I played two games as the Separatist Sample Army this weekend. Although the first game was just one big fumble the second game really showed me how to use the Control Corvettes, the Missile Ships and the Awesome Skirmish Fighters....

....but the Carrier is a big lumbering waist of points. No armor, 2 dmg only, the +1 for mission briefing really is a waste of time, in the game that is a quick skirmish there really is no time to disengage injured ships to dock, wait to repair then leave. Wasting the minimum of 3 turns but probably more if you add the time for the ships to get to the carrier in the first place. The Auto fire is alright.

I would rather take four more fighters then the carrier any time. Which is a real shame as it is a cool looking ship.

So Beta Testers, tell me why this lumbering piece of scrap metal which is the Convoy Carrier is worth 40 pts (or 35 if you look on the other side of the Stat Card)

Harsh? Maybe, but I fail to see any advantage to this unit.

My first (only) game so far had pretty much the same conclusion - but I was going to wait for a bit more experience before writing it off!

Maybe if your fighters could start launched AND have their orders given right from the start if you had a carrier present, then that would make them worth having?

I'm still going to try using it for a few more games to see if it has hidden depths

Steve

The carrier is nice for a fighter swarm. I'm running mine w/8 fighters and a control corvette.

The four missile fighters start on the carrier and receive orders on the first turn, while the carrier moves. After the carrier moves on the second turn, the missile fighters move & use afterburners.

This means that the missile fighters would have now been able to move max of 30" by turn two and get right into the face of whatever their target was.

This allows them to catch up to the skirmish fighters and corvette, all of which swarm around the enemy fleet maneuvering closely among them.

With the help of the mission briefing and the corvette, the missile fighters are now marking their target on 2+ (or 1+ if the target is a capital ship) & if one of them has the basic additional Separatist Ace Fighters, you're sending 5 possible marks of damage at a target during the second initiative band of the attack phase (before the big nasties can shoot).

Now, keep in mind ...

the fighters (whenever you choose to unleash them) will reach their target/s untouched b/c of the carrier.

the carrier can act normally and issue repair orders, keeping it tactically feasible and increasing its survivability

the carrier is a massive model that can soak a lot of damage and has autofire, making it ideal to plug gaps

I find this rather odd then. The typical carrier mission is support and delivery platform for strike craft, not a front-line unit. One could conceive of an assault carrier that is heavily armored, but sacrifices fighter bays for the protection.

It will be interesting to see what more game plays turns up with the carrier.

Yep ... I totally agree about how we understand the carrier's role.

It should never be in the thick of the fighting, but in WH you're talking about a model w/a footprint of ~ 14" x 9" as far as its autofire weapons are concerned.

If something slips through the line (you're losing if this happens), then the carrier can fill in a pretty sizeable hole.

Well according to the Afterburner rules you can not move/turn before hand so you have your missile fighters going 12" in opposite directions.



Where are you getting a max move of 30"? 12" for Afterburner and then the 6" for the second move. Even if you count the 6" movement of the Convoy Carrier thats only 24" However due to not being able to turn you might as well make it a total of 12" as the afterburners will keep you in a straight line from the Carrier Bays.



Or not use the Carrier and just keep them with the fighters in the first place and use the ...Which is it 40 or 35 points?? as the cards has different point cost on each side. Just use the points for more fighters or a control corvette.



Great you hit them! But your target still gets the same chance to save. I find the Scramble of the Control Corvette to be more effective then being able to add 2-3 to your chance to hit.



They will reach the target untouched anyways as they are faster than the other ships able to outmanuver and get out of the front arc. The carrier has nothing to do with it.



Unless I'm reading it wrong you have to have the fighters in the bay to actually repair them and as I stated earlier that would take 2+ turns and unless you playing a massive battle its just not worth the trouble.



Soak up yes, but with a Def of 6+ one particlebow can rip a carrier to shreds in one round if its charged. With a slow move and horrid turn rate your never going to get it into that gap unless your opponent is blind.

Turn 1 Carrier moves. Turn 2 Carrier moves (earlier initiative band than the fighters ... ). Turn 2 fighters move & move. 6+6+6+6=24" the same speed that the fighters can move on their own ...



Well aren't you high and mighty w/your rule reading and stuff

I missed that on my play, and that play was against my wife, so you can imagine what happened in our game. She's a lover, but a fighter--not so much.

