Item Database:Ships:Capital Ships:Carriers
Contents
Carrier Hull Classification Overview
Carriers are the smallest of the capital warships. However, their sheer size still dwarfs most battleships, measuring at roughly 2500 meters in length. Electronic signature masking is nearly nonexistent for ships this size, making them proportionally one of the loudest ships in eve. Crewed normally by 18,000 people, though even pod technologies find some advantages here by reducing the need down to nearly 750 personnel, mostly the flight wing crew.
Appeal
Carriers have been joked as the Swiss army knife of new Eden in the hay days to which some has held over to these days still. Though they cannot sit in the wall like dreadnoughts can, they can definitely reinforce the wall and make it stronger. Skills remain a significant investment just as intense as the revenue investments, yet in a modern warfare environment most battle fleets can easily replace a carrier in days. Like other capital ships, one has to rely on jump drives in order to mobilize.
Roles
Carriers have functioned in many various roles and were once upon a time the premier ship of the fleet. Those days are gone with the arrival of titans and massive war building efforts infinitely quantifying them. Still, even in this busy battlefield, carriers are still found deployed to the field in its use as a mobile repair facility as well first response capitals as they're more 'disposable' to first engage any immediate action when larger ships may be just too risky to deploy. Carriers also enjoy a renewed life in wormhole space where supercarriers are barred due to their mass. A carrier can squeeze though wormholes and can remain quite functional for extensive deployments.
Strengths
Carriers are quite flexible in their function able to deploy swarms of different kinds of drones and fighters, able to meet the needs of any battle fleet. Its Triage mode makes it a formidable repair base quickly patching holes ripped through smaller ships and reinforcing their shields quickly. The telemetry links installed for feeding fighters information can be also tasked to feed information to a friendly fleet, making them capable flagships. Their ability to help refit ships in space and provide spare ships for captains that lost their ships is always useful and her generous cargo bay allows for transportation of goods.
Weaknesses
Like all capital ships, being caught alone by a single battleship or interdictor can spell doom for a solitary carrier by simply tackling it and surviving the drone assault until reinforcements arrive. In recent times however, the firepower carriers used to be able to bring to a fight has been laughed at as the supercarriers simply dwarfs fighter capabilities. They are also easy targets for dreadnoughts and titans, titans especially will often pick carriers to sink with its doomsday device which can pierce their defenses easily enough. Their destruction can be hard felt to pilots and the smaller fleet that host them.
Types of carriers
Amarr
Caldari
Galente
Minmatar
Supercarrier Hull Classification Overview
Supercarriers are one of the more recent capital ships designed due demands to improve carriers to counter the dreadnought anti-capital ship siege fire. The result of improving virtually every carriers performance mark in every aspect has made the size explode into nearly 5000 meter long monster.
Crewing requirements for a supercarrier is a small city's worth at 50,000 crew members, even with pod technology crewing requirements are still in the thousand. As one of the newest capital ships, compartments are not only armored but shielded. To this effect damage that fatally destroys the supercarrier is so contained that crew are able to escape well after the reactors light off at a survival rate approximating to 60%.
As the notable vulnerability in being so large, supercarriers signature radius is nearly impossible to stealth showing up on sensors as an object nearly 10,000 meters big. To counter such vulnerabilities electronic warfare normally reserved for signature masking is dedicated to boosting sensor output and radiation dampeners creating a digital fortress impervious to any form of electronic warfare.
Appeal
Supercarriers are often sought for not only their war fighting power, but thier social status required to sit in one. Thier skill intense training and massive investment in time money and resources and dedication makes them on the most respected ships to fly. although thier fear factor has dropped over the years due to quantification any fleet commander would be foolish to not include supercarriers in thier theater of war and not consider the enemies' supercarriers a vital threat.
Roles
Supercarriers serve best as heart of any fleet. They may not be the ship of the wall but they are definitely the ship that the wall surrounds. Unlike their smaller cousins, they do not have Triage mode available to their systems as the internal shields and armor configuration makes it currently incompatible but this does not dismiss the supercarrier as a logistics powerhouse, as its able to keep more capital remote repairs operational for much longer than a carrier could. They have generous fighter bays with room for the latest fighter rigs which are specially designed to service larger strike craft such as the devastating Fighter-Bombers. Their digital fortress is so powerful that when it’s focused into an array it can black out entire areas in space, nullifying the location of any targeting solutions previously available. They can also field extra ships in their massive hangar bays and have the arrays to service ships to allow for midflight refits. The telemetry links that normally serve for the fighter control are also viable in use of slaving in entire fleets into her computers improving sensory data allowing better navigation inside the gravity wells, targeting, sensors, and damage avoidance and solutions.
Strengths
Supercarriers have impressive defenses, are impervious to electronic warfare and deploy deadly swarms of fighters and drones. All while keeping her fleet healthy and well focused.
Weaknesses
Like all capital ships, a supercarrier is nothing without her fleet. Smaller ships despite unable to perform any electronic warfare against her, interdictors can still work indirectly by disrupting space around the ship preventing formation of a warp sphere or a cynosural field rift, just long enough for a capital killing fleet to arrive and deal with the lone supercarrier.