MIRV, ECCM, 40 vents, 50 caps. (plus/minus 90 OP worth of other hull mods. Omni shields will be quite good here)

OR SAME FIT BUT 6 flash + 2 Squall.

Ion Beam keeps the shield up. Squall hammers. Flash murder capitals.  Or Longbow overload and then MIRV finish.

Flash is quite weak vs smaller ships but if you're a carrier commander and have frigates at your disposal for commanding this may not matter. 

You're still going to lose a LOT of tank every time you recall device (6k cost = 10k shield cost every time you use it, effectively). But it should work as a player controlled ship. Long bombing runs are also a weakness. BUT you can swap to Khopesh and not lose a whole lot here.

You also have freedom to add/remove beams on the combat side. and you can fit things in the rear to fix other anti-frigate defense. But i think 2 grav+ion is ideal here. You want to magnify shield damage so bombers hit home.

I still don't think its a terribly good use of a player controlled capital that has devoted 5 to 8 combat skills. But unskilled with just fighter stuff its probably OK, aside from the fact that your systems are going to be a real pain to utilize with a 30 second cooldown.

[Thaago]

Oh that's a very interesting build, I hadn't considered doing a pure fighter with missiles to complement as a loadout. Off to more testing!

[Edit] Holy wow Flashes are strong! That huge rebuild time though! (72 seconds per wing before reductions!) I'm finding a little better success going 2x longbow 4x flash rather than 6x flash, but the difference between them and daggers really is staggering in terms of output.

Also the more I test, the more I think that I've been highly undervaluing Fighter Uplink. I'm mainly doing skill-less tests, but adding it is like night and day for bombers (170 base speed fighters like flash goes to 187 with CR and 238 with fighter uplink). Ships that could get away/dodge are getting hit, and the effective DPS of bombers wings goes up a ton with less travel time.

[Goumindong]

Flashes have a huge rebuild time yes.

But they also tend to be a bit safer than other bombers because

1) You will cycle them more with recall device
2)  They can have a pretty long fire point. (though Khopesh are best on this i think)
3) They are pretty tanky

Armor/hull/shield values for fighters are usually low enough that you can... just kind of sum them to get an estimate. A dagger is 510(300 hull, 10 armor, 200 shield) and a flash is 810(400/60/350), a longbow is 410(300/10/10), a Khopesh is 575, a trident is 1025 (500/25/500) And there are four of them compared to three for the others. So the next closest bomber is the trident at 2050 HP/wing the Flash have 2440 HP/wing.

So the HP per replacement time is 28.33 for daggers, 41 for Tridents, 38.3 for Khopesh, 22.7 for longbow... and 45 for flash.

They also have by far the highest damage per replacement time at 166*. Tridents are at 80. Daggers are at 55.5, and Khopesh are 133.3.

*actually piranha have more at 266 but they only have 1725 hp/wing and 38.3 HP/replacement time. And also their 10 bombs take 9 seconds to drop which tend to get them wrecked (as compared to the 7.5 of the Flash)

The rebuild time though really makes the expanded deck crews valuable too. That 15% really matters as does the replacement time recovery rate.

Something else to consider is that slow fighters makes it easier to synch recall device in general. And recall device is very valuable in keeping fighters alive (fighters usually die right at the end of their bombing run as they turn around) so there are trade offs.

Maybe the solution for player carriers in terms of skill is to just mess around with the skills. Would the Astral be so OP if recall device had no cooldown? Would the heron be OP if the bonus damage was a toggle that generated a significant amount of hard flux (like the paragons shield effect)?

I don’t think so. But they would be far better the player pilot

[Thaago]

... and now I really want to experiment with scintilla spam.

[Goumindong]

Might be better with condors. Plus you could stack warthogs on condors. Which are also pretty good.

Condors are 10 DP so you can get down to 5 or 6 DP with support doctrine and derelict ops. Let’s assume 6. Let’s put a legion in front (or any suitable tanking ship really) and let’s assume 60 OP of front line tanking. This gives us 30 to 36 condors for 60 to 72 flash/warthogs.

They can’t recall device which is a pain but they all get a pilium or medium salamander launcher for a mess of missiles.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

I agree with the micro to get them to perform! So far my best way of controlling them has been to set escort commands to handle their positioning (behind something of suitable toughness/mobility) and then doing fighter strike commands (without right clicking! Right clicking will ruin the escort order positioning).

There is no "hold fighters" command right? Sounds like something we need.

[Blase]

I agree with the micro to get them to perform! So far my best way of controlling them has been to set escort commands to handle their positioning (behind something of suitable toughness/mobility) and then doing fighter strike commands (without right clicking! Right clicking will ruin the escort order positioning).

Wait. Carriers will respond to fighter strike commands while they are escorting other ships? Can you elaborate on this? I had no idea.

[Thaago]

I agree with the micro to get them to perform! So far my best way of controlling them has been to set escort commands to handle their positioning (behind something of suitable toughness/mobility) and then doing fighter strike commands (without right clicking! Right clicking will ruin the escort order positioning).

Wait. Carriers will respond to fighter strike commands while they are escorting other ships? Can you elaborate on this? I had no idea.

That's been my experience so far! It seems that the way they task their fighters is separate from both their movement and their targeting.

I've been in the habit of using right click orders for ships, but I'm starting to suspect that for carriers this is a trap.

[Seanchaidh]

... and now I really want to experiment with scintilla spam.

I tried 5 with gamma cores (mostly because I didn't have enough lux or flash at the time to fill out more) and they performed quite well for their DP despite not having really any skills related to carriers (nor Derelict Ops or Support Doctrine). And that's the sort of thing that probably gets more efficient the more you have of it. They add good pressure and zoning. I've since switched to using a neural linked Nova with some beta glimmers to fill out my 120 DP of automated ships.