Introduction
Hi I’m Vren55, this guide focuses on the doctrine and tactics of playing carriers in Nebulous Fleet Command. Rather than going through the builds themselves, this explains strategies and tactics to employ with your craft and carrier to win battles.
This guide is part of a series of guides prepared to help you get up to speed on carriers.
For a doctrinal guide: How to Win As a Carrier (Intermediate Doctrine and Tactics Guide)\
For how to load your craft onto your carrier and set it up: A Step By Step Guide to Setting Up Your Carrier and Loading Craft
For a guide to the Craft UI and how to launch and return craft: The Craft Management UI and Craft UI
For detailed Anti-Craft Missile Setup, I strongly recommend reviewing Comprehensive Craft Clobbering Compendium for Chic and Comely Captains: A guide on ACM design and usage
In my opinion, carrier operations requires the player to balance fulfilling the Key Roles of a Carrier with Maintaining An Effective Spacecraft Threat
Key Roles Of A Carrier
Carriers need to kill/threaten to kill enemies in a fashion to affect enemy positioning and support capture point seizure/protection
a. If a carrier does not kill or damage ships to prevent the loss of capture points, that carrier isn’t contributing to shaping the battlefield.
b. Support capture point assets by killing their opponents or softening them up
c. Through your presence alone or by craft strikes, force the enemy to ball up and lose map vision
d. Prime targets:
i. enemy map vision assets (Early Warning Tug, Spyglass Frigates)
ii. Isolated frontline warships (Marauder Line Ships, Axford heavy cruisers)
iii. Ships capturing a point
iv. Ships defending a capture point (Beam destroyers, multi-mission tugs, torpedo corvettes)
Carriers need to kill ships to reduce enemy offensive firepower
a. Similarly important, killing enemy ships enables your team’s frontline warships to push and take space
i. Risks and reward need to be weighed. Throw away your entire air wing and you will be unable to affect the battlefield in the mid to late game. Be too conservative and you’ll also fail to affect the battlefield
Carriers need to provide vision/intelligence
a. Bringing Sundial SEWACS (ANS) and Halberds with Advanced Radars (OSP), Wake Sensor (OSP) or ELINT (ANS) enables carriers to provide a lot of map vision that can be moved around to support the team and your own strikes
Carriers need to defend against enemy munitions and craft
a. Fighters can provide point defense to friendly warships and can be moved around to defend vulnerable units. They should be moved around to defend the front line for ships, but also for craft. This is a very important role because craft can do a lot of damage against friendly warships.
b. Moving fighters to protect your friendly warships also create “safe zones” where your bombers can be moved to the frontline without risk of interception
Throughout a game however, the desire and pressure of a carrier player to fulfil the roles above must be balanced with the following priority:
Maintaining An Effective Spacecraft Threat
Throughout a game however, the desire and pressure of a carrier player to fulfill the aforementioned roles must be balanced with the following priority:
Carriers require craft to deliver munitions to target
a. This means that as long as a carrier exists, it is a threat. However, a carrier without a craft is an effectively dead carrier
Therefore, carriers who lose all their craft before a match is over have effectively ceded space superiority to the enemy carrier
a. If there is no opposing carrier, the loss of your carrier’s craft means you cease to become an effective threat, enabling a smart enemy team to take advantage of this by spreading out and taking more map space.
However a carrier that maintains its spacecraft complement without fulfilling the previous key roles is one that did not support its team
As such, while attrition will likely be taken as the match goes on, it is imperative that attrition does not fully deplete a carrier’s wing.
Carriers must therefore carefully balance fulfilling carrier priorities with maintaining their spacecraft
Basic Craft Tactics
As a Nebulous carrier player there are a number of basic craft tactics to employ. Before going into how to balance the roles of a carrier, it is necessary to go into the tactics a player needs to employ with their craft.
Stand-off And Stand-In
Stand-off
Stand-off is a term taken from real-life fighter tactics. In Nebulous, stand-off is dictated by your fighters engaging beyond their frontal radar cone range of 4km, and launching missiles that extend beyond that range. These are most commonly SDM-100 and SDM-200s and are fired at radar tracks provided by friendly Halberd Skiffs, Sundial Sewacs and warships. To order your flights to fire any stand-off missiles beyond 4km, toggle the RANGE button.
