What is the point of carriers in X4?

[Falcrack]

TLDR: Will carriers serve a worthwhile role in X4, given the ability of fighters to efficiently operate without them?

Seeing the latest info about the Osprey got me thinking about why it would be useful to have ships that act as carriers for small fighters in X4. In real life, carriers are useful because aircraft have fuel and ammunition requirements, with limited range. The carrier has the capability to provide a large stock of fuel and ammunition for the planes, and can get them closer to the action as needed to reduce sortie time and need for mid-air refueling. A real-life fighter simply cannot operate without a base of operations, and there are numerous advantages to moving this base of operations closer to the action.

This leads me to wonder if small fighters on carriers in X4 will have similar restrictions. For example, will fighters not have the ability to travel long distances on their own, but instead would need a carrier to help transport them? Will a carrier be able to travel faster to a destination (like with a boost drive) that fighters would lack? If fighters can quite easily operate on their own without a mobile base of operations, then what is the point of carriers?

What about fuel? Will ships in X4 have any sort of limitations like fuel requirement for travel? In X3, there are jumpdrives that consume energy cells, so it made sense to cram a lot of fighters in one carrier instead of them all jumping independently, using up massive amounts of e-cells, but apparently jumpdrives won’t be a thing in X4. If there is a fuel requirement for space travel, this leads to a strong incentive to use carriers, but if not, and if fighters can travel to destinations on their own as quickly and efficiently as a carrier, then why not simply assign all the desired fighters to a control group or wing and have them move themselves to the action?

If fighters can move themselves to the action as quickly and efficiently on their own as if they were on board a carrier, then that reduces the useful role of a carrier to a mobile ammunition depot (to restock missiles), and possibly as a mobile repair station. I am not sure that these two roles would be enough to justify the construction of expensive carriers, when one could simply build more fighters and have them move themselves, going back to a stations for repair and rearming, or simply use large destroyers and frigates.

Will a carrier and its assigned fighters be cost effective in terms of combat ability versus that same amount of resources invested in destroyers or frigates? I would like to see and use carriers in game, but if their functions and abilities do not justify their costs, then I fear there will be little reason to use them. That is, unless the cost of the carrier will mainly be a function of its own defenses and cargo capacity, and the additional construction costs for hosting fighters is minimal.

This could tie in with the whole jump drive question as well. If only very large ships (destroyers and carriers) could be equipped with jump drives, this would be an additional incentive to use carriers to shuttle fighters around.

[Tomonor]

X Rebirth ship did have a fuel system actually, not sure about X4's ships, though. But you do have a point.

This could tie in with the whole jump drive question as well. If only very large ships (destroyers and carriers) could be equipped with jump drives, this would be an additional incentive to use carriers to shuttle fighters around.

However, according to Egosoft, jumpdrive will still completely disappear, as that was the case in X Rebirth, and still came off as 'cheaty'.

[A5PECT]

If carriers move faster than fighters when using their travel drives then they'll still be useful for transporting fighter groups over long distances. Carriers can have other functions like repairing and rearming fighters, too.

[SirNukes]

Repair is pretty nice; one of my favorite mods for X3 allowed marines to repair docked ships. The nearest shipyard may be far away and across dangerous territory, making such a trip impractical for unsupported fighters.

If X4 is going to keep track of pilots, chilling out on a carrier would be much better for moral and rest than being stuck in a cockpit for eternity. This can be modeled with some simple bonuses to fighter performance (or penalties for pilots flying too long).

Fighter coordination and control may end up being in a script attached to the carrier, like a fleet leader in X3:AP, but I'd prefer that not be the case in X4 since it is somewhat limiting.

[Fulgrymm]

Carriers can have other functions like repairing and rearming fighters, too.

You must have stopped at the TLDR version. He literally brought those points up in the OP.

As for the OP, I think I agree. I hadn't thought too much about it before, but your points are compelling. I guess carriers will wind up just being a cool thing to have late game when you have piles of credits to waste.

[Zetoss]

As much as the headline almost turned me away I must admit OP had a good point, but my most immediate counter argument would be that carriers are cool as heck even if they're not practical.

