Aeria Drone Host's antimatter pool

Constructing fighters takes AM.

The Aeria Drone Host, and the other Carrier Cruisers require antimatter to construct their Strikecraft wings (about 8 Antimatter for each fighter, 18 for each Bomber). This usually isn't noticed though because upon construction they have considerable Antimatter stores which they can use to load up on their ships. During prolonged battle though this can be noticeable, because when they're out of Antimatter ship production becomes very slow. For the fun of it.

Vasari Lasurak Transporters pay about 18 Antimatter for each fighter, and have 3 fighters in a wing (72 antimatter total). Each Vasari Bomber costs 42 Antimatter and there are 3 bombers in a wing (126 antimatter total). With a build time of 25 seconds for each fighter and 30 seconds for each bomber it takes 100 seconds to complete it's bombers and 90 seconds to complete it's fighters.

The TEC Percheron Carrier pays about 12 Antimatter for each fighter and has 6 fighters in a wing (again for a total of 72 antimatter). Each Bomber costs 25 antimatter, and there are 5 bombers in a wing (for a total of 125 antimatter). The build time for the fighters is 20 seconds a piece, and 25 seconds for each bomber, resulting in 120 seconds to complete it's fighters and 125 seconds to complete it's bombers.

The Aeria Drone Host takes about 8 Antimatter for each fighter and has 9 fighter wings total (for, once again 72 Antimatter total). The Bombers cost 18 Antimatter a piece and there are 7 of them (for a total of 126 Antimatter, the same as Vasari, one more than TEC). With a build time of 15 seconds for each fighter and 18 seconds for each bomber, it takes 135 seconds to construct it's fighters and and 126 seconds to complete it's bombers.

Interesting how the Antimatter costs are virtually identical, but the build times vary pretty dramatically (although there is around a one second margin of error for the build times and about 1 antimatter margin of error for the antimatter costs for each craft). Each carrier pays "up front" for the antimatter of each individual craft before it's built, so the entire antimatter cost of the wing is not required for the construction to start.

The Carrier Capitals don't appear to incur any antimatter cost for the production of their ships, though.

There are more stats out there for each of the various craft (Vasari have more hitpoints, armor and damage, Advent have the least and TEC has the middle ground) but I don't think they're relevant here. If you play Advent and your enemy is heavy on Carriers, using Disciples with Steal Antimatter can be something worth considering, not so much to hinder your enemy, but since each enemy carrier has a significant antimatter store (TEC and Vasari have 200, Advent have 225) you can gain significant amounts of antimatter off of them easily.

I took too long to write this post, question was answered.

Yeah thank you. Very informative answer
I think that the Drone host does need some buffing, basically the entire idea of races should be buffed a little.

For example, Advent have a pretty powerful fleet of fighters. They should have the tech tree and ships more reliant on this. This would bring some awesome flavour to the game. I.e. the drone host can have two or even three fighter wings through research. The fighters can be improved, the entire tree can be added to that.

So that Advent would be fighter oriented spacecraft
TEC would have the armor / repair oriented
Vasari would have the raw firepower oriented

That would definitely bring distinct differences for each race

I actually whipped up a quick and dirty mod that made the light carriers in the game field 2 squadrons and it was very OP. I think the best way to buff the light carriers is to leave their stats alone but reduce the cost by about 1/3.

I also whipped up a quick mod that made the carrier caps start out with six squadrons and get two additional per level. It was somewhat OP, but not as much as you'd think. It made it necessary for a well balance fleet to have one carrier cap, but there were a couple of ways to use it. You could use it defensively by decking it out with interceptors to protect your LRMs from his interceptors and your heavy cruisers from his bombers. Or you could split it between fighters and bombers and use it offensively as well. So it gave you options and it also made the fleet composition more similar to modern fleet compositions. All real fleets had a heavy carrier as one of its center piece weapons.

The only downside is that in a small map, I think the Sova embargo rush would be simply uncounterable. If it loaded up on bombers I don't think even a Radiance could stop it.