Carrier
A specialized class of ships designed to carry smaller craft such as fighters, bombers, and shuttles instead of naval artillery. Though less effective in a ship-to-ship battle, the flexibility of their strike craft make them a major asset in orbital campaigns.
The old maritime powers cherished the aircraft carrier as their ultimate tool of conventional power projection and sea/air denial. While their supremacy did not survive the transition into space combat, superseded by more maneuverable and far more suicidal torpedoes, networked AIs, reusability, and increased expendability allowed the starfighter, and thus carriers, to make a limited comeback.
In a naval action, carriers serve similarly to a torpedo arsenal ship, slinging out their payloads ahead of the fleet and weakening or picking off ships at greater ranges than anything limited by lightspeed. Additionally, with warp drive-equipped strike craft a carrier is able to quickly and stealthily reconnoiter vast regions of a galaxy compared to a much larger fleet of conventional ships.
Carriers shine most in the suborbital support role, and often double as a heavy transport and command center for invading a planet, habitat, or megastructure. The kill chain is harder to interrupt, loitering times are superior, and a squadron of bombers in low orbit can be more efficient than a corvette tasked to ground support.
The few Federation carriers are primarily with Airspace Control. The Sagittari Union favors carriers much more, although not as much as they do their superheavy warships. Some, like the Archivist Initiative, have no use for carriers at all.
The old maritime powers cherished the aircraft carrier as their ultimate tool of conventional power projection and sea/air denial. While their supremacy did not survive the transition into space combat, superseded by more maneuverable and far more suicidal torpedoes, networked AIs, reusability, and increased expendability allowed the starfighter, and thus carriers, to make a limited comeback.
In a naval action, carriers serve similarly to a torpedo arsenal ship, slinging out their payloads ahead of the fleet and weakening or picking off ships at greater ranges than anything limited by lightspeed. Additionally, with warp drive-equipped strike craft a carrier is able to quickly and stealthily reconnoiter vast regions of a galaxy compared to a much larger fleet of conventional ships.
Carriers shine most in the suborbital support role, and often double as a heavy transport and command center for invading a planet, habitat, or megastructure. The kill chain is harder to interrupt, loitering times are superior, and a squadron of bombers in low orbit can be more efficient than a corvette tasked to ground support.
The few Federation carriers are primarily with Airspace Control. The Sagittari Union favors carriers much more, although not as much as they do their superheavy warships. Some, like the Archivist Initiative, have no use for carriers at all.
