How to make aircraft carrier better?

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    • Colonel Waffles wrote:

      Aircraft carrier in current state is underwhelming.

      How would you buff the aircraft carrier?
      I already told you in Discord, allow us to park the new flying MRLS on it!
      *** The Creator of Zombie Farming ***
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    • Carriers are resticted to airfields, you cannot venture too far from an airfield without restricting your aircrafts range.
      Compare an Airfield - Airfield range with Airfield - Carrier and you will see some of the annoyance with having to lumber around this slow heavy brick.

      15 Aircraft, really depends how you use it, worse if you have helicopter docks, then your carriers a sitting duck without something with 100range because your just too slow to get away. They are just a damage sink to something else that can operate at 100 range againsts 100 range inwhich the carriers 125 radar range is a huge advantage and your carrier can operate as a sheild.

      You can link up 5 carriers or more, and overwhelm them with aircraft but thats alot of investment and strikes on the carrier deal damage to aircraft sitting on it, but thats alot of missile, helicopter and plane defense. It really comes down to does a carrier have the offensive missiles of a destoryier out to those ranges. CON says not and you need to invest in a maxxed out naval asset in their game otherwise your naval assets are worthless chucks of steel ready to sink to the bottom of the ocean.
    • crazystoner wrote:

      Carriers are resticted to airfields, you cannot venture too far from an airfield without restricting your aircrafts range.
      Compare an Airfield - Airfield range with Airfield - Carrier and you will see some of the annoyance with having to lumber around this slow heavy brick.

      Whut? What exactly are you trying to say by that? Carriers are mobile airfields, but they do not need airfields themselves. Also Range is defined by the unit, not the airfield.
    • Kalrakh wrote:

      crazystoner wrote:

      Carriers are resticted to airfields, you cannot venture too far from an airfield without restricting your aircrafts range.
      Compare an Airfield - Airfield range with Airfield - Carrier and you will see some of the annoyance with having to lumber around this slow heavy brick.
      Whut? What exactly are you trying to say by that? Carriers are mobile airfields, but they do not need airfields themselves. Also Range is defined by the unit, not the airfield.
      If your carrier is in deep water, i believe there is no healing. Any airfleet onboard a carrier will take damage, attacking rebels, fighting ground target, engaging in air to air combat. So you need to be able to relocate the entire strike package to a nearby hospital. This works better when you in range on an airfeild, as you can directly route aircraft to any airfield. If the carrier is outside of combat range, then aircraft cannot reach an airfield. Limiting operating an aircraft to within patrol distance of an allied airfield.
    • Airfields do not provide healing themselves, you will always have to build field hospital if you want to get healing. A carrier can just move into coastal water and provide level 2 healing, even though the description says otherwise.

      To advance further you need to build new airfields, which costs resources and time, about one day to be fully operational. As soon as a carrier is built, he can be relocated quite easily.

      Carrier are also immune to spy operation and special forces attacks, and they provide some AA coverage by default. They are also pretty immune to most missile attacks, because BM and ICBM can only target provinces.

      Also to relocate aircraft patrol/attack range is not important, but ferry range which is quite big.
    • Fereyd wrote:

      Sorry, wrong ;)
      You can ferry directly. I just tried it... ;)
      Please elaborate on what you did exactly Fereyd, because on the few occasions I built aircraft carriers, I have experienced denial if I tried to ferry directly to a carrier that was out of combat range, but easily still in ferry range.
      *** The Creator of Zombie Farming ***
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    • I can think of two things off the top of my head that they could do to make aircraft carriers more useful:

      1/ reduce ferry range for aircraft
      2/ buff naval strike fighters so they don't die as easily when engaging ships

      10,000 (miles/km?) is hilariously generous for ferrying planes from base to base. I checked Wikipedia (the font of all TRUTH!) and it said that the F35 has a maximum range of ~2000 km (oh! 3/ allow F35s and other stealth aircraft to utilize aircraft carriers as well! and drones while we're at it). You could assume that in-air refuelling is abstracted by the game to reduce micro-management, but even then I'd say 10,000 miles is far too much. If you weren't able to ferry aircraft directly to far-off bases, it might bring aircraft carriers and naval fighters into the game more.

      Which brings me to #2: Carrier-based fixed-wing aircraft cannot be used against fleets, because they get slaughtered by the AA defence of frigates. The only effective aerial anti-ship unit that can use carriers is a Level 6 ASW Helicopter - and their range and speed (lack of) allow an enemy fleet either to escape all too easily or to close in on the carrier itself and destroy all your choppers with bombardment.

      There is no point in spending all the massive resources and time required to bring a carrier full of specialist aircraft to attack a distant opponent's territory, when you can just build a strong surface fleet (much cheaper), destroy any enemy navy with that (more effective than using carrier + planes anyway), bombard their coast to oblivion, land an infantry and then build an airfield on your captured province and ferry planes directly there from your home regions.

      Carriers require a lot of support ships for defence. And if you have all those ships anyway, you don't need the carrier.
    • I just ended a game after builing 4-5 carriers.
      You can't put aircraft onto a carrier if that carrier is out of patrol range of an airfield, you can how ever send aircraft to the carrier, then send the carrier far out of range and the aircraft will still land.

      Id like to see carriers increase in speed, they are very slow, slower then all other surface vessels.
      Or maybe an increase in radar range and this is my primary use of them.

      Id also like to see aircraft protected, rather then sitting on the deck getting slaughtered by enemy bombardment or helicopter patrols.

      Also seems to be a refueling bug, where if a plane is refueling and you give it commands the timer resets. Lost my elite pilot to cruise missile strike because of this bug, was like 10 seconds after i had refueled buy i changed command from attack to patrol and refueling seems to match the other 5stack and extended by 4mins so lost all 10.

      As for aircraft, i think with the right research, such as maxxed cruise missile it can be an effective ship to ship unit but comes down to the simple notion you really need that F35. You need that stealth strike fighter sitting on the deck, id also argue you need the naval AWAC but everytime i make a carrier i just look at those stealth fighter and drool, i have this lvl 4 airbases and all i can produce is F18 hornets like ... no wonder the USA needs 12 carriers.