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.

Basically to sum up some of the confusion often centered around these discussions:

They have interesting theoretical advantages (very high speed/acceleration; raid mobility; spike damage; building assassination), but they currently have practical disadvantages (flaks, carrier speed/fragility etc.) - so much so that they don't really serve ANY major function without a high chance of failure.

Hopefully the strikecraft/flak balance can be shifted or changed somehow in the next few patches to make strikecraft more fruitfully used without being massively overpowered (which is what they would be, honestly, without a very strong flak counter and other mitigating factors).

If you disagree after all the discussions, after all the evidence, after seeing multiplayer after multiplayer with no strikecraft (sans RA), then I'd suggest that we can agree to disagree and let that be the end of the discussion.

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.

The advantage about carriers, is that they can fight on the move! This is absolutely critical when you want to place strikes deep into enemy territory. Bombers take out orbital structures faster than any other frigate type. Every other ship has to stop to fight, and is at a great disadvantage for such tactics.

The carrier can blow through at full speed, blast the phase jump inhibitors, half the stuff in the system, and stay well ahead of the enemy's reinforcing fleet. By the time backup arrives, you've already left the enemy territory, with a swath of orbital destruction in your wake. You can not do that with any other ship type, they're simply too slow to pull it off.

You keep saying carriers suck for LINE tactics. Stop using them as a ship of the line, duh! Run them right past that diversionary tactic and get them to work.

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.

I've been experimenting with a simple mod that changes the dynamic with strikecraft a bit. It increases the amount of squadrons a carrier cap has, especially at higher levels. It does not increase the number of squadrons on light carriers, though. I tried bumping them to two initially, it was massively OP. So I returned the light carriers to their original specs and reduced their cost by about 30%. I haven't thoroughly tested yet, but once I get the balance worked out it will make strikecraft and light carriers a viable fleet component and it will make carrier caps more competitive in fleet combat.