Carrier FAQ

[Cloud]

Reposting from SHC with a few minor changes and a few things added. Original thread by Womble


Skills needed other than being able to sit in a carrier:
Jump Drive Operation 5
Jump Drive Calibration 4 (an absolute must aim for 5 before too long)
Jump Fuel Conservation 4 (some say not as important and the others)
Remote Armour Repair Systems 5
Capital Remote Armour Repair Systems 4
Armour Compensations skills to 5
Capital Ships 4
Energy Emission Systems 5
Capital Energy Emission Systems 4
Fighters 4 (a lot of people say that you can stay with sentries for a while)
Tactical Logistics Reconfiguration 4 (if you plan on going triage requires logistics 5 which everyone has anyway, Right?!)

At least 1 cyno alt [might as well make all 3 characters on your 2nd account cyno capable so you have 3 cynos if you need them]

Tips:

Make sure you carry 40k fuel around with you at all times, and if you're going to use carrier in gangs (where they're useful) then i recommend having a few thousand of each other race's topes in your cha.

carry some t1 frigs or inties or dictors or something with your carrier at all time. gang mates get popped in long battles, having a backup ship on-hand is pretty fucking awesome, a rifter on field NOW beats the hell out of another rrbs on the field in 30 minutes. If you are tackled solo on an enemy pos that is ungunned, ditching these as chaff in space will make the warp disruptor cycle off you, and then you can warp out.

Carry ECM drones. Carry lots of them. If you get tackled doing something really stupid, the only real way to get out is to neut out tacklers and ecm the ones you can't neut out.

Carry lots of t1 sentries. They're your most reliable damage type in many situations, and warping off / docking / jumping / getting bumped out of range of them is not a huge deal.

Fighters blow. Carry backup drones. 10 t2 zerkers/ogres do like 600 dps, unless you have max skills, your fighters will only do like 200dps more than that, but getting a flight of t2 heavies smartbombed is a lot cheaper than a flight of fighters. Sentries can hit poses, don't have to catch up to their target, and are a hell of a lot cheaper than fighters. I generally only use fighters when i'm either a) out of range of other drones or b) ganking the shit out of some larger target in a fleet.

You're invincible on stations. Engage anything that attacks you there. [engaging on a station these days is likely to get you dropped by supers]

For skills, train JDC 5, but not fuel cons 5. Fuel cons just saves you a little bit of money every time you jump; jdc 5 is like the best skill you can ever train though, it reduces the number of cynos you need by a HUGE margin, way more than you would expect. Capital ships is a waste. you won't really need to warp anywhere if you're just using your carrier for logistics, and that's really the only thing capital ships helps you with. 4 is a waste even, unless you also plan on buying a titan.
Triage is kinda meh, if you use it in fleets and deal with repping poses a lot then yeah, but i wouldn't bother training it from what you've said. Train up shield reps and play docking games with a shield gank hurri or something, that's probably your best bet for use in combat, past that a solo carrier is just begging to get horribly raped by just about anyone in lowsec.

Carriers are big. Do it 6km out. Fit a salvager to your cyno frig, open tactical overlay, and you'll get a handy 5km sphere. Make sure nothing on the station is within 1km or so of that sphere and you're good.

also keep in mind that your whole sphere should be withing docking range, so you want stations with 10+ km docking range...

learn to identify kick out stations, and avoid them.

Okay. On my Archon+Damnation, the Damnation links make no difference on the Cap Armor Rep. They do, however, seem to make a difference on the Cap Remote Armor Reps.

For fighter damage max/min would be einherj + templars but carriers aren't dps ships so it doesn't make that big a difference.

This is the guy behind the Rooks and Kings video so take special note of his advice

I'll try and put some time in soon and finish the sequel to [Clarion Call]. Whoever uploaded it to youtube did a nice job, considering how much is going on with huds and small details in explaining the action. (Still, you can of course get the 1680x1050 mkv/wmv version here).

These days I fly an Archon. I would have done a year ago too, when that video was made. But the carrier V skill was a useful range bonus.

Looking at some of the discussion here: I do think there is a role for a good triage chimera, especially in the big fights. With the shield rep hitting at the start of the cycle, we've had some nice tag teams with Davinci's Chimera and the armour triage(s). When things scale up and there's a big alpha coming in, the triage chimera (in the hands of a fast player on a fast machine ) can do a lot to lap early damage before the armour rep hits, e.g. even against a cyno battleship being hit by dreads Razz But that assumes you have your primary tanking in order and can actually take the dps.

