hmm. can't say i agree with most of this.
1. (D) mods are so severe that they frequently make a ship really inferior in combat, not just "worth less".
well, yeah. sorry if this question sounds rude, but: isn't that the point? most recoverable ships aren't meant to be worth using, unless you invest into the related industry skills that reduce the number and/or effect of d-mods. without those skills, most ships aren't worth using, although every now and then you'll still find one that is (because of having very few d-mods, or ones that don't have as much of an impact on that particular hull).
(i'm not entirely sure what you mean by "inferior, not just worthless" though. isn't "worthless" way below in usefulness to "inferior"?)
But you still have to give them a full crew and lose a full crew when they (usually) die.
you do have to give them a full crew, yes, but you do
not have to lose said full crew. the Blast Doors hullmod reduces all casualties to half all by itself already, and rank 1 of Safety Procedures reduces these by another 30% for the entire fleet. these stack additively btw, so in combination they will reduce casualties to just 20% of the base number. rank 1 of Damage Control also has a similar effect, though that requires the ship to be piloted by either yourself or an officer with that skill (and i'm not sure how it stacks with these other two modifiers).
2. Meanwhile, the (D) ships eat the full complement of Crew and aren't logistically superior-enough to justify keeping them around.
imo, crew requirement is usually not a particularly meaningful consideration for whether a ship is worth keeping and using, or at least not past the very-early-game where money is often really tight. and most ships (including d-ships) have significantly higher max crew than min crew anyway, so keeping a decent reserve of crew in case of losses isn't too difficult. and even a single passenger liner / troop transport will add a large amount of additional capacity, if needed.
3. (D) ships sell for so little that they're usually worth less than the Supplies and Heavy Machinery we'll get by scrapping them, which is a bit immersion-breaking.
while i do agree they currently sell for too little (see
this thread), there's also a risk of making ship-selling too profitable. being able to get a good amount of money for hauling the occasional, well-preserved prize ship back to port would be nice, but constantly hauling around all (or even just a large portion of) the ships you're able to recover could very quickly become a chore. if a ship is too far gone, i'd say it only makes sense that it's better to just scuttle it right then and there for any still useable parts, rather than investing time into bringing it back to travel-worthy condition and selling the whole ship at the nearest market -- where it will most likely wander right into the trash compactor anyway.
4. With 1, 2 and 3, the idea that we'd fly around in "junk fleets" as a motif seems not to work at all in practice. I simply sell them, unless they're ultra-rares that I'm willing to pay ridiculous prices to restore. There isn't a middle ground.
i disagree. i do find the occasional ships worth using even without skills (especially combat-unworthy Cerberi for a bit of additional cargo space in the early-game). and with the skills, i believe building a fleet that uses recovered rust buckets for a large portion of its combat power can also be worthwhile (though i haven't been able to actually test this beyond the mid-game yet).
if way more recoverable ships were worth recovering to sell them, doing so could get boring rather quickly, i think. and if recovered d-ships used for battle were much closer in power to a new, undamaged hull, it would rather lessen the meaning of allowing for a different combat/fleet playstyle through the related industry skills.
i haven't had the chance to test everything related to this thoroughly yet. but from blog post, changelog, and my own experience so far, i believe the system is in a good spot. that's not to say it doesn't deserve any balance adjustments here and there, but i do quite like it, all in all. :]
Some of the D-mods do need to be reduced in severity, yea. But do remember there's an Industry skill that reduces all the D-mod penalties by half at level 3, and that makes D-ships so much easier to use - that might need to get nerfed a bit.
yeah, i was thinking the same. -50% seems too much. in a large fleet with lots of floating rust buckets, i think -30% would already be quite worth the skillpoint.
the same goes for rank 2 of Field Repairs: half of
all hull
and armor damage repaired immediately after the battle, at no cost, for the entire fleet...? wow. o_o
i think it should either be something like 20-30%, or only repair hull damage, not armor.
the Damage Control rank 2 perk is also only 25%, and only for a single ship. it's probably meant more as a bonus to the main perk of increased weapon & engine repair speed, but that disparity still seems rather extreme to me.