Officers are limited, and it can be hard to justify putting one on a destroyer in the endgame. Not when elite frigates exist who give more ECCM, more Nav bonus, more damage boost from wolfpack, all while being a similar DP and more survivable vs mobility based offense.
This made me wish that Destroyers recieved a different bonus from Wolfpack Tactics rather than a weaker version of what Frigates get.
Huh, yeah. Something completely different would be nice. What if frigates got damage vs things that are bigger, but destroyers got speed? After all, in terms of what a 'wolfpack' of hunter ships need to combat bigger ships: frigates need more damage as they are (theoretically) short on it, and they need more operational time. But destroyers have good amounts of damage, and they have good operational time (for normal fights, rather than 5 ordo endurance challenges), but they need to be able to keep up with the frigates and get away from hunter ships.
For numbers: Wolfpack for frigates is equivalent to... I want to say around 2 strong combat skills. Extrapolating that to just doubling helmsmanship would be +100% maneuvering and +20% speed, but that's not quite right, because destroyers don't really need much more maneuverability. Having the speed be percentage based also pushes the skill to be more useful for high tech, hit and run type destroyers. Which, honestly, might not be a bad thing? After all, it is a wolfpack, not an 'enforcer line of battle' pack. Otoh, it would be nicer to be universally applicable like the skill is for frigates.
Realigning the numbers, what about +10 flat speed and +20% speed? On a hammerhead that's +28 speed, +30 on a Medusa, +22 on an Enforcer. That would bring a Hammerhead from 90*1.3 (10% from CR, 20% from coordinated maneuver bonus) = 117, or 126 with helm, 131 with elite helm, to 90*1.5+10 = 145, or with elite helm 159. A medusa, fully buffed, would be 100*1.6+15 = 175 speed plus phase skimmer (without this hypothetical wolfpack change, but with eHelm, is 145). For contrast, a wolf with base 150 speed, with an officer, would be 215 - an omen 222 but not skimmer - so the Hammerhead/Medusa still can't keep up, but at least its closer.
The main issue I'd see with this change is that, if ordos have wolfpack, it would make fulgents more scary to have swarm and scintillas more annoying to chase down. Otoh... the remnant destroyers really aren't that scary to begin with, so a boost wouldn't be that bad.
I really like this. Destroyers don’t need the damage as much as frigates but as has been said many times, they need speed to be more viable (or defence but that’d be a problem during early game if buffed enough to matter late game). It probably should just a flat speed buff without a +% for simplicity.
It also makes sense for the slower destroyers to be given a speed buff to keep up with the faster weaker frigates.