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The change to 5% dmg is good. No need to fear carriers stepping into Super's terrain anyways. While the skillbonuses of the Nid / Thanatos now get the same damage than Aeon / Wyvern, the latter can field 5 squadrons at once and - which is way more important - can field heavy fighters. Nidhoggur should be a viable choice now compared to the Chimera, on the Thanatos I'm not sure yet.


So, right now with the added damage, it looks like this:

Shield: Chimera, the tanky one, Nidhoggur, the DPS one. A good tradeoff in my opinion.
Armor: Archon, the... better one, sadly. I'll explain why.

Carriers main use will be: DPS. After stripping them from their logistics role, all they can do is apply pressure with their fighter squadrons. While on shield setups, the midslots are used for tanking and the lowslots are used for damage, on armor the lowslots get used for both, tanking AND damage. Thus, the armor carrier that has the most "effective lowslots" is the better one.
In case of the Archon, it has 7 lowslots and 1 "imaginary" or "effective" lowslot through it's hullbonus: 20% resistance on Carrier V, which is very close to an EANM - thus the "effective" lowslot.
The Thanatos has 6 lowslots and 1 effective lowslot in form of it's Fighter Damage Bonus, being slightly above a T2 DDA.

My suggestion would be now: Take away one Highslot from the Thanatos and add it as an additional lowslot, bringing it to 8 effective lowslots aswell and thus on par with the Archon.
If fitting for maximum tank, the Archon would still win and be the tanky choice, as it's having one effective lowslot that is not stacking penalized and will thus reach higher overall resistances. If fitting for maximum dps, it's the other way round, the Thanatos now has the advantage because one of it's effective lowslots is not stacking penalized. When fitting for a balance between dps and tank, they'd come out roughly equal.
They would be differenciated through their High- and Midslot layout though, with the Archon having more "offensive" options - a utility high is usually used for modules like Nos, Neut, Smartbomb, Fighter Support Unit, etc. etc..
The Thanatos would be more versatile however, being able to fit an additional Drone Nav Comp for example, or go for a light shield tank with a maximum dps / mobility setup.

Overall, the move of one high to one low on the Thanatos will put it in line with the Archon and making it NOT the worse choice every time. It would make it an interesting choice instead.

Maybe this could also be adapted to the Nyx and resolve the issues with that one.

What do you guys think?

Also, @Lugh Crow-Slave,

i see that you often mention how the Nid/Thanny would be the better carriers as they would simply kill off the Archon/Chims fighters and thus win. First of all, this would only be true in a 1v1 carrier dogfight.
Second, it will not always boil down to this. There are so many variables, ranging from highslot modules to fighter layout (How many interceptors do you carry, how many support fighters, how many light fighters - An Archon with a full rack of interceptor fighters would wipe out any Thanatos' mixed fighterbay with ease), that you simply can't claim this point to be the truth.
There's also a thing called micromanagement, which you can see already when 2 droneboats fight each other. Usually, the droneboat that has it's drones close to itself - and in scoop range - is at an advantage, as taking drones (or: fighters) out of the combat that are being shot is a lot more easy that way.

Now add in other ships aswell, such as 2 rifters on one carrier's side and suddenly the whole outcome of the fight would be different. You couldn't imagine this now, 2 rifters helping a carrier making it suddenly beat another carrier, that simply isn't really possible right now. On April 27th, it is.

to be honest i find the than gets more than enough tank using shields but if you really want 2 armor 2 shield i suppose this is an option :/

5 midslots make for a good tank in your eyes? One goes for the propmod, without that you might aswell selfdestruct. Now, if you fitted an MWD, you'll probably want a capbattery aswell, or maybe a capbooster. So, from your 5 slots, 2 are gone. Now you can fit a CSE and 2 Invuls, wow, what a tank... It's one weak ass tank.

I'm not sure but i didn't notice that FSU reduce ROF below 5 sec. In fact i think FSU extending cycle right now. Used Firbolgs.
So we lose DPS with each FSU. Maybe I'm wrong

My proposal to fix this is very simple:

Don't allow supers to use support fighters. They'll get their superweapons instead. Carriers will be the only platform to use support fighters.

It would be an interesting idea. Carriers do seem to lack a role they're good at, but the role of using support fighters seems a bit... weak. I'd prefer if carriers would be the definitive anti-subcap capital, but supers have them beat by far.

Carriers do lack a defined role. They get bonuses to support fighters but are only allowed to launch one wing of them. Doesn't really stand out.