Tumbler, i'd like to thank you for your ceaseless efforts in this whole fighter/bomber discussion. Frankly, i've given up convincing people that carrier cruisers are useless. Alot of people just don't want to be convinced, heh. Point out how in a straight up fight they lose, then they say of course! Carriers aren't made for a straight up fight...fine fine...

Then we point out that if a fleet (ANY composition you want) with 30-40% supply/cost in carrier cruisers will *always* lose to an identical fleet with 0% carrier cruiser (With 5-10% supply/cost in flak specially, but heck, try it with 0% flak if you want). IMO, this shows that carrier cruisers are just not worth their OPPORTUNITY cost (ie: You can always do better with their resource/supply cost)... The same thing should hold true if you reduce that 30-40% to 20% or so. The problem is that as the % of carrier-investment gets smaller, you have less "efficiency loss" and the power of the two fleets get closer...But the one with the carrier should always be at a disadvantage...sadly...

See, then the detractors will go on and say: Thats all fine and good, you can still use carriers for hit and run raids on enemy systems, bombers rock against structures, etc... sigh... It goes on and on.

See why I give up? Heh. Let people keep building their carriers, i'll just keep winning online against them. There, everyone is happy =p.

One of the problems with the carriers is that there fighters lose power over time. Each time they pass thougth a wall of flaks, they lose some of there numbers, and there for some of there power. On top of that, what they bring to the fleet, over all(which is long range attack) is already covered by LRM.

The reason that the fighter and bombers where so effective, in games like Homeworld 2, Star war empire at war, and Nexus , was because they could target sub systems. You may lose your fighters over time, but they enemy would also lose firepower(thougth the lose of subsystems) over time.

I had no idea Flaks could take out LRMs so effectively. That should be listed as a strength. Finally, a way to stop the LRM blobs, which seemed to be cheap, annoying, and unstoppable. Plus, I am a fan of light frigates, and LRMs made my awesome light frigate armadas completely useless. Although, after reading this thread, I am just glad that I do not like strikecraft as much. Hit-and-run would be great if I could impact their resourcing operations, but that requires planet-killers to be done right. I guess with embargo it might work.