It's almost 8 years since the game has been launched. Well maybe it was asked before , but nevertheless i was wondering why this game has NO proper Carrier Class Ships???
And before pointing out that there is plenty of them just take look this.
The closest thing being Carrier is Advanced Obelisk. Still even that ship doesn't feel being carrier at all. Sure it has more fighter decks than others as well Passive skill which support the role, still it feels like i'm playing semi cooked Science ship or nerfed Cruiser... The fighters there just like meh press button , let them go and don't care for rest fight. Just check from time to time if you in VERY long combat their number and just hit summon button again.
I really would love to see and use the Proper version of Carrier Class Ships. For Example make the weaponry limited to turrets but increase number of decks for fighters . Make different types of fighters available with specific roles. Make it more Fighter focus management and not weapons.
What do you think ? Thanks for attention.
P.S I know that Star Trek universe lack of Carrier "representation" due to it's "peacefull" nature in its core,which i think is the crippling factor when it comes to designing certain aspects, since the game is going after it.
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And I don't think Star Trek being 'peaceful' has anything to do with the lack of (onscreen) carriers.
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Personally I would want to see several things done to make carriers feel more appealing, and also distinguished from non-carrier ships, like how the cruiser/escorts/science vessels have unique things to them. Some of these things are below.
Carrier adjustments/changes: These could be expanded to affect separation pets too.- Carrier/hanger pet-linked consoles an console slots:The idea of this is that a hanger focusing more on hanger-pets would have some of their console slots dedicated to improving their hanger-pets, as well as having specific consoles that give bonuses to the hanger-pets of the carrier when slotted.
- Hanger-pet UI update: It would be nice to see more ability to control your hanger-pet via a update to the Ui used for the Hanger-pets. Even if this were exclusively to the carrier type of ships specifically with using a Ui that is quite similar to the Ui used for boffs on the ground.
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My Dreadnought Carrier feels very much like a Carrier. It has 5 Frigates, 4 drones, 1 battleship as pets. Or it can swap 4 Frigates for a mass of fighters. Then on top of that use Bridge Officer powers to summon shuttles and other ships. There is a swarm of ships around me and I do not need to use my weapons.
Though it would be nice to have a hanger-pet vendor, that you could buy hanger-pets that have different weapon/energy types equipped on them. It might be weird though I like to have my hanger-pets using the same general energy/weapon types I am using on my carriers or hanger-using ships.
However, As an exclusive carrier captain. I have to say, pet AI is TRASH, ABSOLUTE TRASH.
Baltim raiders - activate gateway upon launch, therefore not having it in combat.
callisto - stay in red alert so long, and are super slow to engage.
Hitting recall, and ships do not dock up, let alone even leave combat.
I have gone into borg RA and parked between 10 and 15km from a cube and launched hangers to see how hard they hit, and how fast they react.
Callisto hangers slowboat to the cube before engaging.
scorpions, will one volley a cube with their torps.
baltim raiders and callisto sometimes lose a ship before killing a single cube.
I have always wanted a 4 or 6 hanger ship.
Sadly, hanger pets, are just gimmicks, like so many things in STO. Like the repair drone platform. I have healed up from 25% hull to 90+% with out the dang things healing me. Other times, the paint get scratched and they go into overdrive.
Lastly, do not even get me started on trying to command the shield repair units while in active combat. Should be able to just set those to intercept, and they will say, every 5 seconds, check closest/weakest self/ally and heal them.
If anyone want to dispute what i have written about the pets, I will gladly take the time to go into borg red alerts and show you. Pets are absolute junk.
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I can agree that some of the hanger-pet AI work pretty good, such as any hanger-pets using mid to wide arc weapons (like beam array an beam bank/torpedoes for example), but the pets using much more narrow firing arcs are much less effective comparatively.
