Strike craft newbie doubts...

1. Speed across the gravity well, invulnerable to all but flak, fighters, and capital special abilities, replaceable with antimatter (free).

2. See #1

3. See the damage charts for damage vs. armor types. Takes awhile to learn, but is necessary to get the most from fleets. Flak (anti-strikecraft) also do well vs. LRMs, and make decent meat-shield targets early game, being cheap and high-hull.

4. See damage charts again. Generally Fighter-> Frigates and enemy fighters, and bombers-> structures, heavy cruisers, enemy capital ships.

Fighters are only better against light craft (siege frigates, LRMS, fighters, bombers) - bombers do a lot more damage and they do heavy damage, which is better against cruisers, flak frigates, and capital ships.

As it currently stands in 1.03, it is my belief that carriers are not worth the opportunity cost (meaning you can do better with the resources/fleet supply). At least in multiplayer where people will build flak.

FYI, flak has a LRM "counter ratio" of about 3:1, maybe even 3.5:1... Meaning 10 flak should be able to fight evenly with 30 LRM. Flak also seems to have around a 7:1 ratio against bomber squads and much higher for fighter squads.

What does this mean ingame? Someone can build 50 carrier cruisers, spend 400 fleet supply and a ton of resources...Then have them be nearly useless if the enemy has 15-20 flak (with the small investment of 60-80 fleet supply). As a side benefit, they will be useful against the very-common LRM unit as well...Their also decent tanks in battles.

So yeah...Given how quickly strikecraft dies to flak, no carriers for me . It is my hope (I have a feeling this is will happen) that the next 1.04 update will have a buff for strikecraft, at least in the toughness side...

carriers are neat later on,

the advantage of carriers is that you can micro the carriers out of danger while the ifghters and bombers keep attacking the enemy

tough as mentioned above... u're a complete fool if u use strike craft vs flak

dont forget tough... strike craft arent meant to be alone always have a fleet with your carriers and if possible keep em out of the battle (edg of gravity well)


another "dumb"strategy some people used was making lotsa (75 in normal games) carriers with bombers then all massing on your capitals... annoying maybe... but like mentioned above get 20 flaks and the threat = gone




all this together:
strike craft are the ultimate support for a fleet, the only real opposition fighters have are flaks... wich costs your oponent time + resources they could've invested in a second capital

then again you have invested in carriers + strike craft, but flak damages the STRIKE CRAFT... not the carriers, so fighters wil slowly be replenished while a destroyed flak has 2 be rebuilded and posibly fly back to the front lines

I'd also like to note that carriers are an extremely versatile unit. If you're up against an enemy who has a lot of LRM's and you get fighters and you destroy the LRM's. Now he gets flak and a few LRM's so you dock your fighters to save em, maybe scuttle a few for bombers, and focus fire all your anti-heavy type ships and your cap ship on the flak. Once most of the flak are dead you can send out all your ships, send the bombers if you got em on the remaining flak, and send the fighters on the LRM's again. They also have a much more specialized use and thats that bombers are the only unit that are strong against heavy cruisers, besides other heavy cruisers. At this point though it gets hard because the fleets are so big it's hard to dock your ships, take out the flak, then send your ships in, and this is where I agree that strike craft should have more survivability because a few flak will delay you, or destroy your fleet, when they are needed for killing stuff like heavy cruisers.

This whole argument about the flaks not hurting the carriers...but the strike-craft... and new flak having to be built + moving to the front line...Its true as far as it goes, but frankly, if we are having a fleet engagement and my flak kill your strikecraft + do dps to your fleet + tank...I've gotten their money's worth.

Your carriers may still be alive after the fight, but the real question is: Did I win this big battle or did you? If I won, you can't expect me to wait for you to build another fleet (and for your carriers to remake their squads)...I'll be pushing on your planets and infrastructure. And I am likely to win, given how you wasted lots of resources/supply into those carriers which were "useless" in this decisive battle.

The fact that carriers rebuild their squads is useful for raiding, hit-run battles, or wars of attrition... Carriers + antorak (for speed boost) can be a fun raiding force for example. But then again, other units can serve this purpose and still be helpful in the big "decisive" battle that we all know comes every game.

@Belfrahn,

1. & 2. The advantage of Strike Craft and Carriers is that they allow the Carriers, because of their Strike Craft, can effectively hit any target at very long range(anywhere in the gravity well), and can switch free of cost between Fighter and Bomber Squadrons for adaptation to different targets.

