Fixing carriers

[Theben]

I've been thinking about this for awhile- almost 20 minutes last night- and carriers in civ have almost always been useless to the AI. Human players can use them quite well, but not the computer, assuming it ever built any.

So I thought that maybe the answer would be, instead of allowing fighters or whatever to base on carriers, to assign 'missions' to the carrier itself. The carrier would be assumed to always have a complement of aircraft, and you could give it ~3 orders/turn, similar to what you can give current aircraft. Plus it would help the human player somewhat with micromanaging.

Obviously there's a bit more detail needed (like what happens when you fail in a mission, carrier takes damage, new costs, etc.) but that's the gist of it. What do YOU think?

[Willem]

Not a bad idea really. It is a bit of a nuisance having to build a Carrier then filling it up with aircraft.

[Fleme]

I don't think I've ever seen the AI use carriers so anything to bring more variety to their game is always a from me.

[Brutus66]

Julius was a pest to me in one game with carriers loaded with aircraft, and they came in huge stacks of escorting ships for company; but he didn't use them nearly as effectively as a human player would have. I sent waves of fighters and bombers against the stacks, and then mopped up with my navy. It still impressed me that the AI actually used them though.

[Supr49er]

Originally posted by Brutus66
Julius was a pest to me in one game with carriers loaded with aircraft, and they came in huge stacks of escorting ships for company; but he didn't use them nearly as effectively as a human player would have. I sent waves of fighters and bombers against the stacks, and then mopped up with my navy. It still impressed me that the AI actually used them though.

What level were you playing? I also have never seen AI carriers.

[Ming]

When the AI actually gets to flight, I've seen them use carriers pretty effectively (well, not as good as a smart human) Granted, it depends on the map you are playing on, but I've seen the AI send over carriers with destroyer support, and try and take out my strategic resources and other infra structure. I've also seen them soften targets in support of a sea invasion.

I was actually impressed that they even built them.

I remember Civ II. You would gift a carrier (fully loaded) to an AI, and it would attack the first battleship it could find, without ever launching it's fighters

[rah]

Battleships, ha, they would attack the first city. Always effective since the AI didn't have to worry about orders for the next turn.

[Unimatrix11]

Carriers are handled in this manner in ´Strategic Command II´ (and I), Theben. They have a strike range, but only one mission per turn. They can get down to 10% strength from losses that have been inflicted on them when they do airstrike-mission, but can only be destroyed when attacked by the enemy. As SC2 is a great game about WW2, its kinda needless to say, that it works pretty well.