The best race for a carrier fleet

I think Advent get 3 hanger bays for their Hanger Defenses, so that leads me to support them.

Thanks, but I'm really looking more for an offensive force, rather than defensive.

Vasari Skirantras carriers can make several copies of any fighter/cruiser ship at level 6. Also they can produce an aditional bomber squad, making them the only capital ship with most fighters squadron in game. With these abilities, they can bolster your fleet at any moment given it has antimatter. Not to mention, they can emit a cloud that repairs over time their fleet around them. Consider having a bunch of carriers with a level 6 Skirantra and "replicate forces" ability.

The vasari is the one race I haven't gotten around to playing yet.

Do any other ships have abilities that could help out?

Sorry, I just play Vasari for now. That's all I got. I've searched the manual and found nothing exceptionally better than the strat I just gave you, IMO though.

Typically, I thought Advent are seen as the race to carrier spam, as they get carriers really quickly. Not sure how this works out, though, as I've never really gotten into them much.

Any faction can spam carriers - considering all the light carriers use up 8 supply no matter what and that every faction gets access to a capital ship carrier for 50 supply, there's really not a CLEARLY superior faction for lots of carriers.

For what it's worth, though, I'd recommend Advent for the early game and Vasari for late-game carrier actions. Advent get access to earlier carriers and large swarms of fighters/bombers. They all do less damage individually than other fighter options for the other factions, though, and will eventually be eclipsed in usefulness by Vasari strike craft. The reasons being that while Vasari fighters are not as numerous as Advent strike craft, Vasari get access to lots of armor upgrades, while the Advent do not (and fighters/bombers don't have shields). Furthermore, it's harder to knock out the individually tougher Vasari fighters en-masse like it is with Advent fighters. The Vasari carrier also has the microphasing aura that affects all friendly fighters, which can make a huge difference for keeping your fighter craft alive.

The Advent can have their carriers squadrens have more fighters in each squadren. They also have Drone Tempest. I haven't used it yet, but I think it gives them the ability to dump out a bunch more fighter. The TEC carrier has heavy fighters which increases the damage and armor of its fighter and its special ability makes all construction in the given gravity well happen faster as well as all its fighter construction occur instantly! I think the devs balanced this out well. The only noticable differance for me is the Sova has a max of 7 fighter, while the Advent and Vasari max out at six.

Short answer would be Advent. Repel with guardians is made for Carriers!

Advent

I say this because of the repel ability as well as the cap carriers ability that increases the dmg output of nearby ships and strikecraft. coupled with a rapture or 2 for the ability that has the opposite effect (enemies dmg output decreased) a well balanced advent carrier fleet can be... troublesome.

I'm not certain but last time I maxed out a TEC carrier I still had only 6 squadrons...


I favor the advent carriers. Once they max out you get upto 6 squadrons of bombers with 17 bombers (using special abilities). It don't get much better than that when you use it with Gaurdians and Illuminators...

depends on you mean by "offensive force", which could be any of the three race carriers.

TEC: against planets, as there embargo can steal from there world. Also heavy fighters as the fighter can take more and deal more damage.

Advent: Air superiority, as the adept drone anima increase the number of fighters in each squadron.

Vasari: against ships, as the scramble bombers gets you an extra bomber squadron, and the microphasing aura allows for them to evade attack.

Tec Crusier Carrier, sucks considering when it dies it gives the enemies capital 4 times more XP then other carriers

I like the Advent's Capital carrier as it has Weapon Cooldown ability which helps greatly in large fleet engagements, while the Vasari carrier is only useful past lvl 6. Tec Carrier on the other hand has instant build + embargo + missile deployment which helps greatly in planetary assaults.

