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[Alex]

I'd rather see some weapon mount changes on it so it can actually act like a combat carrier.  Only 4 small missiles and 2 small ballistics don't really feel combat ish.  It rapidly runs out of missiles then has nothing to do/can't defend itself, and combat carrier to me feels like something that has staying power.

Am I missing something with the Active Flare system it has?  Swap the small ballistics to medium?  Create a kinetic version of swarmers(high capacity/low damage)?  Swap all the smalls missiles out for a single large?

It's not *really* a combat carrier. The COMBAT tag is not something player-visible; it's just a hint to the AI for how to behave. The idea with the Drover is that it can support its fighters with some missile fire, though of course that's going to be very ammo-limited. If it's outfitted with missiles and PD it will stay at missile range, the COMBAT tag helps make that happen, and I wouldn't draw any other inferences from that about its intended role, if that makes sense!

I did just change it to 12 DP and reduced the price to buy it, btw.

[Killer of Fate]

... combined with some questionable-at-time target selection/pathing, let skilled enemies just shrug off bomber strikes and while their friends around them delete the wings.

That reminds me - this aspect of it might be better, at least; I remember making some changes to improve target selection, especially with regard to not picking something that's too deep in the enemy formation and protected by escorts that would shred the fighters/bombers on the way.

Right now I'm trying comparative testing of 2 Condors in the early game, one with Khopesh, the other with Warthogs. So far Khopesh is winning by a lot, which really surprises me, but I'll see how that changes with more fights. I also just got support doctrine, so we'll see how 100% CR and a tiny bit of extra speed does in making them viable.

Re: Condors and Drovers, hmm. The Condor is just kind of supposed to be a pile of junk that gets you easy access to fighters. I could see making the Drover a bit cheaper - maybe 12 DP? and cheaper to buy, though.

I'd rather see some weapon mount changes on it so it can actually act like a combat carrier.  Only 4 small missiles and 2 small ballistics don't really feel combat ish.  It rapidly runs out of missiles then has nothing to do/can't defend itself, and combat carrier to me feels like something that has staying power.

Am I missing something with the Active Flare system it has?  Swap the small ballistics to medium?  Create a kinetic version of swarmers(high capacity/low damage)?  Swap all the smalls missiles out for a single large?

combat tag just means it'll get in range more likely to use its weapons...
the actual tag you're thinking of that means what you described is no_auto_escort which translates into carrier acting on its own and pursuing its own initiative.

Drover is a support carrier first and foremost. And at 12 DP it'll be perfectly fine tbh...
Except active flares, but whatevs

[Thaago]

Been testing more, and am now up to a 4 condors along with 3 frigates, 2 destroyers, and a fast cruiser to stay in front, each with 2 of broadsword, warthog, khopesh, piranha. Still fighting pirates, but larger fleets with multiple cruisers. Khopesh is in the lead, but the Warthog is significantly closer; Broadsword and Piranha both lag, though the latter gets the occasional big hit in. I've built in expanded racks with Pilums on all the Condors, and their Pilum spam is very nice and quite useful. About half as much damage as the wings and they add a lot to total suppression of the enemy with all the hitpoints to shoot down and EMP (and occasional hull hit).

At this point the carriers are at 100% boost for unofficered ships: both fighter skills, support doctrine. Against these enemies it is ok, but I'm just dreading what is going to happen as enemies get more skills. I'm only level 6 at this point, with 5 in leadership, and I'm still flying the starter wolf, so my flying isn't contributing that much.

I'm at ~90 DP right now and winning ~+85% xp pirate fights (2 level 5 officers boosting my size and in combat ships, not too much sample size of bigger enemies to compare to). That's not bad, not great. That said, I have had one surprise fight that wasn't even that hard go horribly wrong: I had to recover all 3 condors afterwards (only had 3 at that time). I wasn't paying attention and an eradicator got into them, at which point, well...

[Doctorhealsgood]

Drover having decoy flares might be funny. Dunno what is their range or cooldown so maybe it is straight up unviable.

[PixiCode]

Drover having decoy flares might be funny. Dunno what is their range or cooldown so maybe it is straight up unviable.

If you meant the Gremlin's decoy flare, its cooldown is unironically over a minute long and its range is ~500 SU or so, going off of memory.

Ouch.

[Doctorhealsgood]

Drover having decoy flares might be funny. Dunno what is their range or cooldown so maybe it is straight up unviable.

If you meant the Gremlin's decoy flare, its cooldown is unironically over a minute long and its range is ~500 SU or so, going off of memory.

Ouch.

Welp. That's straight up unusable by the drover so rip.

[Bungee_man]

Yeah I largely agree with you, wings work perfectly fine in small battles, but they fall off hard late game unless you spam a lot of them. It really feels like an uphill battle to get value out of any of them outside of DTA or as niche, DP-expensive anti-frigate answers. Yet buffing them in any way that doesn't keep in mind spam will just be a repeat of the past.

That's a fair summary, I suppose. Maybe the late-game niches of fighters could just be expanded upon, instead of making them generally good. For example, why not let them capture/hold Objectives independently of their carrier? You know, order a Fighter Strike on them. That's only applicable in large battles, doesn't increase their ability to overwhelm en masse, but does boost their late-game utility.

The problem identified is definitely the major issue with fighters right now, and your suggestion is a good idea (a capital fleet could choose not to invest in point-cappers if they have carriers on hand), but I don't think it'd solve the problem all that much.