The Advantages of Stand-off engagements are: Ease of disengagement and the ability to Score Early Kills - If your craft fire their missiles off at 4km before the fighters close to dogfighting range (within 4km) then you can even out a disadvantageous engagement, or swing a neutral engagement in your favor. If you want to damage a larger flight, you can fire your Standoff missiles and order your craft out of the area
Damaging the enemy at low risk to your own craft - If you can destroy enemy fighters who are loitering within friendly point defense range, or before they can group up to engage you, you’ve eliminated the enemy without loss of craft.
The Disadvantages of Stand-off craft engagements are: Expensive - Stand-off anti-craft missiles are mainly comprised of SDM-200s which take up quite a bit of craft loadout space and the expensive SDM-100s
Imperfect - A player on the ball and with the right loadout can out-juke or gun down your Stand-off missiles.
Active Range control required - because craft are so fast, it is not too difficult for enemy craft to close in with yours if you are not microing that specific flight. One way to help avoid this is to use the SKOSH setting for when the craft expends all its missiles. Be careful though. If you want your craft to later use guns, you need to update the craft WRTB setting to “WINCHESTER.”
Stand-inIn Nebulous a Stand-in engagement refers to when fighters are fighting within 4km, and may use their own radar to detect targets. Sometimes referred to as furball or dogfight ranges, craft engaging within these ranges generally initiate into “furball” or “dogfight” mode causing the “furball” indicator to pop up. Within these ranges, standard S1 and S2 missiles are more effective, although SDM-100s and SDM-200s can still be used. Stand-in is the default setting for all craft.
The Advantages of Stand-in engagements are: Cheap - To engage in a stand-in duel, all you need is a nose gun of some caliber. Certain noise guns and gunpods do better in dogfights (35mm Flechette)
That being said, it is not recommended to run gun-only craft into dogfights. Standard S1 missiles will give gun-heavy fighters an edge by forcing the enemy craft to go evasive, or doing damage within the dogfight.
Does not allow the enemy to disengage - Once locked in a furball/close-in dogfight, the first craft that retreats is usually the one who dies. In a favorable fight, the enemy must either disengage before the fight starts or try to win it by vectoring reinforcements. If you intercept the enemy over friendly point defence you can lock enemy craft in an dangerous area that favours your craft
Favors strong guns - stand-in engagements tend to favor the side with the best gun loadouts. This means 20mm and 15mm Coilgun Tanto mixes, as well as 35mm Flechette barracudas.
The Disadvantages of Stand-in Lethal - within stand in ranges, you are highly likely to lose craft unless you decisively out gun or outnumber your opposing flight.
Inability to disengage - you can force your craft to disengage, however, once in a dogfight this usually results in heavy losses or the outright destruction of your wing
High risk of external factors - stand-in engagements are often quite lengthy, more so than stand-off ones because both sides can’t disengage easily. This means that Flak, RPF and other stand-off missile can be used to interfere with the battle and swing it against your craft
Craft Cover
Distant Cover (Protects the Protectors, the Target is More Vulnerable)
a. Your craft are behind a rock or cover, or out of radar detection from the enemy team, but are within range to interdict or stop an enemy missile or bomber strike
b. This can be highly effective at protecting your ships or craft but requires an active player microing their craft to respond to enemy strike attempts
c. It does however, protect your craft better against enemy Flak or RPF
Close Cover (Protects The Target, The Protectors are Vulnerable)a. Your craft orbit around a ship or craft that you ordered them to Guard
b. This is more effective at protecting your ships and even craft as your craft are closer and have become part of the friendly point defense network. Z-prioritizing targets by a friendly ship will make your craft help intercept that missile or craft.
c. It does however, put your craft in view of the enemy ships, meaning they can be shot at by long range point defense
d. If you are protecting craft by close cover and are hit by overwhelming numbers, you have no safe way to disengage.
