Carriers - What's expected and what's realistic

[Ash]

How about you simply don't play what you don't like?

Honestly this is becoming pretty annoying. We have like 5 or so carriers in the game, and the only faction that is stuck on a carrier because of lacking alternatives is the Coalition.
The other factions all have an alternative Battleship that you can hop on and simply play instead.

On a side note, I personally dont think carriers are as bad as everyone makes them out to be. Sure, they do need some love regarding their dps or general weapon Layouts but they are by no means unplayable. In the Recent CR vs OC event we managed to use two carriers rather well and in my eyes they did not feel way too weak.

What I would suggest is a buff to the Drone Missles. Make them uneffected by CM and a carrier will become way more effecient in beating up cruisers than a Battleship while still being fairly easy to just use.

Carriers are supposed to be different from Battleships so reverting them seems like a waste of a nice concept to me. They don't need the heavies, at least not while they have a drone that can still be tweaked and made better.
If that does not work, perhaps give carriers 6 Primary slots. They seem pretty good on long range and giving them the ability to mount pulses and Primaries Sounds like a good way to support on long Ranges. Or perhaps a carrier only weapon with more range than the Usual primaries.

Just don't jump off and call them ***** before you use them ( like I did) because they are really not entirely useless, all they need is a decent playground.

You've hilighted some useful qualities about carriers' current version. Though wouldn't you say they're at least disjointed if not a bit lost in terms of their purpose? Battleships have a clear forte which is their overall power. Battlecruisers trump this with range. Snubs trump Battlecruisers with manoeuvrability and so on. If we play into the existing paradigms of which ship classes to trump then we shouldn't try to empower carriers to take on various ship types but instead a select few. So i'd argue carriers should own their reputation as very hittable blimps since their defense against heavy hitters should come from their entourage. As for the offensive capabilities, i'd call for a vast array of turrets comparable to the typhoon presently. Make them flying fortresses ideal for downing gunboats and cruisers but lacking the ordnance required to trump anything heavier than a battlecruiser.

Wanted to write something about carriers but then realized its yet another thread about carriers and all the previous ones were fruitless.
In my opinion Carriers should be proper battleships and not big floating targets that do less dps than a battlecruiser. Maybe give them missile silos with low damage and high refire.

The 'mothership' status of carriers should make them a point for defense and a rear guard in fleet engagements. Presently fleet engagements seem to be moreso about brute strength and tactically selected targets. Vulnerability could add more reasons why targets are selected during fleet engagements aside from whoever is weakest or dealing the most damage. The vulnerability of carriers could therefore be tolerated within fleets if the payoff is worth it (mobile snub repair).

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