Remember we don't want to nerf strike craft, we want to nerf the LIGHT CARRIER (which is spammed like hell) and make Strike Craft counterable, we're not reducing Strike Craft hp/attack or anything. The Light Carrier currently has more hp/sheilds than a Kiodiak melee close up heavy cruiser.
Three caveats to that:
1> While the Light Carrier might have more listed HP/shields than a Kodiak, it's in a different armor category. Carriers are "Heavy" armor, Kodiaks are "Very Heavy". This gives them different effectivenesses against various attack types, irrespective of the listed amounts. For instance, Bombers deal twice as much damage to VH armor as to Heavy (100% vs 50%), but on the other hand, the Basic Assault class of ship (the weenie light frigates you start with) do 150% to Heavy and only 50% to VH. Likewise, the specialty cruiser ships (repair ships, disabling ships, etc.) and siege vessels do 125% to Heavy and only 50% to VH. The two armor types are completely identical against everything other than those I mentioned above.
So, while the carriers might be listed as having more raw shields and HP than a kodiak, their survivability is much lower when faced with many types of frigates and cruisers, and a carrier can't exactly outrun a light frigate.
2> It's not just the spamming of carriers that's the problem; it's that, like torpedo cruisers, they're effectively a standoff weapon that can wipe out all of a well's static defenses, and the only way to stop them is to keep a fleet on hand to chase after them, and even that's not a great solution as they can warp out when you get close. This wasn't so bad in vanilla sins, where your defenses depended on mobile fleets, but with the greater emphasis on static defenses in Entrenchment, it's a bigger deal now. Currently, it's impossible to create a bomber-proof static defense that would force an opponent to bring his fleet into range of your guns. You can come close by loading up your SB with hangars, but even that's a losing battle; 14-20 squadrons sounds like a lot, but if an incoming fleet has twenty carriers, you'll be outgunned.
3> The other problem is that currently, the only effective counters to massed strikecraft are either to use your own masses of fighters (which only exacerbates the problem), or to use large numbers of dedicated anti-fighter ships and abilities, which are a huge resource sink if your opponent doesn't use strikecraft.
So here's what I'd like to see:
1> A buffing of the flak vessels, as mentioned before, in a way that would make them more effective against strike craft without increasing their effectiveness against other ships. Not only would this make fleets a bit safer from strikecraft, but it'd encourage people to keep "reaction" forces of a handful of flaks that could get to threatened systems quickly. If these reaction forces can reinforce a starbase to the point where it can't be easily hurt by strikecraft, then an invader will need an actual fleet for the job. (Note I said EASILY hurt; if a starbase has twelve points of armor and a large hull regeneration, and maybe a deflector shield or something, it doesn't take much protection to reach the point where it's not losing HP over time.)
2> A buffing of starbase anti-SC ability. The idea I had last night was this:
Each starbase has three weapons: one it starts with, and two you buy upgrades for. All three have comparable damage ratings. Take the Vasari as the example here; they start with some basic pulse guns, then add disintegration rays (good against structures, okay against ships), and finally long-range phase missile batteries.
Convert the middle weapon into something that can be used against strikecraft. The big purple disintegration rays the Vasari have would be great for this; they LOOK like something that'd be an AoE attack. After all, if you're being attacked by killer bees, an assault rifle wouldn't help much, but a flamethrower would. So, make that weapon effective against strike craft (more targets, less damage per target) and change its targeting priority (structures first, strikecraft second, ships last). Do the same for all of the races. If the middle weapon upgrade (which practically everyone will buy for their bases anyway) can act as a decent anti-strikecraft weapon, then a fully-upgraded base will be able to defend itself from carrier raiders pretty well, and without the need to buy a dedicated anti-strikecraft upgrade that would be useless in other situations. Unless they want to bring in a HUGE fleet of carriers, your opponent won't be able to just park at the edge of the gravity well and whittle you down with swarms of strikecraft.
3> Over time, I'd like to see a design shift to more well-rounded vessels, instead of the overspecialized frigates (and occasionally cruisers) we have now. The Advent carriers were a good example of this; they went from being pure carriers to occasional minelayers in Entrenchment. Give each vessel an activated ability that lets it fill some other role, and you go a long way towards keeping the strategy interesting. (If the Vasari siege ships could fire a long-range anti-structure torpedo, even if it was nowhere close to the terran torpedo ships, then many of the complaints about the Vasari anti-SB weakness go away.) Likewise, if you give flak vessels some other useful role to fill, then people will be more inclined to have one on hand, and this indirectly reduces the appeal of strikecraft; in Entrenchment they make good minesweepers, but there needs to be more.
