Essex Escort Carrier

The Essex Escort Carrier size class 5 multipurpose carrier with facilities to handle all classes of fighter craft and small vessels. Heavily armed and armored, the Essex can either operate in it's intended role of escorting larger capital ships and providing fighter cover, or operate independently with high survivability. Far more agile than it appears, the Essex can achieve maximum velocity in any direction quickly. Crew access to enter/exit the ship is centerline, bottom side, ramped access with dual mounted defensive guns for landings on hostile worlds.

Fighter and small vessel capacity testing performed with FA-7A (Scythe Scout) Light Fighter, F-17C (Hammerhead) Medium Fighter, and FA-32B Heavy Fighter, as well as A-14C-SAR for search and rescue and A-14C-U for utility craft. Provisioning for 16 fighters and 4 larger SVs is provided total. Recommended maximum capacity for efficiency is 12 fighter class craft, 2 utility craft, 1 SAR for 15 total. This allows some movement of craft inside the hanger deck.

This ship shines most in multiplayer use where multiple pilots can take advantage of the carrier as a base platform. For single player use, I recommend the Okita Class Battleship or Mako Class Battlecruiser as both have limited small vessel capacity more efficiently used by a single player. There is no facility on this ship for operating HVs from at all, it is a purely SV optimized carrier.

The Essex Escort Carrier is intended for use with the Fleet Tactical Battlegroup docterine as the primary source of fighter support for the battlegroup, central to the force distribution. Recommended escort options are Kodai class destroyer, Mjolnir class cruiser, Mako class battlecruiser, and/or Okita class battleship. Screening vessel escort duty recommendation is the Yunagi class frigate. Additional fighter basing support and close escort duty recommendation is the Farragut class OCAS.

All Fleet Tactical Battlegroup doctrine certified ships adhere to basic survival rules and are limited to size class 5 as the largest vessel, and scale downwards from there. While usable in single player survival, all Fleet Tactical Battlegroup doctrine ships shine brightest when used in multiplayer with a team of players. All ships are MP and PvP ready, having heavily firewalled internal components and dual bridges (one bridge for normal flight/PvE, secondary bridge internally for PvP called a "battle bridge").

Update: Quite a few minor cosmetic changes made, small functional upgrades as well. My apologies to the earliest adopters, the updated version has many corrections that make more sense.

Recommended small vessels for operations on this carrier: FA-7A Scythe Scout, Light Fighter https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1507376807 F-17C Hammerhead, Medium Fighter https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1517897389 FA-32B Predator, Heavy Fighter https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1489624732 A-14C-U Utility Craft https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1517897049 A-14C-SAR Search and Rescue https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1517896878

Inspired by Gamillon Tri-deck carriers from Starblazers/Space Battleship Yamato.