I agree with Snipafist. Early game, the Advent can win with their numerical advantage. But later on, Vasari technology beats them. I'll prefer to let the numbers speak here:

Fighters with Full Upgrades:

Advent

Hull: 50
Armor: 4
Repair Rate: 0.18
Damage Per Volley: 20 Laser
Cool-Down Time: 12
Range: 2400
Speed: 2700
Build Time: 16
Squadron Size: 9(11 in Hangars)

Vasari

Hull: 105.4
Armor: 7.5
Repair Rate: 0.51
Damage Per Volley: 36.9 Phase Missile w. 25% chance to bypass enemy shields
Cool-Down Time: 12
Range: 2400
Speed: 2916
Build Time: 24
Squadron Size: 4

As you can see, 1-on-1, a Vasari Fighter Squadron will destroy an Advent Fighter Squadron since you can't focus fire on individual fighters(AFAIK), and the awesome armory and native repair capability of Vasari Fighters will effectively negate Advent attacks. They'll kill off all 9 drones at the loss of 1 fighter. While the Advent will take 144 seconds to replace their losses, the Vasari will only take 24 seconds. That's 2 minutes worth of free time for the Vasari fighter squadron to go around strafing enemy ships, 2 minutes of air superiority.

And, this is a simple fight between a lone Aeria Drone Host and a single Lasurak Transporter(both are carrier cruisers). This is without any support from capital ship abilities or cultural influence. Here are the bonuses they'll get from capitals/culture:

Advent

Halcyon Carrier - The Amplify Energy Aura ability, at Level 3, will decrease cool-down time by 30% and increase damage by 30%, and the Adept Drone Anima will make for more fighters per squadron(I think 1 for every level added to the ability). The Halcyon's ultimate ability, Drone Tempest, will temporarily throw out huge squads of 17 drones each. Although a normal Vasari fighter squad can still defeat an Adept Anima fighter squad for the loss of 2 planes, it's best to run away when faced with a Drone Tempest and wait for the storm to finish.

Rapture Battlecruiser - The Concentration Aura ability, at Level 3, will give Advent strikecraft a 30% damage boost anywhere in the gravity well.

Vasari

Cultural Influence - When operating in their own cultural influence, all Vasari weapons get an 11% damage boost.

Skirantra Carrier - The Repair Cloud ability gives all Vasari ships/structures/strikecraft within a constant free repair service. The Microphasing Aura ability, at Level 3, gives all Vasari strikecraft a 30% chance every second of teleporting 750 distance towards their target in no time, which allows them to rapidly close in for an attack pass or dodge enemy attacks. The Scramble Bombers ability simply throws up and extra squadron of bombers for a little while, and a maximum of two extra bomber squads can be scrambled at once. And the Skirantra's ultimate ability, Replicate Forces, allows it to use it's antimatter supply to instantly build a new frigate or cruiser - like a mobile factory. Anything built by this factory is a perfectly real ship which you can use permanently just like any ship built at a normal factory, so if you need an extra squadron up, you can build a new Lasurak Transporter.

Antorak Marauder - The Distort Gravity ability doubles the speed of all Vasari ships and strikecraft within range, so you could have fighters pulling speeds of >5800 units, and bombers exceeding 4000!

Stilakus Subverter - If a fighter/bomber squadrons target gets hit by the Subverter's Defeat Shields ability, the chance for the squadron's Phase Missiles to penetrate the target's shields goes up from 25% to 50%, and even if they don't get past the shields, shield mitigation is reduced by 10%.

PeskyFly: The "Replicate Forces" ships are NOT permanent. They auto-destruct after about 2 minutes. That - sadly - makes the skill completely useless for carriers since they need that time to build their fighters in the first place. But it is still nice to have three additional Enforcers in the heat of the battle.

About the strike craft:
TEC strike craft lack the firepower of Vasari or Advent so they are out.
Advent have superior numbers but less damage. In the early game they are slightly superior (without upgrades and since Advent carriers are such a cheap tech).
As soon as the Vasari gets a few phase missile upgrades this changes: Phase missiles are the single best weapon in the game with the shield penetration ability (negating shield mitigation is a BIG damage boost) and on top of that they also get a direct 20% damage boost. Advent fighter upgrades don't come anywhere near that.
In addition, the advent fighters take other weapon upgrades then the bombers, making those upgrades a lot harder and less effective. The Vasari only has to go down one upgrade path, saving tons of money.
Another disadvantage for the advent are their low hitpoints: They counter this with having more fighters in a squad but this low HP mass number approach makes them very vulnerable to all kinds of AoE spells (e.g. the Vasari Sentinel or capital ship abilities). Advent strike craft will drop like flies if an AoE spell is fired while Vasari strike craft usually can take at least one of them without being destroyed right away.