The whole idea that ships can be repaired while docked seems like a very nice touch for gameplay, doesn't really make sense to lug around a pack of banged up little buckets that degrade with every encounter and inevitably get swatted like flies. Repairing them in the "mothership" instead of having them go all the way to a shipyard would make abundant sense. I'd still expect ships above S class to have ways of self repair but even if an M can use an engineer to get back in top shape after an hour it would be nicer for it to dock and have it done in 5 minutes.

As far as combat goes I'm gonna use some math and logic here so don't get dizzy now people, it'll be over soon. Having a cluster of small ships and going up against half as big a cluster of similar ships, you have a pretty certain win but at the cost of possibly losing a small number of ships, making it generally a better idea to bring one very much bigger ship that goes down to 60% hull but eliminates the risk of any loss. Then why bother with small ships at all? Well there are places big ones just can't go, they may be near invincible in open space but when the enemy pack is swishing around a friendly station at high speed the only way to fight them without much risk of blowing up the station is to send in the precision strikers. Not sure if there will be asteroid fields dense enough to cripple the movements of large ships but if so, that's a place they would become sitting ducks and launching fighters would be the best tactical move. Finally a group of small and fast ships can fan out and rapidly search an enormous area while the big ship waits for intel on where to strike.

None of these ideas have been confirmed to be in use by AI as far as I know but it's how I'd personally use a carrier anyway.

[LittleBird]

Good point OP.

They way it looks and considering all informations we have, mass fighters are superior compared to less fighters+carrier.

A classic carrier is not an anti-fighter ship. It needs fighters to defend against enemy fighters. Means, it is vulnerable without them. To make this clear If a carrier can perform without fighters why it exists? We can call it frigate and move on.
Now looking at X4 with it's surface mechanics fighters will be able to disarm a carrier.

So yea... I can't see a point for carriers without the suggestions in this thread.
But all of them require the implementaion of new game mechanics. Something you can't just simply add.
So hopefully Ego already has something in mind to keep carriers usefull.

[euclid]

There's little information (yet) about carriers but I do hope that they have similar capabilities as in X2/3 (not XR) with some improvements, as for example faster launch/docking.

I've used carriers mainly for mining (launch XL, send them to mine and dock them again) and to save abandoned (bailed out) ships in dangerous space.

Cheers Euclid

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

A carrier will ask all ships to dock and then move to the requested location.

This is an easy way (for the AI) to get a carrier, 40 S ships and 15 M ships to the same destination at the same time.

If you have a wing of 40 fighters and 15 frigates and order the group leader to a location and all the other ships are following it. Then having them all arrive at the same location at the same time is not guaranteed.

Especially not, if they are of different types with variations in engines.

Having all of your forces arrive at the same time may make a big difference to the outcome of a battle. As, feeding your forces in dribs and drabs to an enemy is not likely to result in a good outcome.

This may also be a problem with fleets of L and XL ships. This problem was discussed in a recent post regarding AI.

[BigBANGtheory]

I'm keen to see what a carrier can do in X4 tbh it will be and acid test of many new systems and gameplay design imho.

Watch this space I guess

[Sandalpocalypse]

There are still fighter drones in X4. IIRC- i am not sure on this - it was said or implied that the fighters launching from the behemoth in the videos were drone fighters and they were pretty good sized.

You can substitute for the real life reason for carriers - endurance - with having carrier fighters be much cheaper for the same effectiveness in one way or another.

[Vandragorax]

Many good reasons have been listed here for why carriers are useful, and I believe they are still amazingly useful for transporting, repairing, and rearming large fleets of fighters. They also typically carry a range of small ships like fighters AND bombers. Being able to launch whatever munitions against the enemy as is their biggest weakness makes that side of them very valuable.

By the way, there's no reason why you have to have 1 carrier per fleet of fighters. You could easily just buy 1 "re-arming" carrier out in a remote sector, but have several squadrons of fighters patrolling. If at any point one of the squadrons needs repairs etc. you just dock them with the carrier let it do its thing, then undock and they carry on. The carrier is then free for the next fighter squad when needed.