In any case, the fighters on board the carrier move the same amount in two turns as the fighters in the open. Once you get to 3+ turns, then the fighters can easily cover more ground on their own.



In a very early thread, where it was pointed out that the starting fleets are imbalanced in favor of the Separatists by 10 points, Andorax seems to say that the Carriers are 35 pts.



You're adding ~16% chance to hit the designated enemy ship w/a mission briefing. More hits means more damage.

And, if you only keep the fighters aboard for two turns, you really haven't lost any movement with them.



Maybe. Their ability to reach the enemy untouched depends on how the enemy is arrayed. Whereas, the Carrier offers more assurance of the fighters arriving whole.



Here ... I was thinking that you could issue repair orders to the Carrier (not the fighters), which would still allow it to act normallly (presuming I'm understanding the rules correctly). This means that the Carrier's low armor value is slightly mitigated.



Yep ... it's gotta be positioned in anticipation of where the gap is going to open.


I'm just trying to provided a modest apologia for the Carrier. At 35 pts it's not so bad ... IMHO.

But, like you, I recognized the great value of fighters over the other ships ... that's why I'm rolling w/8 of the little blighters.

I even modified the fighter tray to more conviently package my swarm.

Ok how can you say the fighters in "the fighters on board the carrier move the same amount in two turns as the fighters in the open"

The Carrier only gets one Move where fighters get two moves each turn. It does not matter so after two turns the fighter have moved 24" and the Carrier has moved only 12". Unless there is a rule I'm missing in which case can you site the page as there is no index.

If the fighters begin the game on the carrier ...

the carrier moves on turn 1 w/the fighters on board (i.e.: the fighters have effectively been moved 6") ... then on turn two the carrier moves again w/the fighters on board (i.e.: the fighters have effectively been moved another 6") ... the fighters have therefore been moved up to 12"by the carrier's before executing any of their own moves ... then in the ensuing initiative bands of turn two the fighters execute both of their own move orders for another 12" of movement

Therefore fighters that begin on a carrier move 24" in two turns (between the carrier's moves and their own), which is the exact same amount that a squadron of fighters can move on its own over the course of two turns by executing 2 move orders a turn.

What about nerfing the fighters (and by the sounds of "muahaha" in the background it sounds like they need nerfing) by limiting range and forcing a re-dock with the carrier to re-fuel?

Ok I see where your coming from, but that still leaves the fighters at the exact same spot (less if its missile fighters using afterburners). Whats the advantage? Safe transport? Nothing can really hit anything else in the first two rounds, and with a DEF +6 it is not the ideal place to store your fighters from attack.

So I still need convincing that the Carrier is worth the points. Maybe if it had a longer range than the Particlebow (Uncharged) I would say it was worth it, but I fail to see how it acts as a support vessel. The Repair crews on deck! is not worth it unless the fighter is Reduced and then good luck trying to move it to the Carrier. You don't want to leave your fighters next to the carrier all the time because that defeats the purpose of it.

Ok Highland Piper, just to clarify; are you playing with the error on the fighter cards that limits their movement when they are damaged? Just making sure that you realize that that was a copy and paste error on Denny's part.

If it's not playing out to be balanced, I suggest you experiment with house rules until the beta team can fix it with errata. Maybe have the fighters be progressively harder to hit as they become damaged? That was suggested in another thread and it might help to increase the survivability of damaged fighter squads...

Sacretis

I was just thinking forcing a re-dock in 3-5 full turns or the fighters drift.

The advantage of the carrier also comes from the mission briefing that increases the fighters' combat ability.

I personally don't think that ability is worth the 35 points of the carrier. 2 Skirmish Fighters and 2 Corvettes can annihilate most of the ships without the +1 to hit the target, a single target. Sorry mate, its just not enough.



How is that helping? That just hinders the fighters making the carrier even worse than it is now.

It's a little somey-something, but ...

I totally see what you mean, especially if you're playing the Corvettes' attacking bonus as cumulative.

re: my eight fighters ... yeah baby ... come get some.

During the second game I noticed that the corvette didn't need to have the other ship in the firing arc to give the +1. The first game I had assumed it did and was trying to maneuver them around to point at the things I wanted to kill and have line of sight which was making me get hit by other ships. It didn't work out so well for me.

