Why not limit Carriers to Huge hulls?

Fighters simply need balanced in a static fashion(they're not at present) and then removed from duplicated mass influences that give them an exponential growth curve compared to the multiplicative growth curve of everything else.

Limiting them to huge just means the game would go to crap at huge.

Phychoak, 

The game goes south as soon as they are available. I was just thinking of offsetting it. It would also be nice to have said modules LARGER (take up more room) and only mountable on Huge hulls This would force the choice to invest in the time to build one or the next size in hulls like large that are not carriers. 

True the fighter scaling is the problem. I have not seen any response from Stardock on if this would be addressed .

Well, it goes to crap as soon as they're available primarily because they're not balanced in a static fashion to start with, they're worth far more than you can otherwise fill the space with.  Bumping them up to huge hulls would make it happen a little later, but what good is another 20 turns in the big scheme of things?

I view the key problem with Fighters being that SD didn't quite decide whether they were a ship, or a weapon system. They opted for a bit of a hybrid approach.

Fighters auto replace (great, but that is like a weapon)

Fighters auto upgrade (Nothing else in the game does this, and Fighters benefit from MANY upgrades because they use components, like a ship)

Fighters are super mass effective because they get capacity upgrades in time and auto upgrade, and are a ship with no engine, gaining them more space.

Fighters are hard to deal with because they are a single target and have to be hit by the same type of weapons mean't for much larger ships, and ships can only target one ship. Leading to a quagmire battle when fleets run into them and have to hang around murdering the fighters.

Personally, I really would have preferred Carriers/Fighters be treated more like a unique weapon type, than a ship in a ship. This way, unique anti-fighter equipment could be brought in to balance them, that would target them specifically, freeing major weapons to work against enemy ships. Thus, a carrier only fleet would get chewed up by a regular fleet, as it has no escorts, the attacking fleet will certainly take a bruising from the fighters, but they won't SLOW DOWN to deal with them, they'll head straight for the carriers and murder the threat from the source.

Treating fighters as a piece of equipment (fully) also means they won't auto-upgrade, and won't benefit from capacity tech either. Furthermore, Fighter's attack could be a very low attack of all three weapon types, making them useful generalists, but not capable of fully compromising an enemy fleet that just doesn't have the right defense.

Right now, they are ships in ships, but with none of the downsides of other ships and very little cost. 

Finally, I wouldn't mind letting fighters conduct bombing runs on planets, allowing you to specifically kill certain buildings or something like that

I love the idea of being able to use fighters to bomb the planet and possibly take out planetary defense..

Honestly... I think the best way to balance carriers is to make the drones and fighters something that the player designs.     The Fighters on the Carriers should have a set cost based on the design from the ship designer.      Speed of replacement should be based on distance from the zone of influence with 100% speed in the zone and much much slower once you move deeply into enemy territory.

and when I say 100% speed I do not mean one turn.  this speed should be a factor of total production of the empire or something but I'd suggest a starting point of 3 turns while in your own empire....

Next, I would make it so fighters only upgrade when destroyed... (or when the player/AI selects upgrade)   so if you build a carrier with "super fighter Mk1"     do a whole bunch of research and have now designed "Super fighter Mk X"   you might still have a bunch of fighters that are 9 designs old out there....

Yes this would be more "maintenance clicks"  for the player but it would make carriers much more strategic and in my mind better...

I suspect the current carrier design has more to do with AI limitations than anything else...   if they do anything else the AI simply cannot know enough and will fail to use them correctly...      however I've YET to see the AI make use of carriers.    they may build one or two here or there but they just don't really use them. so the current design fails anyway.

Personally, I think it would be easiest to treat fighters as partially expendable as follows. Ftrs for carriers in orbit around a planet, or based on an in-system space Stn replace automatically. otherwise destroyed fighters stay destroyed until carriers come home and 'dock' to replenish. As for upgrading, follow same rule, so deep-space at school or carriers deployed outside your own territory can't upgrade. Should be relatively easy to code as well.

to each his own. .. but i would hate this.  I do understand the what and why but on large and above this would really suck if " home and 'dock'" meant back at your shipyard. .  Maybe if it were anyplace in your ZOI it would be OK.

Mush better idea (at least for me)

I really do not see how this improves balance. The player would always be building better fighters than the AI designs so it would make balance worse.

Yeah I agree. I don't think the most agreeable solution to the most players is adding a more micro intensive element.

