EVE General Discussion

Why not?

Formulate a plan and make it happen.

1. Suitcase
2. Hilarious solo lossmail (alternatively, high-adrenaline 'solo' killmail - people love to shoot ships that are stuck on a cyno)
3. Join fleet, assign drones, go afk, collect killmails

I think that about covers it.

They look expensive on kill-mails.

Valid Point,

Unfortunately questions such as yours get trolled (as most posts on the forums do) so hopefully this response will serve as a genuine answer.

The carrier has three distinct roles in interstellar combat.

a) Capital support (A carrier excels at shield/armor repair as well as energy transfer and can beef up a capital fleet the more of them you have). In this scenario, you typically have carrier squads and wings which are allocated to repair or transfer capacitor to specific capital or super capital friendlies.

An example goes to the Battle of Asaki (A 3,000 pilot affair that began when a Titan jumped onto a battlefield instead of bridging a sub-capital fleet to the engagement). The Titan's capacitor was already drained from the jump drives firing and the enemy was attempting to neutralize its capacitor reservoir so it couldn't jump back out of the system. A 'Carrier Rescue Group' put all of their energy transfer modules onto the Titan, overcome the energy neuts from the enemy, and gave it enough capacitor to jump out. The carriers saved the Titan. Now that same Titan later came back to the fight and died, but that's a different story.

b) Sub-Capital support (In this scenario a small assortment of carriers (1-3 usually) will hit the field with a sub-capital fleet of combat ships. The carrier can either amp up DPS in the engagement via drones or can enter triage mode and rep friendly ships, acting as a super logistics boat.

c) Remote support (Either accomplished through the carrier delegating fighters to sub capital ships elsewhere in the system (allowing those ships to use the fighters instead of their own drones) or by repairing shields and armor on player owned station modules and shields. They are also useful to carry sub capital ships from one system to another without forcing you to destroy rigs (you can store up to 1 million m3 of unpackaged ships in a carrier's maintenance bay).

Beyond the above, the carrier does not have much tactical use, although some folks will disagree and insist on using them for mining and missions just for kicks.

-D

The main purpose of a carrier is to assign drones of course

http://i.imgur.com/YNpH0TG.jpg

Posting in a Stealth "Nerf carriers" thread....

Look up "Triage Module I". Or "Triage Module II" if you're feeling adventurous.

we had an annoying 12 man intie gang running around our area which our 5 man vaga gang couldn't catch. warping a carrier to a gate allowed us to catch them and kill several before they realised obvious bait was obvious.
Also whenever i need new ships or we redeploy i feel my lack of a carrier greatly. being a hitchhiker sucks.

You'll have more fun flying sub-capital ships anyway.

Death to supercaps.

The purpose of a carrier is tear extraction. From a carrier undocking and repping that cyno ship you were trying to pop, elite PvPer that you are, to that slowcat fleet that ate your dread. From triage mode to 30M bounty ticks. And of course the best tears of all by the same carrier pilot, when he is finally caught and held, and his beloved carrier is slowly taken apart by subcaps before his eyes.