Skill Idea: Fleet Optimization
Years of discerning the exact capabilities of every ship in his/her command gives an experienced commander the ability to do more with less. Operating a fleet less than 50/30/20 Deployment Points gives the following bonuses,
Level 1: +5/10/15 maximum Combat Readiness (all ships in fleet).
Level 2: 15/25/35% reduction in CR Deployment Cost and Recovery Cost. 2/3/5x per ship bonus for Coordinated Maneuvers & Electronic Warfare.
Level 3: +5/10/15% Flux Dissipation (all ships in fleet).
The rationale here is that is a.) not all or none and b.) rewards small fleets with both campaign and combat bonuses. I also thought about the "deploy more to gain buffs" of EW and CM and worked those in as well. An intentionally tiny fleet could chain-deploy, likely have both speed and range advantages (if you capitalized on CM and EW), and win flux wars with otherwise equal ships. If you maxed all this out early, your initial fleet would be pretty powerful but as soon as you start adding, you would see less and less positive effect until you completely outgrow it and lose all the bonuses completely. This has the net effect of making the skill points useless. You might have to put in a warning or visual queue that the skill isn't working because your fleet is too big.
Hmm. If a smaller player fleet gets combat bonuses - sufficient to make it competitive with a larger player fleet - then that might obsolete larger fleets, no? It seems like trying to tune this using combat power is a bit dangerous. Not necessarily impossible, though.
It's the main reason I conceived of the system, really. Growth is a fundamental part of the progression of this game, but growth does not necessarily mean more/bigger ships. What if instead we can focus on building a small but elite taskforce?
Probably too intensive to implement at this stage of development, but I do hope some form of this makes it into the game.
There's really a lot to think through there, as far as implications on everything, and, as you say, it's quite a bit of effort - an entirely new progression system for ships.
But can it ever be a viable playstile choice? The way I see it, you're building a game about managing a grant fleet and building your own star nation. The (mid- and late-game) challenges in the game are all build with that in mind. Providing a host of entirely different challenges that can be overcome (only) by a small fleet would basically mean building content for another entire game!
That's why I suggested small-fleeting as a part-time job; players could still do Starsector's main thing while occasionally dipping their toes into other waters. You'd need much less content than you would for enabling it as a playstile all on its own.
Hmm, maybe? For example let's say a smaller fleet was able to get around *a lot* faster. Combine that with patrols and static defenses at your colonies, and it would enable you to effectively protect a more wide-spread set of colonies, giving you access to more desirable worlds. The point being that once your colonies get off the ground, a lot of the quantity-scaling-up can be offloaded from the player fleet onto patrols and stations. Offensive use of patrols/war fleets would also be something to consider.
Also, I *think* temporarily scaling up for a larger challenge feels better than scaling down from your "usual" fleet. You get to keep your core fleet and get some expendables, and there's the feeling of taking on a greater challenge. Scaling down feels more uncomfortable because you don't have the stuff you're used to having, and if the reason for doing it is something smaller, then it might also feel more like a chore.
Maybe something fairly uncomplicated like "the effect of SB depends on fleet size" could work. Have it give +10 burn w/o the skill point, and then it'd vary from say +3-5 to +10 depending. Would have to quantify "fleet size" in some elegant way, though. Fleet points are not player visible, and "number of ships" would favor large ships excessively. Could possibly be based on the sensor profile, hmm - then you'd have some added benefits to keeping that down, and it "makes sense" in that ships with degraded/augmented engines etc cause more disruption to the drive bubble etc.