I think the fighters should be a weapon module, and part of their justification in size, is that they can be manufactured on-board. Replacement can be instant and automatic as far as I'm concerned, but I don't think the fighter should ever upgrade. You should unlock better fighter modules as time goes by, just like you do all other weapons. If you upgrade the ship, you can upgrade the fighters.

For example:

Default Carrier Module includes 2 Fighters, with 3/3/3 weapons and some amount of HP, enemy anti-fighter defenses eat at this HP and eventually kills the fighter. No need for defenses on the fighter, because it isn't a ship that other ship's target. As I mentioned previously.

Unlock a great missile tech? Get access to the Bomber Module, which has 2 fighters with a single 9 missile attack (or more) etc.

Unlock a great kinetic tech? Get access to the Interceptor Module, which has 3 fighters each with a 6 kinetic attack.

Decide you need to take that default carrier you built and upgrade it to bombers? Just upgrade the ship to the new design.

The numbers are arbitrary. The point is, you treat these things like a new weapon system, and they become WAY easier to manage and balance and counteract, because you can have a unique defense type. Keep treating them as a ship and we have lots of issues.

Weapon VS Defense is Rock Paper Scissors. I'm proposing it becomes Rock Paper Scissors and Staples. 

In either scenario you then of course have roles/etc. to consider, but that is another issue entirely.

How about adding a Logistics cost to each Carrier Module? That way you can fit less carriers into a fleet. Or less ships into a fleet with a carrier.

Trying to match realism, micromanagement and gameplay is always going to be tricky. I think fighters staying destroyed until you renter your own space, but not upgrading to latest design until back and 'docked' would be a nice compromise. Upgrading a carrier should also upgrade and replace lost fighters as well.

This carrier problem makes me want to pit my fleet of 108 fighters--or more if I make the carriers useless--against 12 of my best huge ships (optimized for offense against fighters) and see what happens. Can the battle viewer even accommodate that many ships in action without major slowdown/crashing? Wait, does Hyperion Shrinker stack with Precursor tech? I forgot to check. Maybe then 15 carriers vs 15 huge ships.

Yes the battle viewer can accommodate that many objects.

I like the modules idea ONLY if actual fighters (small ships) are represented in the battle viewer. Sort of like how Distant Worlds does carriers. Then  you can also have a 'anti-fighter' line of defense options perhaps under the mass driver specializations.

Exactly my intent. 

Specific Anti-fighter weapons should already exist... perhaps as a module that can be added on to ships to change all weapons to be anti-fighter... or as stand alone weapons to add.

I think if they simply did this AND then allow ships to target more than one ship at a time it would fix everything with the carriers.

Right now fighters soak too much because a ship with 16 weapons can only shoot one ship at a time.     so if you have 108 fighters flying around you need 108 shots to take them out  even if each weapon alone could take out a fighter...

The soak levels that defenses have is a major issue since ships fire all weapons at the same ship.

How about limiting carrier modules to cargo hulls.  Much more limited space on cargos and low hit points would make them more vulnerable.

Maybe even lock any ship that has a carrier module to the 'support' role.  Do a slight adjustment to the Interceptor ship role and move Support target priority to second after Guardians and they would be in even more trouble.  It would force you to use Guardians as well to defend them, which would weaken either the offensive numbers in a fleet or the Escort wall.  It would also make Interceptors more tempting to use as well.  It could make the ship roles feel more balanced rather than the powerhouse being just Escort-Capital.

Even in real life we have super carriers and the smaller general carriers

Fighters should be upgraded and produced on the carrieres automaticaley, but :

1) It has to cost time and ressources

2) You could add a button on the fleets/carriers to turn of the auto upgrades if u need to save ressources.

It turns out that carriers are not so overpowered after all. After running some tests, I feel confident in saying that their main advantage is that they are significantly cheaper to produce than any equivalent ship needed to best them.

Could you expand on this statement please, Nilfiry.

I made a new topic to talk about carriers in general, but the summary is that carriers have plenty of weaknesses that you can exploit to survive or beat them.

https://forums.galciv3.com/473196/page/1/#3601176

I think carriers should be kitted out with N fighters, and enough parts on-hand to replace them once.  With the only way to resupply would either be a re-supply fleet or returning to a friendly planet with facilities.

But then I think supply-lines are a key concept as it gives you and the enemy the ability to cut off the tail and then roll up the head of any assault element.