the capital carriers are usefull in combination with a huge fleet of frigate carriers cause they add bonusses to the huge fleet of bombers u have then.

also keep the cap ship and bombers in the middle and send the frigate carriers in circels around the edge of the gravity well keeping them out of harms way and pumpin bombers into the battle.

do make sure u have more than just cap ships to keep the enemy busy and away from ur carriers, and keep the battle in the middle of the gravitywell.

if u play it right their allmost invincible

Carriers simply dont carry enough squds at the beginning and mid game you'll have cruisers to replace carriers.

The support abilitys are kinda lame too.

so no, carriers are free xp for your enemy.
And their main weapon is negated by bunch of flak frigs so....

Imo one of the best capital ships in the game is a carrier.. The Advent Carry is a monster.. Not only does it nice damage by it self later on with upgrades and level.. But you can't beat anima which with abilities can raise up to 10+ per squadron, along with energy aura.. Which when maxed out will decrease cool down by 22%.. It starts getting rediculous late game where you start seeing Illuminators doing 25 damage a hit..

Three Words.

Missle Battery Spam.

Kills AI's dead. Sucks in multi-player though, so go with Kol and Marza instead.

A Sova is no direct combat ship...
However, embargo is useful if you can reach the enemy homeworld.
Missile Batteries are good vs light frigs and fighters are good vs LRMs, which I like as an advantage in early engagements.

Fighters on a mid level Sova are also useful for countering enemy fighters in fleets and hangar defenses.

The ultimate is not that great, but not bad either. If you go all fighters the Sova with its ultimate can be all anti strike craft power you need vs anything but massed carriers.

The Kol is just a ship with a bit more fire power and staying power, but it offers nothing which normal ships cant do just as cost effective.
A Sova can replace your complete anti fighter duties most of the time and it has Embargo which while not mind boggling is still neat.

5x means 5 bombers per squad.

if you zoom in till you can see the fighters/bombers themselves and then hover the mouse above them, you can see the stats.

the damage displayed there is incorrect as many other dps figures displayed ingame or on infocards.
e.g. vasari bomber does 5.7 dps, advent bomber does 2.53 dps

It's been pointed out that capital ships gain much of their usefulness from abilities as they level up. Carriers would seem to be at a fundamental disadvantage if they don't gain experience from damage inflicted by their fighter wings. If fighter-inflicted damage doesn't translate into carrier exp, then carriers level up more slowly, and are therefore limited. Granted, it would be pretty awesome if you could get one to a really high level, but I honestly don't see it happening.

capital ships gain experience from any enemy/structure destroyed in the gravity well, they don't have to damage it.
the experience reward is divided amongst your capital ships.

I don't think sides-rear doing more damage necessarily makes sense against some ships: Many TEC ships fight with broadsides rather than head-on. In fact, I think only Kols fight head-on, every other ship I've seen seems to turn broadside when attacking. Several Vasari ships fight better at an oblique, and the Advent carriers also seem to do better broadside or oblique also.

In my personal opinion, carriers are absolutely essential if you're playing as the Vasari. I always have a bunch of them running around if I'm Vasari. For the Advent, I find them to be ok, but nothing special until they get leveled up quite a bit. When it comes to TEC, I do think their carrier is a waste of money. I, too, run around with Kol's and Dunov's just like when I play as Vasari I run around with their equivalent to the Kol (I forget its name) and their carrier (I forget its name too). Carriers appear to be more or less useful depending on the race you're playing as.

Of course, this is just the way I play. Carriers do always make excellent empire-defense ships though. Their interceptor fighters/bombers get into the action fast.

1 squadron is enough for them.

See, a Level 6 Halcyon/Skirantra/Sova carries 5 squadrons and takes 50 supply points + 1 capital ship slot.

6 cruiser-sized light carriers carry 6 squadrons and take 48 supply points. They trade off the extra abilities of the capital carriers with an extra squadron, a free capital slot, and 2 supply points less. The cost comes to about equal since they're cheaper in cash but pricier in resources.

6 light carriers also have the advantage in that they can replace strike craft losses faster than a single capital carrier because they have 6 fighter/bomber factories operating instead of 1, and a larger collective antimatter reserve. Also, they do not need battle-hardening while capital carriers must be Leveled up to L6 for all their abilities to come into play, and since carriers of any kind will be operating behind the front line or at the edge of the gravity well, the cap carriers' guns don't matter all that much.



Yes. The Advent have the best fighter and bomber squadrons early and in mid-game, but in late game with high tech, the Vasari easily have the best fighter squadrons and Vasari bomber squadrons are slightly ahead of their Advent equivalent.

With the Vasari maximizing their Phase Missile, Wave Cannon, Hull, and Armor techs, and the Advent maximizing their Beam, Laser, Hull, and Shield techs, Vasari fighters will be quicker, tougher and better at dogfighting and strafing, while the Advent fighters will be more numerous and better at bomber interception. The Vasari bombers would be faster, tougher, and be able to shoot through shields, while the Advent bombers would be more numerous and would deal more raw damage to their target.

With base specifications and no technology bonuses, the Advent and Vasari fighters would be about equal in dogfighting, but the Advent fighters would be better at strafing scout/long-range/siege ships and intercepting bombers. Without tech bonuses, the Advent bombers would easily be the best.

TEC squadrons wouldn't be the best at anything in either situation, but if they manage to tech up faster thanks to better economy, they could be stronger in the mid-game for a while until their rivals also research up their trees.

I thought phase missiles and armor were the only things that would improve for the Vasari fighter/bombers. Which always annoyed me, because you can only get the 20% damage bonus on phase missiles, and it takes a lot of pre-reqs to get there. I've had games as Advent where I'm frustrated beyond belief that the enemy's phase missiles seem to be acing my hull, but even when I missile swarm as Vassari I rarely notice a huge boon to the phasic missiles. If fighters use wave, that would make me very happy.

Also, the Vasari carrier's abilities are really quite nice. The ability to phase out squads is really handy, the extra units per squad gets to be a nice bonus, but most of all, the repair ability it has is just amazing. You can literally tank a single battleship against an apocalyptic invasion if you have the repair ability maxed, and it will easily tilt battles in your favor in the beginning of the game. The fact that it regens all units in the area of effect can be put to amazingly good use. I like it a lot more than Dunolv, which is usually the very first thing I target in battle against TEC.