Are hangar ships really useful?

[esQ]

What's the advantage of having hangar ships if only diffrence between hangar ships and the fighter ships that you can equip at the device slot is that you can perform a simple control over the hangar ships?

[uni790]

Some of the Elite hanger options can be nice, the Tholian Mesh weavers for example have beam fire at will III, and attack pattern beta III, which together boosts the teams damage output by a fair amount.

But to get any use out of hangers at all, they need to be elites(and only certian ones), otherwise it's just a waste.

[Shellbie]

Too much investment for very little reward.

[uni790]

Originally posted by n3mes1s:

Originally posted by uni790:

But to get any use out of hangers at all, they need to be elites(and only certian ones), otherwise it's just a waste.

This is a joke, right? lol. The only difference between elite pets and normal pets are probably one or two more weapons, or any other gimmick and thats it. The AI and hull points (the things that matter the most in hangar pets) is exactly the same lol.

the Elite pets come with better damage, better HP, and some abilities, which is what can make them useful, the only space pets worth anything for raw damage for example are the Elite Scorpion Fighters, as they have that High Yeild Plasma torpedo, and there are 12 of them.

[ImperatorPavel]

The elite pets actually don't have much better damage, and don't have more health than the normal versions of themselves, and actually very rarely are worth the upgrade.

[Wisecasper]

If you use the hangar traits, skill choices and duty officer abilities they are just about passable. When i started playing and the max ship was T5 and recall mode actually healed them they were awesome. I used to use attack mode and they would fly in formation with me and go off and fight an enemy entering their range. I hung back out of enemy range and they would go and kill ships up to T4 eventually if you kept issuing replacements. It was great for background gaming whilst doing other things on the pc. Now they just bounce off your hull and won't attack unless your ship starts firing which is within 10km even though their range is 15km and you have to use bridge officer abilities to heal them because recall is 'headbutt my ship doing nothing useful' mode

[ImperatorPavel]

I usually stick the sarr theln trait on my carrier if I'm flying it. Usually I can just target an enemy and my pets will start firing.

[Wisecasper]

On some of mine I equip the bio-neural warhead, which has a range of 15 and they follow that into combat. But they're still not as efficient as they used to be. Although the messing they did with the fire at will accuracy has helped a little

[ImperatorPavel]

Huh. Usually I can just get them to start shooting by targeting an enemy.

[ImperatorPavel]

Meh, if they're out of range I'm fine with waiting for them to get within range. Only daily I bother to let them solo is sh'mar and that occurs over a small area. Mostly just use them for the free tachyon beam anyway.

I'm not saying carriers are great, not saying they're useless either.

[ImperatorPavel]

I don't do many queues, hence me being fine with my pets being slow. I have other ships for queues.

[ImperatorPavel]

Mostly just event queues, where I don't fly the carrier.

[ZME_Matchstick]

Originally posted by uni790:

Originally posted by n3mes1s:

This is a joke, right? lol. The only difference between elite pets and normal pets are probably one or two more weapons, or any other gimmick and thats it. The AI and hull points (the things that matter the most in hangar pets) is exactly the same lol.

the Elite pets come with better damage, better HP, and some abilities, which is what can make them useful, the only space pets worth anything for raw damage for example are the Elite Scorpion Fighters, as they have that High Yeild Plasma torpedo, and there are 12 of them.

better damage? lol no.... on useful carriers aka dread carriers.. pets won't even account for 1% or your total DPS. The last time I ran a dread carrier with a parser to get a breakdown of my DPS. The pets did a total of 3k damage.....

[ImperatorPavel]

I fly lots of different ships. I fly the sarr theln, a sovvie, a xyfius, etc. I don't necessarily fly the carrier all the time.

[Gorok Delvedeep]

Originally posted by n3mes1s:

Not much. Dreadnought carriers are great, because they dont depend on hangar pets, but Pure carriers are completely screwed in this game because the pet AI is still dumb as hell. There is no point flying a carrier and see how no matter what you do your pets do whatever they want (nothing).

My advise is, if you want a ship with hangar, pick a dreadnought carrier or just a heavy escort carrier. Never ever pick a pure carrier (like the one we are going to get in the summer event, for example).

Pet's were vicious when they first happened, because they ranked up to 5 star x3- x4 quicker than now (because they nerfed that) they were great dodge tanks because they had massive defence rating boosts from tiny size and high impulse ( before crap tek nerfed defence because tacs cried like little girls they couldn't hit the fighters at all, ever) and ignored AOE booms because the ai used to be smarter and they wouldn't just stop atop a blowing up ship ( this ai code mae the game break so often and in so many ways they dumbed it down and now they've just made pets aoe immune because they're too stupid to leave an aoe / not enter it)

the traits wing commander and rapid deployment were only even introduced because the things they effect were nerfed into the ground

[AbsynthMinded]

Carriers/Hangers are a sad foot note in Star Trek canon. I wish they did not exist at all in the game. They are not a worthy DPS platform. DPS is all that matters in STO. In the Trek archives carriers only held any role in print. In video they were only ever used as a rare plot tool or set dressing. They are never seen or used as a primary elemet to any story, ever. More to the point, any time fighter sized craft are used or seen in Trek, they are decimated or seen as inconsequential.

I have not read every Trek story out there. But even there the appearance of carriers is exceptionally limited. I hate carriers and hangers in STO.