Fire power without resource is still an M2.

But for the first time we have vanilla carrier management that's... pretty decent, if you navigate through the commands and settings carefully, which is why I'm writing this.

A fully knitted carrier is the pinncle of raw power, efficiency and mobility. Trust.
Remember 1 PPC = 5 HEPT, and a Raptor is like 65 missile launching tubes if you choose to go that route.

They just die really fast.

Most important setting is (take a guess) attak response: evade.
Not defend, not flee, not ignored.
What it does is it allows your fighters to dock even when under light harrassment.
When something unexpected is happening, you want all your fighters to immediately abandon target and go back with a simple "carrier -> recall local ships".
Formation basically doesn't matter. More on missile % later.


Why do I need a custom turret setting?
This allows the turrets on fighter to
1) prioritize missiles, self explanatory
2) prioritize target
3) attack anything in range for some strays
4) most important, DOES NOT retaliate when fighters are coming home
In FL some ships, most notably Strong Arms, have their turrets on attack enemies. You don't want your fighters to get grazed and then draws the attention of a full Strong Arms group.

Don't add the fighters to wings.
Don't add the fighters to wingmen.
Don't clear their homebase while they are under carrier control.
In 1.2 carrier taking over their commands while they are in the middle of doing something else leads to severe bugs all over the places. I don't know how cleanly they were fixed in 1.3 but don't chance it.
Accept the fact that they are no longer under your control.

Get a ship with docks and put on carrier command software.
Dock a couple of fighters.




Repair threshold:
The next time when your carrier is not doing anything, it would jump to the nearest shipyard (or your HQ) and damaged ship for repair.
If you don't want a bunch of ships to queue up at your HQ, set at disabled.

Maximum sector travel:
Absolutely set both to 0. Unless you wanna see your fighters chase things through gates and die in OOS combat.

Replace ship:
No for now. Bug alert. [forum.egosoft.com]

Use shipyard:
Basically buy / repair using NPC shipyard.


Arrow keys + enter
Don't use "Buyer". Lots of dumb things can happen when you have a lone M3 traveling through NPC space. Remember you have no direct control of the ship any more.
"Supplier" would only grab stuff from your HQ. At maximum range = 0, your carrier will send the supplier to grab stuff from your stations whenever they are in the same sector. If the supplier can't reach the carrier (you jumped it out or something), it would wait till the carrier is in the same sector again to return home.
"Defender" and "Fighter" are basically the same.


This is not how you carrier will outfit a ship.
Your carrier expects a fully knitted ship when they are first assigned a role.
You should fully outfit the fighters at HQ before having them dock at the carrier, in that order.
This is for when a ship is destroyed and the carrier goes to replace it, what loadout would it choose for the replacement.
Since we have replace ship = no, you can ignore this.

Now save the game and jump your carrier somewhere for a test run.

Don't use carrier -> launch fighter attack.







because it's essentially an attack all + land. This will also dump every homebased fighters out regardless of their roles.

Instead you should use normal combat commands on the carrier. The carrier would use the fighters as an extension of itself. So if you issue an command to the carrier, the carrier will relay it to the fighters (and join the fight too).

1) Attack capitals, attack fighters & attack enemies all prioritize larger ships.
I don't know if it's intended. In reality it works fairly well since you never want your fighters roaming under the pressure of an enemy destroyer.

2) The carrier & the fighters don't share vision.
If the carrier has no enemies in its scanner range it will recall the fighters, regardless whether the fighters can see enemies. Like I said, the fighters are intended only as an extension of the carrier, not like they have each individually intelligent pilot behind them like the CODEA fleet system.

Producing fighters at HQ is one of the least efficient thing the HQ can do. A single M3+ takes about 2 hours while an M7 like a Tiger is just 4-6 hours. Not to mention Xenon capitals like a K being only 5 hours and I being 9 hours.
If the carrier buys from NPC shipyard and trys to apply loadouts at HQ, it leads to a game freeze[forum.egosoft.com].
So the best way to replace fighters in my opinions is stockpiling a bunch of replacements somewhere and allow the carrier only to repair at HQ or NPC shipyards.
That also saves you lots of clicks of selecting a loadout for each fighter in the carrier management tab.

We all know hanger counts & speed are the most important attributes, but wait!

Now in FL:
1) Hanger entry number & locations no longer matter.
Because carrier-managed fighters use docking computer. Drones too.

