Difference between revisions of "Item Database:Ships:Carriers"
m |
m (Protected "Item Database:Ships:Carriers" [edit=sysop:move=sysop]) |
(No difference)
| |
Revision as of 00:15, 24 March 2009
Contents
Carriers
Key facts
Carriers are capital-class ships. They excel at fleet logistical support and can lend substantial fire-power to a fleet.
The term ‘carrier’ usually refers to the smaller of the carrier-class vessels for each race. The larger one is often called a mothership or ‘Mom’.
Carriers do not have turret or missile weapons, but they do have huge drone bays. Additionally they can control more drones simultaneously than normal vessels, and they are the only class of ships capable of using fighter drones.
Although this can make them formidable attackers, their real strength is in their ability to mount capital-class remote shield transfers and capital-class remote armor repairers.
Practical Use
In relative terms a pilot skilled enough to fly a carrier might be able to inflict a comparable amount of damage when flying a battleship. This makes a carrier an expensive choice for an aggressive role.
The carrier is a valuable fleet ship because in addition to delivering the damage of a very good battleship, it can repair friendly vessels over a greater range and for a greater length of time than a very good logistics ship.
This ‘two in one’ performance level makes carriers highly desirable in any fleet.
Carriers can not use jump gates and must use their onboard jump drives to move between systems. This requires a fleet-member in the destination system to activate a cynosaural field.
Practically speaking this means carriers cannot travel to high-security space.
Carriers have the ability to transport fully assembled, fitted and even rigged ships. Additionally pilots may refit their ships in space, if they are close enough to a friendly carrier.
Despite a formidable tank, carriers can be destroyed by battle-ship fleets and are safest when spider-tanking with other carriers.
Features and abilities
A solo carrier can maximise its ability to repair itself and other ships, by using the ‘triage module’. This module can only be used by carrier-class vessels. While in ‘triage’ mode a carrier can repair at twice its usual rate, but can not receive any remote repair. Because solo carriers are considered vulnerable, fleet commanders may prefer to field multiple carriers without triage modules, but it should be noted that no other vessel can repair targets as quickly as a ‘triage’ enabled carrier.
Carriers can dock at stations, mother-ships can not; mother-ships must remain in space at all times.
Flying a carrier requires many fully trained skills including racial battleship, logistics, drone interfacing and warp drive operation. Depending on a pilot’s background and existing specialties, other capital ships may be easier to train for, but none are so versatile in combat.
Because carrier pilots can assign drones (including fighters) to other pilots in their fleet – it is possible for carrier pilots to avoid the battlefield and allow pilots in less valuable ships to direct their damage.
Fighters are the only drones capable of warp. This means that carrier pilots can assign fighters to comrades anywhere within the same system. The only limitation is that the assignee can only control as many fighters as he could normally control drones; so no more than five.
Carriers and especially mother-ships may field many more fighters, so may assign them to multiple pilots.
The fighter’s ability to use warp also means that if a target vessel escapes into warp – the fighters will follow it; this is another unique feature of carrier-combat.
Vulnerability
Like every ship, there is a world of difference between being able to undock, and being able to fly it well. Carriers excel in fleet operations, but they are very vulnerable if used casually for ratting or other solo tasks. This fact, coupled with the very heavy training load required to make the ship meet its combat potential, may lead the unwary to lose their new carriers in the course of fairly mundane tasks.
Types of Carriers
Motherships
Key Facts
Motherships are Super Capital-class ships. These ships can only be built from a capital ship array inside of an alliance's sovereign territory. These massive ships are the second most costly ships in the game, behind the Titan-class Super Capital. The main differences between carriers and motherships is the ability to launch more fighter drones than a carrier can. A carrier can deploy one extra drone per carrier level, whereas a mothership can deploy three extra per carrier level.
Motherships can also equip the Remote ECM Burst module. This module jams any ship within its area of effect.