A couple of ideas on starbases and carriers

Why the hell does everyone obsess over carriers so much?

It seems like every week or two there's a new post talking about how we need carriers, we need carriers, we need carriers.

Not gonna happen in GalCivII, as they've told us since 2006.

Anyway. Sorry. Just had to get that off my chest.

The Carrier thing with fighter boils down to adding nothing more than Beams and possibly Hitpoints to a large ship. To do it differently, like causing the enemy to have to individually attack these smaller ships - would require an overhaul to the battle system and is not realistic. In my opinion

I like the SB ideas though. I would also like to see a cap on eco-SB's affecting a planet.

The upgrade via SB's and planets seems like a neat idea too.

Dunno why people can't just design a ship to look like a carrier, say it's a carrier, and put it in a fleet with a bunch of fighters.

i never said we need carriers, i just noticed that every idea on them involves new ships. This idea would make tiny hulls usful towards the end of games, as they would be faster, and there would be more of them.
Also can i point out that only the third idea is a carrier.

Still, it's a dead-horse topic. There is even an official thread to talk about them in:
https://forums.galciv2.com/133868

Just passing by here. It seems to me the point of the carrier would be to have a vessel with a very high range (and possibly sensor cap) so that your tiny ships can use it as a staging point (like a mobile starbase).

I think it would be cool to see a bunch of tiny ships swarming out of a much larger carrier. You could send your carrier to the other side of the galaxy and wage war against an enemy attacking one of your allies. Perhaps they could manufacture tiny ships inside the carrier as they traveled to the destination. Unforunately though, carriers are rendered a bit useless since the range you can travel from one of your bases is already so huge.

Presently Range seems like a bit of an afterthought to me. Did anyone here every play Fragile Allegiance? It was looking for a game like F.A. that led me to GalCiv. A lot of cool things in GalCiv, but still room for improvement. I would like to see a greater emphasis on competition for resources (not necessarily the resources that exist, something diffierent).

I don't think that A carrier ship is required. But some method for grouping a number of fleets and sending them to a location as an entity would be very usefull by itself.

I suppose that in reality, the present fleets would become like squadrons of "X" ships that could be part of a fleet of "X" squadrons. This way the present attack software does not need to be changed much since squadrons would still fight other squadrons as fleets presently do, but if a fleet engages an other fleet, the individual squadrons would pair off to fight each other until one fleet is wiped out. The pairing could be done randomly. This also has the benifit of reducing the number of ships moving around hence increasing the turn speed.

I'd just like a ship that could "tow" very small, but slow and short range, ships. That's basically all a carrier does - take slow and/or short range attack craft to some region where they can operate as if a home base was nearby. Really stupid that they'll never be added, but oh well, maybe a competing game will figure out this "impossible challenge".

You want faster, more useful tiny and small hulled ships? If so, then use fleet support modules. Atlas modules can be used to improve the firepower of all ships in a fleet, and it will draw enemy fire to the ship equiped with that module. Fleet warp bubbles will speed up an entire fleet and will draw fire as well.

More specific details about fleet warp bubbles can be found here:

TA 101

You may need to scroll down the guide a bit though to find the information.

I guess idea 3 is not a good one then.
What about the first 2 ideas?
The first is to allow players/ai to make a starbase give more useful affects on a smaller area.
The second will force players to upgrade ships only at certain areas, and docked ships could defend the starbase when under attack. It never made sense to me that a ship could upgrade when isolated from any sort of supply source.

Yea I doubt GC will ever embrace Battlestar Galatica and Star Wars. Fleet Bubbles (ToA) do the trick quite nicely.

I have been thinking though, if GC III gets an overhauled planetary invasion with multiple phases (bombardment, drop, then landwar) and many more options, an invasion module carrying atmospheric fighters, among other goodies, might have a rational justification for being in the game.

So carriers are "too complicated" for the AI to figure out, yet these techs exist in game which allow you to accomplish much of the same thing, and the AI can figure that out fine? lol

Oh well..

Making starbases more useful sounds good though, I don't see a point in the first idea, but using them for repairs or upgrades could work.

By the way, Stardock, like carriers that "add nothing to the game but complexity", agents also "add nothing to the game but complexity". Take that crap out too then, kthx. :p

I reeeeaaaly would like to see carriers also... And i will tell u why! Its not that they will bring anything new to the game "gameplay-wise", but its the feeling... Whenever u see a sci-fi movie or series, they ALWAYS use carriers in battlesequenses. Why? Because its a freekin cool thingy to watch  :HOT:  Im a big fan of battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG1 / Atlantis, Babylon 5 etc... Dont u just love it when the cylon basestar comes in and all the fighters breaks off and let hell reign down?
So we dont NEED the carriers for an enhanced or "better" game, but i for one misses the "im-in-a-movie/serie"-feeling when i play GCII due to the absence of carriers.

My way of "solving" this is to build a fleet of 1 humangos (uses large textures at maximum size) basestars (Huge "carriers" filled with defences and fleet-enhancements), 2 Escort Crusaders (large), 2-3 Warships (Medium) and as many fighters as my logistics can handle (tiny). I then just set my mind to the idea that (when i engage in fleetbattle) all the Tiny fighters comes out of the basestar (which then operates as a carrier in my feeble mind).

Its a shame SD dismisses the idea of carriers so harshly.. I realy miss the (and a better planet-invasion and the possibility to use diplomacy to keep others out of your space + + ) complete spacewar-feeling this would give the game.

On the other hand i salute you (SD) for coming so close to fully satisfie my hunger for galactic dominance.. Maybe u will rewise your stand in this matter before GCIII   

Well maybe it's true that it's just a cosmetic addition, but yeah, that IS enough to warrant adding it. (in Galciv III)

So.... yeah, since carriers are just a cosmetic improvement that doesn't effect gameplay, I also feel that Galciv 3 should NOT include other things that don't effect the gameplay significantly. Like:

1) Graphics (Who needs em? Text based maps, hell yeah! X can be a starbase, O can be a planet, and little period dots can be ships! Wow I could be the artist!)

2) Music (Meh, people just turn it off anyway, right?)

3) Sound (Hey, there's no sound in space so ditch that too! Sound is so unoriginal!)

4) Text (Not all text, but those useless things like "dialog" and "communications", or the text in "technology descriptions". That doesn't effect gameplay AT ALL!)

5) Events (Well, we can still have random events - I mean, they DO affect the gameplay. I mean, we don't need all those "pictures" and things, and "explanations" to go along with these events do we?)

Yes, I think that they should omit all of this stuff in the future version, and focus JUST on stuff that affects gameplay!