Big Wing Versus Dispersed Wings (Air 2 Air Wing Size)
The Big Wing (More than 5 Fighters in a flight)I personally am heavily NOT in favor of big wings. I think they have a place in carrier doctrine but I dislike them for the following reasons and I strongly advise against players lumping all their fighters into a massive group and throwing them at the enemy for the following reasons: Increased visibility - a mechanic in Nebulous means that larger flights above 5 are punished with an increased radar signature
Incredibly vulnerable - contrary to thought, lumping more fighters into a flight makes the entire flight more vulnerable to getting shot by point defense or enemy stand off missiles. Blast Frag missiles have a radius and they can detonate on multiple craft, making large groups even more vulnerable
A large group of fighters does reduce micro, but wise enemies maneuvering their craft will refuse to engage yours because of the size of your blob
The one time to use a big wing is if the enemy uses a big wing of craft but it’s smaller than yours and puts themselves in a vulnerable position to do so
Penny Packet/Small Flights (5 or less fighters in a flight)
The ideal way to use fighters is to disperse them to protect friendly ships or important locations from air attack: This disguises the size of your total air force
This reduces risk because losing one flight of fighters is less risky than losing half or your whole fighter complement
Dispersed flights of craft lets players set up ranged traps where multiple groups of fighters can overlap their standoff missiles (SDM-200s on STANDOFF) to assist a friendly engagement
A dispersed group of fighters also enables a carrier to protect more friendly ships, and makes their movements less easy to read by an enemy carrier (if you’re everywhere, the enemy carrier won’t know where you are in force)
There is however, a risk to small flights of craft:
The risk to small flight is that you can feed flight after flight into poor engagements. Just because you’re splitting your craft into flights of 4-5, doesn’t mean you should engage a larger flight.
You can however, micro two groups of craft into an engagement with a larger group, pincering the enemy.
Small flights of craft are also much harder to manage than just a few larger flights. It is recommended that if you’re not actively controlling the flight, to ensure your flights of craft are guarding friendly ships with point defense, and to put the craft on the JUKE or EVADE Maneuvering posture
Strike Tactics
Light Versus Heavy You generally want all of your fighters to have some ability to hurt light ships because if you lose all your bombers, your anti-ship capability is severely reduced. Fighters can be used to do anti-ship strikes but they have far limited capability than bombers. Generally though it is a good idea for your fighters to have some loadouts with anti-ship striking capability
S2s, R1s, R2s, 100mm Gunpods and 35mm are all generally used against light targets such as Corvettes, Frigates, Shuttles and Tugboats. S2s can be used for heavier targets such as Destroyers but generally fighter-launched S2s
R3s and Torpedoes are the preferred choice versus heavier targets. They have the weight and damage to break through enemy point defense and deal heavy damage to capital-grade warships
Carriers have to balance between light strike or void superiority to support their scouts
CBU-40s and KBU series of bombs can be used as a backup option for most craft but need to be dropped at dangerously close ranges for effectiveness and should be used when all other munitions are exhausted or to finish off crippled ships
Size of Strike Small Strikes (2-3 bombers) do less damage but reduce risk to overall air wing
You may lose 2 bombers but it’s only two bombers
Small strikes however means less munitions onto target, which means that enemy point defense can reduce your strike further
Moderate Strikes (4 bombers) you do average damage and there is an average risk.
Big Strikes (6+ bombers). Six bombers for some carriers is half, or their entire strike complement. While these strikes are utterly devastating and can completely wreck a 3000 point fleet, they take time to build up, take time to reload and also are incredibly high risk because if your bombers get caught and killed, you might have lost your entire bomber wing
Pathing
Cover Hopping - most bomber strikes prefer to use cover hopping to not only preserve your flight’s health against enemy point defense fire, this prevents your flights from being observed whilst on approach. The tradeoff is that you burn more fuel taking an indirect route and while you are hidden from the guns of enemy ships, you’re more vulnerable to enemy fighters using the same rocks as cover
Long flank - you burn your bomber around the map edge or around the flank of the enemy. This is a safe way to get bombers to a target, but can burn fuel and take a long time. This means your target may not be there anymore when you are going to strike it.
Ensure that when dropping bombs, to path your bomber as close as you can (outside of 1km defender range) before dropping
Carrier Scenarios
The goals of a carrier changes depending on the opposition you are faced with. As such, I suggest reviewing the following “states” listed below.