The Archon is great because you can have a stable 20k dps tank with max skills (including booster ones) and still help support. The Clarion fitting does that with strong booster + Damnation, for example (using amarr navy eanm for 18k and then an occasional overload blip of one repper). In the new vid (and recent battle reports, in fact) there'll be some 3xRR setups on Archon (4370hp/s raw rep), too, which is lots of fun.

All four carriers can be used well though, if the support is fitted appropriately.

Clarion Call 2 has been released and can be DL'd here

Amarr BS to 5 and Amarr Carrier/Dread tbh. :P

bigger shits attract more flies...

I honestly have no clue. After having a carrier for ages now i've lost some to enemy fire, DD's and such and replaced them with what's available, or more usually by scooping lost ones off hostiles. i've never bothered with going back and swapping them in or out for others. I don't consider the differences between the fighters enough to warrant caring that much.

Max

Implants that are useful on carriers:
Capacitor Implants CC8 & CR8 (especially useful if you're going to be repping a lot)
Slaves (expensive, but improves survivability a bit)

Always carry drugs on a triage carrier, exile for armor tank carriers, blue pill for shield tank carriers, and mindflood on both.

As another general tip, always keep cloak on carrier (fitted or cargo) in case of those "quick get to the chopper moments"

Jump to Eve-fail Carrier Blog Posted by Sudden


If there's anything I forgot, anything that should be removed, or any new info post it here and I'll edit it in.

[Lorkin Desal]

This should be sticky IMO

[Cydo]

I've been quoted in a serious post, i feel quite proud

[Sudden]

Shameless plagiarism from eve-fail:

A brief discussion of carrier functionality, with a focus on minmatar
Fitting:

Although carriers have a little damage in the form of drones they are very much support ships, sporting a hard-to-manage combination of neuts, smartbombs, tackle and both local and remote repair. Their primary function is repairing things, usually structures but also each other, supercapitals or even subcapitals on rare occasions. There are two primary fittings for carriers, one for general combat and one which is cap stable in triage mode for rapid repair.


Combat


Triage


An interesting feature of the carrier is the reconfiguration capability, which works thusly: When the pilot of a carrier enables reconfiguration mode, and when there are fewer than 10 ships within 5000 metres of the carrier, those ships within 5000 metres can change their fittings just as though they were docked in a station (except that T3 ships cannot switch subsystems). Reconfiguration mode is disabled by docking or jumping, so a carrier pilot must re-enable it each time. This is accomplished by right clicking the capacitor, selecting configure ship and checking the box.



The carrier's corporate hangar gives the pilot 10,000 m^3 of extra storage space, which is enough to carry as many as two spare capital modules (4000 m^3 each). Between this and the reconfiguration capability, a carrier is able to swap between its' roles while in the field. In my opinion the combat fit my alliance uses for the nidhoggur is faulty: If one swaps a neutralizer for the triage module, one can carry both a shield and an armor repper in the corporate hangar, allowing the pilot to reconfigure to full armor or shield rep as needed while still being able to triage.

Generally one will prefer to fit for combat, then reconfigure to triage when needed. Refitting from the combat to the triage fits pictured above means carrying the following unfitted modules:

1x Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
3x Capacitor Power Relay II
2x Cap Recharger II
1x Triage Module I (unless you take my advice and keep it fitted)

Faction modules:

Since a fully fitted carrier will run around a billion isk, you may as well look into faction module variations. In particular, faction EANM (energized adaptive nano membrane) will give you a handy resist bonus for around 30 million each. My alliance also recommends domination or true sansha warp disruptors, but these cost 100m which I don't think is worth it. Smartbomb range can also be increased with T2 or faction variants, but this doesn't appear to increase their utility in a meaningful way.

Fuel:

The carrier's fuel bay holds 20,000 units of fuel, and if you carry 2 capital modules in the corporate hangars the remaining space will hold 13,333 units, which together will be enough for most ops. I can't use triage mode, but if you can it would be good to carry a fairly large number of strontium cycles, probably 10 or more. At that point it would probably only be possible to carry one capital module in the corporate hangar. If you use my idea of keeping the triage module on the combat fit, the one capital module in the corporate hangar should be a shield rep, if repping towers, or an armor rep for combat or for repairing a station -- most capitals and supercapitals are armor tanked, and station shields only need to be repped to 50% before it will go back into reinforced mode if attacked, whereas armor does not recharge and should be repped fully.

Note that only the nidhoggur and thanatos have range bonuses to both shield and armor repair. The chimera and archon will probably just carry two of the same type of repair module. They also have an energy transfer range bonus, but refitting to be cap stable would probably be easier than trying to sort out a cap chain.

