Carriers, Ridiculous?

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Ghpstage

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Time for a nice rant :p
There are 2 major things with Carriers that seem utterly broken to me :rolleyes:

1) They can stack unlimited airpower in a single tile, enough to overwhelm any AIs airdefence regardless of how advanced they are. This in itself is crazy enough :crazyeye:
2) They can also have planes flying into and out of them to any point on the map in a single turn, and i'm 90% certain these cannot be intercepted.
Combined these things allow for some ridiculous abuse :eek:

I'll spoiler the long rant bit for those who don't wanna read it all :p
Spoiler :
-You pretty much have free reign to take any enemy city you want, as you can cripple the units in it for the first time in amphibious warfare. In itself attacking the units is fine, but the fact you can mass 50 fighters to attack 1 city is just... :dubious:

-You don't need a medic unit in your carrier stack for healing aircraft as you can swap it out for a new one from your cities :crazyeye:.

-When attacking by sea, you can replenish any lost aircraft almost instantly. Allowing you to bring your entire industrial might to bear against a handful of air slots in a few cities near where you attack :wow:

-You can move your fighters back to your cities, upgrade to Jet Fighters and return to your carriers in the space of 3 turns.... even while in enemy territory on the other side of the world :lol:.

-Unlike other naval units, they are still incredibly useful on land heavy maps, you can increase air capacity of some cities to points where you can completely overwhelm an entire AIs military in a single turn. Especially as having those Fighters makes space for 8 bombers in said city... Obviously they are more limited on Pangea, but you can still reach a good percentage of the land if you make use of fort canals, and other features. Or you can always capture some coastal cities and draw the AI stack in to be obliterated.

-The above note is made even more effective as Fighters, being intercepted by SAM Infantry seem to survive more often than die, even Mobile SAMs aren't particularly effective at killing fighters. Then SAMs can only attack 1 air unit per turn, and after firing this are completely at the mercy of Bombers (I've never seen an AI build enough AA units to cause an issue for Carrier abuse, even on Immortal).
The same cannot be said of Artillery, they die... a lot... and Fighters cost less. Granted some will die fighting enemy Fighters, but numbers prevail here, plus your are destroying the enemy air force, ensuring even more superiority in the coming turns :drool:

-Oh yeah, carriers themselves are pretty much never going to die if your careful with them, a great investment!


And the thing that tops it all off is the AI doesn't even know how to counter them, let alone use them itself :mischief:


Don't get me wrong, I love abusing them! It just seems ridiculous that massing Fighters and Carriers will pretty much guarantee victory, even at seemingly unwinnable tech/production/population disadvantages :spear:, and even on most land heavy maps :crazyeye:. The only thing that can stop them, is :nuke:, and even that can be gotten around for the most part (SDI and Bomb Shelters). Even if you were to play MP, the only other things I can see being a threat are subs and erm, Carriers :lol:

What do the rest of you think of Carriers?
 
You can only have 3 FIGHTERs/carrier and they CAN be intercepted.

Bombers cannot be placed on Carriers.
 
On my BTS they can only carry 3 fighters, but when producing 2-3 carriers a turn over a couple cities that is not a problem. If you're fighting a less technologically advanced civ, then definitely yes, but when they a decent navy it can a risk having so many units on the one tile.

But the whole fighter can fly anywhere in the world to a carrier is absurd.
 
smackthewise said:
On my BTS they can only carry 3 fighters, but when producing 2-3 carriers a turn over a couple cities that is not a problem. If you're fighting a less technologically advanced civ, then definitely yes, but when they a decent navy it can a risk having so many units on the one tile.

But the whole fighter can fly anywhere in the world to a carrier is absurd.
Click to expand...
I'm talking about fighting even more advanced civs :rolleyes:, the problem lying with you having local, overwhelming air superiority over an enemy that may have 10 times as many aircraft in total.
The Carriers will also counter the enemy navy, they would be vulnerable unescorted, but noone would leave them like that. What threatens that kind of stack bar a nuke or enemy carriers? :confused: Maybe subs, but you can drastically reduce the threat they pose with sentry destroyers

Blaarg said:
I fail to see the problem, it accurately reflects real life.
Click to expand...
:lol: since when do carriers in real life allow a naval fleet to utterly outnumber the number of aircraft the enemy can have on land!?

mechaerik said:
You can only have 4 FIGHTERs/carrier and they CAN be intercepted.

Bombers cannot be placed on Carriers.
Click to expand...
They only carry 3 and while they can be intercepted, shear numbers will mean you will kill every enemy fighter. Ground based AA can only make 1 interception per turn and rarely seem to kill.
When you have just 10 full Carriers, the 30 fighters is usually more than enough to pull this off. Any more you bring can just bomb things

I did not say bombers could go on carriers. I said that as you can have loads of fighters from carriers, you could have 8 bombers in a city. The fighters soak up all AA, then bombers attack untouched, and the enemy stack dies the same turn to whatever is lying around.
 
since when do carriers in real life allow a naval fleet to utterly outnumber the number of aircraft the enemy can have on land!?
Click to expand...

- WWII.

10chars.
 
Ghpstage said:
:lol: since when do carriers in real life allow a naval fleet to utterly outnumber the number of aircraft the enemy can have on land!?
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure 10 fully loaded carriers would overwhelm any airbase in the real world too.
 
While definitely true that so many fighters/jet fighters is almost impossible to overcome in huge numbers, due to the ability to strike any units that could counter attack. Bringing so many fighters to the battle in the first place is also somewhat ridiculous, especially if you expecting an honest fight.

