No carrier class?

[Bandit_6]

So are battleships the new carriers?

[WhyJay]

Not really, you can use them as carriers but their're more the main ship for the late game. With "X" Weapon slots and so on.

[Hurodrik]

Cruisers can also play the role of carrier, since they have that slot available.

[donder172]

There is a mod which does add a carrier class.

[Bandit_6]

Yeah i know the mod youre talking about. Waiting for it to update

[donder172]

Originally posted by BrotherArcadius:

Yeah i know the mod youre talking about. Waiting for it to update

Actually...
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=683230077&searchtext=class

[NixBoxDone]

There really isn't one at the moment, I don't think gimping your direct firepower to make your main large gun platforms (battleships) into a carrier with 1 hangar is worth it.

You can plop hangars and PD on the cruisers to act as a sort of bridge, which I'm currently teching to in my game to test, but otherwise nah.

[TVMAN]

Originally posted by PonySlaystation:

I don't think gimping your direct firepower to make your main large gun platforms (battleships) into a carrier with 1 hangar is worth it.

You can always mix it up. I use two different BB designs in my current game: One as a pure kinetic artillery platform, the other as a carrier platform, and I arrange them in my fleets at a ratio of 3:1. A pure carrier BB has three hangers, so you can bring a mix of interceptors and bombers on each ship.

[Exarch_Alpha]

The game could have light cruisers, battlecruisers and carriers. I don´t think the current model will remain like that forever.

[Dwaldor]

I think this is a silly argument. You can add hangers to the last 2 ship sizes. The only mistake Paradox made is to call them Cruisers or Battleships. They should have classed the sizes, small, medium, large, and xlarge and then we wouldn't be having a discussion on why Battleships shouldn't be Carriers. lol.

[LordOfPants]

If you take a 'battleship' size hull and pick modules that give it three hangars, you have a carrier. What are you looking for from a carrier class ship that you don't get from a 3-hangar battlehship?

[Bandit_6]

New Ship Classes and more is usually what I play with but I find its current build is too unstable. Gonna wait for the 3.0 to play it.

[NixBoxDone]

Originally posted by LordOfPants:

If you take a 'battleship' size hull and pick modules that give it three hangars, you have a carrier. What are you looking for from a carrier class ship that you don't get from a 3-hangar battlehship?

I'm really looking for a dedicated carrier ship. The problem with battleships is that they are not actually MORE effective when going hangars. I'd want a ship type that specialised in the carrier role, rather than sacrificing a spinal weapon or (what, 5?) large weapon slots to field them.

There is no way to build them that doesn't feel like you're trading an effective war platform for an inferior carrier. A ship somewhere in cost between cruisers and battleships that was carrier only (maybe even with some sort of support function like a faster replacement rate of strike craft within the fleet it is grouped with, so simulate dedicated repair and manufacturing of fighters within the ship?) would be great.

[kazaddum]

Originally posted by BrotherArcadius:

So are battleships the new carriers?

Pretty much, they can have up to 3 hangars and some short and mid range weapons.

"Battleship" does just mean the basic size ingame.

Originally posted by PonySlaystation:

Originally posted by LordOfPants:

If you take a 'battleship' size hull and pick modules that give it three hangars, you have a carrier. What are you looking for from a carrier class ship that you don't get from a 3-hangar battlehship?

I'm really looking for a dedicated carrier ship. The problem with battleships is that they are not actually MORE effective when going hangars. I'd want a ship type that specialised in the carrier role, rather than sacrificing a spinal weapon or (what, 5?) large weapon slots to field them.

There is no way to build them that doesn't feel like you're trading an effective war platform for an inferior carrier. A ship somewhere in cost between cruisers and battleships that was carrier only (maybe even with some sort of support function like a faster replacement rate of strike craft within the fleet it is grouped with, so simulate dedicated repair and manufacturing of fighters within the ship?) would be great.

Who said that carriers were effective in space?
Because they are/were on earth?
They were effective on the oceans because the mobile air bases they were offered a way to bring cost effective firepower to bear over longer ranges than a battleship could.
For the price of a Battleship you could throw many more bombers at it, no way for it to destroy them all. The mass of bombers would eventually wreck it, while the base - the carrier stayed out of range.

This is coming to and end at the moment with the current anti-ship missles. For the price of one carrier you can fire several thousand missles at it, which sink it with ease. The fire bases however are out of range of the carrier.

[NixBoxDone]

Who says that they have to be UNEFFECTIVE in space?

We're not asking for an effective carrier because it is realistic, but because having a fleet of strike craft carriers is fun and could be a viable way to play, if only there were a few tweaks to how it is done right now.

Clearly, Paradox agrees that carriers should be included in the game - there is no reason to include the bomber module if it is objectively worse at anything else you could put in the same ship, which cannot be intended because it would practically be a noob trap. Something build only until you know better, which would be sad.

Saying that they're not viable because of anything is purely conjecture - we have no carriers in space, we never tried carriers in space, and even if we did and it didn't work, that doesn't mean that it has to work the same way in a fictional game.

Even if WOULD have to be realistic, we already have an argument for bombers - they carry systems that allow them to bypass shields, making them able to directly attack the hull of enemy ships. The only reason the carriers don't work as you describe is because it isn't coded in. The fighters have no fuel gauge - it is simplicitly stated that propulsion in this game works without fuel. That means that fighters should be able to operate as far away from their carriers as their life support will let them.

We just can't because they aren't treated as ships, but as missiles, fired only when an enemy is within engagement range of your carrier.

After all, I don't see you demand they remove space dragons because we haven't seen any yet.

TL.DR.: There is no reason to include or not include carrier ships because this is a fictional game set in a fictional universe with "pulled out of our butt" technology and space critters and Paradox decides what works how.

We are asking for an effective carrier design because we think it would be fun. Arguing that it wouldn't work is fruitless, because nothing we have in game "works", it's all made up.

[kazaddum]

Then stop power gaming and make your battleships into carriers.
Add a battle rebalance mod in and you're set.