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[Ishman]

I think they're awesome - I enjoy using them, but. They present issues in that the use of them is purely a player-facing thing.

The AI fleets don't need to make profits, they don't have to worry about purchasing fuels and supplies, just that they've got enough stored that if they make it into the Zone of Realization around the player where they move from abstracted to real, they don't run out of supplies before messing with the player.

Civilian ships don't have enough ordnance points to have a combat setup (weapons, vents) and campaign hullmods.

Yet this doesn't matter for the AI fleets as almost none of them affect them (yes, it would be vastly annoying to have a hostile fleet with all augmented drives), which means that any of the combat freighters they field have what is an effective advantage of 40-80% more OP dedicated to combat stats than your vessels, if you even bothered to outfit them.

I believe some changes could be made to them so that while they still might not do anything useful for the AI, it would feel much more fair to the player to actually take advantage of them.



Basically - every ship could get a paperdoll like equipment slot system, with engines, armor, interior (cargo/fuel/crew), and so on. More exotic slots would be available on more specialized ships, surveyors, salvagers, tugs (which I'd like to see more of, as they're a neat concept but enormously overpriced for the player to use simply do to their overhead eating your cargo space), but everything would have a basic layout.
Larger vessels get more slots, whether it be additional space to mess about with efficiency or multiple exotic slots to play about with.
These would default to sensibly desirable hullmods that, if the AI fleets were in the hands of another human, you'd expect to see - expanded holds, increased engine speed, efficiency, and so forth. Thus, on ships that you salvage, you'll actually find loadouts similar to what a player would field.
Changing them would require being docked and knowing the hullmod blueprints like you currently do, but instead of costing OP, installing them is a credit cost.
And finally, they wouldn't immediately require a large additional amount of work from modders as each hull class (and type of ship tag with freighter/tanker/combat) would come with the default slot layout and loadout.

There's of course tons of other ways to quick and dirty make them not so imbalanced towards benefiting the AI, making anything tagged with campaign hullmod cost 0 OP, but I feel that there's lots of room here to add more fun customization options with an implementation like this.

Also I just really want to be able to spend credits to buy OP so I can actually fit my Apogee with guns. I love flying it, but it can barely fit front weapons and it's mediums with two combat hullmods, let alone actually have anything in its missile and PD slots.

[Megas]

I suggested campaign hullmods cost no OP because they take your campaign mod limit, but most (that posted) thought that was overpowered, even if the limit was lowered to one.  (I can understand Solar Shielding since that one gives -20% energy damage, but that can be split just like old Automated Repair Unit into new Automated Repair Unit and Efficiency Overhaul.)

Aside, I like to squeeze in Reinforced Bulkhead on most of my ships because I do not want to lose them permanently after combat.  Even if I have plenty of money and blueprints to replace them all, I do not want to risk losing valuable and possibly unique cargo because my Apogee or something that died fighting happened to be carrying the football.

[Ishman]

Yeah, there's a ton of campaign hullmods I'd like to be able to regularly use on all of my ships, but besides one or two of the cheap ones - I can't take any of them except on combat capitals with their OP costs scaling the way they currently do.

All of the cruiser and capital hauling ships have less than 80 OP to play around with - nowhere even close to enough to make them fit to take on a frigate and still have any campaign layer mod when they vary from 15 to 40 OP. It wouldn't be so bad if augmented engines & efficiency overhaul isn't so much better than using tugs with how crushing they are in opportunity cost (useless in combat, useless in campaign beyond the +burn they provide, and expensive).

I hope some others can chime in with more elegant ways to implement them too, I just threw this out there as a crude example that I'd hoped might inspire some discussion.

[Agalyon]

I definitely agree with the idea, stuff like Reinforced Bulkhead feels mandatory, and much like supplies, fuel, etc, its something the AI never has to worry about. I think its partly an assumed balance for having the player vs the AI, but its really irritating that they can throw themselves at you without such worries. I kind of feel like the AI should be using things like that to help balance it out, or alternatively have to face some kind of consequence for using all those supplies and only mounting weapons, and never having to interact with the tactical layer.

Thats the real problem imo, the advantage of having to never care or mod for the campaign layer. But, its hard to say. I think making them cost 0 is wrong because its removing player choice, but I think making the AI have to use them is much better.

[FreedomFighter]

Feel the same. The player needs to spend some OP for those hullmods while AI can ignore it completely. I just wish campaign one doesn't take the main OP and we can have another solution for campaign only hullmods that don't directly affect ship combat capability. The ARU and Efficient Overhaul already been separated into two so one is for combat only and another is campaign only. I'm temping to fiddle with javascript just to change level Loadout Design to output more OP bonus so I can use campaign hullmods without it drain on my combat OP.

[Megas]

More OP means more OP for combat stuff too, instead of campaign stuff.  Some ships, especially carriers, are OP starved even without campaign mods (and with Loadout Design 3), which was why I suggested the campaign mods cost no OP because the cost is the two campaign mod limit.

AI not only ignores logistics, but also fleet cap, which they routinely violate.

[FreedomFighter]

It is just bandaid jury-rigged situation for me. I could just use that extra default 10% from Loadout 3 and not use the rest for combat stuff and put into campaign hullmods. I still wish there is campaign OP and it will bleed into general OP when you overuse it. Other ppl might have a better idea than this. I'm too dumb to think of anything else currently.