POLL: Carrier idea thread

[Proselyte]

Unpopular opinion: All non-FWG battleships are basically carriers because Freelancer battleships always served as FOBs for fighters . . .

Bismarck/Tokugawa will certainly carry more fighters than Elbe.

While I do like the line of thinking tying this back to the vanilla (and current) depiction of battleships, we also run up against the problem that we have ships specifically designated as carriers by role in game right now. They just happen to be, mechanically, battleships. And, despite their size, it would be fairly easy to guess why despite their capability to carry strike craft, a "battleship" wouldn't carry more than a smaller dedicated vessel - devoted internal space.

A battleship, by role, is likely going to devote a bunch more of that bulk to armor, damage control, internal support systems for its big guns, etc., and maybe any leftover space we can get some hangars in there for versatility. Every battleship is kind of a carrier, but they are not dedicated carriers - they are battleships. Trying to apply the size differential between the Bismarck and the Elbe would have to necessarily include reclassifying all these supposed "carriers" into something else, or else we'd look very silly with the Rheinland carrier having half the capacity of their big brawling turtle.

I'm personally in favor of giving the docking mods that capacity buff and getting the carriers specialized as what they claim to be, doubly so with this thought of letting them carry ammo resupply and gear swaps around. A perk shared with the regular battleships too, just with less space. Not so much a fan of letting them dock gunboats personally - imagining those popping out of an Overlord seems a bit goofy to me, even if we've got the contrivance of docking much larger things on NPC ships.

In the end, the work around PvP balancing them as their own thing (if they aren't to stay simply a different battleship) is beyond me, but I love the roleplay opportunities around dedicated carriers and dock-mods, so the distinction matters I think, even if current pop makes it seem pointless.