2) Launch tube number is really, really important.
Because fighters can't just teleport themselves into space, they have to exit the carrier in waves.
For example, a J docks 50 fighters and have 10 launch tubes, so it can dump all fighters out in 5 waves. A Colossus has 60 docks but only 8 launch tubes, so it takes 8 waves to dump all. That's not an insignificant difference in launch time if you test them in battle.
The locations of these tubes don't matter at all because all fighters are protected from collusion right after launch. Just the raw number.
For more info, read this guide[roguey.co.uk] on Roguey's website.

There are practically only 2 choices. Paranid Ariadne or Split Panther Raider.

The Ariadne docks 24 fighters and has a separate launch/dock path for each ship, meaning it dumps all 24 fighters in one go. It's also an M7D. If you sacrifice 4 docks for 4 drone extended you effectively have a drone repair ship + a light carrier in one package. The catch is it having basically no fire power itself. Tri-Beam available tho, for practically missile immunity.

The Panther Raider docks 20 fighters and has 10 launch tubes. Great laser regen at 1750J/s but no access to beam weapon and cannot use drones.

Some wild card choices include Argon Cerberus (strong shield + laser, 10 fighters), OTAS Astraeus (beam weaponry), Argon Griffon Raider (compact + individual launch tubes), etc. But if you really wanna use a carrier as a carrier, strength is in the number.

Four standard choices: Split Raptor, Argon Colossus, Terran Tokyo & Xenon J.
The Raptor is still the best carrier all around.
The Colossus is worse in almost every way, but 2GJ more shielding.
The Tokyo has incredible sustained fire power between MAML & PSP, as well as great shielding and a slim profile at the cost of docking only 50 fighters.
The J has more fire power than a K (yeah what the hell, I know) in OOS combat and also with 50 fighters. If you set all fighters to "defender", the J can be an effective OOS patrol.

The wild cards are ATF Valhalla, ATF Woden & Goner Aran. If you have experience with these why the hell are you still reading?

If you were one of the brave ones who tried to play with vanilla carrier in TC/AP, and you assume it's still Aamon vs Fenrir... You'd be about 35% correct. Lots of fighters received significant changes in FL.

Atreus Eclipse Prototype: 200MJ, 139m/s, buyable
incredible protection & 100% efficiency shield recharge, the best one among the 200MJ group. You can fix its speed with this exploit[forum.egosoft.com], but the 23m/s accel/decel can be a problem.

Argon Aamon Prototype: 150MJ, 180m/s, buyable (diplomacy)
Access to both Terran and CW weaponry & missiles. Buyable and commonly spawned.

Terran Cutlass Prototype: 150MJ, 186m/s, buyable (diplomacy)
4 main, 2 front (MAML compatible), 2 rear. If you think MAML on a fighter is bonkers you are absolutely right. Probably the most powerful fighter (gun-wise) against capital ships. Cargo is only 200. Extremely common spawns in Terran space.

ATF Fenrir: 150MJ, 190m/s, buyable
No MAML turrets but with 8 main guns and a 256 cargo. Be aware that it has an accel/decel problem at 21.6m/s, a whooping 8.8s from 0 to max.

ATF Thor: 125MJ, 196m/s
The ATF Valhalla prints them. Literally, print them from thin air. As long as the Valhalla is not destroyed it would rapidly generate an infinite amount of Thor. If you steal all the single-use jump beacons from the Valhalla it would get stranded in a sector, and now you know where to grab an infinite amount of Thor if only you wish.

Pirate Blastclaw Prototype: 100MJ, 159m/s, 650 cargo, not buyable
Huge cargo and also very overtune-friendly. Default accel is 36.4m/s.

Pirate Advanced Eclipse: 100MJ, 168m/s, 400 cargo, not buyable
PBG-compatible front turret. With 65 of these bad boys you will... end each fight with everyone's hull at 75%. You can, however, mix a couple of these into your fighter roster for a much improved cleanup against smaller ships.

Strong Arms Enhanced Chimera: 100MJ, 162m/s, buyable
ISR-compatible front turret. You should rig a new turret setting to have it only shoot at capital ships & missiles.

OTAS Venti: 100MJ, 195m/s, buyable
10 main guns.

Yaki Susanowa Prototype & Split Advanced Mamba: 75MJ, 267/255m/s, buyable (diplomacy)
Lightning fast, PBG compatible 8 main guns, perfect cleanup ships as personal ship wingmen. Cannot function in large groups because of friendly fire.