State 1 No carrier on the enemy team to oppose you
While this is a useful situation for your carrier, this is not necessarily the ideal scenario. Without any carrier, the enemy’s points have either gone to frontline warships or more devastating rear-line missile ships. Thus, carrier players must do the following
Assuming your fighters have a backup anti-light warship loadout eg. 35mm guns, they should be used to target enemy light assets
Target enemy frontline warships or isolated assets with bomber and fighter strikes
Ensure to still escort strikes as OSP and ANS could have backpack mounted craft or heavy anti-craft missiles.
The enemy may have more anti-ship missiles because they did not bring a carrier. Employ your fighters to escort your friendlies to protect them.
Provide vision. If your craft are not being contested, you should be using your Sundials and Halberds to scout the enemy and establish map vision
State 2 Carriers are Equal in Strength
Due to the diversity of nebulous and how the factions different carriers and craft have been designed, it is unlikely the situation will occur where the carriers are on an equal footing
But if that’s the case then the following should be priority
Strike Targets. Hit frontline warships, reconnaissance assets, and ships trying to capture the points.
Maintain your air wing. If the carriers are at equal strength then the priority is to make the enemy carrier lose craft so you can overmatch them in craft count. This means you should only take engagements that are likely to result in your favor. Be warned, though, the enemy player is likely going to try to damage your air wing by setting up traps.
Defend your friendlies. Provide your friendly capture point player and frontline with craft cover. Not only does this protect your craft, it will improve your team’s performance as your craft can fend off enemy strikes just by existing
Eliminate Enemy Craft. If you can, set up elaborate fighter traps by leaving out valuable craft or units and then jumping onto attacking craft with multiple wings.
State 3 Carrier Overmatch In Your Favor
The enemy brought a smaller carrier. A typical example is you brought the ANS Levy and you’re fighting the OSP Journeyman
Do not let yourself be distracted
Do not let down your guard
Use lower enemy craft numbers to strike enemy warships and frontline. You should have a higher strike tempo as a result
Wiping out the enemy craft may be helpful but not necessary and can be dangerous. In my experience the enemy smaller carrier is often relying on the larger carrier to make a mistake so they can exploit that error and kill your craft.
What you have to do is use your superior craft numbers to escort strong strikes aimed at destroying the enemy warships. That does mean you should be prepared for ambushes because a smart carrier enemy player will try to anticipate your attacks on their key assets and vector craft to intercept
You need craft to escort your bombers in to do damage especially if there is an enemy carrier. Do not just throw them away
State 4 Carrier Overmatch Against You
Your carrier is outnumbered in Craft Superiority by the enemy carrier or carriers. The typical case for this is that you brought a single Levy-class against the OSP Moorline.
You still must try to attack the enemy warships and defend your friendlies, but the highest priority is maintaining your craft wing at all costs.
If you are still flying craft, you can still be a threat. If you are de-crafted you are no longer a threat.
Fight under friendly point defense as often as possible.
This is because dogfights are difficult to disengage from safely
Bomb/anti-warship strike isolated assets. Use small strikes, losing 1-2 bombers will be likely but that’s fine. Losing all of them however will kill your carrier.
Use standoff munitions SDM-2s and SDM-1s to attrit enemy craft. Fire and retreat.
Do not, do not, aim to attack enemy fighters unless you’re the one pulling off an ambush/fighting over friendly point defense. Because they have more craft than you, a skilled player can bait you with distant cover tactics.
Employ cover. Hiding craft behind rocks is a good way to set up traps and protect your craft
Poke for holes in the enemy ASF net. Use Local Superiority to counteract enemy craft pushes. Employ distant-cover tactics. If the enemy tries to wipe out one of your flights, vector multiple wings to converge on them
General Builds
During testing, the testers found or settled on a number of general builds with a variety of craft counts. These are just a few I recall.
ANS
Most single Levy fleets are called "Levy and Friends" because the single hull of the Levy enables it to bring a range of supporting assets.
Levy Cap Fleet - An ANS Levy accompanied by capping assets such as a beam destroyer and several corvettes, maybe Raines. This fleet relies less on its carrier, which is likely less capable, not as heavily buffed and usually not carrying many or any bombers to primarily provide Air Superiority. A useful fleet archetype for people who like to specialize in capturing capture points and attacking enemy reconnaissance assets.