Triage mode:

I am not personally familiar with triage mode, having never trained logistics 5. Triage mode halves the cycle time of capital remote repair modules and doubles the rep amount, for a total of 4x the repping ability. It also gives a massive scan res bonus, removing the need for a sensor booster. Triage mode lasts 5 minutes, and at level 4 should burn 150 strontium per cycle. Carriers in triage mode cannot use drones, and I am unclear as to whether they can use other offensive modules such as neuts and smartbombs.

Fighters:

Most of a carrier's damage comes from fighters. A decently skilled carrier will do upward of 1000 dps, which would be decent for turrets but fighters are slow, and unreliable in lag. You will most likely want to use minmatar fighters as they have the highest speed.

Drones:

A carrier's drone bay is generally large enough to carry around 16-20 fighters, which are 5000 m^3 each. You'll want to leave out one fighter in order to carry normal drones in addition. It's tempting to try and carry multiple flights of each damage type and category of drone in both T1 and T2 but this quickly gets ridiculous and expensive, and you rarely use them anyway. A barebones drone selection is as follows:
Multiple flights of T2 light drones (warrior are fastest)
At least one set of T2 sentries of each type (sentry drones have different ranges and carriers have a drone control range bonus which allows you to use even the longest-range sentries out to their falloff distance)
Heavy shield and armor repair drones
Heavy ECM drones (wasp EC-900 I believe)
Once this is done you can fill things in as desired. I can't really imagine a situation in which you would use medium drones instead of light or heavy, but heavy drones can be used instead of fighters to save them from bombs; ten fighters will run you 120 to 150 million. I'd recommend adding a bunch of T1 sentries, light and heavy drones.

Boosters:

Most boosters aren't relevant to carriers, but blue drop and exile increase local shield and armor repair amount respectively. You can see my previous post for a discussion of booster side effects; the short version is that they carry a small chance of reducing your maximum shield or armor hitpoints respectively, so you may want to consider waiting until your shield or armor is below the amount of HP the side effect would reduce you to, which is different depending on the strength of the booster.

Insurance:

As mentioned in my previous post, platinum capital insurance isn't worth it. Unless you're planning to suicide-triage or otherwise have a very good reason to believe you will die, I recommend basic insurance. Half a carrier's value is in fighters and modules anyway, so even platinum will only return about 50% of the value.

[Omega Supreme]

Wait, the carrier's maintenance array lets it reconfigure itself? I thought you had to be within range of -another- carrier/SMA ship to do that?

[Sudden]

Wait, the carrier's maintenance array lets it reconfigure itself? I thought you had to be within range of -another- carrier/SMA ship to do that?

My interpretation of the blog post is that the carrier reconfiguring is done when 2 or more carriers are within 5000m of each other.

[Omega Supreme]

Ah, yes, that'd make more sense. I was wondering what was going on there.

[Womble]

My only claim to fame on SHC and it goes down the tube cause I don't get credit on the new forum.

[Cloud]

My only claim to fame on SHC and it goes down the tube cause I don't get credit on the new forum.

credited original thread to you

[Womble]

My only claim to fame on SHC and it goes down the tube cause I don't get credit on the new forum.

credited original thread to you

Yay begins swinging epeen.

[BLEURRRRGH]

Boosters:

Most boosters aren't relevant to carriers, but blue drop and exile increase local shield and armor repair amount respectively. You can see my previous post for a discussion of booster side effects; the short version is that they carry a small chance of reducing your maximum shield or armor hitpoints respectively, so you may want to consider waiting until your shield or armor is below the amount of HP the side effect would reduce you to, which is different depending on the strength of the booster.

Depending on your role in the fleet, Mindflood might be an idea too. I seem to remember Alazais once saying that he took Exile AND Mindflood with him when flying his Triage Archon. If his tank was failing, he would pop an Exile. If his cap was failing, he would pop Mindflood.

[Helen]

Mindflood is a pretty good idea for all capitals tbh.

[Gluecksbaerchi]

You can explicitly select the carrier you want to use for refit in the right-click menue. This is especially important when a hostile carrier is closer to you than your friendly one - the neocom-fitting button will always select the nearest carrier.

Allowing others to access your carrier only applies to the ship maintenance bay, the corp hangar thingie can't be accessed iirc.

The ship maint bay does NOT follow aggression mechanics. I'll leave the lesson to the reader. If you're smart, you can do things that will make you think this is an exploit. Please don't ask GMs about this (yet), tyvm.

You cannot use the save/load fitting mechanic to refit at a carrier, at least that didn't work when it came out.

