This is a repost from Reddit which I wrote a while back and thought it belongs here as well as there are so many bad ideas being flooded on that site:
I remember back in the day that dropping a carrier on a fight actually meant that the fight could be swung in favor of the carrier’s team. These old school carriers were not easy to kill, provided actual combat capabilities (many a fighter has chased me throughout the solar system) and when they went into triage they could repair their friends like the hero it was. It also inspired what is to me still the best Eve video ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMFahR4wXTg&ab_channel=Rooksandkings
Nowadays a carrier in a fight is simply a big piñata which can be withered down and even have their fighters rendered useless with little effort. There is also a hard choice to be made if you decide to drop a carrier: tank it out but have little damage application and a single, small support fighter wing of Sirens allowing you to actually tackle something to try and kill it; or go for maximum damage but have no tank so if your buffer tank runs out you are dead. Compare this to a HAW dread which has both tank and DPS, the lone carrier in a fight is useless.
Force Auxiliaries (FAX)
Remove command burst strength, duration and range bonuses.
Normal (T1) carriers
Add command burst range bonus (move from FAX) to carriers.
Add another dedicated slot for a support fighter wing.
Add a 100% bonus to armor plates and shield extenders (which is half of the super carrier bonus).
This should hopefully increase the usage of carriers in non-super capital fights or fights where they are dropped to support sub-capital fleets. The additional support wing allows carriers to provide actual utility to fleets alongside command bursts.
Networked Sensor Array (NSA)
The NSA should double the sensor strength of fighters when activated. This will allow the carrier to better respond to ships fielding sensor jamming modules by decreasing the chance of them being permanently jammed. As the NSA is quite capacitor heavy using capacitor warfare can still mean that a single carrier can be locked down by a small competent gang.
The NSA should also provide some damage increase or application to fighter weapons as this module only has one benefit and three drawbacks, which is hardly a fair tradeoff.
Triglavian carriers (Trig)
With the success of the Zirnitra (as seen in the recent Ahbazon fight) Trig capitals are extremely popular in capital fights. A Trig carrier should have fighters which spool up weapon damage but the carrier itself cannot field support fighters. Other fighter abilities should include an afterburner for a speed boost but no heavy damage ability (support fighters only have two abilities as well).
This will allow at least one carrier type to be viable in dreadnought fights and, to counter them, T1 carriers will be required.
Tech 2 (T2) carriers
A lot of ideas has been floating around over the last few years on what T2 carriers should be capable of and this is just another example which is hopefully not so radical as some ideas.
Add a new cynosural (cyno) inhibitor module for T2 carriers which allows for a mobile platform of limiting cynos in an area of effect.
The cyno inhibitor module should have the same drawbacks as an NSA and should be heavier on capacitor so it cannot perma-run.
No command burst bonuses as that should be kept on T1 carriers.
Have one light and two support fighter slots so that space superiority fighters can be used and some utility can be provided for the fleet.
Carrier skill bonuses remains the same as their racial T1, but T2 carrier skills increases tank and range of the inhibitor.
Add a 150% bonus to armor plates for Amarr/Gallente carriers and a 150% bonus to shield extenders for Caldari/Minmatar carriers.
These carriers will obviously be the primary targets in capital fights; but that is also the idea behind them. A decision has to be made in a capital fight when these enter the battle: kill them first while the other team is killing your dreads so you can bring in more reinforcements or kill the other dreads knowing they also can’t bring in more reinforcements, but you have to be quick as they can simply turn the inhibitor off and bring in more.
I would really love to see carriers make a comeback, dreads are now in a perfect spot but not everyone wants to lock themselves into place for 5 minute windows at a time or lose a 4 billion worth ship because it can’t even tank a small gang.