Khaak Fighter: 75MJ, 153m/s, not buyable
Err what?
If you use this exploit[forum.egosoft.com] to gain unlimited focus crystals you can theoretically field 65 these bad boys with 3 Beta Kyon Emitters. Try if bored :)

If say you mix 20 Susanowa Prototype and 20 Eclipse Prototype together. The Susanowa would be the first to engage enemies every time and taking casualties, while the Eclipse just trail behind and do nothing.
You can try to mix like 10 Advanced Eclipse among 50 Aamon, for them to arrive later to cleanup with their PBG turrets and not taking heat with their 100MJ shielding. Sometimes these plans work, sometimes not at all :)

I use EBC on CW fighters whenever possible because of the range, bullet speed and energy drain. 50 ammo should sustain them for a long time.
On turrets you can use HEPT set against capitals + missiles to save energy, or PRG for good accuracy & range.
I put EMPC on Aamon's front/rear becasue of its hull damage.

One ground-breaking game changer in FL is the availability of the Spectre missile.

Spectre: 260k dmg, 228m/s, 20m radius, 1 produced per 144s, proximity
Tempest: 60k dmg, 235m/s, 20m radius, 1 per 240s
Tornado: 400k dmg, 312m/s, 40m radius, 1 per 300s, proximity

A missile doing 4X the damage of Tempest produced at 60% of the time is bloody bonkers.
It can even be better than Tornado if you can't hit 65% of the shots.
Plus none of the downsides like a large blast radius or a slow turning rate.

Hence the Aamon is my go-to fighter choice for being compatible with both Spectre and Tornado.

I've come to an conclusion that no fighter composition is extremely effective against another group of fighters.

The fastest way you can kill fighters with fighters is probably employing a bunch of PBG turret Advanced Eclipse. No other fighter weapon is remotely as effective as PBG; problem is, of course, friendly fire.

If you wanna have PBG on main guns, have no more than 4 (Blastclaw prototype is perfect for this). Otherwise one solid swipe kills one of your own ships.

You can spam Wasp or Tempest but neither is too effective. I personally don't bother with Wasp because it is terrible dmg/cargo wise, and doesn't really kill smaller ships anyway.

The best way against fighters is just to bully them with larger ships. Duh. Best candidates are capitals with speical weaponry like Agamenon / Deimos (PSG), Astraeus (PBC), Akurei / Q (PSG+beam), etc. Or just call in your M7M with 50 Flails, launchers set as "Attak my target (all ships)", target a couple of fighters for a few seconds, then watch them disappear one by one.

PBG-compatible fighters
Like those Strong Arms groups or the Yaki. An Asp prototype with PBG melts multiple of your fighters in seconds and there's nothing you can do about it. Nuke them before or after your carrier operation. Be surgical.

Missile boats
Both M7Ms and M8s. Their "aftermath" blast can nuke everything. If you wanna "invade" anywhere, make sure their RRF missile boats are dead.

ANY TERRAN SHIPS
Yep. Terrans are off limits in general becasue everything fires Hammerhead.

PSG-compatible ships
Agamemnon, Deimos, Zeus, Odysseus, Kariudo, Xenon Q. Xenon Q is now compatible with PSG, but only 2 at left/right and not very common.

Again, a carrier is a glass cannon, both the ship and its fighters. If you wanna do carrier combat, try to kill your target in seconds or don't do it at all. Hence why raw number of hangers >>>> anything else, also why fighter deploy time is very important, because you really need to swarm and overwhelm your opponent. Do not do fair fights.

At replace ship = no and repair = yes, the carrier should repair all fighters after a fight. If an NPC shipyard is closer it would use the shipyard. WIth luck, your HQ shouldn't be bothered too often.

Using a single type of fighter plus the same loadout, you don't need to search what ships were lost or what roles they were. Just stash 50ish them somewhere. If loss is more than 20% of hanger number, like if your Raptor is flying around with 55 fighters after a few battles, just bring 10 of those backups to HQ to apply the loadout and assign them to the carrier.

Again, strength in number. If you are playing with 40 fighters, each fight against a Xenon K would probably be 2-5 losses. If using 60+ fighters, battles are often over before they can even engage.

Roguey for having his site.
Cycrow for identifying the freeze bug related to fighter replacement, as well as overall contribution to the mod.
And everyone else who has worked on FL for us.