Order Carrier

[Tenacity]

Now this has been discussed quite a bit in the capship point defense weapons thread started by cam, and after much discussion with Jinx and others I (and they, I believe) have come to the conclusion that any changes to the point-defense weapons available to the carrier are too likely to overpower other cruisers/battlecruisers, so any changes to improve the carrier's defense against fighters/bombers, or battleships/gunboats, need to effect only the carrier and not the weapons it uses.

So, here are some ideas, only offering up alternatives to changing weapon stats at this point (though it should be noted that I still believe cruiser razors need a projectile speed increase to make them effective against small gunboats):

1. Battleship Shield:

Probably the most controversial suggestion, right now one of the greatest problems I have with my carrier is the fact that the moment my shields go down, any damage taken to the hull causes the screen to shake so bad that I likely wouldnt be able to hit a rheinland battleship at close range. This is, from what I understand of freelancer modding, an issue with the size of the craft (the larger the ship, the more it shakes when taking damage to hull).

Now, unfortunately battlecruisers dont have their own shield class inbetween cruisers and battleships. Instead, they get stuck with cruiser class shields, which are fairly weak for the size of the ships - and the carrier in particular as it is almost twice the size of any other battlecruiser in the mod. Giving the carrier in particular a battleship shield may help the issue, but it could be too much at the same time.

2. Mines as point defense:

I'm not sure if this is even possible in regards to programming, but I'll ask here - is it possible to have mine launchers 'shoot' mines a distance away from the craft as if forcefully expelled from the launcher? If so, positioning 6~ mine launchers at various points around the carrier would give it a weapon to use against any fighters or bombers that get in close, hit the mine button and you throw mines out to strike everything nearby.

This would be a unique mechanic among capships if it were possible. The only other ships to have multiple mine launchers are the spatial and zoner gunboat, and both of those are designed to thrust around laying out a field of mines offensively, rather than to use mines as a defensive net of explosives.

The biggest issue here is that if the mines are not able to be 'launched' away from the carrier to a fair distance (say 100-200~ meters), then they'll simply come back and strike the carrier instead of the attacking fighters/bombers.

3. Multiple Countermeasures / engines

This seems to be a growing thing among order players. Eternal has posted asking for an additional CM to be added to the osiris, we have a cruiser that, unique to all ships, has 4 countermeasure droppers... and honestly it fits the theme of the order, to be able to get away easily.

One thing that I have noticed when fighting other order capships, particularly eternal's osiris (and other osirises) is that capship missiles are... difficult to evade, to say the least. My carrier currently has a heavy CM dropper equipped, and it generally takes me 5-10 countermeasures to shake a single battleship missile. I've noticed similar behavior with most other CM's in regards to both cruise disruptors as well as combat missiles. I dont know if this is just CMs being bugged, or extremely bad luck on my part, but it really shouldnt take more than 2-3 Countermeasures to shake a single missile.

Multiple countermeasure droppers, or a secondary engine up at the front of the battlecruiser (like we see on the recon destroyer) would make it much easier to get away from ships with cruise disruptors, or to evade the anticap missiles from other cruisers and battleships.







I'll post more ideas as I come up with them, comment on those three for now.

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