Also I haven't heard anything mentioned yet about carriers possibly being able to build fighters/bombers on board. That would be absolutely amazing and another compelling reason to use a carrier. If they could effectively replenish their stock of docked ships using raw materials and an on-board manufacturing bay

[linolafett]

Also I haven't heard anything mentioned yet about carriers possibly being able to build fighters/bombers on board. That would be absolutely amazing and another compelling reason to use a carrier. If they could effectively replenish their stock of docked ships using raw materials and an on-board manufacturing bay

I think building ships is exclusive to shipyards only.

[mr.WHO]

I'd love if carriers could repair docked ships onboard - this would reduce micromanagement and make fighters much more usable.

[Walton Simons]

I would like if they can simply dock fighters this time. It was really weird in XR with drone-only carriers.
Made the smaller ships quite useless without a way to transporting them on longer distances. Pretty bad because I actually enjoyed seeing my fighter wings getting into fights with pirate\xenon fighters.

[Tomonor]

I would like if they can simply dock fighters this time. It was really weird in XR with drone-only carriers.

That will happen. One of the Q&A video demonstrated the Argon Colossus launching Novas.

[DavidGW]

I would expect that carriers will be able to repair docked fighters, by housing extra engineers. In XR it didn't make much sense that you could have carriers repair for free with a good engineer, but you had to pay exorbitant amounts of money for repairing smaller ships.

Other reasons carriers would be useful is I'm also expecting there to be hazardous regions like in XR Fields of Opportunity. It is possible that some of these regions might not be practical/possible to avoid. Transiting fighters would be killed almost immediately, whereas a heavily armoured and shielded carrier should be able to traverse without a problem.

If I make some assumptions on possible armaments and AI, 'hazardous regions' could also be extended to the use of flak weaponry. Fielding a fully laden carrier gives you a lot of choice, rather than either just a larger fighter squadron or a heavier destroyer.

For example, if you're going up against a heavy destroyer armed with a heavy anti-fighter load out like flak cannons, a carrier could choose to act like a destroyer, shrugging off low damage AoE blasts and pick off the destroyer's weapons with minimal risk.

On the other hand, if you're going up against a heavy destroyer fitted out for anti-cap-ship combat, your carrier could do a quick pass to strike any anti-fighter weaponry that is there, before retreating and launching the fighters to pick apart the destroyer, again with little risk.

Or, if your carrier is being attacked by smaller ships, any equipped flak weapons could do some serious damage to the enemy squadron before deploying your own fighters, evening the odds.

Finally, in a battle against another cap ship, a carrier acts as a tank, drawing fire away from allied fighters. I guess using a destroyer plus fighter wing would do the same thing, however I would expect that a carrier would be more tanky for the price compared to a destroyer, with less weaponry accounting for the cost difference.

[Vandragorax]

Also I haven't heard anything mentioned yet about carriers possibly being able to build fighters/bombers on board. That would be absolutely amazing and another compelling reason to use a carrier. If they could effectively replenish their stock of docked ships using raw materials and an on-board manufacturing bay

I think building ships is exclusive to shipyards only.

Well you've still got some months left of development lol

[Honved]

I believe that having carriers BUILD fighters would be overpowered, but having the ability to repair them over time (possibly using SMALL amounts of some resources, such as Teladianium or Hull Plating) would certainly make them more useful. That doesn't mean 2-5 minutes to bring a heavily damaged M3 back to full condition in time to rejoin the same battle, but fast enough to bring the whole fleet back up to fighting condition in less than a day for a relatively minor cost. If you want "faster", you go to a shipyard and pay a lot more for it.

[Walton Simons]

If you want "faster", you go to a shipyard and pay a lot more for it.

Speaking of this, if you have a lot of damaged fighters would be nice to just dock them into the carrier, send the carrier to the shipyard and have them all fixed (of course by adjusting the price for the damaged fighters in bay).
This way you could save some time instead of just send one by one to fix them, not to mention having 10 or more fighters that need repairs.