A carrier isn't meant to engage directly. It's merely a power projection tool. So by forcing the fighters to an umbilical cord, you can't deploy the fighters at all without a carrier. You want to buy fighters? You'll have to buy the logistical mechanism to get them to the fight. Sure it's an overpriced target, but you're looking at a point/package total, not each element. Savvy?

And from the other thread you said:



So you like fighters over and above other larger ships? All I'm saying is let's equalize the package a bit.

I think it was made clear:

You can't stack Command Cruiser bonuses on top of each other.

You get only one bonus per target of the command cruiser on Scramble (Andorax to verify, but we brought this up in another thread and I was under the impression you can't stack them, so the Command Cruiser sorta loses out for the cost).

The other thing is that I wasn't aware that you had to dock the fighters, wait a turn, activate the repair, then wait the rest of the turn, then launch fighters? I'm going to have to look at the Init band to see if you can land and repair (or repair and launch) in one turn. And see if there is verbage in the rules that specifically states that the carrier's repair special action nullifies the fighter's actions in the round.

to me "repairing" a squad of fighters seems silly, really i would like to see it changed to "reinforcing" and just require the unit be within a certain range of the carrier

Well I was going to waffle a bit but if you can't stack the abilities then I will just stick with Control Corvettes

This is on the back of my Convoy Carrier


I would say you have to have them in the bays just by how its written.

I know I have irritated some of the people here about this subject and I'm sorry I'm just offering my criticism and opinions. I'm not trying to be offencive.

I'm honestly rather disappointed as it is a really nice looking model, better looking than the Hammerhead in my opinion.

So you can't stack the bonuses, it takes to long to dock, repair, return to the fight and its armor is really low. So besides its good looks it is the only ship currently allowed to repair and still move and fire.

Maybe allowing to repair fighters two repairs instead of one?

Oh and I see there was a post about a mix up in the cards? could some one post a link to that so I can kitbash my card to how it is suppose to be.

Aaaah, now I see what you are saying.

Yeah, I'm not sure the cards are adequately covering the rules for fighter repairs. Some of our problems are related to the ship cards lately, methinks.

If I had to do this logically (and I'm getting clarification) depending on the INIT bands of action:

If you dock your fighters (fighters' actions) and then activate the carrier action, you fix your fighters in the same turn (you don't have to wait an entire turn). And then during the next round, you can move them away.

OR

If you initiate the repair action (Carrier's action), then move/launch fighters (fighters' action), you can do that in one turn.

It's entirely dependent on how you read it. In my case, I have been playing since the fighter docking/launching is a separate action from the carrier repair action, then you can do one action per ship in the same turn. I'd also have to go look, but if fighters can take TWO move actions, you may be able to get them in and out of the carrier. I don't have any of my stuff before me, but it seems logical that the fighters don't have to spend three or even two whole turns in the carrier unless you need to build them up from being almost gone to full strength.

Once a fighter squadron gets nicked, I take it back and swap out another stand full. The nicked squad flips in, repairs to the next level, flips out and runs back. I have played an entire battle not losing one fighter squadron this way (so to me, the carrier has been pretty essential - especially when the mission briefings to my bomber squads caused the victorious destruction of two particle bows in play).

I am going to write up a house rule, though, that limits fighters based on a carrier presense. If you don't have a carrier in your Fleet, you cannot have more than four fighter stands in play at any one time. So bye bye 6 to 8 fighter fleets with no carrier.

When I think about stacking, my thoughts are this:

If you activate one ability on a ship, you can't stack similar abilities on ships. That is, you can't target two Control Cruiser abilities (like Scramble) or two mission briefings on one squadron on one ship. However, you can activate two abilities of different natures - a mission briefing and a Scramble, for example - on one ship. I'd also say that you could stack two mission briefings on one ship if they belong to two separate fighter groups.

And maybe this isn't clear and needs to be cleared up better. I'll concede that my interpretation of the rules is probably more loose than someone who reads deep into every rule. And perhaps that's my failing with the rulesbook.

Ok that right there would make a HUGE difference.

Clarifications being posted now.

If repairs happen after movement and attack, how can you repair and then move the fighters on that turn?

Maybe I'm missing something.

When you do this the Carrier will definitely come into its own. Keep it at the back out of trouble and keep the fighters rolling in and out of the bays. With 8 fighters you are are definitely going to be able to flank the bigger ships and hit them from the rear.

Edit : I just thought that the phrase to be applied is, "Force Multiplier".