But its completely in keeping with the military doctrine of Force concentration and rapid dominance. Such as the recent US invasion of Iraq.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overwhelming_power
 
I fail to see a problem here.

Your logic can be applied to any unit, bring enough of them to a single point and you can overwhelm the enemy through sheer numbers.

You are simply stating the advantage of any aggressor, you get to choose were and when the fight is going to happen, making it impossible for the defender to station enough units anywhere to fight you off in the first turn.

If fighting an even more advanced civilization chances are they will bring their full might bearing down on you the following turn or two, bringing in their own fighter stacked carriers to counter yours.

They will also be easily capable of just sinking your ships, a few cruise missiles to weaken your defenders followed by Battleships/Missile Cruisers causing collateral damage leaving your chances of winning any combat to less than 10% fairly quickly. It wont take long before you can but watch them sink one carrier after another and all your precious planes with them. Then again that is assuming the AI knew how to play :crazyeye:
 
@ Volapyk

I completely agree, the AI definitely is not so good in the modern warfare part of the game. Cruise missiles and blitz destroyers have never been bought against my stack of carriers, destroyers etc :( usually they send ships with 1 or 2 combat or first strike promotions.
 
:lol::lol:

Though Shaka's stack has put me back into my place before, and I think Monty must have studied overwhelming power doctrine at West Point with a High Distinction! Probably failed every other subject though.
 
It's true that in BTS, an imbalance between sea based air power and land based air power was created for no good reason. There is no game rules related limit to the number of planes that can be stationed on a carrier group, there is a very harsh limit to the number of planes that can be stationed on land (city 4/8 planes, fort 4 planes and there are very few forts in most civilisations). So it is always possible to overwhelm the coastal air defence force unless the defenders place inefficiently huge numbers of (mobile) sam units in these cities which aren't even very effective at their job.

The only possible cost efficient counter of a large carrier group is a double tactical nuke attack or a surprise battleship group (or other strong ship group) that can slip into strike range undetected. The AI will typically not counter the carrier group tactic efficiently. That would require strategic insight.

It's a pity that the game rules force this imbalance between land based and water based air power. A game rule that disallowed more than 8 planes in any 3*3 tiles area would have been a more symmetrical limitation to land/water air power.
 
Roland Johansen said:
It's true that in BTS, an imbalance between sea based air power and land based air power was created for no good reason. There is no game rules related limit to the number of planes that can be stationed on a carrier group, there is a very harsh limit to the number of planes that can be stationed on land (city 4/8 planes, fort 4 planes and there are very few forts in most civilisations). So it is always possible to overwhelm the coastal air defence force unless the defenders place inefficiently huge numbers of (mobile) sam units in these cities which aren't even very effective at their job.

The only possible cost efficient counter of a large carrier group is a double tactical nuke attack or a surprise battleship group (or other strong ship group) that can slip into strike range undetected. The AI will typically not counter the carrier group tactic efficiently. That would require strategic insight.

It's a pity that the game rules force this imbalance between land based and water based air power. A game rule that disallowed more than 8 planes in any 3*3 tiles area would have been a more symmetrical limitation to land/water air power.
Click to expand...

First to know the real problem :goodjob:
It makes it worse that the water based airforces can hide in cities and freshwater lakes making them immune to navies, while still threatening everything around it :lol:
I mostly disagree on battleships though, the recon mission allows the carriers to see them before they can attack giving the carrier fleet first strike. It seems unlikely to me that a big battleship group was hiding in the specific city i'm attacking before I arrive :p. Submarines may prove a somewhat effective counter on the other hand.

I doubt any sane player would build significant numbers of forts either, it would trash your economy to do so :D
 
Fighters have a large outlay in that you still need things to hold the lines that can attack from out of their range, and enough naval cover (though vs the AI naval warfare is VERY EASY...although only if you initiate the war and destroy it in port turn 1).

Nukes are a problem, but so are battle cruisers hitting your stack from out of site and inflicting collateral + getting cleaned up.

A ridiculous mass of fighters will be anything, but that's also true of the much-earlier infantry/arty combo to a large extent.

They CAN be really good, but it's not like they're far and away the best option. To hold sway over the skies to beat anti-air, intercepts, and STILL have bombers cause collateral after that is a massive initial :hammers: investment, hardly something you'd be able to attain when backwards or weak in pop. If you're backwards you might lose culture or space before you get to flight (or at least before you get enough fighters/invasion troops).

Edit: sub tac nukes are probably the single biggest threat. 1-2 of those and it's lights out.

Edit 2: It's also technically possible to get hosed by a bajillion cruise missiles, since they're not capped. You can actually kill defenders outright with cruise missiles if you have enough of them (and at 60 hammers a pop a large empire can probably have 2 cities 1 per turning the suckers). The AI will never do that though.
 
I can make a similar argument about Subs and TacNukes. TacNukes can evade interception (unlike ICBMs), and with enough of them, you can overwhelm many enemies (Landers full of marines amphibiously attacking Nuke-Depleted cities). Besides, carrier based aircraft still cost maintenance, and cannot strike everywhere. I personally use city and fort (mainly city, but by the end-game my workers have little to do except build forts) based bombers to attack, then capture, then bring more bombers into the new city (from either troop-factories or cities which cannot reach my next target). I rarely use carriers, except for recon or for beach-head landings.
 
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