JS Kaga DD-184 Carrier

My most labored ship to date, I'd like to share my carrier, a near replica of the JS Kaga, a Japanese Defense Force Carrier. This is a proposed future version carrying F-35s as well as Helicopters. The fighters, helos and missiles aboard are all of my own design as well. Features: 18: F-35B Fighter Aircraft (9 on deck, 9 in hangar) 2: MH-60 SAR (Search and Rescue) Complex ACB systems to manage the aircraft such as automatic launch, recovery of damaged craft, docking on spin blocks that prevent on deck collisions and relaunch after repairs. Powerful Phalanx and SeaRAM CIWS. Lightweight and maneuverable capital ship with a top speed of 40. Constructs additional SAR Helis when the flagship suffers damage. Many hidden strengths to preserve the ship's style but bring it on par with high end craft. Extreme range large missiles and rear torpedoes. Overlaying shields that activate only the sides facing enemy units to save on power demands and a superb LAMS that can even shoot down rail gun shots. Controls: 5: Raise the main elevator 6: Lower the main elevator 7: Manual override for launching docked aircraft 8: Manual override for docking aircraft 9: Activates the Nuclear Option (Download this!: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2306380058) Extensive decoration to mimic the real life JS Kaga. Many small details such as pad eye textures on the deck, hidden or blended detection parts. A warning! Operating costs for this are high. You best be running a small nation at least to be able to afford an aircraft carrier of this size and power. It's not a super carrier but it's still a large capital ship with powerful engines, defenses and flight operations. Carriers in FTD have a bad reputation as not effective. In extensive battle testing I can confirm this one is effective. I have defeated The Megalodon in combat several times. The carrier relies heavily on it's speed, extreme defenses and maneuverability against large threats. Outpacing dangerous battleships, firing long range large missiles and torpedoes and having many angry fighters buzzing around pushing enemy defenses to their limits. If all else fails, soften up a target with some World Killer Industries Mc'Nukes. Hitting 9 on your keyboard while at the helm will spawn a pair of budget nuclear cruise missiles with a five second delay between construction of the pair. They will immediately soften up that hard target and with all the aircraft in the air they are not likely to be focused on. Make sure you download the blueprint for those here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2306380058 Tips: Begin a combat as far away as you can. Carriers are not sluggers, they rely on staying away from enemy fleets! You can change the weapons systems on the carrier and the fighters to whatever is most suitable to what enemy you are facing. Sometimes in battle one or more of the essential ACBs could be destroyed. You may notice a full health fighter hanging on deck for more than 5 seconds. Usually this means the launching ACB is currently destroyed however you can quickly launch the fighter by tapping number 7 on keyboard. Docking is a tricky beast. I've tried many things and settled on a complicated ACB system to automatically self manage docking and launching. Fighters on their own will self dock when damaged as long as the ACB on the fighter survives. The carrier will cycle launches of full health docked aircraft every 5 seconds. Even if a fighter loses it's ACB there is a chance it will be auto docked by the carrier. This is unlikely as the only way I've found of doing so is checking nearest construct health which often isn't the damaged fighter. The carrier will do the best job it can to keep fighters in the air and working. This is all totally automated but some micro management strategic game play can help. Manually ordering a damaged fighter to dock and nudging it back to range to manually order a SAR Helo to fix it, at least to the point it's docking ACB is repaired. The fighters themselves have minor abilities to repair each other to keep them going or salvage a mostly destroyed friendly fighter. The F-35s are all programmed for individual flying altitude to limit collisions. Each plane is 25 firepower worth of missiles in current config and perfectly stable in flight. The planes are designed to return to the carrier at the end of combat. The planes will not fire weapons at low altitude, so they won't unleash missiles on the deck. Of course you can customize what you want on the ship including turning this ACB off so that they circle the carrier on CAP. The MH-60's are SAR. They are using ZerothAngel's LUA code to operate as repair craft. They will follow friendlies and focus on fast repairs. The carrier will spawn extras if it suffers damage so they can keep it at 100%. They fly pretty well at a stable altitude and can be manually ordered to move around the battlefield as well. Future plans? Anti-Sub Helicopters. Learn Breadboarding and LUA to improve aircraft management. Keep this updated with the frequently patched FTD. A bigger ship.