I have a suggestion for an improvement to the carrier. I would like to suggest that captains have the ability to launch a Combat Air Patrol (CAP) . I believe it is normal practice for carriers to have some birds up to provide cover to the carrier... Kind of a sitting duck without them.

Something small, one launch per bay or something like that.

Thoughts?

No... that would break the carrier... one of its major disadvantages is that it has to survive about a minute before a respectable amount of DPS can be brought to bare... this reduces that time to 30 seconds which would make one hell of a difference.

agree /signed

I like the mechanics of the carrier pets. Just it takes a long time to build up any dps. I die in PVE if the amount of time to get all my fighters and BOPs out involves a long amount of time. Every big fight I die. If I cant get my ships out in time or my ships get blown up and I have to wait through the cool down and dont have possible shield buffs or heals to get me through it. Good idea, bad implementation. Cryptics MO.

Now if my ships could do a barrel roll. Then I would be happy.

I vote no.

As a carrier captain, I feel like they have this ship just about right now.

Although I with the obvious realism of this feature, and plain common sense; I bow to the idea that the lack of fighter cover is the only major weakness of the carrier. It seems sensible to some extent with fighters, and in obvious PvP situations, but even one launch woud deploy a frigate which is perhaps too much. Forcing carriers to get stuck in, and leaving them open to alpha strike I think is an important feature for balance.

I like the idea...but I also feel it needs to refined. BoPs shouldnt provide the CAP. The BoP is your heavy attack bomber/Strike unit...not an interceptor. The BoP shouldnt have the ability to fly CAP, it should be in and out as its currently modeled.

But the light Fighters are something else, they should be able to fly CAP, as they are perfectly designed for it. They are fast, light weight, mobile...they could and would respond perfectly as fighters/interceptors.

I think we should be able to use a single bay of fighters to loiter in a CAP orbit around the Carrier.

/signed


I fought a 3-4 carrier group and we could nuke 1-2 carriers before they got those fighters up, but once they did, there was no hope. Even focus firing we couldn't pop them fast enough for it to matter.


One question I have is whether the fighters disappear when you kill the carrier.

If it's a player ship, they do. If it's a NPC it's a toss up. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't.

And I agree with the opposition. Carriers are fine as they are now.

I dont' think that having one wing of fighters out will help much from a DPS perspective. it would provide a bit of protection from cloaked defiants though.. It is hard to defend against decloaking defiants without cover. Not as though you can pop and evasive

You need to launch multiple wings before you can do any major dps.