Carriers are the lowest level of combat-oriented capital ships. They typically cost anywhere from 800 million ISK to 1.2 billion ISK on the market, and they take around 800 million ISK in minerals to make.
A carrier's offensive capabilities are centered around super-heavy combat drones called fighters, which take 5000 m3 of hangar space and, therefore, cannot be fielded by any other type of ship in Eve Online except for motherships. Each fighter for each faction specializes in one form of damage, Amarr EM, Caldari KIN, Gallente THERM, and Minmatar EXP. Each fighter does a baseline of 75 damage and damage increases with increased skills. A carrier has no turret or launcher slots, which makes them incapable of fielding offensive ship-based capital weaponry. However, they can fit smartbombs or energy draining modules that could support the fighters in combat. Carriers usually need smaller ships to back them up when they are alone in space because of their bulk, slow targetting, and the inability of fighters to hit smaller targets. Usually, carriers have from 80000-100000 m3 of drone space, and can support up to 10 fighters without modules, and 15 with modules.
A carrier's defense revolves around capital-class defense modules, such as Capital Armor Repairers or Capital Shield Boosters.