Huh, it wasn't working for me. I'll check later but if it was working at some point I'm sure it'll work when it goes live.

Because no ship can refit in space

And no you can't swap them out when full either to prevent people from carrying more than they should

Sorry but the ONLY way to load or unload new fighters is to be in space - Docked or Tethered to a Citadel, you can't move fighters to or from launch tubes.

Bay size is one pretty encouraging reason to not use support fighters - At 3k/m each, that is a lot of space that could go to something else.
That aside - You will need 12K/m of space in your fighter hangar if using anti drone fighters, 9Km if just using support or fighters capable of hitting other ships.

Seems there are still more reasons not to use a carrier over a subcap or dread.

-- - -- - -- - --
Anti-drone fighters - With a total of 72 HP damage difference between fastest and slowest - There is no reason to use anything other than Gram II's, unless your going for a specific damage type.
Equite II's may be useful at 55m/s slower than the Gram II and potentially 24 more HP damage per volley.
Locust II's don't have much going for them being Kinetic and 165m/s slower than the Gram II, Satyr II could be useful if your target is right on top of you and does less than 1Km/s.

It seems a shame Devs didn't bother to make the different faction types different enough to make a difference. Hopefully they are not at release stats yet and some thought may yet be put into making them unique. Maybe the Gram could get its Tackle attribute changed to target painting, the Satyr changed to scram for stopping heavy fighters just MJDing out of range, leaving the other 2 with the web bonus.

I'm not sure, but I believe the tackle ability prevents heavy fighter MJDs, considering it already acts like a scram and stops MWDs.

I'm not sure, but I believe the tackle ability prevents heavy fighter MJDs, considering it already acts like a scram and stops MWDs.

it does tested this during one of the mass tests

So the tackle ability, -6% to velocity per fighter, on anti fighters acts as a scram?

aye seems the fighter "q" command is also broken


also noticed fighters now orbit the carrier and the drone return hotkey now works

looks like they are really geting the mechanics down even if it is two steps forward one bug back :p

just hope they get them down in time to finish the balance issues

does this meed there is now a hot key for fighters to attack again? will test tonight

F1?

And "Q" is working fine. Also Shift + R, Shift + Alt + R now working aswell.
Can't understand why many ppl have problems with ratting, wrong fighters perhaps. Some ppl still don't know that there are 2 types of light fighters.
Also I tried to kill Domi and Gila today, with simple but pretty tanky fit. Domi destroyed within 30 sec and Gila was on armor after 1 shot and 1 rocket salvo (it's 1 sec). Gila with mwd and 1 nano can't run away from fighters. I used Thanatos with 1 DDA 4 FSU 2 DNC and 1 OTL with tracking script. It was just stupid test but carrier isn't worthless

kill a dromi with what?

also q is still not working for me the overlay comes up but that is it

and it's not that carriers are worthless its that they are worth less than dreads with HAW still

the fact that you got a gila into 1/2 armor after one salvo is surprising how close were you when you launched fighters and how many died b4 they made it?

Miss 'Assassination' Cayman - I don't know what happened in my previous tests but the velocity ability is pretty effective. Bombers are like ducks in a shooting gallery once hit with it.

i'm starting to wonder if the disadvantages are making them to hard to balance

the line between op and u.p. is very very thin this combined with the fact that ccp is trying to make one capital only work on sub caps and at the same time giving the rest an option to chose


another thing is fighters are not cheap by any means making HAW even more attractive

I don't envy whoever has to figure out the balance, but I also don't think they're getting it right.

I don't know if this got brought up early but it looks like they are reducing base material needed for all caps, So if carriers look like sub-bar state right now against sub-caps they might introduce Tech II carriers to overcome its downsides ? I don't know...

With the patch release just around the corner, it seems unlikely that any meaningful change will be introduced at this late stage.

I don't foresee carriers falling into a place where they are both playable and useful for many years (now occupying a place next to the Rorqual).

I'm calling it now: time to extract! There are plenty of alternative ships out there, including dreads, which require less investment, function well and result in less enlightenment of my family with the new words I utter while fighting with the interface.

Kinda makes me sad the way they have implemented features and haven't really smoothed out the edges for carriers. I do think that another tube would be beneficial for e-war, I have had trouble on sisi for my fighters keeping up with targets which I think needs to addressed. So far I have been disappointed, mostly due to the fact I spent the last 2 months training for a carrier :P,

I do think that the buffer tank on the archon is decent for my uses, I have tried making a rep fit but it seems kinda slow on the cycles but I haven't really tested the ancillary armor reps. I do live in wormhole so I don't have to worry about supers only issue is if they escalate to dreads I'm toast, I've gone toe to toe with a dread and man they hurt, which is to be expected.

I think the only things that need to addressed is throwing on a dedicated support drone tube so you don't lose 1/3 of your dps, fix fighter speed to make them able to apply their dps, and maybe tweak dps a bit.

At the end of the day unless you give carriers a role to fill, they are basically useless, you are better off using dreads especially if the engagement is gonna be drawn out, CCP has a week left hopefully they can ease our pain and have carriers fixed :P

If all you do is add an extra rube for a support drone nothing will really be fixed as the support fighters aren't worth the fighter bay space

As of right now I dont think there is much that they can do before the release in 7 days if I'm correct, I mean theoretically they could do a big update to sisi a few days before the update but with fanfest around the corner its looking less and less that carriers will not be polished in time, I mean adding another tube would be a band-aid but the issue I have been having is my support drones not keeping up with anything, so speed of fighters in general would be a big push towards making ewar fighters possible, If my dromi drones cant keep up to web stuff than whats the point of using them when you are sacrificing 1/3 of your dps same with the disruptor drones , haven't really used other drones, I tried testing the jamming drones and from what I have seen they can't jam for ****.

Another thing that needs to be addressed is the drone bay which I totally forgot, either it needs to get bigger or fighters need to get smaller, your basically putting your dps out there to be diminished as soon as they die which is a no no for extended fights where if you cant kill the target fast enough due to dps dying your dead especially if your in a buffer tank.