Levy with Police Frigates - An ANS Levy accompanied by two 120mm or 250mm armed frigates possibly with some anti-craft missiles, a Spyglass 11.5km radar or sarissa point defense turrets. The Raines are employed as stable bases where the Levy's bombers and fighters can mass before going off to find and kill targets, or as scouting ships.
Levy with Beam DD - Having a beam destroyer guard a levy or the natural frees up allied ships to take on different tasks. A beam destroyer in an ambush position is a deadly weapon to any unsuspecting enemy who gets bloodlusted when spotting the carrier. In these fleets the carrier is usually about 2,000 to 2400 points at most.
Levy with approximately 3 Capture Point Sprinters - my personal preferred fleet archetype. The three sprinters enable this fleet to seize the natural points and one of the contested neutral points of a map, which frees up heavy ships and other allied light ships to position themselves for the battle ahead. The capture point sprinters also provide area vision to warn of incoming enemies and can be used at critical moments to take back points. Each sprinter should only be a little above 200 points with the levy sitting at 2000-2300 points.
Double Levy - Double Levy fleets are the ANS equivalent to a 3k Moorline Carrier. They allow for high craft count, but some points are sacrificed for more pads. This fleet is also more complicated than a single 3k Moorline. That being said, it also is the only fleet type that can possibly contest a 3k Moorline.
Levy with Frontline - Typically this fleet involves an Axford paired with a Levy. The Levy usually is Tanto-heavy with possibly 0 bombers in order to support the Axford and the friendly team with craft superiority operations, reconnaissance (through SEWACS Sundial) and light strike. A useful archetype, this fleet does however suffer from a lack of light assets.
OSP
Journeyman + large warship eg. Ocello/Marauder - More commonly deployed as a Journeyman paired with an Ocello, this pairs two powerful support-orientated assets of OSP together to support a friendly team. The danger with this fleet is that the Journeyman alone without capture point ships to support it may find it difficult to deny points with an enemy carrier facing it.
Journeyman Cap Fleet - The Journeyman capture point fleet is a 1200 point Journeyman paired with Multi-Mission Tugs (Jammer, C30, MLS-2/MLS-3 with VLS-1 tugboats) and T20 shuttles. Think Tantalum Squadron starter fleet but with a Journeyman. With the craft protecting your capture point vessels and multiplying your power with light or even heavy strikes this OSP fleet archetype can be used to seize points and harass enemy light assets.
3k Moorline - the only fleet carrier available currently in Nebulous, this fleet is powerful with a certain risk. Bringing a 3k moorline means you must be providing reconnaissance, craft cover and heavy strike. It is a fleet that will require good judgement and the ability to manage the multiple craft you deploy and their settings.
That being said, deploying one of these 3k Moorlines will make the life of any player running a single Levy very unhappy.
Moorline Container-Carrier Hybrid - An even more complicated fleet than the 3k Moorline, it brings both unique attributes of the Moorliner together in a powerful package. Even with just two container bank hangars, a Moorline can still hold a decent amount of craft to fight and even beat a single Levy, whilst also bringing containers to throw long range missile strikes at enemy warships. Builds of this type typically use 1 Container Bank Launcher with 3 Container Bank Hangars, or 2 Container Bank Launchers with 2 Container Bank Hangars.
While this fleet type is incredibly cool and powerful in the right hands, you will need to combine both long range missile skills and carrier/craft control skills to use it successfully.
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3401658497
More NEBULOUS: Fleet Command guilds
- All Guilds
- Comprehensive Craft Clobbering Compendium for Chic and Comely Captains: A guide on ACM design and usage
- A Step By Step Guide to Setting Up Your Carrier and Loading Craft
- A Step by Step Guide to Setting Up Your Craft
- The Craft Management UI and Craft UI
- Salvo size = infinity; Cruise missile Time on Target attack handbook.
- Nebulous: Cap Fleet Commandments
- MD/Rail
- Jakub's Guide to not Dying to Missile Spam
- NEBULOUS: Fleet Command Guide 427