Your Ideas to make Carriers useful

[mr.WHO]

In latest anouncement Egosoft mentioned that they want to add Fleet resupply ships.
However with it the one potentential use of Carriers as repair & resupply ship will no longer be unique and we would probably end up with Ressuply ships being atual carriers.

So the Resupply ship will R&R ship.
Destroyers can ferry almost the same amount of fighters (and Odyseus can even carry M-size ships), have more L-size turrets and half amount drones.



So how should we make Carriers actually doing something sueful and contributing to the overall military scheme?

My Idea? Turn them to REAL Fleet command ships.


How to do this?
1) Add Carriers only special radars that give you long radar range (e.g. 120-180 km - this could be faction specific, so could have better radars).
2) Expand the drone storage to 40 (only 20 drones is tiny comparing to 10 drones of Destroyers) and add more types of combat drones:
- combat drone mk.2 (military grade drone - two weapons and enhanced hull point).
- combat drone mk.3 (experimental drone - two weapons, enhanced hull point and light shield).
3) Add ability to name your fleets/squads (this would be useful in general, but also for carrier in particular).
4) Add new carrier group menu which will display all squads assigned to the carrier (thus custom naming e.g. Destroyer escort, fighters squad, bomber squad, corvette squad):
- each squad can have set specific stance:
> Idle - ship sill docked inside the carrier (S and M) or stick pasivelly behind the carrier (L and XL size).
> Escort - ship stick close to the carrier and engage all hostiles that get near the carrier, L and XL size ship will try to be in front and sides of the carrier).
> Attack - these ships will be designated for carrier "launch attack" order.

Then when you assign you subordinates to the carrier you will be able to select carrier and when you click on the target you will have "launch attack" button - there you select which defined squads are to participate in attack.

5) Carriers should be able to repair and resupply docked S and M ships but less efficient than dedicated resupply ship - this is to reduce micromanagent on the carriers - who would like to mico several dozen fghters?

6) Also the S/M storage should be increased from 40/10 to 60/15 so that we could make proper carrier based fighter/bomber groups.

7) Possibly Destroyer S/M storage should be nerfed - they are significantly smalled than Carriers yet then are able to store almost as many ships?

[adeine]

1) fix docking & launching of fighters/bombers
2) fix docking & launching of fighters/bombers
3) fix docking & launching of fighters/bombers
4) ... Profit?


Seriously, though, any sort of carrier is useless until there is something vaguely on par with X3's docking computer, allowing for efficient and speedy launches and landings (along with a "flee to home base" threshold for subordinates).

[Bubonosaure]

Yes, this is definitely problematic.

So, here are a bunch of simple and more elaborate ideas :

- Carriers can act as mobile missile factories for M/S ships assigned to them. To accomodate for this, they need a station manager on top of the pilot that will manage eventual freighters assigned to it to buy missile components.
- Carriers can have a non-stacking group buff to damage to simulate the idea of fleet command improving coordination. Let's say 5% to a large zone (20-30km) around it.
- Carriers could have a bigger drone storage. I'm against Mk2/Mk3 variants though. Fighters should be the main focus for DPS. Drones are just there for distraction and some extra dps.

More complicated ideas :

- Space fuel becomes an actual fuel. Every S/M ship recieves a small dedicated storage to space fuel. It allows ships to use space fuel to boost, instead of energy shield. Carriers would be able to refill the ships in space fuel using the same mecanism I explained earlier : they get a station manager on top of the pilot to supervise supplies and freighters.
- Carriers could also have natural shield regen and shield bubble that absorbs a small % of damage taken by allies when in close proximity to the carrier.


I like your whole bit about squads and fleets. All class should be nerfed to only stock 20 ships max and Odysseus could have two M size (one docked and one stored) but only 10 S ships. However, I don't think carriers's storage should be increased. You want bigger fleets ? Then get more carriers. 10M size already seems a bit far fetched when you look at the actual size of the ship, accounting for living quarters, storage, drones, weapons, etc...

