I think that assault cruisers should have a weapon system--maybe stronger than that of the siege frigate but less than that of a light frigate--just something to help fend off lighter stuff as it's launching its volleys at a starbase/structure.  I especially think that carriers should have a weapon or two and that they make the carriers smarter in the fact that they don't move into fromation with the rest of the fleet if the fleet is under attack.  This would make it harder to lose the carriers because they would stay out on the edge of the gravity well or move away from the fleet and so the enemy would have to take the time to travel to the carriers while still getting pounded on by the rest of the fleet.  these weapons don't have to be very powerful, but maybe be like a better anti-strike craft frigate--using lasers or pulse lasers to destroy the strike craft.  I believe that more people would then like to use their fleet points for carriers/other stronger ships like LRFs and/or HCs instead of Anti-strike craft frigates if the carriers if they could not only build/field SC but also take them out. 

These weapons on the carrier could also be somewhat effective against LRFs too.---just a thought if anyone reads this and wants to make a mod...

actually they do if you have them in a fleet and so they will reform with the fleet--and sometimes be in the middle between the to fighting fleets--if you tell the fleet to attack a specific target that you want destroyed.  Even without this and your fleet just jumps in, the carriers will folow the rest of the fleet in and possibly be in the thick of things when you don't want them to be.  Then there is always when you have your fleet sitting at the edge of a gravity well and an enemy fleet jumps in on top of yours--quite literally--to where your fleet is exactly. Then your carriers don't really move at all and are "in the thick of it"

Like medieval siege weapons they need to have the way cleared for them or they are just big vulnerable targets, i think its fine that the same goes for assault frigates.

When you take out the army round the fortress, THEN you can wheel in the big guns to break down the walls.

I would say that the same should go for siege frigates, excecpt this would limit the planet harass strat even more and further reduce their use.

But on the same token we don't have enough desirable behaviour either. An Ogrov ordered to attack a starbase come hell or high water will fight to the death. But an Ogrov just sitting somewhere will do absolutly nothing when attacked.

This is true of any ship, though. They attack based on their weapons, not whether or not they themselves are being attacked.

It could get pretty complicated. For one thing, a ship can only be ordered to use a primary weapon. For example if you give the Kol an attack command, it will always shoot that target with its beams (primary), and its secondary weapons will pick their own targets. So if the Ogrovs just get a secondary weapon you wouldn't be able to control what it shoots at, but the auto-attack will always be focused on structures. So if something happens to be nearby and in the weapon arc, it would get shot at. But at the same time, all ships except capitals and anti-fighter only have frontal guns, so giving anti-structure cruisers more coverage doesn't make much sense in that context.

If you make the anti-ship weapon its primary, then you wouldn't be able to target the anti-structure weapons.

I suppose it is possible for IC to re-write the combat engine a bit so that it takes the target type into account. Since they included a switch to make a weapon only able to shoot at buildings, it could be changed so that when giving an order it picks the highest damage weapon that can attack that target, so clicking a building would use the torpedoes/blue goop, and clicking a ship would use the secondary weapon.

But.. I don't think it's worth for them to spend time doing that since the benefit is pretty marginal currently. Wouldn't be bad to open up a few more modding possibilities, I suppose.