I have read posts on carriers being overpowered however they are not. A history lesson is in order. World War 2 between Japan and the USA. Battleships were the thing to have in World War I but a few well placed torpedoes or bombs from a small group of planes on warships sinks them. When aircraft carriers became part of the fleet battleships became more of a target than a tide turner. Italian Battleships got nailed by old English bi-planes during World War II. Google the battle of Taranto for info on that encounter. Close to the end of WW2 the superbattleships of Japan were no match for fighter planes. The Japanese fleet was feared until they lost their carriers in the battle of Midway. Japan lost the offensive afterward. So yes sending a battleship or three battleships against a carrier in GC3 is suicide just like it is in real life. No modern naval commander would do such a thing. Once Japan lost their carriers it didn't matter they had the superbattleships and they knew it. Battleships in GC3 are meant to put holes in other enemy ships, starbases, and space monsters. With space age targeting tech you may very well hit those small fighters with your massive proton cannon but do you have enough proton cannons for all the fighters being launched against your fancy ship? And don't forget each fighter may have Lancelot beams and stingray torpedoes mounted to its tiny insignificant frame which altogether cost about 1/100 the price of your feared ship.
The only reason their was a battle of Yavin was the death star had TIE fighters to take on the rebel fighters. The Trade Federation Battleships didn't do a whole lot of damage to the Naboo fighters. The droid fighters did the damage to the Naboo fighters and the Naboo fighters blewup the Trade Federation battleship.
In the real world when an area needs policing an aircraft carrier is sent to the region.
When a carrier with fighters destroys a battleship things are as they should be. When a carrier without fighters destroys a battleship somethings wrong.
It all comes back to your lack of first-hand experience. You're speaking purely hypothetically, without knowledge of how the mechanics actually play out in-game. You will not "eat the enemy fighters" because there are too many of them, and your ships, however numerous, simply can't take them out quickly enough to make a real impact. Even you throw a fleet at some carriers, it won't matter because the fighters respawn immediately.
However, much of the discussion is not focused on "beating" carriers - but rather using carriers. Fleets of carriers make the game too easy (and would even if the AI could make strategically designed fleets) - thus I don't use them at all - and really, mechanics like this are the reason I hardly play anymore. Nothing feels balanced, so nothing is ever fun.
It's still 'use carriers to kill carriers' though. The drones are just another flavour of carrier deck. Your solution to carriers being OP is still ultimately a matter of 'only use carriers once you encounter carriers'.
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Oh, and to the OP's edit - missiles are the worst choice against fighters, because they fire slowly and waste lots of damage per hit. As you'd have learned had you actually played the game.
True, you could adapt the principle though. Mix in guardian ships, with kinetic weapons, doing 50 damage a shot or at least 25 would be ideal. Or possibly add extra batteries of different weapon types to your capital ships. If you have three weapons types (which can one or two shot a fighter) you've tripled your rate of fire against small targets. Guardian pods is simpler though i think. Carriers are nice mechanic to counter/mitigate just making big ships with heaps of weapons, or variations on the theme. They are definitely a pain if you don't design for them though. Suppose they could counter guardian pods with their own guardian pod screens and your back to who has the most/best fighters.
Personally though haven't really been a big fan of carriers, the fighters seem to take a few turns to rebuild/return (whatever) after being destroyed, so if you're getting into a lot of fights quite rapidly, I found they lost effectiveness quickly.
There's enough conflicting reports on this to make me seriously wonder if it's bugged. After all, we know that the combat view is buggy as hell and often bears little relation to what's actually going on. Possibly it's meant to take a while to get fighters back, but they simply haven't been dying when they appear to for many of us? Or maybe it's equally possible that sometimes carriers just fail to launch all their fighters?
I've certainly seen insta-respawns happen numerous times, and have rarely witnessed persistent fighter deaths. Maybe now that the AI is complately obsessed with carriers we'll get a better idea of what the correct behaviour is.
That is interesting. I haven't really used carriers that extensively (not as a mainstay anyway) but I wonder if not having designed that many carriers, meant the AI was less likely to use those designs against me. I did not used to see them that much at all and I did wonder what all the fuss was about but perhaps my experience is atypical. I do maintain there are sufficient mechanisms in the game to counter them (guardian role ships of suitable size, with kinetic weapons, perhaps durantium and maybe thrusters) if the AI has started to over emphasise carriers, I think that will be sub-optimal tbh. That said things have been changing abit recently and havent played in awhile it might be wise to play on the latest update before shooting my mouth off.
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