Massed up on lots of cruiser Carriers, and with support cruisers, light frigates and the requisite capital ships, Advent and Vasari strike craft can be hellishly powerful. For potential fleet compositions, see the Carrier Battle Groups post and the "best race for a carrier fleet" post somewhere in this Strategy forum.

The TEC have the worst strike craft, that's just how they are. Only their capital ship Sova Carrier can field decent squadrons with Heavy Fighters and Rapid Manufacturing. The Akkan's Targeting Uplink also helps to an extent.

3. Anti-Strikecraft("Flak") Frigates are indeed a counter to strike craft, but they can be negated by a micromanaging opponent, and cannot be micromanaged themselves(4 guns constantly on auto-fire and speed no match for that of strike craft).

For one thing, they only defend friendly ships within their small firing range from strike craft, and strike craft can pass in and out of this range for their attack passes to minimize the damage taken and severely reduce flaks' effectiveness. Flaks have fast cool-down times, and thus high DPS, but it doesn't matter since they can't shoot while their targets are somewhere else.

Vasari strike craft can even repair any damage they take at a decent rate, and their capital ship Skirantra Carrier can fully heal them within 5 seconds with Repair Cloud. Also, when fighting in home territory, all strike craft can make flights to Regeneration Bays/Repair Platforms in between their attack passes and quickly restore their hull points. Since flak can't focus fire, and can't shoot down much in one pass, they can be countered by repair tactics.

Another thing, TEC Bombers with Targeting Uplink from an Akkan and the late-game ERM technology can outrange flak guns - they can shoot while the flaks cannot. Thus they can shoot at whatever capital ship or cruiser group the flaks are trying to protect, from outside flak range.

Flak is also weak against cheap Light Frigates, which do 125% damage against them and are faster than their cruiser/capital escorts. Flaks cannot be present as the bulk of a fleet because they're so simple to counter, and because they're so useless against anything heavier than Bombers.

Fighters are also a strike craft counter, but they are much harder to avoid because of their speed, are deadlier than Flaks when countering Bombers, and are more effective against a wider range of targets. Drawback is that they are more expensive, taking up 1 Carrier Cruiser for each Squadron.

4.
Fighters kill:
Fighters
Bombers
Long-Range Frigatess
Siege Frigates
Scouts
Civilian Ships
Colony Ships

Bombers kill:
Heavy Cruisers
Orbital Structures
Capital Ships
Support Cruisers
Carrier Cruisers

I find that in the early to mid game before heavy cruisers are being used in any significant numbers, a 50/50 combo of fighters and bombers really adds a lot of offensive firepower to your fleet for use against enemy LRMs, buildings, and capital ships thats hard to get just by building hordes of frigates. I don't usually go strikecraft crazy; I like to use about 6 light carriers in a fleet, and thats about all. Once I start getting heavy cruisers in appreciable numbers, I convert my bomber squadrons to fighter squadrons so that I will have protection against enemy bombers and a highly mobile offensive capability against LRMs.

Fighters and flak frigates together can lay down a lot of damage against the LRM blob. Plus the flaks can also help suppress enemy fighters, thus more quickly freeing up your interceptors to suppress enemy LRMs. It's not just about DPS with strikecraft; it's about how you use them in a balanced fleet.

Strike craft are a force multiplier. Their value goes beyond the simple statistics of how much damage they do. They force your opponent to defend against a multiplicity of threats, which will have the natural effect of diluting his firepower. Firepower spent defending against fighters and/or bombers is firepower that can't be used against your other ships.

All that said, however, I have used a strikecraft heavy strategy which did work. I don't like to do it as TEC because it relies heavily on bombers and TEC bombers are less effective than Vasari or Advent bombers in my experience. What you do here is you build mostly light carriers, light frigates, and flak frigates. When a battle begins, you dock your bombers. Use your flaks and interceptors to suppress enemy interceptors and bombers. Simultaneously turn loose your horde of light frigates to destroy enemy flaks. Once hostile flaks and interceptors have been defeated or at least blunted, launch your bombers. When I play this way I usually sortie my bombers against enemy capital ships first. I also release my flaks and interceptors from dogfighting duty to anti-LRM duty. This strategy works pretty well as Advent or Vasari, but not as well for TEC.

I've got a thread running on this same topic. Should be an interesting read for anyone interested.

Highly suggest comment 29 (Fighter/Bomber balance tests) and 54 (more tests).