So, anyways. Here's hoping they actually do something about it. I have pretty bad memories from the balancing they did on X:Rebirth. I cannot remember buying a single Teladi ship besides the novelty factor. Oh, and they need to improve IA scripts all across the board because this is whole carrier concept relies on IA, and right now, I have enough time to cook an omelette while waiting for ships to land on the carrier.

[Loneshade]

1) how about carriers repairing fighters docked inside?

2) I'd personally like a command & control table, so i can use seta and stuff, without steering the ship myself.
Also a way to command my fighters around effectively.
My main issue right now is that all commands queue nicely, but I've no way to effectively cancel orders, since the 'remove all orders' function, also clears the ships base assignment.
So some sort of 'set emergency command' and 'clear all emergency commands' would be good, to have ships return to their activity, after whatever action was completed.

3) I'd like a carrier who has a bridge that allows view on all the hangar bays, so you can watch ships take off and land.

[EvanRath]

work like carriers in real life but in space - isnt that the point?

[Admiral Sausage]

The real point of a carrier, as suggested by the name, is to carry ships around. So, while adding features for them to support a fleet would be useful, it doesn't make them better for their real purpose. For that, there needs to be a reason for other ships to not only dock with a carrier, but to remain docked while it travels.

The most obvious way I can think of to do that would be to make carriers able to move ships around faster than they can on their own. That would mean:

1. Increased travel drive speed. A light fighter like a Perseus can reach 5km/s with a Mk3 combat drive, so a carrier would need to be even faster than that to be useful. Of course the AI would also have to be improved so it doesn't take 5 minutes for them to go through a jump gate.
2. Remove the highways. These allow small ships to travel far too fast relative to large ships.

[mr.WHO]

The real point of a carrier, as suggested by the name, is to carry ships around. So, while adding features for them to support a fleet would be useful, it doesn't make them better for their real purpose. For that, there needs to be a reason for other ships to not only dock with a carrier, but to remain docked while it travels.

Unfortunately highways makes actual carry factor almost redundant - fighters can get anywhere much faster with highways that carrier and Egosoft will not remove highways.

[EvanRath]

jump drives

https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/265

currently only you can do it but still

[Bubonosaure]

Jump drive is such a cope out. There are many things that can be done to justify carriers besides jump drive, which bypasses all zone control. Actually glad they didn't include it in X4.

[lordmuck]

Faster fleet deployment

- better ways to launch / quicker launches

- Carrier must get to the sector anywhere in the xverse faster than s / m ships, however I am not referring to fly speed in a sector. At the mo, if we do a fly to command, all s/m ships will get to the other side of the universe under 2 mins. Using the carrier 20 mins! So first thing that comes to mind is a type of jump drive and any "jumping through hoops clicks and setups" to get the carrier to jump from A to B must be done in under 30 seconds to make it even worth thinking about to use. Be it beacons / charge time (cooldown could have a bit of a wait time but SETA would still kill that) OFC needs some sort of fuel like ecells mixxed with nividum rofl or something.

Fleet management in terms of resupply and repair

-"jumping to a sector" needs to allow us to select where we want the carrier to appear at. Therefore we also need to be able to select the Y axis on the maps which for some dumb reason we dont have. This needs/should/could be done in the same way homeword cataclysm works. A normal right click from top down / perpective view places the flyto command or what ever command we want on the map, we then hold SHIFT and click the waypoint, while shift is pressed we can only move up or down the Y axis, the ability to also rotate the direction that the ship is facing would also be neat.

-Carrier should need materials to make missiles, and therefore would need a "module" to be installed with a chosen missile type. We could also have the mod drops include something like +1 module for missile creation and -X% to speed in creating (a negative impact on speed) missiles / torpedoes allowing the carrier to make another type of missile / torp ex: smart and swarm or light and heavy torp

- Ability to repair using materials hull parts / engine /smart chips the usual things ships need to be built with.

