Why don't shuttles reduce the supply or fuel costs or burn speed of bigger ships? That's what they're for, aren't they? So that ships that are too big to efficiently maneuver for docking mid-flight can just have a shuttle ferry what they need.
I mean, I wouldn't imagine a fleet of onslaughts and one atlas would benefit from the battleships having to doc with the Atlas to top up while burning between stars.
And, the more I think about it the more I think a shuttle handling the mid-flight logistics of a large ship would irl act as a natural tug boost.
Like, imagine every ship has the same top burn speed (because the alternative doesn't make sense when top speeds are set by safety protocols, handwaves not withstanding), but the Venture, renowned for slowing fleets down, just has an awkward docking profile. I mean, look at it. It's engines are large and widely set apart and it looks like it's docking port is between them. It would be hard to dock with it mid-flight, and if you were piloting anything bigger than a shuttle and your docking port isn't on the front of your ship (and it wouldn't be), the only way to dock would be to rotate your ship, putting the front and back ends of your ship in the way of the engines, either inducing self-interfering drag at best or having to shut them down to prevent damage at best.
Which would make sense , since the venture very much is a fleet ship, heavy on missiles and wielding an auto factory that would sensibly take up all of the prime docking space in the middle of the ship, making the designers figure screw it, just put the docking port between the engines, ruining it's burn efficiency without a shuttle, so they can go all-out on making it an upper-midline missile boat.
So my thought: give all ships a 'logistical deficiency' stat, which is the problems the ship has running in a fleet and in practice is a representative of what bonus the ship would get from having a logistical support (shuttle) ship in the fleet. So for gross, awkward ships with bad burn rate the shuttle would dedicate itself to doing all it's docking duties itself so the Venture would never need to fall below max throttle to resupply or refuel, effectively boosting it's burn speed, or if a ship is way bigger or way more high tech than its cargo hold is capable of handling making any combat engagement cost a lot more cr than most, the shuttle could lend it it's cargo hold, allowing the crew of its client ship to choose what the shuttle holds in its stores so that they aren't limited by their ships own cargo space, reducing the CR cost of an engagement.
And, for ships that really aren't special enough to warrant the use of a shuttle, they could just get a supply use a month bonus that is near or just over the cost of running a shuttle, effectively negating the need to match every ship with a shuttle but also simultaneously eating the cost of the shuttles after a battle in which their reasons to be are lost, discouraging a player from scuttling their mercury the moment their venture is lost, but also still costing fuel to transport between systems giving a player a reason to consider scrapping their logistical train for parts if their need to have it has been lost and they're a long way from home.
Oh and the fact that the bonus a ship gets is the same regardless of the shuttle servicing it means it's up to the player what kind of support they want. None of this "defenseless or nothing" you get with the tug. If you need a shuttle for your atlas you could get one with triple pd tac lasers to keep strike fighters away, if the need comes up. If you have a Venture armed to provide prolonged long range support for a fighter screen you could make its shuttle a dual-reaper kite_a wingman, "Just in case." And if your shuttle is to cheapen the expense of fielding a xiv onslaught line-breaker, it's shuttle could be an unarmed mudskipper, because you can't be bothered.
Thoughts?
