Player Features and Ideas Discussion

With the upcoming changes, carriers will only be able to launch fighters (I think). I understand this from a combat balance point of view, but it makes no sense lore-wise and heavily nerfs carrier's utility. After all, whats to stop a "carrier" from "carrying" a mining barge or mass-salvager. So I came up with 2 ideas. The first one is much more feasible, but the second one is more modular, and I think cooler.

1. Utility Fighters
The title says it all. Add mining, scouting, hacking, gassing, logistics, etc. fighters. I would also like to be able to set the number of fighters in a squadron, so I;m not stuck deploying 8 scouts when I only need 1.

2. Allow carriers to deploy ships as fighters.
This would allow capitals to deploy any fitted subcap as a fighter. The bigger subcaps would take up more bandwidth, so a carrier might be able to fly 2 marauders or 20 frigates (example numbers only).

These ships would be limited to a certain number of active module, hopefully skill dependent. 5 actives would make a reasonable maximum. Stacked modules should count as 1 for this limit. And gas miners should be stackable! (other miners too)

For modules that require the pilot to do something, the carrier pilot would still have to preform the action itself (e.g. a controled ship can use a Data Analyzer, but the carrier pilot still has to preform the hack).

Probe launchers are kind of a special case. You have to set up the probes, but the controlled ship will let the carrier pilot know when something enters that space (shows up on scan). There could be a way to automatically scan down anomalies though.

The cost would have to be looked at, I think this could get expensive fast.

This system could (and hopefully would) replace fighters altogether. It allows a lot more customization, without adding (many) balancing concerns.

Carriers would no longer have a drone bay, they would carry all ships in their fleet bay, regardless of whether they are manned or unmanned.

Another option would be to allow carrier pilots to fit their fighters, but then you lose out on ship bonuses, and it could be harder to implement.

counter proposal, learn the current mechanics before suggesting changes a class of ship you cannot yet fly

Two Marauders launched from a Carrier.
Let's see: A Chimera is little over 2 km long, while a Paladin is 1.5km long... Ehm.

lol have you seen the numbers for these? they are a joke i really hope they

1. up the numbers for the e-war effects
2. give them a more powerful special ability(currently they just have propulsion and the one ewar ability)


but over all you will probably never see them used as carriers can only send out one flight and they are not worth the 33.33 drop in dps

Long range Ewar has some combat utiliry. What I meant was out-of-combat utility. Before the fighter changes a carrier could cary mining and salvage drones, and so can any other drone ship. If I understood the nerfs right, it was more targeted at the combat utility of carriers (refiting, RR and dps) than the out of combat utility.

As for logistics, a carrier could fly maybe around 10 Ospreys. Unless I completly miss my guess, a treiage carrier should do significantly more rr than a carrier flying 10 Ospreys.

As for the 1 ship does everything role, I agree that having human pilots to do everything should be better. But there are already mining drones. And if the residents of New Eden have the tech to control drones, it is an extremely minor step to control ships.

What if carrier-piloted ships received 10*(Skill) % of the role and skill bonuses for the ship? It would cap out at 50%, and helps to raise carrier's skill ceiling a bit.

Also, for lore, isn't "carry ships to do everything" kind of the purpose of a carrier in the first place?

What if there was a carrier-sized "fleet transport" ship that was a capital booster and ship transporter? Like carriers but without the ability to control any of the ships. I want a stealth version.


Hopefully just 1 or 2. I have no idea on the numbers though.

I know a Thanatos can do around 3k dps, so using 2 1200 dps marauders shouldn't be that much of a stretch.

I would like to see the original plan for carriers with players docking and launching from them.


I would like to here if this is r feasible now that one of the biggest technical issues was over come when they were working on Citadels

Can't people dock in the fleet bay?

If not, that would definitely be nice. This was proposed with the assumption that you could carry maned ships just like you would be able to carry unmanned.

Even if people can't dock now and they make it so you can, I would still like to see an unmanned ship control thing, so carrier pilots aren't completely beholden to other people for non-combat.

That was the issue they solved with citadels lol

I was thinking no on drones, mainly because controlling 5-10 drone boats would be a nightmare.

But it might be doable, idk.

On numbers, the ones I gave were just examples, they would need a lot more work.

Couple of reasons:

1. They have this utility now, its being taken away in Citadel.
2. Lore: They carry ships and control fighters. Why not control ships too?
3. It allows carrier pilots to customize their fighter squadrons however they want.