I agree with you on that, and that like the advanced tactical escort you should be able to choose which of the sections you fly. Honestly i could see alot of the suggestions I made working for separation-ships if they were expanded after implementation.
there are however some improvements I'd like them to make, basically turn current 4 stances into 5 (I don't consider the "lauch fighters button to be a "stance" as it does modify the behaviour of craft that are already launched.
That is true. Though that is taking into account that you might be treating each hanger-pet as a single entity, over merely treating them as a unit like the current Ui does. Also if we saw them expand the hanger-pet UI to add the abilities of the pets to the UI an allow you to set abilities to auto or manual would work.
Also it would be nice if we could choose from afew pre-set attack run styles, as most of the pets seem to circle around a target when attacking which is most effective for beam array type weapons.
I can tell you'd love the vogon frigate pets that barely move on launch so they're a good 20km behind when you get into combat then sit and spam mines which will then be 25km or so away from anything remotely hostile.
I've a theory that part of the issue with recall is they have to fly up and interact with a part of your ship but because the designer and testing folk are lazy that part is mostly inside the ship so as a result they just fly up and bump into you as they try in vain to find the pixel that will trigger the dock.
Of course that doesnt explain why they then refuse to undock.
Only carrier pets I've found to be consistently adequate are the rommie drones BUT the only way to have a carrier with them is to use a lockbox ship, which is kind of rare being a romulan vessel.
Fighters in general are pretty fragile with delta flyers or tholian ones being marginally better due to having beams. The pet ai isnt anywhere near good enough to use cannons.
In addition to that, the top of my wish list would be a pets tab, 1 or 2 for all carriers and any other ships with any kind of combat pet. It seems such a shame that you can upgrade your ship from, say, 10k to 50k, but can't upgrade your pets from 5k to 25k. It would be nice if pets were as customizable as Small Craft. It would also be nice to have an Ensign station on all non-drones so the pets function could be much more flexible.
I'd also love to see better use of the Carrier Commands, and subject to cool-downs, each time a Carrier Command is activated; it could activate a Pilot ability:
Attack: ‘Lock Trajectory’
Escort: 'Form Up’
Intercept: ‘Deploy Countermeasures ‘
Recall: ‘Evasive Manoeuvres’ (OK - not Pilot, but probably better than Clean Getaway)
Also, under the carrier commands: 'Attack' the pets should attempt to position themselves 5k in front of the carrier with an engagement range of 15k (and don't disable 'launch' if targeting something more than 10k away), under 'Escort' and 'Intercept' they should attempt a close ring around the relevant ship and under 'Recall', they should auto-dock within 1k.
I wish the last 'Holding' had been a 'Fighter School' with one Department for improving player Small Craft and the other for pets. The pets could have included Tactical Consoles that improve pet damage as well (and not being ‘Vulnerability Locators’ they’d be a 'fair' trade off), Engineering Consoles (perhaps even an auto transporting 'repair doc' for the worst damage pet) and Science Consoles; all of which buff the pets, but don't have the other extra benefits that other Fleet Consoles have. They could even sell better Flight Deck Officers, which do something more useful than the current ones.
Just my thoughts, I have one ‘dedicated carrier’ and I love playing it, it does a decent dps in ISA, but lags a long way behind some of my other ships.
Out of the 7 ships that can use the Romulan Drones, only 1 is a Lockbox ship.
Don't say the other scim variants because they are the same ship.
I use them on my Chronos and Eternal.
Completely stifles cross-pollination of carrier builds as often you're stuck with just the frigate that comes with that carrier.
If I've earnt/bought a carrier, it's pets should be unlocked for use on all my carriers.
Only current saving grace is on KDF faction where there's slightly more cross-carrier capable fighters than is available for feds and allies thanks to early days with flight deck cruisers when such nonsense didn't exist.
Possbily another shining example of cryptics proof reading gone awry as the drone tooltip says dreadnaught warbirds and kelvin t'laru but nothing else.
Didn't think the temporal ships could use anything but fighters so having the drone option opens them up a bit more.