No, we do not all argee at all.   

A lot of us want a small flat-cost to rach Strike Craft squadron. 30 credits, 15 metal, 15 crystal. Hell even let Carrier's get their initial Strike Craft for FREE but any replaced ones will cost ANTI-MATTER AND RESOURCES. 

The problem with just anti-matter is they can STILL REPLACE their Strike Craft during a battle, and considering SC are actually pretty durable even WITH FLAK, they are not going to lose that many and this means the Carrier's will still have ample Anti-matter to replace WHICH CHANGES NOTHING.

-Flak needs a general buff and all capital ships need a weak flak

-Strike Craft costs resources to replace so he will now actually care about not losing his strike craft. 

well, ima take a pot shot at this, how about making the rebuild time for strike craft 3-4 times as long while in combat for light carriers, as well as making them use anti matter to replace their fighters and an initial cost to buy the squadron. dont know how this would go as far as balance is concerned but its an idea. as far as light carriers having weapons go, i think its a stupid idea but in reality i doubt any space ship in a combat role would go out with 0 weapons and only strike craft. but reality is not really that fun i suppose and the engine is limited in what it can do. anyhoo.

I doubt too.  You'd think they would just have a flak gun or two on the ship.  The flak gun could attack anything though.  But it's attack paramters would be set to the "immediate area" instead of the grav well so you don't have Carriers dying for no reason.  If that made sense....

I remeber when the vasari carrier had weapons. man that was lols back then they had one squad and raped with their little pee shooter still. good time, good times and abusive ones. any noway should carriers get weapons.

I believe that my entire post was disregarded. For a more sci-fi oriented example, let's compare the CVL in SoaSE to the CV in Starfire. They are lightly armored, their shields are light, and the fighters are their main weapons. Adding weapons, even light flak turrets, is insane. Let's assume the actual turret take up the space for 3 fighter launch bays. Then the magazine for said turret takes up another 4 launcher bays. You can now carry a single fighter squadron, making your carrier ineffective. Congrats on thinking that through and looking at my above post.

I agree that upping flak frigates is the path to take. Carriers may be overpowered, but they're a really cool unit that works very differently from the rest of the unit types. They're good, yes, but don't forget that they're expensive and take a lot of fleet supply. The real problem is that there's no really good counter to carriers except other carriers. Currently, flaks are decent at clearing fighters, but they still don't work very well against bombers. This means that if you want to protect your fleet against a mixed strikecraft fleet, you have to invest in fighters. It's not healthy for a unit's only counter to be more of itself, obviously, and the natural counter to strikecraft are flak frigates. 

Of course, flak frigates have a few built-in tactical disadvantages against carriers. For one thing, flak frigates are much slower than the fighters they counter, which gives the carrier owner the ability to choose how, when, and where flak/fighter encounters will take place. Flak frigates also can't really destroy carriers -- only the strikecraft they produce. Think about how this is different from a typical counter, such as LRMs to counter light frigates. Most counters actually eliminate the ships they counter, but flaks leave carriers unhurt and able to retreat to fight another day. Moreover, wheras most unit counters CAN be deployed even when there aren't units to counter, even if they're not optimal, flak frigates are really pretty useless except as carrier stoppers.

I repeat, the answer to this problem is to make flak frigates VERY EFFECTIVE. Flak frigates are useless against anything but carriers, they have built-in disadvantages against carriers, and they can't deal effectively with bombers. The solution is to make flak frigates strong enough that they can TOTALLY SHUT DOWN a carrier fleet of equal or even greater size. That way, carriers can still be strong, cool units, but won't dominate as long as the other player invests fleet supply and resources in otherwise useless flak frigates.

The carrier is already the work horse of the fleet. Not having guns allows you to have other types of ships.  If you added guns the carriers escorting ships would not be needed.  Why would I need lrfs to kill lfs if my carriers can fight back?

If you wanted guns you would need to remove something else.  You figure carriers not only carrier strike craft but anything strike craft need. 

Capital carriers are a different story.  They are very large so they can hold SC and some guns, but can not have the number of weapons as standard caps.

only if flak ships get a upgrade to have  anti fighter/bomber missiles they have a fast recharge  and take little antimator

   I like it the way it is, plz stop b!tching about it, your gonna end up having them make this game all possy whipped for real, there are many ways to deal with carriers, I'm sorry that theres such a high pop of OMG ignorant people, the simple fact is lean2play, peace.

Why dont Terran aircraft carriers have serious weaponry of their own?

