Aircraft Carrier
“She carries no great guns. She does not need them – her guns have wings, and they fly a hundred miles to find you.”
The Aircraft Carrier is a floating airbase: a mobile flight deck from which Fighters and Bombers operate far out at sea. It mounts almost no offensive armament of its own – its striking power is the air wing it carries. Heavily armoured and equipped with long-range reconnaissance, the Carrier extends an empire’s air reach across oceans that no land-based airport could ever cover.
Stats
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| Attack | 4 |
| Defence | 16 |
| Movement | 4 |
| Range | 0 |
| Sight | 8 |
| Cost | 90 Production |
| Required Tech | Steel and Flight |
| Required Resource | None |
Special: Mobile airbase – bases up to 4 air units. Requires both Steel and Flight to build.
Abilities
- Mobile Airbase – Acts as a floating airport. Up to 4 air units (Fighters / Bombers) can be based aboard.
- Rebase Aboard – Rebase Fighters and Bombers from a city onto the Carrier (no Airport needed on the ship – the Carrier is the airbase), within the air unit’s range.
- Air Wing Sorties – Based aircraft fly strikes and intercept enemy air raids from the Carrier’s position, so the whole air group moves with the ship.
- Long Reconnaissance – Sight 8 gives the Carrier group exceptional early warning at sea, scouting far beyond any other unit.
Available Promotions
- Combat I – +10% attack (5 XP)
- Combat II – +10% attack (15 XP, requires Combat I)
Upgrade Path
The Aircraft Carrier has no upgrade path. It is the ultimate force-projection warship.
Strategy
The Carrier turns the air arm from a coastal-defence tool into an oceanic strike weapon. Where a land-based Fighter or Bomber is chained to the range of an Airport, a carrier-based wing strikes from wherever the ship sails – ideal for assaulting island empires or any front across open water. Load it with Bombers to soften a target city’s garrison from beyond its shore defences, or with Fighters to win air superiority over a landing zone before your transports arrive.
Protect the Carrier as you would a Battleship – more so. Its own Attack of 4 means it cannot defend itself in a surface fight, and if it is sunk its entire air wing is lost unless another friendly airbase is within reach (a sunk Carrier’s aircraft relocate to the nearest friendly Airport city or other Carrier, or are destroyed). Never sail a Carrier unescorted: screen it with Destroyers against Submarines and Battleships against surface threats. Keep enemy Fighters and Bombers off it with a portion of its own air wing flying defensive cover. Used well, a Carrier group is the single most flexible offensive formation an empire can field; used carelessly, it is 90 Production and four aircraft waiting to go to the bottom.
Historical Background
The aircraft carrier rose from experiment to dominance in barely three decades. The first flight from a moving ship came in 1917, and by the 1920s the major naval powers were converting battlecruiser hulls into flat-decked carriers. For years they were seen as scouts and skirmishers for the battle line – until the Second World War demolished that assumption. The British strike on the Italian fleet at Taranto in 1940, and Japan’s carrier raid on Pearl Harbor in 1941, showed that carrier aircraft could cripple a battle fleet at anchor from over the horizon.
The decisive proof came at Midway in 1942, a battle fought entirely by aircraft in which the opposing fleets never sighted one another – four Japanese carriers were sunk by American carrier planes, and the strategic initiative in the Pacific changed hands. From that point the battleship was finished as the arbiter of naval power. The carrier became, and remains, the centrepiece of every blue-water navy: a sovereign airbase that can move 500 miles a day and project force anywhere an ocean reaches.