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Definitely some neat ideas here.
Hullmods: Ah yeah it could be another mod potentially, or it is possible that the "no_drop, no_sell" tags aren't working in some situations. I checked a few markets and didn't see them but I didn't check every one. If you were using an old save, it could also be that the hullmods were placed in those places before that change took place. It was not in the first .95.1a update for this mod. At least not the ones you mentioned.
Having hullmods locked behind skills in combat was primarily just a way of artificially giving some fleetwide combat bonuses to combat without
actual fleetwide bonuses if that makes sense. It naturally limits power creep from adding too many bonuses since these were available prior to the change (and UI space is an issue when adding too many things to a skill) but I felt that combat needed something even beyond the powerful flagship bonuses. It also makes the choice of skills more interesting imo. Heavy Armor and Safety Overrides are both very powerful hullmods. Though Corrosive Warheads got a nerf this update, Corrosive and Ionized Warheads are just as powerful. This makes investment into combat more than just flagship investment without overtaking the other skill lines in usefullness. It keeps it primarily a "powerful flagship" skill line, but adds something to the fleet that also synergizes well with other skill lines in various ways. For instance, taking the OP bonus from Industry makes it easier to install those hullmods - or lets them be built in as a story point dump.
Shield Shunt: Interesting idea with it scaling based upon shield efficiency. That might be possible and I'll probably look into it. I agree that the numbers might change if I make them mutually exclusive since my real concern was with them stacking in the first place.
Carriers and tech levels meta: I'm generally aware of the tech issues with carriers and I've done a lot to try and address that in the recent updates. For a brief summary, high tech was meta until the last update - which it was then considered less useful than some of the legendary midline and low tech gunships. Low tech bombers are budget LPCs for certain builds lacking OP. Low tech carriers in particular get a bit less OP to work with in order to discourage too much high tech LPC investment. They have a smaller DP to compensate and usually but not always have more weapons over high tech carriers.
Your idea is what I originally hoped to do, but it's currently impossible with the API. You can only differentiate wings by type, not by tech level. That's why I had to make OP scale so much and adjust carrier OP pools from there.
To further develop the balance more, I've been tossing around the idea of making high tech a lot more durable but really increasing the replacement times. I just need to find a sweet spot where low tech feels useful because of staying power, midline is an upgrade to damage for additional OP but replaces less quickly, and high tech is the choice for extremely good effectiveness at the start of a battle but once you lose them they will gone for a long time. Thoughts?
Armor Maintenance Nanites: Very cool idea. I can't tie it to a new button press or anything like that, but I have a thought on this: what if I linked it to venting (player flagship only) so that active venting always assumes a full flux bar and venting takes 3 times as long but fully repairs armor over the process? That's similar to the original idea. Armor is tricky to work with code-wise though, so it might not be easy, and that is assuming that active venting can be captured in the available code. I know some inputs are. I'll do an effort analysis on it and go from there.
Thanks for your thoughts!
*Fixed up awkward wording and minor typos*
*EDIT*
Unfortunately, editing Shield Shunt to scale via shield efficiency will not work. It *technically can* via coding but I cannot communicate the bonus through the UI and so it realistically can't be implemented without causing confusion. The built in hullmods to ships and fighters is already a stretch as far as player communication is concerned. I have intentions to consolidate them eventually once balance is more defined, but for now adding additional layers to that is off the table, sorry!