Carriers Qs

[EntropicFrost]

So I'm doing another run of the game since I haven't played for a while (there wasn't the story last time, am enjoying that right now) but...

How do carriers work?
I understand that they function like mobile bases as they can create smaller ships with ore, but when you go to buy one they list fighter compliments, which then gets further confused by secondary and primary. From what I can tell, primaries you have to launch manually, and secondaries will whenever combat starts right? (Note: Am using one of the mods that add ships)

Second: Do these fighters get replaced automatically (free or with cost if so?), or do I have to handle replacements myself? I'm just trying to figure out if buying a carrier is really economical for me yet, or if I should just go the destroyer route for big guns.

Thanks.

[chaosavy]

There's several concepts.


Carriers tend to have drones/fighters that will manufacture for free - this is the "primary/secondary" type hangars.

Primary hangars can be controlled by the player - whether you chose to auto launch, or launch them manually.

Secondary hangars - will automatically launch (this is because there's no good place to put an interface for this - so I made it auto).


---

The other concept is being able to dock with a carrier (fly into it like a base) - you'll need a fighter or a gunship to do this.

Once docked - you can manually pilot the carrier (like any other ship), you can then fly over to a base, dock with it and buy ore.

Once you have ore you can manufacture fighters and once you have manufactured fighters you can launch them - in addition to the primary/secondary hangars above.

Carriers can also build ships up to a corvette - these will appear in space along side the carrier (same process as building fighters).

Does that answer some questions?.

[EntropicFrost]

Yep! Thanks.

Was looking at adding a carrier to my fleet as a way of adding fighters without the tedium of actually buying, and then replacing, fighters after every battle, especially since I'm not really far enough into the game right now to have stable income.

Last side question, how do you boost TSF rank past 5.1? I can't get any more missions for them after scout rally points to make it go any higher. My guess right now is that its story locked since I know the story unlocks some parts. ( I'm at the Talon fleet operation right now. )

[chaosavy]

That's the current height of TSF mission ranks - it's a bit tough with the TSF since the military wouldn't normally hire a contractor to destroy stuff - since that's their business - they don't like the competition.

Non-combat-ish missions are a bit more challenging than combat missions, but we'll see.

stable income

Once you have a base - building ships reduces the credit cost by 90% (from memory) - so you'll want more more than credits :)

[Leonhart Yukikaze]

gonna have to check again but i think i got it up to 6 with TSF? not really that important tho as it only give like one more % of reduction anyway. aaand they don't really sell anything that pricy xD

[EntropicFrost]

How can I move ore from an owned base to a carrier?
Is it possible to have mining ships deposit ore to a carrier?

[chaosavy]

Carriers can pick up cargo pods by flying into them, a tractor beam upgrade makes this easier.

You can also buy/transfer ore from a base - when docked at it as a carrier (pilot the carrier as a main ship - then dock with the base - then go the usual route to buy/transfer ore).

[Galdred]

Is there a way to tell other ships to dock inside a carrier?
I haven't been able to dock other carriers to a base (which would have been handy to upgrade them with shield and armor!).
They just patrol around the base (and I am not really up to flying to each of them to dock it myself...).

[chaosavy]

Carriers can't dock at bases (without the player) - because for as far as the game is concerned - they are bases and that would cause a lot of issues on my end - so I just made that decision.

[Galdred]

Originally posted by chaosavy:

Carriers can't dock at bases (without the player) - because for as far as the game is concerned - they are bases and that would cause a lot of issues on my end - so I just made that decision.

That makes sense. But then, it would be good to have a remote access to their base function (a bit like you can have other bases build stuff when you are inside another base):

ie, a carrier management screen that would let your purchase upgrades (the same as the current ship upgrade screen, really, but accessible from the remote interface), and repair them (when not in combat, and maybe costing minerals).
A way to rename them because it can get very confusing with several carriers.
I initially commissionned 5 of them, but I rolled back to my save, because I found them unwieldly to use except for my own ship, and very cost ineffective compared to DD (that can also have fighters).

Maybe a way to get them to buy ore at stations (or order mining/transport ships to offload to carrier)?

The latter may already be possible, though.


Btw, one reason DD are really super cost effective compared to CV is that they cost nothing when docked, so you can stockpile a ton of them with patience.

I think the end game would be more balanced if they costed something when docked.
Maybe have several "free upkeep" slots for each ship size (so that the player can keep different ships for mission free of charge, and charge both for base defense and docked ships after that?
Each base could also have a upkeep free base defense slots for each ship size.

That said, I don't know whether it would be doable to survive the latter outsider waves, with base defenders that cost upkeep, as I am not there yet.