Help supplying a Carrier

[Scoob]

Hey all,

I usually use my Carriers just for REPAIR, but will sometimes manually supply them with the resources needed for Countermeasures. However, this time, I want to field missile-equipped Fighters so the Carrier needs to maintain a good stock of resources to ensure a steady supply.

My current Player economy is solid, I already supply all needed resources for my own Station building needs, as well as my Shipyard and two Equipment Docks (S/M Ship Maintenance Bay). All needed resources are promptly supplied through my network.

Now, I was hoping that this "Push" network would automatically supply my Carrier, however, I can't figure out how to do this. Sure, I can order the Carrier to go get its own supplies, but that's slower than manually delivering the resource myself. Plus it takes the Carrier away from where it's needed of course. The problem is, I can see what wares the Carrier wants, but it creates no Buy orders. So, my vast supply network is worthless for keeping this ship - and by association its fleet - fed. I cannot even assign a ship to trade for the Carrier, it's just not an option.

In part, it's this lack of automated resupply using my existing network, that lead me to create STATIONS in the same role as a Carrier. Think a Defence Platform near a Xenon gate - such as in Hatikvah's Choice I - with an S/M Ship Maintenance Bay, which is supplied by my network, and a load of subordinate Fighters that attack any enemies, then return for repair and rearm a the station. This is what I've set up in my current v7.0 Beta game. However, for some reason, automated Repairs and Rearm aren't working properly. So, I thought I'd have a Carrier do the job.

Basically, how do I get my Carrier to i) Stay where it's needed, and ii) BUY from my extensive supply network? Am I missing something obvious here? I know for SUPPORT ships, they have to be deployed before Trader Orders are generated. Once deployed, my Trade network will happily supply them. However, there's no such option for a Carrier.

Note: in the Carrier's "individual Instructions" tab, I can see it's set to buy all it needs just from me (trade rule) but it's not actually generating Trade orders to do this. I thought, in the past, I'd been able to assign a Transporter in the relevant role to Buy for it, but I'm not seeing an option for that.

[Koizuki]

I think it's probably intended that the Carriers aren't able to do that because of Aux ships being in the game. I think I read that Carriers used to be able to do this before their release, but afterwards they probably needed some other differentiating factor for the two ship types, so Carriers got Position Defense (Aux ships can't do that despite functionally being a carrier themselves) and Aux Ships got the Buy Offer stuff.

The only vanilla solution right now is to attach an Aux ship into your fleet with the carrier to handle that portion (my fleet's fighters will happily dock at whichever ship has wares to restock with; even other Carriers in my fleet.) The other problem is you need to make sure whichever trade ship you attach to the Aux ship has a Captain with high enough Piloting skill themselves to reach the sectors with your trade stations.

[Scoob]

I think it's probably intended that the Carriers aren't able to do that because of Aux ships being in the game. I think I read that Carriers used to be able to do this before their release, but afterwards they probably needed some other differentiating factor for the two ship types, so Carriers got Position Defense (Aux ships can't do that despite functionally being a carrier themselves) and Aux Ships got the Buy Offer stuff.

The only vanilla solution right now is to attach an Aux ship into your fleet with the carrier to handle that portion (my fleet's fighters will happily dock at whichever ship has wares to restock with; even other Carriers in my fleet.) The other problem is you need to make sure whichever trade ship you attach to the Aux ship has a Captain with high enough Piloting skill themselves to reach the sectors with your trade stations.

Thanks for your reply.

Hmm, this is a really daft choice in my view. A Carrier is specifically for supporting S and M-Class ships, which it does well, but having to supply it MANUALLY? That's plain crazy! It's sat there, doing its job, it knows what resources it needs but won't issue Buy orders? Daft lol.

The Auxiliary Support Ships work well - I often deploy them a sector away from a front line so ships can return for resupply. Why a Carrier cannot work that way too is beyond me. It negates a huge amount of the Carrier Potential. I have the supply network, the Carrier should take advantage of that, just as how Support Ships do and my support Stations. I'd forgotten, but this is likely why I started building Defence Platforms with repair and resupply Facilities - it worked great in my prior games, but they're broken in the current Beta.

[Koizuki]

I'm not participating in the beta so unfortunately I have no idea what's broken about those repair/resupply stations (I'm assuming basically Equipment Docks with those Maintennce Bays?) If they are broken, probably is worth reporting as bugs to the devs.

Otherwise, yeah, I can't quite remember which thread around here I read it in, but someone did claim that Carriers used to function the way you wanted it -- before the release of Aux Ships. It's just that now you have two ship types that are almost identical and my best guess is they wanted some reason to field both, so they arbitrarily split their functions between the two.

Honestly, I would also prefer Carriers get that functionality back, but give Aux ships some other niche to play with -- being able to repair/resupply L/XL is already a useful niche, but maybe change their carrier breakdown to have fewer S docks/hangars, maybe a bit more M docks/hangars instead, and/or gear them more toward drone carriers like the H. I don't remember if most of the Aux ships have those launch tubes or not, but with the changes to the way drones are retrieved in Beta 3(?) Aux ships being drone carriers would be a pretty good niche in itself.

But these are more substantial changes that would be made, so I doubt the devs will act on these ideas.

[GCU Grey Area]

I just use a baggage train of L freighters full of missile parts following my fleets around (Defend role) & manually restock carriers & auxiliaries from them as needed. When stocks on those freighters start to run low I send them off to resupply, while the fleet remains in the field. Have not attempted to automate this because not convinced the AI won't suicide my freighters by sending them off to resupply at a wildly inopportune moment (hence the Defend role for the freighters rather than Trade For).