The carrier is your supply depot, where you drop loot, your refit service, your ship storage service, all that while it can repair you or give you cap. It is the center of your engagement strategy, both in and out of triage, it's not a support ship, it is THE support ship. Dualaccounting these is highly dangerous. Always carry cap booster charges. Always carry barrage, RF fusion/emp, CN antimatter, scorch, etcetc, in m and l. Carry alternative modules, eccm, ecm, target painters, webs, scrams, points, afterburners, ship scanners(!), plates of all sizes, race-specific armor/shield hardeners ('oh we killed everything but megathrons, gogo stack kin/therm'), everything you ever fitted on any ship, bring it. Bring warp core stabs, two carriers can fit WCS mutually and warp off if the fight goes wrong, etcetcetc

remote-eccm does not have an effect. A dual-ECCMed carrier beeing remote-eccmed by multiple battleships has a sensor strenght beyond the 500. If they jam the carrier, or you got any good idea how to make them put every jammer on the carrier, go for massive eccm-stacking

A carrier can be made cap-stable with 5 support modules equiped. Now let's say this carrier is in docking range, supporting well-tanked BCs and battleships, this single carrier will tank a 10-20 man ganking-squad with ease. Add a second carrier for heavier gangs and/or if the first carrier is attacked, so you can refit the primaried carrier for tank while the second one stays with 5-RR-supportmode, tanking the now-refit carrier

damps will make you suck. bring at least one sebo, scout arazus. a carrier busy locking is not good.

entering triage will drop all locks, like siege. An ecm-cycle which already started will be in full effect, so let's say your carrier gets jammed, you go 'oh shit triage so I can relock and rr', this very ecm-cycle will still complete.


-----

What we didn't test yet is, what happens when you warp a carrier into another ship and then enter triage. This is for bumping caps or bigger battleships out of docking range. Two things can happen:

- the bumping speed is calculated and applied before the server recieves the triage command, thus the bumping speed is the same, no matter if you triage or not
- the bumping speed is recalculated or it is calculated after the triage command gets to the server, thus applying higher speeds due to higher mass, bumping the shit out of everyone

[Talinthi]

Allowing others to access your carrier only applies to the ship maintenance bay, the corp hangar thingie can't be accessed iirc.

^^ not 100% correct.

1) your corp hangar is usable by EVERYONE if your carrier is set for fleet use.
2) corp members will have access to any tab they have the roles to access
3) NON corp members will be able to put things into your corp hangar BUT will not be able to view any of the tabs so anything in them will be safe from their sticky fingers.

---hint: Store expensive mods you might be transporting in your cargo hold, or if it's larger say a cap mod store it in a secure corporate hangar. Most corps have at least one tab that's director/ceo use only, since your piloting the ship you'll be able to access the tab, but those without the proper roles will not.

Also exile(blue pill for shield) and mindflood are always a nice thing to have around when your using any capital ship(capital /= supercap) as has been said several times, the drug support skills are also nice to have to decrease the chance of side-effects.

[parasoja]

The eve-fail post was written with big 0.0 capital fleets in mind, where capacitor (because of lag) and per-second tank aren't really a consideration (new triage fits actually use a full buffer tank). I can't touch the fun stuff that alazais gets into... though I did kill him one time.

I should go back over that post and add stuff about cyno and cap transfer carriers, overheating and new triage fits. But, lazy.

[Sudden]

The eve-fail post was written with big 0.0 capital fleets in mind, where capacitor (because of lag) and per-second tank aren't really a consideration (new triage fits actually use a full buffer tank). I can't touch the fun stuff that alazais gets into... though I did kill him one time.

I should go back over that post and add stuff about cyno and cap transfer carriers, overheating and new triage fits. But, lazy.

It's a shame, I follow your blog specifically for the useful info you post, makes my heart break that it hasnt been updated the last week or so

[parasoja]

It's a shame, I follow your blog specifically for the useful info you post, makes my heart break that it hasnt been updated the last week or so

Your wish is my command.

[teds]

Mindflood is a pretty good idea for all capitals tbh.

c, cap is life

[Luna Lee]

carry some t1 frigs or inties or dictors or something with your carrier at all time. gang mates get popped in long battles, having a backup ship on-hand is pretty fucking awesome, a rifter on field NOW beats the hell out of another rrbs on the field in 30 minutes. If you are tackled solo on an enemy pos that is ungunned, ditching these as chaff in space will make the warp disruptor cycle off you, and then you can warp out.

I'm not a carrier pilot (yet) so forgive me if this is obvious but does this mean gang members can access the ship hanger on a carrier and board/store ships in the same way you use the sma at a pos? Does it require any special skill or anyone who can sit in a carrier can enable this?

[Mona]

Yes, no, yes