A question about carriers

[Formous]

Escort of capital, I am something of a fan of carrier based vessels. Can someone tell me a little about this class of ship in X4? How does it operate, maintained? Do you have to purchase any next fighter, arm and crew them, or can you purchase the fighters as a complete package? Is it possible to operate the ship independantly without being a huge tycoon, doing merc work? Do you have to manually target all the guns? or can they fire on their own? How is the fighter AI for the carrier vessels?

[Karath]

I'll try and answer some of these questions. Fighters you will have to purchase separate from the carrier itself along with Arming and crewing them. You can choose to purchase drones along with the carrier. I dont know how they work in terms of ai in relations to the carrier as I have not bought them myself. the fighters are separate to the carrier, and while you can subordinate them to the carrier, besides that I really cant speak much about the ai as they are separate entities. Someone with more experience here might help out. You don't have to be a tycoon to buy a carrier and it's fighter compliment but it will certainly help out when replacing losses, but it still going to be expensive if you are not planning on being a tycoon. I paid for a carrier with credits I mainly got from doing station building missions as they are the most lucrative missions, and without having a station producing wares to begin with.
the turrets will fire on its own, and you can give turrets behaviors, such as defend that will make the turrets only fire back at enemies when fired upon, fire at all enemies, fire at your targeted enemy, hold fire, and missile defence.

I only have experience with the Argon Colossus carrier, it has 40 internal storage for small craft, like the destroyer. Also has internal storage for 10 for medium unlike the argon destroyer, 8 small landing pads, and 4 for medium. The carrier also have launch chutes 5 front, 5 rear. Also after the recent patch you can repair fighters I think and rearm their missiles at carriers and the recently added supply ship.

sorry about the longish post.

If I am off on any of these and there is someone more knowledgeable about the game and the carriers, please feel free to correct me.

[Set-115689]

-carriers can all dock 40 small ships (fighters) , 10 medium size ships (frigates) and 20 drones.

-carriers can repair docked ships for free magically

-if you buy blueprints for missiles/drones/satellites etc... the carrier can produce them for docked ships from wares in the ships storage. Storage size varies by ship but you might be able to make 100 heavy torpedoes at most from the largest carrier storage so it's not massive.

-you can automate resupply/repair in a way but it's too quirky for me I prefer greater control over my ships

-each fighter has a pilot and fighter load outs can be configured for each fighter

-different carriers have different numbers of docking bays and other stats

-carrier turrets can be set to attack/defend and some other settings. Drones behaviour depends on the turret settings. Attack will release drones when an enemy is in radar range or near.

-carriers can be set to patrol area, defend position within a variable 40 km setting, etc....

-you can't man turrets I think and you can't fire any guns by yourself on a carrier the turrets are all automated

-your crew can repair your carrier up to a certain hull % based on service crew skill

-fighter ai not so good. I just set my fighters and frigates to dock and wait at the carrier so when they complete their orders they return to the carrier. I use M ships mostly to attack s/m targets and collect loot drops. I use plasma/torpedo fighters to blow up L/XL ships.

-carriers require little maintenance depending on how you use them. You can just go around attacking enemies and collecting the loot drops and still make quite a bit of money.

-out of sector or at ranges greater than maybe 100 km from the players position the combat mechanics change vastly. So if you want a carrier you aren't going to be near arm it with like plasma turrets and probably put some on the supporting ships. In sector this wouldn't be the best choice.

-drones fly much slower (127 m/s?) than most ships these days so they might have trouble redocking if your moving.

-carriers don't come equipped with any thing like drones/fighters you have to but each component/ship individually

I think the Colossus has the worst redocking but it can easily blow up a xenon k with plasma turrets.

[lock]

Carriers are not really expensive unless you add all the extra armaments and the best of everything, with that being said, the small defense fighters are docked on your ship, which on some ships you can also have repair drones and Drones that get stuff to your port or another friendly port.

You can have 1 small ship on deck, some carriers you can have 4 small ships that are fighter based.

The defense drones on some carriers will not come out and fight for you if you have a fighter ship docked on the landing pad of the carrier...and then again sometimes it will go into the storage area and then the defense drones will appear and IF your ship is at max. speed, you can expect the defense drones will be so far away...they won't be any help to you.

You can sometimes find a empty ship that the pilot has abandoned in sectors that you have explored already, sometimes (like most) they will have mines around it and be some arms or missiles aboard.

Sometimes its enough to pay for a upgrade of something you want to improved on with the ship.

If the carrier ship is brought at a wharf or ship building port, the crew would be low in experianced and the captain will most certainly not even a 3 star rating.

I usually have to make a crew out of buying small fighter ships and then sell the fighter ship after de-crewing it.

Even Mk2 bolt guns will tear a hole into any ship if your shields are high enough with at least a 20,000 rating. You could sit still and let it come to you to tear it apart. Easy stuff.

I usually have 5 defense drones and 5 repair drones, which is plenty if you are fighting 2 or 3 xenons fighter based ships...as for the k's, my bolt guns will kill it in no time...without any drones.