Fundamentally, the issue is that there's a qualitative difference between a wide-open battlefield where carriers can maneuver and pick off isolated targets and a full one in which enemy PD is heavily-concentrated and your line ships are always fully engaged, where another line ship shifts things much more than one or two carrier wings unless you have enough of them to liquify the enemy before they can start to fight properly. I'm not sure of the whole solution, but I think it boils down to making fighters more impactful in low numbers, maybe with a few extra boosts below 8 wings, while improving the viability of AOE weapons against fighters and the AI's handling of them in both directions.

[Killer of Fate]

Yeah I largely agree with you, wings work perfectly fine in small battles, but they fall off hard late game unless you spam a lot of them. It really feels like an uphill battle to get value out of any of them outside of DTA or as niche, DP-expensive anti-frigate answers. Yet buffing them in any way that doesn't keep in mind spam will just be a repeat of the past.

That's a fair summary, I suppose. Maybe the late-game niches of fighters could just be expanded upon, instead of making them generally good. For example, why not let them capture/hold Objectives independently of their carrier? You know, order a Fighter Strike on them. That's only applicable in large battles, doesn't increase their ability to overwhelm en masse, but does boost their late-game utility.

The problem identified is definitely the major issue with fighters right now, and your suggestion is a good idea (a capital fleet could choose not to invest in point-cappers if they have carriers on hand), but I don't think it'd solve the problem all that much.

Fundamentally, the issue is that there's a qualitative difference between a wide-open battlefield where carriers can maneuver and pick off isolated targets and a full one in which enemy PD is heavily-concentrated and your line ships are always fully engaged, where another line ship shifts things much more than one or two carrier wings unless you have enough of them to liquify the enemy before they can start to fight properly. I'm not sure of the whole solution, but I think it boils down to making fighters more impactful in low numbers, maybe with a few extra boosts below 8 wings, while improving the viability of AOE weapons against fighters and the AI's handling of them in both directions.

the solution are buffing smaller PDs so frigates and destroyers can more easily handle small fighter groups. And if your destroyer is isolated enough to be ganged up by 2 Herons, than it's not the Heron's fault

And then you buff bombers specifically... Maybe give tactical buffs to fighters here and there. Nothing that would make them stronger against frigates or destroyers. But maybe against capital ships.

You could probably increase all bombers wing size by 1 and reduce their respawn timers by 2 tiers. And they would still be balanced, cause bombers are ridiculously expensive, their missiles tend to miss a lot, and capital ships have extensive point defence or shields.

And if you think "but what is poor Jimbo the frigate supposed to do about being ganged up by 3 Longbows and 8 Daggers?". If you are spending 20 DP (and 51 OP), then you should have enough firepower to kill an isolated frigate that can also very often just dodge all the damage you throw at it. The only ships that would be unable to counter this would be general junk like Cerberus, Vanguard, Hound, Apogee, Fury, etc. But those ships are just generally underpowered and get countered by the very concept of their own existence

And then if you fear bombers would make fighters obsolete. Because bombers would be just straight up better. Then you give most carriers combat tags. Like Heron for example. Boost their OP or give them some tactical benefits. Like Condor having 20 additional max speed. And let them roam along their support fighters (not to be confused with Xyphos and Sarissa support fighters) if they spend a minuscule amount of OP on specialist tools rather than bomber damage. The issue then however unfortunately is that many weapons are nerfed into the ground and rely on certain ships' hulls being strong. Like Heavy Blaster is awful, but we don't care cause Radiant exists or something... Or Graviton Beam does nothing. But we don't care cause Eagle has almost as high flux stats as Aurora for 10 less DP. So, if you wanted to put a Heavy Blaster on a Heron and roam with it along your Talons and Gladii, then you would just find out the game wasn't designed for that. And the universal slot is there to just poke fun at you

[mr. domain]

Drover Maneuvering Jets when??

[happycrow]

Newbie question here, how does expanded racks help? The carriers with pylums since the pylums don't run out of ammunition? I am a little bit confused there.

[mr. domain]

Newbie question here, how does expanded racks help? The carriers with pylums since the pylums don't run out of ammunition? I am a little bit confused there.

protoss voice you must launch additional pilums!

[Killer of Fate]

Newbie question here, how does expanded racks help? The carriers with pylums since the pylums don't run out of ammunition? I am a little bit confused there.

pilum max ammo is small and their regen rate is not infinite. It's mostly good for ships with Fast Missile Racks, but generally you shouldn't use those two in conjunction

[Phenir]

Newbie question here, how does expanded racks help? The carriers with pylums since the pylums don't run out of ammunition? I am a little bit confused there.

Pilums shoot faster than they regenerate ammo. They regenerate 1 ammo per 10 seconds but they fire 1 per 5.33 seconds (3 every 16 seconds). Racks means they take longer to run out of ammo, especially when built in since that also reduces fire rate. Additionally, condors have the fast missile rack system so they run out of pilums even faster.

[happycrow]

Thanks, y'all.
(must shoot more pilum pretty pretty light show)

[Thaago]

Yeah, I'm not sure that expanded on a condor are the best use of a story point, even if it does have 100% bonus XP over lifecycle, and the fire-rate penalty hurts a bit. But I want at least 1 S mod for recovering them, they don't need expanded deck crew, and the fire rate is already dominated by the fast missile racks so: Pilums, Away! Zap Zap bang bang.

You know, if we want to make Condors not trash, giving them more OP and a second medium missile mount would turn them into missile boats that are also carriers. Hideously vulnerable glacially slow pinata bags of crew death, but good fire support value.