The tests indicate that strikecraft don't match up to the cost of other units you can buy so in response to the OP concerns about using them vs churning out other units, you're correct. Strike Craft don't make sense.

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The element I haven't seen discussed personally interests me. What happens in an MP game if your main fleet targets all flak frigates for destruction first and your carrier group either keeps its strikecraft docked or has their attacks directed towards safe targets?

Won't those large groups of strikecraft work quite well once you've thinned down the ranks of flak frigates with regular combat ships?

Won't those large groups of strikecraft work quite well once you've thinned down the ranks of flak frigates with regular combat ships?

No. Strikecraft do absolutely miserable damage for their cost. If your opponent spends the same credits making frigates, LRM frigates, anything besides carriers/strikecraft you'll get plastered.

Okay, and how are those other frigates going to combat the strikecraft once you've taken out the flaks?

By destroying the Cruiser Carriers/Carrier.

The frigates will catch and kill cruiser carriers with ease, against a carrier cap ship it's a bit more difficult.

That hasn't been my experience. I think you're a little too dedicated to the idea that strikecraft are worthless.

If the enemy focuses on my flak (and keeps their strikecraft away till flak dies)...Thats fine, the flak are great tanks! By the time most of the flak is dead, the enemy fleet has been decimated...Flak is also very easy to remake and spam .

It might be that the best way to use strike craft is to use capital ships instead of light carriers. While light carriers field only one squadron and are basically defenseless, a Halcyon, Sova, or Skirantra are highly survivable vessels that can field 6 or 7 squadrons once leveled up and also have a not insignificant amount of firepower in their own right. This doesn't even take into consideration the special abilities ships like these have. The Advent's Halcyon can improve the rate of fire of nearby friendlies. The Skirantra, IIRC, has the highly potent repair cloud ability, and the Sova can wreck an opponent's economy with embargo.

Using this strategy would necessitate a capital-heavy research curve. Your front line fleet on even a small to medium map is going to need three or four heavy carriers to make it worth it, plus you're going to probably want at least two more capitals; one supporting type and one battleship. You're look at 5 to 6 caps per fleet. Thats a tall order, but it's doable. This resource cost is somewhat offset by the fact that you won't need to spend money on carrier cruisers, and since your bombers are going to be your big offensive weapon, you won't even need many heavy cruisers. You can pour most of your credits into light frigates and flak frigates and end up with a pretty potent, if capital ship heavy force.

Per Phoebus the Greatest in the other thread regarding this issue:

Cost for cost, compared to Carrier Cruisers with Bombers, Assailants do:
133.5% more damage to light armor
250.3% more damage to medium armor
75.2% more damage to heavy armor
12.5% less damage to very heavy armor
16.8% more damage to Capital Ships

The Assailants also have 18.9% more effective health.

It doesn't matter that your carrier cruisers are sitting on the edge of the gravity well, because either:
1. The enemy will rush them in seconds and get free shots on the carrier cruisers as they try to jump.
2. The enemy is fighting something else and is effectively dealing much more damage than the cowardly carrier cruiser.

Flak Frigates aren't even needed, carrier cruisers are simply not even close to being cost effective against anything but HCs and structures, even in pure offense scenarios.

Capital Ship abilities that can easily kill, disable and/or cripple massed strikecrafts, and Flak Frigates are just an extra weakness that can further cripple the already gimped carrier cruisers.

About Capital Ships, yeah, Carrier Caps do have the best offense. If only because Capital Ships are rather poor offensive ships. (4 Assailants can out-dps any Battleship, for half the cost.)




Is there any question just how weak these units are after seeing those numbers? This isn't a case of just using them correctly, fighters/bombers are not cost effective. You're going to get creamed if someone shows up using almost anything else. And if they show up with a few flak frigates you're done.

...You're kidding, right? Flaks do 25% of their damage to light frigates and capital ships. Both of those vessel classes do 100-125% of their damage to flaks.



Consider me unconvinced. I don't deny strikecraft and cruiser carriers might need to be tweaked, but I tire quickly of this unjustified argument that they don't do anything right.

My 2 cents.

Strike Craft are a non-issue right now.

Most players do quite well early game with a spam of lights, lrms, or flak. Mid game, they go for CAs and utility ships. Late game it's caps, special CAs and a blend of everything. Rarely do CVs get preference.