What makes Advent strike craft really cool is the Guardians push ability. With that it is possible to keep any non-strike-craft the enemy wants to throw at you away from your carriers! So you got the second best strike craft but immortal carriers. Vasari carriers usually die fast to light frigates chasing them down.
To kill the Advent carriers one would have to take down the pushing Guardians first, which takes time and gives the carrier fleet an opportunity to kill off half a dozen ships and then simply jump away.

This of cause won't work in a direct strike craft vs strike craft battle: Strike craft are not affected by the pushing ability so in a fight Advent carrier versus Vasari carrier the Vasari would probably win.

If you want to make a pure carrier fleet and win against a "normal" playing opponent, then using Advent and Guardians to push the enemy away from the carriers is the way to go.
However, flak frigates will still shoot down your strike craft very fast. I had such a game recently, I had about 30 flak and the enemy about 40 carriers. We decided to fight it out because the game got long and boring.
My fleet could not reach him but his fighters also died very fast - before they could do significant damage. We were then basically sitting around in the system without anything happening. His Guardians kept me away and I didn't have the Illuminator range upgrade to reach them (I was Advent, too).
Quite boring
The solution to this would either be use LRM (as TEC or Vasari) to kill the Guardian or to get the Illuminator range upgrade (as Advent) to kill the Guardian or to simply jump in carriers with bombers. Since my flak killed all his fighters I had complete air superiority so bombers can then kill the enemy carriers without any opposition - as long as he doesn't bring flak

The Iconus Guardian's Repulsion ability is easy to knock out. Using Kanrak Assailants with the Charged Missiles ability, you can shoot shield-piercing area effect Phase Missiles at a range of 8500 - beyond the Repulsion ability's range - and kill the Guardians. The Ravastra Skirmisher's Interference ability also drains the Guardians' antimatter supply twice as fast and increases the cooldown of their abilities. Once the Guardian wall is broken, you can use just about anything to storm the carriers - Enforcers, Skirmishers and Assailants will all do.

There is a little problem in the fact that Advent carriers are impervious to bomber attacks(Heavy armor on the Aeria and Telekinetic Push on the Halcyon), so instead of bringing more Lasuraks filled with bombers, a combo of Skarovas Enforcers with Stilakus Subverters would be the carrier-killer force once Fighters have established air superiority.

In fact, if you don't count the Repair Cloud advantage, the Kortul Devastator makes a better carrier for the Vasari than the Skirantra. It starts out with 1 squadron and a whole ton of direct-fire weapons, while the Skirantra starts out with 2 squadrons and pathetic direct-fire weapons. After levelling up to Level 3, the Kortul gets another squad for a total of 2 while the Skirantra is operating 3. Eventually, the Skirantra will operate 6 squads, but 4 extra squads don't make up for the advantage that the Kortul has in MUCH better direct firepower, much better durability, considerably stronger bombardment weapons, and better abilities(Power Surge, Volatile Nanites esp.).

Yes, as I said you can shoot through the Guardian wall with Assilants (or Javelins as TEC, that will just take a little longer because of shields).
However, this takes time. And in that time the strike craft is killing off your frigates.
And the Advent can simply jump away his carrier fleet before the last Guardian goes down, replace the 4-5 guardians and jump in again while you took over a dozen frigate / cruiser losses in the meantime - or even lost a capital to his bombers!

The Aeria dies quite fast from bombers because of its heavy armor. Telekinetic Push of cause is a problem but it doesn't do enough damage to take out bombers (at least not the Vasari bombers) so it is a delay, not a deal-breaker. It also usually doesn't affect all bombers and if you micromanage them reasonably well they will drop off their payload before being pushed away.

Enforcers don't work since they won't get close to either the Guardians or the Aerias (because of Repulsion).

Er... the fighters will be engaged in suicidal combat against my fighters, and after they pop, the bombers go down as well. If flak is present, this process is accelerated.

Even while the bombers are still alive, they won't be able to do much damage to frigates or support cruisers. Bombers use AntiVeryHeavy weapons, which do 50% damage against Light(Assailant), Medium(Skirmisher) and Heavy(Subverter/Transporter) armor types. They only do max damage against structures and heavy cruisers, and the Enforcers have their Reintegration ability to nullify that damage once the bombers have been downed.

