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« on: March 03, 2024, 09:34:17 AM »
So ideally a player running, say, a Neural-Linked Radiant should be able to, in the pre-battle dialog options, swap to that Radiant as their flagship and then deploy it - or even just deploy the Radiant and then transfer control to it without deploying their flagship.
However, Alex has previously noted that, due to low-level implementation details, this is unlikely to happen.
Thus, this alternative suggestion: When determining player DP, particularly when allied fleets are present, the game currently assigns the player a minimum of "enough DP to put their flagship on the field". I'd suggest that, for a player with Neural Link, "the player's flagship" should count both linked ships.
(Specifically, this should be enough DP to field the player's actual flagship, whatever ship that is, plus enough to field the single most expensive other ship that has Neural Interface or Neural Integrator installed and no assigned officer.)
And as an aside, could we get the Neural Link hullmods to have a small bit of added functionality? It shouldn't be an issue to add "+15% max CR if the player has Combat Endurance and +100% missile ammunition if the player has Missile Specialization". Obviously, these bonuses would turn off if the ship also has an officer, or if the player specs out of Neural Link.
And yes, that means that a canny player could combine this with Support Doctrine, using the NL hullmods as cheap buffs to un-officered ships. Which, given that Support Doctrine is, uh, not that great compared to just using the plentiful supply of officers you naturally get access to... I feel that's fine. Still, if that's considered problematic for some reason, just use the standard "these bonuses scale down the more ships they apply to" thing; +7.5% max CR and +50% missile ammo if the player's fleet has two un-officered ships with NL hullmods, etc.
