Escort carriers/battleship sized fighter platforms

That’s literally what they’re in the middle of doing. It’s called Tiericide and it started like five years ago.

Thanks captain obvious :kissing_heart:

I was meaning the dedicated balance team. Not the, we started something then got side tracked by creating large graphic lag beast that everyone wants to anchor up outside Jita undock, team.

Actually an escort carrier’s role in New Eden would be to support Black Ops and Marauder operations as well as regular BS and Battle Cruiser operations without throwing 20 billion into the battle.

1 Like

I was trying to figure out how 1 flight of light fighters (space superiority) would compare to a full flight of heavy drones. For the sake of this comparison I will assume the following:

  • Light fighters (space superiority) – Satyr T1.
  • Heavy drones – Ogre T1.
  • Light fighters are launched by a light carrier (battleship sized T1) with no bonuses to light fighters, i.e. the level of the ship skill will have no impact on the performance of the fighters.
  • The heavy drones will be launched by a Dominix, with level 5 in the Gallente battleship skill.
  • All other skills are not considered.

The result I get from the above is that the light fighters will do 144 DPS and the drones will do 192 DPS, i.e. the drones will do 33% more damage. Therefore from a pure damage perspective, the drones will do the most damage. However, there are likely other issues which can have an impact on allowing a battleship sized ship to launch light fighters.

My consideration for a light carrier would be:

  • Battleship sized, T1.
  • The costs for the ship should be no more than approx. 50% more than a standard T1 battleship.
  • Battleship targeting range (70-90 km).
  • Tanking ability roughly on par with other battleships (maybe in the lower range).
  • 1 launch bay and a fighter bay for 2 squadrons. One idea could also be to include a fleet fighter bay which can be used to re-supply larger carriers. I think 2 launch bays may be too much, but that is up for discussion. No more than 1 light fighter squadron can be launched though.
  • Bonus for racial support fighters (something like on the carriers).
  • Can launch light fighters (space superiority only) but gains no bonuses from ship skill whatsoever.
  • Can use medium sized weapons bonused for damage application, not damage. Medium weapons based on race: Amarr: Lasers, Gallente: Hybrids, Minmatar: Projectiles, and Caldari: Missiles. This is kind of the reverse of oversized weapons for battle cruisers.
  • Can use battleship modules (such as microjump drive).

I think the major issue with the above ship will be the costs of the fighters themselves.

The above are just some rough considerations and I am sure that I have missed something. Please let me know what you think and feel free to point out things that you think I have missed.

Please note that I know that you can probably do many of the same things with a pure drone boat as well and probably cheaper so there is no need to point that out. The aim of the above is to figure out whether a balanced light carrier can be designed. This is far from the same that it will ever appear in the game.

2 Likes

Giving them support fighter bonus would make the light carriers overlap with the normal carriers. I wanted to give them space superiority bonus because that way each carrier class would have it’s unique bonus:
light - space superiority
normal - support
super - heavy fighters

If you want something smaller than a carrier to launch fighters, it needs to have the targeting range to use fighters.

The common argument against that is it would be way too OP in hi-sec, which I agree with.
I had an idea on the new-old forum for a sensor booster bonus:

Escort carrier bonuses:
150% bonus to sensor booster scan resolution effectiveness
1000% bonus to sensor booster targeting range effectiveness
+1 target

Escort carrier bonuses don’t apply in hi-sec
Only the highest value of scan resolution and targeting range bonus applies outside of hi-sec

The last role bonus is there to prevent insta-lock and 100k km targeting range. Logis can help to boost these values in hi-sec, but will be ignored everywhere else.
If I was calculating correctly (using scripted T2 sensor booster), outside hi-sec with max escort carrier skill, they should have about the same scan resolution that carriers get with NSA, and the maximum targeting range would be roughly 3000km which is still shorter than the carriers’ base targeting range. You need 2 sensor boosters to have both.

In this case escort carriers shouldn’t be able to fit NSA, or to use e-war modules.

Just make it so only citadels can launch fighters in HS.

1 Like

That’s actually a thing that escort carriers could/should counter with their space superiority.

@ Dior
I understand what you are saying, but do not fully agree. While the normal carriers get a bonus to support fighters, they can only launch on squadron (of 3 total squadrons), which is why in my opinion the focus of normal carriers are light fighters in general.

If a second launch bay is added to the light carrier (which I am not sure is a good idea) it could launch to support fighter squadrons and then the focus of the light carrier would be support fighters (with the option to launch a non-bonused (from ship skill) squadron of space superiority fighters.

I would personally love to see a light carrier focused on space superiority fighters, but feedback from previous threads have shown that there may be balancing issues concerning the damage application/output of the space superiority fighters. This is what concerns me.

@ Arrendis
You may be correct about targeting range. I do not know what the exact targeting range should be, but it should be nowhere near that of ordinary carriers, at max I would guess it should be something like 5%-10% of ordinary carriers, and maybe it should require some sensor upgrades like e.g. sensor boosters with range scripts to achieve that.