The Kortul Devastator is effectively invincible against bombers because of it's Weapon Jam ability which knocks out the weaponry of hostile strikecraft flying withing the ability's aura, so the capital/s won't be hit either.

And Guardians are barely even armed. While the bombers may focus their attacks and take down a few Skirmishers, the Guardians won't be inflicting any losses at all.



The Aeria has the same Heavy armor as all Flak Frigates, Support Cruisers and Carrier Cruisers use. It takes only 50% damage from bombers.

Until the fighters resolve their suicidal combat the bombers get in free shots.
Even with 50% damage they still do good DPS against heavy armor. Unlike fighters, which have a low base damage and get 25% against most units so that they are useless against anything else then very light / light, the bomber has a high base damage (about twice the fighters). It is possible without any problems at all to single-strafe a carrier with each bomber pass. 50% of incredibly much damage still is a lot of damage

And yes, there are tons of counters to bombers. Nobody ever doubted that. Still, if the Vasari is going Aeria + Guardians then countering it with flak + strike craft is a very good idea (if you do not want to rely on LRM to kill off the Guardians and give the carriers time to jump away).

Vasari if you have time to tech to the appropriate tier and are really committed to wanting dozens of squads (not that spamming will always work well).

-15% extra damage in influence (the cap is not 11%.. I wonder why so many people get to that wrong conclusion).
-it takes the carrier cruisers anti-matter to create each bomber/fighter, vasari create full sqauds the fastest of all cruisers, Ive got replays that show this. Which means they can replenish the fastest. Include the fact that each fighter/bomber vasari itself dies much slower than other races and they can have their squads survive a bit longer due to each fighter/bomber being killed slower and replenished much faster.
-phase missiles, which at 30% phasing (assuming the player doesnt have subverters yet) and the enemy has 65% shield mitigation (will occur if under ff) means that instead of doing 35 damage per 100 damage, it would do 54.5 damage per 100 damage (30 of it influenced by armour).
-unlike advent that focus on shields that are useless for drones (100 shield) and fighters/bombers(no shields at all), many vasari players usually do focus on hp/armour like tec.

now I ignored capital ship abilities, cause advent and vasari have pros and cons when it comes to them and you cannot really measure how valuable they are (its too specific to the positions of the fleets and whats going on in a specific scenario), however I will say this: antistrikecraft abilities that do aoe damage can usually kill all advent bombers/fighters instantly, they need 2-5 tries for vasari.

The TEC are not TOTALLY hopeless in the strikecraft arena, they're just almost entirely hopeless. Their Fighters are no match for Advent and Vasari Fighters, and their Bombers simply can't compete with the firepower of Advent/Vasari Bombers no matter how much you upgrade them. But their Heavy Fighters are able to put up a bit of fight.

The Sova Carrier's Heavy Fighters upgrade at Level 3 gives it's Fighters a passive buff of +30% damage and +3 armor. A fully teched-up Level 3 Heavy Fighter Squadron(6 fighters) would be able to win against it's Advent equivalent: a fully teched-up Halcyon Carrier's Level 3 Adept Drone Anima Fighter Squadron(12 fighters). While Heavy Fighters may be able to beat Adept Drone Anima Fighters, they'd still lose to fully upgraded Vasari Fighters operating from a Skirantra Carrier with Repair Cloud support.

With technology upgrades not counted, Heavy Fighters and Adept Anima Fighters would be equal in fighter combat but Repair Cloud supported Vasari Fighters would still be superior if micromanaged to fly through the Cloud in between volleys.

The biggest problem with this is that in order to have combat-effective fighters, the TEC would need to spend tons of cash, resources and supply in building Sova Carriers and upgrading them to Level 3 while their opponents can just build Aerias/Lasuraks and get more squadrons for the same supply cost. And normal TEC Fighters and Bombers operating from Percherons and Hangar Defenses would still be pathetically underpowered since only those squadrons operating from Sovas would get the boost.

I have a different opinion on the TEC's Carrier capabilities. I have only played for a few days, but its not how you compare the individual squadrons, but how you group the carriers themselves.

