It shouldn't be about micromanaging respawn rates and it DEFINITELY shouldnot be about having to position the carrier to flank targets. That's the entire point of fighters and bombers as it is.
I wouldn't call that "micromanaging". Micromanaging would be if you're doing it per-wing, this is regular "managing"
You're pressing one button maybe every 10 seconds. Enough to be engaging since you need to pay attention and decide, but far from enough to be "micromanagement", if we take that term to imply an amount of controlling that's an unwanted hassle. I mean, I suppose that's subjective - maybe someone doesn't want to press
any buttons, right - but this seems generally reasonable.
Regarding flanking: if your carrier positioning doesn't matter very much (beyond "out of trouble" and "not too far"), then that's one less reason to fly it yourself. (I'll say, it'd be more interesting to see *why* you think that, and other things. As it is, all I can see is that you strongly don't think that should be the case (due to caps), but not what about it makes you feel that way, beyond it being the fighters' job. There's just not much discussion to be had without knowing about the "why" of things.)
I do see what you're saying regarding fighters doing this on their own, but to me that's far from being the "entire point" of fighters. If's just one more thing they could potentially do.
but the loss of strategic control of the fighters is a huge blow to wanting to fly a carrier, definitely not a help.
I don't understand what you mean. Why would you want to actually fly a carrier yourself if you have full strategic control over fighters anyway? Wouldn't you want to fly a more combat-capable ship where your ability to control it makes a difference to its performance, vs one where it doesn't?
Edit: just want to make clear, this "loss of strategic control" is definitely a loss in my book, no argument on that point at all. I just think that what we get in return will turn out better.
Alex did you consider giving players control over the Regroup-Engage toggle on a per-squadron basis? If there's a max of 6 squadrons anyway even the biggest carrier wouldn't get unwieldy (same size non-carriers have to potentially juggle far more than that in guns) and it's not like players would get thrown at that from the start. The cheaper carriers they'd pilot have a smaller squadron count anyway.
So either straight up toggle for each sqaudron (ctrl/alt + numbers 1-6?) or letting players group them in the refit screen using the weapon grouping interface so you can break your squadrons up into strike packages?
All your fighters, all your bombers, all your interceptors so you can keep your interceptors back home to defend while sending your bombers with escorts forward? or maybe group them into self-contained fighter+bomber groups, so you can send a smaller strike group to kill a frigate when you don't need all your squadrons away.
Hell if they worked more like weapons (so you can control individual squadrons or custom groups) you could let them remember what their target is even when the player switches targets: Player targets his own destroyer going in -> toggles his interceptor group to engage -> interceptor group goes and escorts that destroyer -> player targets enemy capital ship -> toggles bomber group to engage -> bomber group goes and attacks that capital ship, interceptor group stays on escort duty with the destroyer
If the player ever want to reassign a group, it's a simple 2 button presses: toggle to regroup, toggle to engage and it'll do whatever is appropriate for the players target at that point.
I did consider this, yes, more or less exactly as you're describing. There are several reasons why I don't think it'd work very well.
1) The hypothetical loadout where you've got both interceptors and a strike mix of wings is rather, well, hypothetical. Only the Astral has enough slots to even consider it, and it seems like it'd be a bad idea anyway - if you're going to use a strike group, you really want to maximize its potential. Giving up half or even a third of its capacity for some interceptor cover seems ill-advised. This isn't like weapons where you're flux-limited and aren't giving up much firepower when you put in some point-defense. You do get some ordnance points from mixing in the cheaper interceptors, but it doesn't seem worth it.
Imagine if flux didn't exist. Could you justify putting 2 flak on an Enforcer, vs loading it out with, say, 2x Heavy Mauler and 3x Hypervelocity Driver? And then consider that PD on carriers is still an option, as a fallback from not having interceptors. If the carrier is going for strike-type offense, there's not a lot of reason to mix 'em in. And if you're going for an interceptor-heavy carrier, you really want a healthy mix of interceptors. It goes back to that whole point about fighters scaling non-linearly, but this time on a per-carrier scale. If you're giving up half your strike wings, you're giving up way more than half your strike firepower, and likewise for interceptors.
2) I *really* don't want to add 5 more controls for selecting groups of fighters, and if we were to mix them up with weapons, 5 groups aren't quite enough. Potentially the way to go here control-wise would be to add a 6th group, and let you use them for either.
Basically, it seems like a lot of added complexity (and dev-time) for something that looks a lot like a fringe case. I could potentially see going the "6th group" route if this proves to be wrong, though.
This isn't really more complex than what a direct combat ship has to go through in a fight just new. But if you want players to flagship carriers, then there needs to be enough active gameplay to make that worthwhile - and just giving the carrier guns isn't really letting them fly a carrier, it's just letting them fly a combat ship that happens to have some fighters.
I think there's plenty of stuff to do. Non-combat carriers have a fighter-specific system to time the use of, there's positioning, there's engaging/regrouping, and then there's managing your weapons. Adding per-wing (or per-wing-group) controls would take the amonut of stuff to do above that of a combat ship, not bring it up to that level.
Personally, I don't end up toggling autofire on individual weapon groups very much in combat, and when I do, it's a bit clunky. Not something I want to add *more* of, for sure.