Hi,

I'm wondering if anyone else has toyed with this.

I compulsively capture ships, and the Gremak Assault Carrier is amazing as a troop ship. It's as fast as lighter ships, can take over most smaller ships in one go, and drops three armor units on the ground during invasion. It's also much better equipped than other troop transports.

The Ashdar Carrier is great for invasion, and well fortified, but really too slow and bulky for capturing ships.

The Terros Escort Carrier is basically an Armored Transport with a smaller weapon port. Since I use it for point defense, the difference is only having the PD weapon on a light vs medium mount point. (I'm not sure if that even makes a difference.)

Is this a thing I've been missing?

(For those who haven't tried it, there are "Berth" and "Hangar" hardpoints on ships. Fighters can go into Hangars, but Assault Shuttles (carry melee units) can go into Berth or Hangar. Berth points can only take fighters, while Hangars take both.)

Berths and Hangars slots are actually identical, you can put assault shuttles in hangar slots and fighters/bombers in berth slots. The difference is there to guide the AI and the automatic designs (the whole "balanced/escort/siege" thing you get from the "hardpoint" drop-down) for what kind of small craft the slot should have, but yo don't have to abide by it.

I've tested that in both live and in the in_dev builds.

And yeah, carriers make great invasion/capture tools, being able to carry tanks, marines, and marauders. You can even drop off the troops on a planet and use them to ferry around civilians, too!

As far as I'm aware, in the current builds Hangars and Berths work the same.

That's very interesting. I will try it in my next games.

Thanks for the hint.