Not rational.

oh,and,add a gun to the carrier and it will become a mini cap....:P

You all seem to complain WAY too much.  Carrier spammers/more carrier power   Carrier haters/nerf carriers.  It's basically just an innocent question dragged into a slurry of back-and-forth arguments on carrier power.  If you don't know how to effectively bloc carrier spamming, that's your problem.  If you think carriers need MORE power, you obviously havn't used them en masse.  As for the question that that started this post, carriers don't REALLY need weapons, they should(if they're in a fleet) stay squarely in the middle of all surrounding ships, eliminating the need for carrier weapons.

Koda0

P.S. Look at carriers today, they don't have the 16" cannons of their extinct Battleship companions, but nobody's complaining there.

Yes, it was disregarded, and for good reason. You're talking about science fiction - by definition, it's all made-up. Stop saying people are 'insane' because they think a defensive gun on a carrier would be realistic. Not only is it not your place to be telling people what is and isn't realistic in a fictional environment, you're also completely ignoring real-life examples.

Are you, perhaps, suggesting that US carriers aren't armed with Sea Sparrows? What about smaller carriers, like HMS Ocean, which is armed with 3 Phalanx emplacements? The suggestion that adding a flak turret magically takes up 7 fighter bays for an emplacement and magazine follows no examples from real-life and only makes sense in your own private world, where apparently bullets are all 5 feet long.

Congratulations on not thinking through your own post, and assuming that everyone will agree with your plucked-from-thin-air blueprints of a science fiction space carrier.

NB: I don't actually think carriers should have guns, as they don't need them. They're powerful enough as it is with their strike craft. Giving them guns would be more realistic and closer to real-world examples, but would not help the balance of the game, which really is the point of this thread.

Perhaps instead of adding a weapon the the carrier, ironclad should add an ability that can can disable any ship attacking the carrier in a certain radius for 10-15 sec to allow it to escape. Now I know what you guys are going to say, the carrier couldn't just run into the middle of the battle and disable all the enemy ships, ONLY SHIPS THAT ARE ATTACKING IT. also the ability would be made so that is cost a lot of anti-matter so it could only be used once or twice in a battle.

I would also think that this would not upset the balance. since its not adding anysort of weapon, just a defence system.

but at the same time they still have defence systems such as 20mm phalanx mini guns, (as point defense) and anti aircraft and light anti ship missiles.

Carriers don't have weapons because it's beneficial to their AI. Without standard weapons, a carrier has no reason to run into the thick of battle and get a box full of rape. This way, they sit outside on the edge of the gravwell, away from danger.

I would just put carriers in front of my fleet, manuever in front of an attacking enemy fleet then BAM, 10 - 15 second turkey shoot.  Too much micromanagment especially when you're fighting on several fronts.

I propose that we give all carriers flak, Ruthlessness, and Missile Barrage.  That way they can defend themselves against enemy frigates and strikecrafts.

That's is just stupid... You KNOW they need some kind of healing power too.... Duh!!!!

Flak, it isn't that kinda not smart since flak weapons is suppose to take out squadrons that you are housing?

Someone brought up real life carriers...well, those ships are covered in AA guns to protect from bombing runs.  So looking at it that way, maybe they should have light AA.  maybe 2 guns instead of the flak frigates 4.  Not to go attack with, just for defending from fighters.

**I think carriers should have Novalith Cannons mounted on them** 

carriers should use the same priciples that US carriers use  - standoff offensive punch via aircraft , yet retaining the ability to defend themselves in the short term using phalanx {?} defensive systems and short range misilles . Also to make it more fun carriers should not engage with fleet when fighting it should as I mentioned before be a standoff weapon with a small fleet of criusers and defensive fighter to protect it but also have above mentioned defensive capability    

...Carrier weapon is a good idea.. im not a carrier spammer, but i think its stupid to have a combat unit without some sort of meelee weapon for self-defense.. even hoshikos, cielos and colony ships have something, so why not a military carrier? just give them 1 weak laser with 4 damage points so they dont look so silly on the battlefield. I dont think it would make them unbalanced...

Solution to carrier spam is to lower their HP, along with antimatter drain. Carriers should be long range unit, specialised on SC and very vulnerable to direct meelee attacks once the distance advantage has been lost, but not without some sort of weapon, thats just stupid for a military unit...

..and yeah, make the flak stronger and available to capital ships, it doesnt make any sense for a massive all-in-one battleship to not be able to defend itself against SC at least a little bit.. in every good sci-fi there are always some AA batteries on bigger ships, so why not in sins? It would be cool.