One question though; I am not sure if it is mentioned and I did not see, but will adding fighters ships on carriers will accordingly affect the daily supply cost? How will having fighters affect the carrier's combat readiness? Will having 5 fighter wings lower CR much faster or maybe if you have fighters will higher ordnance point will spend more CR than the cheaper in OP ones?
(Uhhhh I am not sure if the above counts as one question)
In any case, it
does have one answer: there's no interaction there at all.
I did actually consider having fighter wings increase the deployment cost of a carrier, both in CR and supplies, with carriers having a lower base deployment cost. It gets unwieldy, and you get weird edge cases like wanting to uninstall a fighter wing for a smaller battle to save a few supplies, and since they (in that hypothetical setup) don't cost OP, refitting like that wouldn't cost you CR, so it'd be free. So you'd be swapping out fighters constantly to micromanage costs.
And then if refitting fighter slots did drop CR despite them not costing any OP, that'd be something to explain too. Plus how much a wing adds to a carrier would have to be dependent on the carrier's base deployment cost, and that's yet one more thing to explain and keep track of.
It just comes out a lot cleaner with OP costs.
On the one hand, that's neat.
On the other hand... geez, I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly why that bothers me.
I think... I think it comes down to some ships making sense to have a bit of fighter capacity, and others not? Like the originally-mentioned Hammerhead w/ Talons is kindof a classic, but putting any fighters on a Medusa or a Sunder just doesn't feel right to me - even though those latter ships have significantly more ordnance points to spare and are thus better able to handle the costs of a hull mod. Still, you could get there from the other direction - give a few ships fighter slots and a "limited flight decks" hull mod that increases the cost of fighters and makes them a choice rather than a no-brainer "this ship should have fighters installed".
Honestly, the most use I'd expect this to see - at destroyer size, anyway - is on freighters and other civilian ships. +100% to refit time is pretty crippling, but a cheap-to-deploy ship that can provide a one or two use bomber wing could be decent in a pinch. Taking points away from a combat destroyer, though, might not make a lot of sense.
In terms of it feeling "right", hmm. I kind of see what you're saying, but the basic in-fiction assumption here is that destroyer-and-above ships have decent-sized shuttle hangars as a matter of course, it's just a logistical requirement - probably because these ships don't land on planets (at least, not routinely) and need these for resupply etc.
Huh. That's interesting... maybe this should be a hull mod that doesn't increase in cost for larger ships, then? A flat, say, 20 OP to gain one fighter bay?
Right now, it goes up, but not as steeply as most other hullmods do - it's 10/15/20. Don't want it to be so low as to be a no-brainer on larger ships, and it *is* better on them.
I meant the "Point Defence Jammer"
Ahhh, gotcha. I probably should've figured that one out
Hmm. Mmmmaybe? Depends on if David ends up drawing an icon for it.
I could actually see this being useful on a ship that intends to go up close and launch a missile barrage. Although PD shooting at the ship would likely intercept those missiles anyway. Might be a bit too specialized! Plus any ship that's inside PD range of a target that needs to be shot with missiles is probably in very deep trouble.
being forced to pilot a carrier if u want controllable fighters??
Well, you could tell the
carrier to attack what you want attacked
Gotta think outside the box!
i'm also very nervous about the no permanent change for killing fighters and infinite fighters on the battlefield
I think the "replacement rate" business should take care of it because it sort of dynamically adjusts. Even if a certain fighter happens to be a bit too strong, it can't just keep attacking or the replacement rate will dip so low as to make it bad anyway, no matter how good it was to start with.
@ Alex: I thought about simply fighter capability on a ship with battleship-grade armor and firepower, even if it is not as much as BSG. BSG had two hangars, along with either big lasers and missile tubes (original) or a bunch of flak guns and maybe other ballistics (2003).
Aha, gotcha.
As for Starsector...
I am not sure I will put a fighter bay on a battleship. I like sinking all of those OP into better weapons, hullmods, and vents to make the battleship into a death machine. (i.e., Onslaught that can solo the simulator with no hull damage.) On the other hand, I wonder if Paragon with a hangar would make a better Odyssey (in terms of combat performance) than the Odyssey. (Before Astral got six bays, Odyssey was a better carrier than Astral.)
Yeah, 20 OP + whatever the fighter costs is not at all trivial.
The other downside of the hullmod is no "fast" replacements for returning bombers, btw. That's a pretty big deal - for example, the Odyssey can launch a Dagger wing, have it fire off torpedoes from close range, return for refit, and fire another round probably within 10-20 seconds. A Paragon-with-converted-hangar would have to wait something like 50 seconds just to get the full Dagger wing re-launched.
(I might end up buffing the hullmod a bit; it's fairly brutal right now.)
Just remembered: Back in the day, (I think) Hound had enough hangar points for a single wing of Talons. Maybe Hound's system could be upgraded from flares to fighters (although flares are occasionally useful). Similarly, Vigilance might have had some hangar points too, but I am not sure about that one.
I don't know about that - the scale for frigates just doesn't feel right for fighters, based on all the illustrations we have.
Wohoo! I was already in bed, for this I had to get up again! Also: Congrats to Tartiflette for a highly successful suggestion 
For drones, it would probably be the cleanest solution to convert them all into in-build LPCs.
Yeah... I just have a soft spot for the Shepherd. And the mining drones feel too large for it, though perhaps if the Borer became a wing instead... well, it could be a "later" thing, as it's not essential right now.
While fighters are ordered to regroup, the replacement rate holds steady if it would otherwise go down.
Doesn't that mean that the ideal way to use a carrier is in close combat with a regenerating deathball of angry fighters around it? That doesn't seem quite... appropriate.
I can see how it sounds that way, but it really doesn't work out in practice. Even with a combat carrier like the new Mora (or the Heron), fighters on escort duty are not effective at the carrier's normal weapon range. They're great defending against other fighters, but vs a ship? Basically, doing this just makes them sitting ducks and prevents them from performing a proper coordinated attack where they're strongest.
For example, say you're flying a Heron and you've got a bunch of Warthogs (which have 3x Light Mortar now), and are fighting a Dominator. First of all, cozying up to a Dominator is a really bad idea, it'll chew you up in seconds, Warthogs or not. Second, you want the Warthogs attacking constantly, which means doing attack runs on the Dominator and letting them engage - when ordered to regroup, they just won't spend that much time actually firing on it, as much of the time it'll be too far for them to attack. So, yeah, you'll be replacing them quickly, but they won't be doing much at all for you.
Just noticed this, and I like it. I take it Command Experience skill is gone or repurposed to do something else. All crew levels did was make my ships' CR low early in the game before 80% became the baseline later. I guess they are all vets for 70% now?
Haven't touched skills yet, but yeah, that'll change. And yes, 70% is the baseline, though I need to change that to be just inside "no bonuses" territory, I think.
Another thing I noticed on the Mora screenshot: Minor Enemy Presence hint. I guess that helps demystify some of the peak performance rules.
Yep.
