I think I broke the game.

[TacticalPteridactyl]

I thought kiting was op. Space planes for the win... right? I mean, it was a little tedious, but the only effective counter the AI could muster was raiders. But I take it back. Maybe it is OP as far as tactics go, but...

Assault Carriers.

Holy f'in shit, dude. I just load up my fleet onto a few of these puppies and there ain't no blob nor clever maneuvering which can beat it. Short range, sure, but their cloak gives em first strike on just about anything, and I don't need to feed my economy into unit replacement anymore. It all goes towards turrets and filling APCs. They'll steamroll just about anything, and when things get hot, it's simple enough to pull out and repair. It feels like a dirty little cheat.

I'm gonna go shower.

[Aklyon]

They also repair the units inside them.

[FluidDynamite]

Yeah, assault carriers stuffed with units are pretty ridiculous. Their effective-DPS is sky high since usually your fleet would lose damage as ships get taken out, but with these guys their damage is consistent and good enough to take on decent sized fleetblobs and high level turrets without sustaining basically any material loss. That and the points you've stated, the cloak/alpha strike capability, auto free fast repairs, and blazing fast speed makes me personally feel that they're borderline OP for what they cost (in K and in metal).

I actually have a personal house rule to never shoot stuff with assault transports due to this reason. Doomdropping your entire fleet on top on an AI emplacement may not be as efficient as blowing them up with the assault transports themselves, but sure is a lot more fun.

Dunno, perhaps the current assault transport can stand to be moved to Mark III, and a extra tier be added between the current assault transport and vanilla transport, which won't have the ability to fire but keeps the other toys (cloaking, speed, repair in friendly territory, etc).

[Shrugging Khan]

I like to load them up with bombers or, even better, with Youngling Tigers. The price of a carrier filled with younglings still isn't that high, and the ability to take out key targets even more quickly isn't to be sneezed at.

[raptor3312]

I've treated the carriers as the tip of my spear. I have them run in torwards high priority targets, guns blazing in all directions. When they finally die, my fleet carries the momentum and finishes the job. Of course not so good when you forget to go after the ion cannons first and your fleet is reduced to scrap and is pretty much thrown right back at you.

[Ansopedi]

Assault transports seem way too good for their knowledge cost, and what makes it even worse is that currently they do not lose their attack even after unloading.

Blazing around with them to clear ions and other stuff feels cheesy as hell and is way too easy. Personally i would like Assault transports to lose their attack. All the other stuff they gain (another jump without dieing, repairing stuff inside, instant unloading, much more hp, cloaking) is almost too good for their cost even without them being able to fight well too.

[Aklyon]

Assault transports seem way too good for their knowledge cost, and what makes it even worse is that currently they do not lose their attack even after unloading.

Blazing around with them to clear ions and other stuff feels cheesy as hell and is way too easy. Personally i would like Assault transports to lose their attack. All the other stuff they gain (another jump without dieing, repairing stuff inside, instant unloading, much more hp, cloaking) is almost too good for their cost even without them being able to fight well too.

They aren't really assault things if they have no attack, though.

Also, with them having an attack, they're like a human carrier. I like that, although with all of the similar posts here I wouldn't be against a K cost increase, I guess.

[damiac]

Agreed, assault carriers are absurdly good for 3000 knowledge.  At 10000 I'd still unlock them first, but I think that'd be a more reasonable price point.

They should also cost a lot more to build.  The energy cost seems right, but the mineral cost and time should be a lot higher. 

[TechSY730]

I hesitate to bring this up and make them even "more broken", but IIRC, there is a very abusable bug where unloading an assault transport doesn't actually decrement their firepower until a full game sync (basically only upon a reload of a save game)...

That might be throwing off subjective analysis some.

[damiac]

Yep. I used that bug to my advantage for a little while at the beginning of my 9/9 game by putting my entire small fleet into one transport, unloading it, putting them into the next one, ect, so I had all my assault transports at full power.  Then I'd send them into the neighboring systems to take them out singlehandedly, without even needing to have my actual fleet.

But, even without that bug, it doesn't take that long in a normal game to have enough ships to fill 10 assault transports.  So while the bug does increase their broken-ness a little bit, fixing it wouldn't solve the problem. 

I'm not sure if they're so absurd in a game with auto-aip increase though.  Taking a planet down with assault carriers is quite a bit slower than doing it with fleet ships.