Now, on bigger maps, maybe, I dunno, CV forces can get local superiorities and destroy fringe world structures. But on small and mid sized, even mid sized multi-systems, CVs can't properly come to bear with an enemy fleet.

As raiders, they excel -- long range, high damage and easy in-n-out. Blow a few Trade Ports, Labs, or CA Factories and peace, we're out.

But try they in a real furball with a guy who has any flak and it's not gonna work.

Strike craft need just a little tweak -- I'd propose a faster turn around on their actual striking.

@Tumbler quoting Phoebus,

Check back to your thread. Phoebus forgot something.

Anyway, you don't have to build carriers if you don't want to. That's your opinion if you think they do pathetic damage.

Here's the Effective DPS per Supply of non-upgraded Lasurak Transporters vs:

Fighters(using Fighters): 0.83
Bombers(using Fighters): 1.92
Long-Range Frigates(using Fighters): 2.56
Light Frigates(using Bombers): 1.07
Support Cruisers(using Bombers): 1.07
Heavy Cruisers(using Bombers): 2.136
Structures(using Bombers): 2.136
Capital Ships(using Bombers): 1.60

The Lasurak Fighters can also blockade trade/refinery ships for low risk, defend from siege frigates, and make far more effective hit-and-runs than anything else.

Here's the Effective DPS per Supply of non-upgraded Kanrak Assailants vs:

Fighters: 0.00
Bombers: 0.00
Long-Range Frigates: 2.16
Light Frigates: 3.25
Support Cruisers: 1.625
Heavy Cruisers: 1.625
Structures: 1.625
Capital Ships: 1.625

Here's the Effective DPS per Supply of non-upgraded Junsurak Sentinels vs:

Non-micromanaged Fighters(one gun): 1.125
Non-micromanaged Bombers(one gun): 0.85
Long-Range Frigates(one gun): 1.00
Micromanaged Fighters(one gun): 0.56
Micromanaged Bombers(one gun): 0.38

Microed strikecraft are when the player keeps the strikecraft out of flak range in between attack passes, basically avoiding them while possible. If you're really lucky and get all 4 flak guns to fire, you multiply the above numbers by 4. Although, I don't see why the heck the strikecraft would all be approaching simultaneously from 4 different directions... they'd instead all be coming from the same direction, so at max you'll get 2 guns firing at them.

just my 2 cents:

i like strike craft... and so i use them....
i am just playing SP. so i build whatever i want to.... if i want to have frigates, i build frigates, if i want to build crusier, i build cruiser, and i always have strike craft with me....

although i think the Cap Ship carriers should have way more of them... if you take a look at the Sova Carrier: it has at least 8 start/landing ramps on its upside and 4 on it's downside... so it should have at lvl 10 at least 12 strike craft...

just my opinion cocerning strike crafts and the carrier design...

Strike craft are not really cost-efficient but they make for great hit'n'run.

Another fun thing to do: Pair Advent carriers with the Guardien and its repel ability. Keeps your carriers safe while the strike craft deal damage.
Still, flak will rip through that. Not to mention all the capital ship abilities that annihilate strike craft. In the end your strike craft will be gone and the enemy will kill your Guardians with his LRM.

Not that fast. Not if you keep the strike craft out of range except for during attack passes. Not if you fly them to a repair service in between their attacks.

The Fighters will just rip up the enemy LRM before they can kill the Guardians.



And all the capital ship abilities that boost strike craft. You've got Heavy Fighters, Rapid Manufacturing, Targeting Uplink, Adept Drone Anima, Anima Tempest, Concentration Aura, Microphasing Aura, Scramble Bombers, and Repair Cloud.

BTW, AFAIK, no ability 'annihilates' strike craft to the point that 40-50 bomber squads won't just blow up a capital ship in every pass. Only the Kortul's Jam Weapons disables their weapons, but Flak Burst/Telekinetic Push/Targeting Uplink + Flak are not going to stop them so fast. I don't know about Magnetize, though.

I think that the main problem with carriers, that no one is focuing on in any of the post, is what is there function of a carrier in a combined fleet.

If you look at it, the support and heavy cruisers work best at close range combat, making them the perfect comb. arms fleet. But the carriers are a different story. The carriers fight at long range, which is out of range of the support abilities of support cruisers, and out of range of fire support form the heavy cruisers. If you do close with a comb. arm fleet with carriers, you are told by main people on this form, that you have made an error. That because carriers add no support abilities at close range. Also on top of that, in close combat, squadrons come out on top of enemy flack while not build up! This leads to the loss of entire squadrons the second they launch.