- repair drones apply a bonus to speed and how many ships are being repaired at the same time including crew skill once that gets implemented correctly / working

Other bits

Carriers need to have a wing type on its own "Mother ship" "home ship" for the selected s/m ships NOT the stupid "defend ship" so you make a wing that works in limited situations and its still broken as ships need to be launched after the carrier is shot, so we have the stupid wait time, once they launch they attack x once and try to land again! -.-

All the fleet commands and management needs to also be sorted out / fixed and every missing thing added! Before this could even work right for combat

Carries with the mother ship or home ship setting for a transporter s / m they use the best buy or collect from a selected player station and resupply materials that are needed, the S / m transporter will always try to keep stock of XYZ at full. We should have the option to turn resupply to the carrier on or off due to how harsh the combat situation will be.

s / m transports can also have destroyers as a mother ship / home ship for resupply

[adeine]

The real point of a carrier, as suggested by the name, is to carry ships around. So, while adding features for them to support a fleet would be useful, it doesn't make them better for their real purpose. For that, there needs to be a reason for other ships to not only dock with a carrier, but to remain docked while it travels.

Another main reason, and the principal one in X3, was to keep docked ships safe and allow them to retreat from the fray in an emergency. Doesn't work in X4 because ships fly circles around the carrier and stop in place trying to dock, getting gunned down.

There needs to be a launch/landing AI or mechanism closer to X3's docking computer for carrier based fleet deployment to ever make sense. Even if carriers got to places faster, if deploying or gathering up your fleet takes ages, it's largely pointless.

[caltrop]

Give them huge armoured prows, like in Warhammer 40k (or even BSG) , so they can ram other ships/stations ^_^

[Shehriazad]

1: Make them launch/dock ships and drones WAY faster. Some L miners already have properly working drone bays for miner drones...so the tech exists.

2: Give them insane travel speed and shorten the travel engine activation time.

3: Doubled Radar for carriers

[Tomonor]

- Space fuel becomes an actual fuel. Every S/M ship recieves a small dedicated storage to space fuel. It allows ships to use space fuel to boost, instead of energy shield. Carriers would be able to refill the ships in space fuel using the same mecanism

Lmao. I can totally see drunken pilots rejoice in their whiskey-fueled ships.

[Falcrack]

1) fix docking & launching of fighters/bombers
2) fix docking & launching of fighters/bombers
3) fix docking & launching of fighters/bombers
4) ... Profit?


Seriously, though, any sort of carrier is useless until there is something vaguely on par with X3's docking computer, allowing for efficient and speedy launches and landings (along with a "flee to home base" threshold for subordinates).

I wouldn't like it if the only solution was to have fighters immediately teleport outside the carrier when undocking, and immediately teleport inside for docking when they got within a few km. That was a lame hack fix IMO.

[graphicboy]

Cue the video from X3 LU where the player summons in the fleet, in formation, and they start attacking the enemy.

[adeine]

1) fix docking & launching of fighters/bombers
2) fix docking & launching of fighters/bombers
3) fix docking & launching of fighters/bombers
4) ... Profit?


Seriously, though, any sort of carrier is useless until there is something vaguely on par with X3's docking computer, allowing for efficient and speedy launches and landings (along with a "flee to home base" threshold for subordinates).

I wouldn't like it if the only solution was to have fighters immediately teleport outside the carrier when undocking, and immediately teleport inside for docking when they got within a few km. That was a lame hack fix IMO.

Yeah, the 'within a few km' approach is wonky, but it worked. Ideally X4 could improve on this solution so the AI actually pathfinds properly/aligns itself and boosts into the landing spot or hangar (and vice versa). You can kind of do this yourself if you have the maxed out docking assist installed, and it makes landing relatively instantaneous.

I'd be cool with the AI cheating a little if that is what it takes, so docking effectively tractor beams the ship into the correct position or the ship being able to move beyond its own manoeuvring capability while landing. For rapid deployments, you could either have a hangar opening (as for drones) or keep the landing pad in its open position and just have ships fly out/spawn from beneath one after the other.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

In latest anouncement Egosoft mentioned that they want to add Fleet resupply ships.
However with it the one potentential use of Carriers as repair & resupply ship will no longer be unique and we would probably end up with Ressuply ships being atual carriers.

