Lets Talk About Carriers

[Daemondim]

This is the first piece I'm going to do reviewing my impressions of a very specific portion of the game.

Carriers. Everybody loves them, everyone's talking about them. How do you use them effectively?

Micromanage. Carriers should take a massive amount of your attention in the early to mid game, with silos becoming more important late after you've taken care of radar.

Carriers carry fighters, which will protect your battleships from the devestating capabilties of bombers in naval mode, bombers, which will eliminate naval threats, sub charges, which we all know what those are for.

Carriers can carry a set number of plans, be they bombers or fighters. I'm not particularly sure what that number is. To start, it's 5 fighters, and 2 bombers. I once ended up with 1 fighter, and six bombers, so I suspect the max number is seven. The carrier has a massive number of nukes for your bombers, and using them effectively can be tricky, remember to move your fleets along with your bombers, to cut down on regen time.

I noticed on another thread, someone mentioned you can manually land planes on carriers, so if you're in close to an airbase, you can send your airbase's fighers and bombers out to sea, and the fighters will repop. This is a very good tactic for keeping your airforce supplied at sea.

Carriers are weak against almost everything but subs, so try to keep subs and battleships around to help the carriers out. but don't bother moving the carrier terribly close to shore. You want your fighters to just barely be able to reach shore, to scout and cover your bombers from other fighters, before having to turn back to refule. Keep a constant run of fighters flowing out of one carrier, and keep two full of bombers as you can, to make an effective cover/attack force. Bombers, on their way back to carriers, do switch to naval mode, so don't be afraid to use them to go ship hunting on the way back. After all.. they have the fuel for it.

Carriers also will make up a large portion of your seaboard defense. Not only are they effective sub detectors, but if subs are launching, /immediately/ launch the bombers in naval attack mode. they can shoot a surfaced sub before the second or third missile if you've positioned them correctly.

Carriers make for excellent long range strike platforms, and for wonderful distraction techniques. Don't be afraid to lose fighters and bombers in runs against the enemy, it's worth it, especially when you can make resupply from your airbase.

any comments, thoughts, and expansions are always welcome. Thanks for the great forum to think and talk about these things, and thanks to everyone out there interested in the comraderie and expansion of the game as a whole.

Any requests for my next analyses?

Dae

[Spitfire]

Two questions

1. So can you just keep sending fighters from Land Bases to Carriers so the Carriers have an infinite supply of fighters?

2. Once a fighters fuel supply runs out does it crash or just return to base?

[KallDrexx]

Two questions

1. So can you just keep sending fighters from Land Bases to Carriers so the Carriers have an infinite supply of fighters?

In theory yes, but it takes a bit of time for fighters to regenerate at the airbase so it takes time to refill up your carriers. It's good to plan it out and start doing it early to keep the constant supply going so your not having to resupply them right at one time (imo at least).

2. Once a fighters fuel supply runs out does it crash or just return to base?

They crash as far as I know.

[GeneticFreak]

Fighters are lovely for distracting enemy silo sites. before nuke arrives launch alot of fighters on the general area, and launch bombers against cities.

[tellatubby]

People always say that fighters are good for distracting enemy AA when you're trying to nuke, but I find that AA will automatically target incoming nukes before fighters.

[martin]

People always say that fighters are good for distracting enemy AA when you're trying to nuke, but I find that AA will automatically target incoming nukes before fighters.

I find that too, which is probably a good thing really! who wants their silos auto attacking fighters when there are ICBMs

[XF Clohvn]

People always say that fighters are good for distracting enemy AA when you're trying to nuke, but I find that AA will automatically target incoming nukes before fighters.

If you turn your order view on you can see this at work when you're getting attacked yourself

[Yonder]

I find that often your carriers are too far away from home to be replenished by fighters. Bombers however can reach a carrier from nearly everywhere, refuel, and be within striking distance for those situations when a bomber can't make it directly to the enemy.

[Daemondim]

This is true, that carriers can easily outdistance the reach of fighters. I sometimes will stagger a couple fleets of carriers, though, since the bombers have such a huge range, so that the fighters can 'hop' from home, to fleet, to fleet. It worked out very well in my last game.

[Taldier]

Your right that silos will automatically target nukes first, but they pause between firing. This means that if it fires at a fighter just before a nuke comes into range that it takes time to reload before firing at the nuke. This will create a substantial advantage if your nukes are targeted properly to arrive at the same time.

[[twisti]]

Only if you destroyed practically the enemies entire radar coverage. If they still have radars, then the fighters will just be wasted.