I build what i call an escort strike force and a full fleet. (this comes from my old days playing wing commander, loved that game)

Basically, you build a total of 3 sovas and 6 perchons in the escort strike force. 2 of the sovas build nothing but bombers and the other has nothing but fighters. The pecherons are also nothing but fighters. The TEC's carriers have a total of 7 squads and so that gives you a total of 14 bomber wings and 13 fighter wings. The TEC makes up for in quantity what you don't get in heavy damage, as you can send 2 targets on opposite sides of the gravity well a very fancy present that they won't appreciate. TEC strike craft are ok at the ship to ship fight, but they excell in crippling your opponent's shipbuilding capability especially when you keep the motherships outside the gravity well so they can jump at anytime.

For example. I was playing against a guy who was advent. I took my escort fleet and chased after 1 of my scouts with it. This made my phase jumps totally random and whenever i found a world with his name on it, i used embargo and sent my fighters and bombers after his orbital refineries and his infrastructure. This forced him to buy his metal and crystal from the black market. Since i had a trade port at each of my worlds; I was getting an enormous sum which i then used to corner the black market prices on metal and crystal. If you have to pay a 10-1 or 15-1 per metal and crystal, you just spent 1000 credits on 100 metal and 1500 on 100 crystal. Painful...

The main fleet is a long range assault force consisting of 3 sovas, 2 marzas, 2 kol battleships, 6 LRMs, 4 flak, and 1 each of the command and repair cruisers. I use this fleet to stay right at the edge of the gravity well, or pretty close and pound on my targets from a distance. The kols have a nice anti-fighter ability so i keep them close in to the carriers and have the flak frigates as outer perimeter defense. Again, i build 2 carriers worth of bomber and 1 of fighters, that gives me 14 bombers and 7 fighters. I then use the marza's ship to ship missile banks, agumented by the missiles from the carrier's abilities, and the LRMs to pound on bunched up targets. You guys don't really get to see what the cluster munitions can do untill you use them enmasse. Scary stuff happens when you do. I also see that no one has mentioned the missile upgrades for the TEC. Why not? they give you a cumulative 60% upgrade in damage, add in the Heavy fighters passive 30% and you get a total of 90% damage upgrade as well as extended range for your missiles, bypassing that nasty weapon's jam ability.

So in conclusion, its not a how you fight with just 2 or 3 squadrons, its how you use the carriers full potential in a mixed battle group. I personally think that the TEC has a viable carrier option, its just how you use it.

Edit: for spelling

Jota, you have way too many capitals per support craft in your main fleet, dude. You should be packing some Kodiaks, and some LRMs to back you up, and atleast 2 of each support cruisers.

That's my opinion, anyway. Someone with a regular fleet, such as maybe 3 Capitals, and 50-60 LRMs, and support cruisers and like 10-15 kodiaks would just demolish you. Especially the Kodiaks with their Intercept Ability.

Jotanhorn - exactly.

The TEC strikecraft get some pretty nifty buffs if you put in the time and effort to research upgrades to their autocannons and missiles. You start factoring in Heavy Fighters too, and you have some very, very potent fighters combined with bombers which can outrange Weapons Lock, and hit with high damage, too.

If we're talking about Vasari under repair cloud, then why not keep in mind that with Rapid Construction, your TEC strike wings are built basically instantly at full health. The Vasari will crumble under sustained fire, and their lack of numbers when their strikecraft are replenising their numbers is their undoing in long-term engagements.

Sykonaut - The Sova has some pretty respectable guns, and with a mix of Kols and Sovas, maybe the odd Akkan here and there to stun enemies with Ion Bolt and let your ships open fire quicker with the control tower upgrade, in addition to a whole bunch of Cobalts sucking away their energy with their Sabotage reactor ability, then having a whole bunch of Kodiaks starts to look like a trickier prospect - as to the 50-60 LRMS, they get decimated completely by any kind of Fighter support.

Support ships are always handy, and I don't really see why one would assume Jotanhorn doesn't take any along with (he mentions taking one of each, Robotics / Command) - I personally like to take along a whole pack of Robotics cruisers (healing, but also slowing enemies down with their explosives) and a few Cielos for target designation and buffing up Kols and Akkans, but that's just how I play the game.