Garbage interceptors boring bombers and the state of ANS carriers

So the carrier update has been out for a while now and I've played a quite a bit of mostly ANS carriers, enough that I feel like I've noticed some pretty damning issues with them that I feel need to be addressed. 

So with this update it really feels like the favorite child once again gets the pick of the litter while ANS gets the scraps.

Let's run down the list.

  • Barracuda- Only downside compared to Tanto is RCS while being cheaper
  • Sturgeon- can carry the firepower of two claymores at once but hey it's 8% slower and you'll detect it a bit further so that balances out right?
  • Pike with EO because fuck knowing when you've been locked up amirite (also I thought EO was an ANS thing which was why only they got the seeker... guess not)
  • Halberd: The ANS version is just worse in every way OSPN gets flechettes and the radar. also i guess now OSPN gets an ELINT analogue because it wouldn't be fair if ANS got something they didn't have a counterpart for
  • SDM-1/2 OSPN gets these too for some reason which is weird because I thought Hybrids were an ANS thing.
  • size 3 Rockets... Because I guess OSPN needs dirt cheap softkill proof anti capital firepower.
  • Bomb shells. this one is genuinely baffling. They delete entire squadrons and there is literally nothing you can do about it. I don't care that they are basically a spinal weapon they need to go. I have literally watched these three shot fighter wings out of nowhere. Actually I changed my mind. you can keep these just give my solomon's 450mm beehive shells
  • 35mm Flechettes Literally all you need to rule the sky as osp. Guaranteed to make SDM users pull their hair out. Win every dogfight no matter how outnumbered you are
  • and 2 different carrier hulls

And ANS Gets

  • SEWAC. +25% range over the halberd advanced radar but for +50% the cost. Also no self defence capability(this is a lot more important than it might sound) also your ELINT package costs 10 points more than the halberd's Wake sensor
  • Tanto coilgun: almost double the cost for a weapon that's marginally better than the 20mm and is guaranteed to run out of ammo before it kills more than one or two things. Also I find it baffling that they took the weapon whose defining feature was crossmapping missiles and gave it a 1200m range. If you think it would be OP with 8000m then you should look at a sarissa’s accuracy in the endgame screen.
  • Claymore... 8% faster than the Sturgeon
  • but hey the 20% shorter detection range they get shurely makes up for this
  • Halberd- no advanced radar, no flechettes but hey you get a shittier elint sensor: 80% the cost for 2/3 the range
  • weapon bays: fuck flexibility in battle amirite
  • you get 1 carrier hull. It's just big enough to be too big to put two in a fleet, and just small enough to be too small to spend a full 3000 pts on... the best of both worlds.

Enough whining how does this play out from a carrier perspective. well since you can't really run a full carrier fleet you will always be outnumbered. Thanks to flechettes, unless you have an overwhelming advantage in numbers you will get obliterated in dogfights so you need to fight in standoff.  This gives you two possible tools, the SDM-2 and the SDM-1, and I guess the SGM-2 if you're feeling lucky. However there is a problem: the SDM-1 has only a single seeker slot. Also Most craft carry both chaff and flares. this means you are effectively limited to CMD and EO but really only to CMD. EO is just to expensive with your Lunges typically rounding out at 13 to 14 points with EO. Keep in mind a barracuda costs 8 points. so we are paying 14 points to hopefully kill a 8 point craft with a zero point loadout. Or we can use cmd and limit ourselves to a more reasonable 9 points to kill an 8 point craft. definitely a recipe for success. 

But the problem with CMD is that fighters only lock at short ranges which means that the missiles will jump around as they try to hit low quality tracks. For this reason we need to make our SDM-1's maneuverable which limits their range. but they will still miss a lot. Luckily SDM-2s don't have these problems. They can take validators and thus we can just use a simple ACT/[wake] or ACT/[ARAD] setup. Just one problem. We can only take one of these and flechettes eat them for breakfast. Also they do much less damage than advertised and you can't put EL warheads on them. This means that they will have a relatively low p_k. and you will usually need a lot of missiles to destroy even small fighter groups. And don't get me started on bombers. All this means that Even if you are successful in your engagements with  enemy fighters, sticking to your advantages and taking few losses, you will kill at too low of a rate and will be very hard to meaningfully affect the opposing carrier players ability to attack your teammates. And all that is if you are successful. What happens if you start losing craft? What happens if you can't break through the flechettes? What happens if you make a mistake? You are fucked.

I guess claymores are also there. People would be way more aware of how pathetic these are if corkscrew torps weren't OP as fuck.

One more thing I want to touch on. Remember how I mentioned that pikes and halberds can both carry flechettes. This makes it infinitely more annoying to kill these fuckers. With it typically taking 2-4 SDM-2s to break through their PD and kill them. So that’s around half a squadron’s primary weapons just to kill a skiff.

  • So what should be done about this 
  • Tanto should be able to carry at least 2 size 2s
  • Tanto coil should have its range buffed at least out to 3000m-4000m. Also their hitbox should be increased. If they are going to cost as much as a whole other fighter they should at least hit like it.
  • Health/armor increase for SDM-2s
  • Remove bomb shells 
  • Give Claymores a reason to live.
  • Lock halberd/ pike 35mm to slug only

Lastly just because I know that people love to bring this up whenever someone complains about ANS carriers being bad I want to get ahead of it "OSPN is the 'carrier faction' they're supposed to have better craft" 

I can understand this but I have a gripe with it. As I've already demonstrated It's not really possible to build a good ANS fleet with only carriers and craft in it. You will always start from a disadvantage in the craft game but hey you get a capper or two out of it so that’s nice. To be clear I’m fine with this and this can be where that advantage comes in but some people seem to think that OSPN should just get outright better stuff for the same price which is baffling to me.

Thank you for listening to my ted talk. Tune in next week for my manifesto on why the Ocello is a spawn of satan and should be removed, and how we need to bring back the mk82 and make ANS rails great again.