I think the mistake being made by some is thinking that the X4 Carriers have a specific preconceived role rather than looking at the game and actually trying to understand the role Egosoft have seemingly allocated them.

Carriers are arguably useful as-is, they are essentially larger versions of X4 Destroyers that sacrifice the main guns and maybe a couple of turrets for stronger shields and the ability to rapidly deploy waves of S sized ships (up to 10 ships at a time from internal docking) and recover S/M sized vessels faster (up to 8 S sized and up to 4 M sized) . No other ship in X4 really comes even close to having the full capabilities of X4 Carriers, so they are already unique in that regard and I doubt the resupply ships will change that. I would not be surprised if the resupply ships effectively are like a Sonra/Incartus or generic Builder (geometry wise) with the capability for L/XL craft to dock with it (possibly only when in a deployed configuration - c/f Builders and station construction).

The Paranid and Argon mining vessels have carrier like potential (Paranid mining vessel has 2 S sized internal ship launch bays, and the Argon mining vessel can carry 80 S sized ships) but lack in the shield, firepower, and M craft docking capability departments as well as having lower S sized ship deployment/recovery capability. They may be faster vessels going from A to B but that does not make them suitable for the same role as X4 carriers have currently been assigned.

There is no disputing the point that the AI and/or maths code in X4 is flawed in at least some areas but such points do not counter the fact that X4 Carriers are unique in their own way and have utility as-is.

The C&C aspect is another area that could do with some improvement but that also does not affect the uniqueness nor utility of carriers as-is.

Their relative price point, the rate of cash income, and other lore based factors essentially invalidate the assumption by some that X4 Carriers (and X4 Destroyers) should be more capable than they currently are (at least in the Vanilla game). If we are talking about community developed mods, then that is another matter entirely.

[Admiral Sausage]

...they are essentially larger versions of X4 Destroyers that sacrifice the main guns and maybe a couple of turrets for stronger shields and the ability to rapidly deploy waves of S sized ships (up to 10 ships at a time from internal docking) and recover S/M sized vessels faster (up to 8 S sized and up to 4 M sized)...

Carriers don't have enough firepower to be useful in direct combat (which is fine, as they are supposed to rely on their fighters for that), and even ignoring the AI and UI issues, they can't deploy ships as fast as simply not having the ships docked in the first place.

[sh1pman]

Why would you ever need to mass deploy fighters? They get around faster by themselves. I just can’t think of any combat situation where I’d want a carrier with fighters instead of just fighters. Carriers are waaaay slower (counting deployment and docking times, and also travel through gates, highways and superhighways).

Just order a carrier and a bunch of fighters to move somewhere 5 zones away, see who gets there first, and by what margin (I bet the carrier will take at least 5x more time). Carriers are also next to useless in combat because of useless turrets (unless they’re missile turrets). They're just fat targets, and they’re not even good at being fat targets, because they get mopped up by station drones or enemy fighters in seconds (okay, maybe a minute or so).

So... if you want my ideas on how to make carriers useful, I’d say that there’s no way they can be useful in X4. Their primary role (to carry fighters) is rather pointless in X4. I’d remove them from the game entirely, and replace them with some other XL ship class that makes sense, maybe a cruiser or battleship. Shields should be impenetrable to anything less than a destroyer main weapon, lots of point defence turrets to shred fighters and corvettes (I don’t even mention that turrets aim and damage need to be fixed and rebalanced), some kind of nuclear torpedo launcher (ultimate weapon against stations and other battleships), hangar and launch tubes for fighters with scripts like “launch, kill that guy’s engines and return”.

This kind of carrier gameplay (fighters being just another weapon in battleship’s arsenal) I can see as entertaining. Otherwise it’s boring and pointless.