As I see it, there is only two way to build a fleet in sins. One is build a fleet of heavy and support cruisers, as the heavy bring the firepower, and the short range abilities of the supports keep them in the fight. The second is to produce a carrier only fleet(or almost carrier only). The reason, is that if you close to attack, you risk your unarmed carriers, this makes bring heavy cruisers a problem, as you can't use them, and that they take up supplys. You can't bring support cruisers as there short range abilities only work on the ships near them.

As it stands now, there is no 50/50 (close combat ships/carrier) combs that will work for people like me, that like to use both fighter and close in combat ships. There is not even a 25/75, 75/25 or and thing in between. This is were the problem is, you must fight at long range or at close, without the abilitie for one to support the other.

What we need to fix the problem, is something that will allow long range carriers to support close range combat ships, and allows for close range combat ships to support longe range carriers. I've seen on many post, the ideal of just increasing the damage output by 2 to 3 times what it is doing now. But this will just make us all spam carriers, as it would if we increase the damage output of the LRM by 2 to 3 times what they do now.

There right now there are only two ways to fix this problem iun my eyes.

Ones is to give all squadrons an special abilitie that help the close range ships when the close to fight. It need to be something not in use by any other faction, on any of there ships. There reason that special abilities where not used in games like homeworld 2 and to some level in star wars empire at war, was the fact that you could destroy subsystem. This mean our special abilitie should be something like, turning off the secondary weapons on a enemy ship for example.

The second is to have a better fleet command system which act like an special abilitie. But in both cases, they need to do the same thing, which is allow us to have mixed fleets of long and short range ships.

Here's the Effective DPS per Supply of non-upgraded Lasurak Transporters vs:

Fighters(using Fighters): 0.83
Bombers(using Fighters): 1.92
Long-Range Frigates(using Fighters): 2.56
Light Frigates(using Bombers): 1.07
Support Cruisers(using Bombers): 1.07
Heavy Cruisers(using Bombers): 2.136
Structures(using Bombers): 2.136
Capital Ships(using Bombers): 1.60

The Lasurak Fighters can also blockade trade/refinery ships for low risk, defend from siege frigates, and make far more effective hit-and-runs than anything else.

Here's the Effective DPS per Supply of non-upgraded Kanrak Assailants vs:

Fighters: 0.00
Bombers: 0.00
Long-Range Frigates: 2.16
Light Frigates: 3.25
Support Cruisers: 1.625
Heavy Cruisers: 1.625
Structures: 1.625
Capital Ships: 1.625

I don't think these numbers matter to be honest.

1. Building a fleet is rarely based on supply alone. Cost is the major issue 99% of the time. You add more Supply when your fleet gets big enough.
2. The cost of the 2 units you are comparing are VASTLY different. You get 2-4 fighters total for the same cost you get 10 light frigates so by not factoring in cost of each unit you get this incorrect assumption that if you field an equal amount of fighters/bombers to his units you'll be ok... But you've spent a TON more resources than you opponent to just break even in battle power. Which means he's probably got a ton more units than you somewhere else.

Cost analysis of DPS per unit
:
10x Frigates / 4x C.Carrier / 2x Carrier
Fighters: 0.00 7.68 1.66
Bombers: 0.00 3.32 3.84
Long-Range Frigates: 21.6 10.24 5.12
Light Frigates: 32.5 4.28 2.14
Support Cruisers: 16.25 4.28 2.14
Heavy Cruisers: 16.25 8.544 4.272
Structures: 16.25 8.544 4.272
Capital Ships: 16.25 6.4 3.2

Those numbers are what you'd get in combat. These are best case scenarios for the strike craft as well. They don't even come close to the dps you'd get making other units.

For these units to be worth the cost the cruiser carriers would need to field 2-3 squadrons each (which I think would be a good change) and carriers need to deploy about 10 squadrons to start. That is the only way those units will come close the dps that you get from the other units.

And for the record I would LOVE LUV LUB to see them do this. I love using strikecraft, I chose Advent to learn and use because their fighter bases get an extra squadron, their carrier gets extra strike craft, and right now those units are not cost effective.

Playing multiplayer games means that if you do not field a fleet that can defeat your enemy you will lose. There is no way to exploit the advantages of bombers/fighters unless I have 2x-3x the income in credits/resources to spend and so far none of the games have given me that much of a starting advantage.