As for the statement that it should only be citadels that can launch fighters in HS, I think it falls into the same category as “why not use a Dominix” (or other drone boat) – it may be true (and end up being the case), but I am going to disregard it since the aim of this discussion is to see if it is possible to create a viable light carrier that can use fighters as described earlier in both HS/LS/NS/WH.

I construe the citadel and Dominix comments as “we do not want a light carrier”. This is fair enough, but that is not the point of the current discussion.

What is? Citadel fighters? Citadels are already laughably easy to destroy in highsec, why do you need another tool to do it?

@Unseen_Spectre

Actually, I’d love a light carrier option like that. But if people are going to complain that being able to use fighters the way you use fighters (at range) is OP in high-sec, well, then there’s a possible solution. Making the light carrier incapable of using fighters at range is basically like saying ‘you can fit the artillery, but you can’t use it past 30km’. Is there room for abuse? Sure. There’s room for abuse in every system humans have ever developed. People are going to try to get away with anything they can get away with. It’s what we do.

Other potential balancing options: increase the ‘service time’ on fighters in these escort carriers. Your hangar isn’t big enough to service the entire squadron at once, so it takes twice as long as it would on a fleet carrier.

@ Arrendis

Sorry if I misconstrued your comments about fighters on citadels.

Concerning the targeting range, yes it is difficult to determine the right range. I agree that it should have some targeting range, but not nearly that of a normal carrier. If you use the Caldari Chimera (the normal carrier with the longest targeting range) as a basis (~4600 km targeting range) and my previous estimates (5%-10%) that should give a targeting range somewhere between 230 km-460 km. Whether this should be the basis for the light carrier or achievable by using e.g. sensor boosters I am not sure. Does the stated targeting range seems reasonable to you?

As for the balancing points, your suggestion for “service time” is very reasonable. Other could be to reduce the number of fighters in a squadron or reduce the number of the use of the special abilities the can be used before rearming is required.

There are a lot of parameters that can be tweaked - the difficult things is to get it just right.

And these concerns are reasonable, however the current stats of the space superiority fighters are based on the fact that they won’t get any bonus, while all other fighters get. I think if we want a carrier that’s bonused for space superiority then the stats of these fighters should be adjusted too.

With appropriate skills the Chimera targets out to 5775km, 8577km with Command Ship info boosts. Just to keep the numbers right. If we take 10% of those numbers (577km unboosted), that’s still beyond the current ‘hard cap’ of subcapital targeting range. Ideally, these ships should be on the quick side for battleship-hulls. Converted CC/CB classes lost about 5-10% displacement and gained a bit of speed from the reduced weight, after all. (ex: check the displacement/speed on the Amagi-class battlecruisers and the final numbers on Akagi when she set sail).

Mind you, that same benefit—range—is likely to be the Achilles’ heel of ships like these. If you’re attacking an enemy 300+ km away, they let your fighters cross 200km of it… and then warp onto you. So these would only really be useful in a support role, where there’s something to keep the enemy fleet occupied.

The real worry, of course, is citadel warfare. Not attacking cits, but rather getting a fight started on a citadel grid, say 300km off, so the attackers aren’t in range of the guns. Once the fight’s engaged, half a dozen of these undock, drop fighters, and manually send the fighters out to the fighting, same as we do in null. No aggression/untethering until the fighters actually have a target to shoot, and if the fight goes bad, you just recall the fighters, unlock all targets, and try to de-aggress/tether before the enemy comes and kills you.

@Dior_Ambraelle: easy way to do it. Escort Carrier launch tubes use a 6-fighter squadron for Space Superiority fighters, with bonuses that bring that up to about 75-80% parity w/normal (not super-)carrier SSFs. Also reduces costs some.

Of course, doing that means you’d basically see fleets of these being used to defang supers in nullsec, but as soon as they can launch SSFs, that’s what you’ll see, anyway.

@ Dior

Just to clarify. When I say non-bonused, I mean that the space superiority fighters are not getting any bonus for the light carrier ship skill. Any other skills that affect the space superiority fighters still apply.

I do not know what the right solution is. However, I do understand your concerns.

@ Arrendis

As I stated in the description, there are many issues to consider and I do not know them all.

I know that the right balance is hard to find, but I am sure it can be done.

the loot fairy is on your side. then got nuthin.

You could have the lighter carrier use the current carrier model size and then make new bigger ones for carrier and super carrier.

How many fighters would be needed to take out a freighter in a 0.5 system?

Uh… asking for a friend.

1 Like

I don’t know, but I’m sure it would be cheaper with a group of destroyers.

True on an isk basis but a HS capable carrier could possibly be much more efficient on a number of required accounts basis. If … my friend … were hunting a high value target, might be a fair trade off.