Well the new hangers in entrenchment have a really cool feature called phasic trap.  Within a certain radius all of the strike craft get stuck!

If you are playing normal Sins, then their sentinals are pretty good.  If they are TEC then build carriers, lots of carriers.  Fighters do a good job of fighting other fighters.

If you can protect assialiants with sentinals, their phase missles should take out the carriers.

Good Luck!

build hangar defense on the beseiged planet, take your closest protecteed frig factory and build 15-20 carriers en mass.  all fighter.  or if you have phase stabilizer and RA, then use that a couple times instead.  its how i usually build my fleet.  as a result, I end up with 50 or so lasuraks.

There was already a posting on this a few posts down... Carrier Spam Multiplayer

I found the best strategy for this was to build a balanced fleet.   Of course, I don't play multiplayer and only play against CPU so I don't know how well this would work against human players.

If your opponent has a fleet of say, 10 carriers,  those ten carriers only have fighters/bombers as defense.   So my fleet would have 5-7 flak frigates, supported by 1 mothership, 3-5 carriers, a few light frigates and long range frigates to protect my own carriers.

Keep your tactics set to local area only, and destroy the fighters first.  Then launch your bombers and assault the carriers.

Ah, I got you.  Well, I don't have a whole lot of online experience but I will tell you how one player beat me the other night without using carriers. 

I had a combined fleet of disciples and some drone hosts as well as a Radiance while he had a couple of capitals (One was the skiranta while the other I'm not sure) and a fleet of mostly assailants with a few skirmishers.  Now, at first, it was going back and forth.  In one battle, I took out just about all of his assailants in one battle but, unfortunately, lost my Radiance.  And I did have one time where I was running from him and just taking out assailants on the way out of the system since fighters will eat assailants up.

However, he probably noticed that I started to concentrate on building drone hosts and, so, all he built was skirmishers.  Basically, in our next fight he just overwhelmed my drone hosts (I had about 7 or 8 drone hosts, a new radiance and 6 - 7 disciples while he probably had 20+ skirmishers and his two capitals).  I was flying the drone hosts around my planet and even split them into two groups but he still was able to catch up and swarm them... basically because he had a good deal more skirmishers than I did drone hosts and, although I would take quite a few out while running, he was dwindling me done until I had to retreat.  Skirmishers are much faster than drone hosts and will catch them.  Once they do, they can slaughter them fairly well I will say.

I will say that my micro needs work (just started playing online) and that, in that last battle, the AI was not listening to me very well it seemed, even when I was yelling at it .  But still, carriers are slow and basic assault ships are meant to catch them and chew them up (which at 150% damage they seem to do well).  You can build a good deal more basic assault ships per each carrier the enemy has and can swarm them.

And a capital definitely has no chance against carriers as capitals are very slow.  To take out carriers you need fast ships... either strikecraft from your own carriers or these basic assault ships.

Ignore this advice.  Killing the carrier works and having flak means the carrier fleet will be depeleted of AM.  Once AM is gone, the carriers are WORTHLESS.

Exactly, last night p robably made a few carrier spammers cry. All they had very carriers and once i toke out 30 light frigates i was chewing their 30-40 carrier soams as if they werent there. I had 3 cao 20 carriers of my own and a blanced fleet. Light frigates work and they work good. But you have to be smart about them. Againts me a carrier spam will get you a lost because light frigate are no impressed by carriers, in fact i would say that they laught at them.

i hate carriers now, i was in a multiplayer game where my tec opponent made about 15 carriers.  me being tec made about 20 flak frigates, 12 carriers all with fighters, about 20 lrms, about 15 hoshikos, a dunov lvl 3 and a marza lvl 6.  i successfully destroyed all of the bombers quickly but nothing could keep up with the carriers and i happened to missile barrage them twicew and they still lived.  in entrenchment i think they rreally need to slow down carriers.  imho a ship that is big that holds fighters should not be able to outrun almost every type of frigate.

no u r right they can catch up but it his very hard to constantly keep firing upon them because they are too fast, they need to slow them down

Also called demolition bots for TEC.

Lol ignorant people that don't botehr to read for me to reapead my self for their small brains.

Carrier do not need a speed nerf, they don't need any nerf at all, the only small nerf I would see possible is a tiny damage reduction in fighters, bombers. But not by much.

Vasary gravaty war head will slow down the carriers.

Tec Demolition bots will do it.

Advent it's more tricky but can be done with repulsion demands micro but if your good and tallented you can even prevent him from retreatign when your winning.

But the ultimate counter to carriers are light frigates. They have a use and a purpace now so use them. You your light frigates, diversity and balance your fleet and carriers become a negligable nuissance. The spam is dead if you die at teh hand of some numb spamming carriers then that only means you were just as numb if not more so then him for not having seen it comming and for not having contered it. You know people will spam carrier anticipate it.

Also an anti fighter skill that people forget about and that is even more powerfull then the Kols flak is Magnatise on the Dunov. Their no greater feeling then blowing up your enemies caps with the own fighter spams. Not to mention you gain air supremacy much much faster. But once againt magnatise does take more micro then flak burst.

EadTeas I think the problem is early on since carriers can be built right away. By the time you have those support ships and research their added abilities your enemy could have tons of carriers. Especially the gaurdian. Whoever says flak doesnt work is wrong imo. I use them all the time. Yeah 5 flaks will not defend against 20 carriers but 20 flak will and they are much cheaper. Balanced fleet is the way to go imo. I had one game where i destroyed 2900 strike craft and he never could defeat my fleet. But i could never catch his carriers and he had free roam of my planets. So this is a problem. They need to be slowed and strikecraft SHOULD NOT BUILD when enemy is present. I suggest that carriers get an all power to engines ability for short bursts of speed for antimatter. This will solve the running around in circles cheapness.

What I think he was talking about is called Kiting.  The player is moving his ships around and pulling the attacking units farther out. Maybe one or two defending carriers die, meanwhile the attacker usually is pulled into an ambush.

If the carriers leave, or are so far away that they can't be reached focus on the strike craft.  Make sure their attack and defense are at least on par with the enemy and kill them.  Carriers are USELESS without their strike craft.  Once the strikecraft have been destroyed, then attack the carrier units with figthers.  Micro your fighter's attack so that they all attack ONE carrier at a time.  This way all strike craft that they enemy carrier units produce get intercepted before they get to your structures.

Then the enemy can jump out, or be harrassed.  Carriers build slower when they are under attack.  The quickest way to destroy strikecraft is to post flak where the units attack.  This way unless the other player is microing his attacking fighters, they will get chewed up.  Send your fighters to harrass the carrier units then.