If carriers are supposed to be little fighter manufacturing plants then they should cost more, at lot more, in upkeep.

More ideas for carrier balance

* carriers only gain/replace fighters when leaving a shipyard/planet/military starbase, instead of "repairing" each turn

* carrier fighters are locked at carrier creation (no free upgrades), upgrading the carrier would upgrade the fighters (with the cost for the fighters included)

* fighters damaged in combat follow the repair rules for the carrier they are on. no instant repairs each turn.

* Carrier modules should add to the logistics cost of the carrier if only marginally

* Tooltips for ships/fleet should factor power from the fighters

* Make the UI prioritize targeting carriers, maybe by upping the 'value' of carrier modules

Either Logistics nerf, or change the entire target priority system.  fighters foul it up, as they are low priority once an escort comes in range.  Even worse, when a carrier comes in range, my ships shoot that up rather than dealing with the real threat, FIGHTERS.

Now thinking that a new target priority system should be developed, using threat (based on the threat against your fleet's fortitude, or even your specific ship), defense fortitude not including HP (only the fortitude that counts against YOUR weapons), enemy HP, and your threat against their HP. It all boils down to picking targets that you can more quickly take their guns out of the game.  I'm too tired to propose a formula atm.

The biggest threat should not necessarily be the target.  I'm tired of getting nailed by fighters, only shooting at them once all of the normal ships are destroyed.  They all could have been killed with just a few rounds of salvos from my fleet, before the enemy ships all got into range.  

It would be a different story if offensive firepower lowered as your HP diminishes, but it doesnt. The carriers and capitals are soaking up damage while the fighters nail your ass.  You killed the carrier first, big deal, the fighters end up hurting you more, because you didnt shoot them all down in the first place.

imo they should scrap the whole carrer implementation and introduce "space fighters" as a 4th weapon research line. you'd research them just like you research missles, lasers and mass drivers and equip them on the ships in the same way. no more stupid double dipping in hullsize increments & module miniaturization, no broken OP assault fighters, no targetting priority issues etc.

 EDIT: that's basically the way fighters work in Distant worlds, and that system works fine.

Someone said in another thread that carriers will only regenerate their fighter at a star base or ship yard. Is this a fact? If so it severely limits carriers and this has never been my understanding. If it is true this has been changed and reduces the power of carriers substantially.

No one questioned the post made after the comment was made so I wondered if it could be correct.

I've seen that posted, but its absolutely false.  Fighters regenerate after every combat.  I've had a fleet of carriers with more than half the fighters destroyed in one fight that I ultimately won.  I fought another fight immediately, and I again had a full complement of fighters (it wasn't still depleted from losing half in the previous fight).

I think they were suggesting it rather than saying was the the case. It's been suggested several times, though tbh I'd rather they just nerfed carrier modules - having to send them back to shipyards and keep track of exactly how many fighters each carrier had would be micro-management hell.

This is the problem at a fundamental level.

1) Carriers provide strong offense (weapons that scale automatically with tech).

2) Carriers provide strong defense (free hp every combat).

This is better than anything a single weapon or defense module can provide, and as such...OP.

If carriers remain mechanically as they are, then balance requires a strong nerf. Their offense would have to be lower than any weapon at the same tech level by mass...period. But that method of balancing is difficult, because fundamentally carriers are in direct competition with weapon/defense modules, and its very easy to make one strictly better than the other.

That is why I agree with several of the suggestions in this thread, that the best balance is to make carriers DIFFERENT from weapons/defense modules.

This would include suggestions made in the thread like:

1) Require resources (maybe 2 different types of resources).

2) Heavy maintenance cost.

3) Has to go to planet, starbase to "restock" fighters.

I ultimately think that is the best way to balance, just tweaking the numbers will make balance very difficult.

Personally, I feel that requiring strategic resources isn't a very good way to balance carriers. It ignores the root of the problem and leaves us with a balance situation which is heavily settings- and luck-dependent, especially if the resource or resources required are ones whose availability is dependent on more settings than simply the resource abundance (e.g. Antimatter, Elerium). Beyond that, as there isn't at present any penalty for having a negative stockpile of a resource, there's little to prevent me from buying the stockpiles of the other empires for a long enough period of time for me to build up a carrier fleet roughly equal in size to the carrier fleets of all the other empires on the map combined, if I pay enough attention to trade for their (insert appropriate resources here) before they use their stockpiles up on their own stuff.

Better would be to make the FighterRepairTurnRate and FighterRepairPotency variables in GalCiv3GlobalDefs control how long (in turns) it takes for a fighter to be replaced and how many fighters a carrier module (or even a carrier, though I'm not sure that I like encouraging the use of several small carriers over one big one in that fashion) can replace in parallel, or something like that. Better would also be to knock assault fighters down a bit by making them into Tiny-hulled fighters rather than Small-hulled fighters, giving them less of an advantage over the later fighter types.

Quoting Seilore,

reply 19

Yeah, I don't like the idea of requiring resources either.  To me most of the issue comes in to play that there are many free small ships flying around (maxed out at your tech level).  Because of this it makes carriers OP.  Counting against the logistics cap, at least in part per module or per ship seems like the best solution.  Maybe there is a better solution, I'm happy on the ideas people have come up with so far in this post

Resources is an option, though probably not the best option.

As for logistics, I don't think it would be the right method by itself either, though perhaps in concert with other ideas.

The problem is the same as the one I outlined before....as long as carriers are a direct comparison to weapon/defense modules they are very hard to balance.

With logistics thrown in, the most common outcome is:

1) Carriers are the strong option for their logistics price: Always get them.

2) Carriers are a weak option for their logistics price: Never get them.

The one caveat to that is their autoupgrade ability. So theoretically a low manu/high research playstyle play could build carriers....even if they weaker than equivalent other options, because as they keep researching better weapons/defenses they get immediate use of those....which is better than building/upgrading old ships. That "might" be a draw even if carriers were a combat weak option.

Yes but they would be automatically upgrading, but still always sub-par with enemy modern ships which means that they would only be useful against lower tech opponents. Like anything else really

Yes, however, Paul has already said that he's against and not able to at this point to have you decide what fighters to place in your ships.  Not to mention the issue is still there how can small ships carry 3 or more carrier modules essentially 6-9 additional small ships?

How?  unless you are technology impaired your fighters are at max your technology therefore should be able to match up against his?

Once this was pointed out I like the idea of having the fighters match the tech level of the carrier when it was built/upgraded not what it is currently.  Therefore not always the best of the best.