Carrier Battles Mod.
The mod is based around SE4's abilities, rather than any sort of real-world equivalent.
There are basically two classes of ship:
- Carriers
- Support Warships
Carriers are the best way to get fighters to the battle. They have a cost/size reduction mount for fighter bays, and are big enough to hold lots of fighters.
Support Ships are low maintenace, and have few restrictions on design (though fighter bays are very expensive to try to fit in)
Shields and armor are leaky.
Point Defense as you know it is non-existent.
Direct fire weapons have typical ranges from 1-4, missiles are SE3 style, and never fizzle out.
Shielded ships are mostly immune to small arms because of the leaky shield effect. Missiles (double/quad damage to shields) and very large calibre weapon hits are required to breach the shields and do significant damage.
Direct fire weapons are capable of hitting missiles, however due to their short range, it is very dangerous for capital ships.
Fighters on the other hand, make great missile interceptors, and losing them to missile hits is not as damaging to your fleet.
Fighters also make excellent bombers when loaded with external-mount CSMs or slow reloading heavy cannons.
And for killing fighters, fighters with high damage ratio guns are good
The support ships are good for a number of roles. Missile bombardment, for one. Unless the enemy has an overwhelming number of interceptors, some will get through. (Especially if fired from multiple angles in a pincer attack)
Support ships with relatively heaving shielding will be mostly immune to non-bombers, so they can also provide a excellent direct-fire support in dogfights.
Any number of supply and transport roles are also filled by these ships.