fighters/carriers

Jesus.

How To Win Every Game 101: Carriers and missiles.

See the old videos on youtube and you will see some big ones that are more even.

Missiles are unbalanced, they do triple the damage of mass drivers and cost less... where is the reasoning in this? It should be the opposite, mass drivers should do the most damage as they're short range weapons, while depending on thruster speed of your ships you're likely going to be struck twice with missiles and at least once with lasers before you can even get in close enough to fire. It makes mass drivers totally pointless bulky and weak, in comparison to lasers which are slightly stronger but take up much less space. The AI also seems to understand this because the AI never uses mass drivers.

yep, and unless you are engaging near a black hole, or other gravitational force.. only beam weapons should actually have a range limitation since light will difuse over distance, but an object like a missile or projectile will keep going indefinatly..

it's not even just that carriers are OP.   as long as you have a higher logistic fleet, they will take barely any damage, especially if even just one of your ships has missiles.  so you can go around with a 30-50 logistics fleet and basically conquer any size map as fast as you can get from planet to planet with transports.   I sent a fleet of 8 ships to dozens of planets, conquered them all, never lost a single vessel.  

basically, if you grind fleet logistics and transports and sponsor your starting shipyard with 5 planets that have decent manufacturing levels, you will be able to stomp the entire map every single round with just one single fleet.    

your enemy probably won't even be close to transport research, meaning they can't do anything, and even if they were, you could easily retake your planet because they probably won't have fleets large enough to defend.  

What makes carriers so powerful:

A: instant health regen of spawning new fighters every battle.

B: no logistics cost for ships on carriers (175 fighters for no logistics cost is silly).

C: idiotic tactical decision-making. enemy fleets will always target the fighters first, rather than punching through the fighters to get to the carriers.

obviously in the OP's scenario it doesn't matter since the fighters are equivalent to dreadnoughts, but assuming an even level of technology the carriers will still win against everything because they will only take damage after their fighters are all dead.

if I were Stardock, I would focus on fixing the battle viewer. so much low hanging fruit there.

I actually only looked into fighters because I guessed they would be the only counter for the over powered missles (and not the reason you might guess). each ship can only target 1 ship per refire, I noticed this when using my missle boat against enemy carriers. however if you have multipule ships they will each target a different ship to spread the damage, making fighters supieror to the 95% cdr missles.

on another note... I did end up splitting my 50 logistic carrier fleet into 5 (just 1 carrier per fleet) so each had 35 fighters and 100's of moves per turn... I destroyed 1000 power worth of enemy ships in one turn, only took 10 minuets of clicking.

1) What is  95% cdr missles?

2) Are you able to stack multiple carrier mods on your ships? I don't think I noticed more fighters on my previous game? Is there any point to using more than one type, defense vs attack?

1) 95% CDR missiles are when you load a ship with every missile cooldown reducer it can hold, which reduces missiles' refire cooldown to 0.4 seconds.

2) You certainly can, but there isn't really a point to using anything aside from default Assault Fighters. Assault Fighters that spawn end up being classified as Escorts anyway, making them defensive ships regardless of their intended purpose (which is why everything attacks them first; everything is programmed to always destroy the Escorts before Capitals and Supports).

If Assault Fighters were always programmed to be Assault-class, as expected, carriers wouldn't be nearly as indestructible as they are now.

The effect is amplified by a Defense/HP bug I've mentioned a month ago and that hasn't been fixed. Considering it affects all damage calculation and seriously protects tiny/small ships, I'd think it should have been fixed *before* release, but I'm not even sure it'll ever be fixed.

1) how much is the CD for missiles to start?

2) Would you throw anything else on a carrier but carrier mods and basics (engines life support etc)?

Uhh well... at max tech i had one of each fleet buff module. Move speed to 100+ range 300+ (on largest map), then fill with advanced fighter bays. I had 7 bays in mine, (35 per ship).

I have another thread on the missles: 

https://forums.galciv3.com/465393/page/1/#3550057

wasnt all i started the thread for but it was definitely the highlight.