I can't respond in full detail at the moment, but a couple points that stood out from the above couple posts I wanted to respond to:
1) Markets - yeah I liked how markets were handled in .6 the best, honestly. Then it limited weapons/ships to mostly whatever the hulls/variants of the market's faction utilized, and locked all the good stuff (tier 2 and above) behind that faction's military market. Then the black market had some of that tier 2 and 3 stuff, and a few other things at complete random it seemed. It had a nice feel to it. The current market system seems like it just randomly pulls weapons based on their tier and rarity across all markets evenly, and doesn't do important things like guarantee point defense weapons are always available.
2) DnD is exactly the kind of dynamic I was going for, yeah. I play a lot of RPG's as well as RTS, and that has definitely been an influence for this entire mod.
3) AI assault/support pairs or task force groups - You can do this pretty reliably actually. Keep in mind there are increased command points in this mod, so:
Step 1: Select your assault group and tell it to escort a support ship. The recommendation for this is that the assault escorts are either a class smaller or at least fairly faster than the support ship. 0-flux boosting helps this a lot with assault and strike ships though, so you will be surprised what you can get away with there. Do this for each support ship in your fleet.
Step 2: Select the support/strike ships (Only the support/strike ships, mind you) you want to have target a priority enemy ship and right click that enemy vessel. The support ships will focus either their missiles or fighter waves on that ship, and strike vessels will close for a salvo.
Why this works well:
- The key here is that the AI is very aware of when it is "flankable" and will behave much more cautiously when it has that liability unless an eliminate command is explicitly given. That's why numbers are so important because the larger group has the flank advantage and can sometimes outright intimidate the other side into being overly defensive and not using their strike weapons until its too late. Escorts, however, provide flank defense the AI is aware of, and even the minor distraction of having to briefly engage an escorting frigate can buy enough time to make the AI confident enough to fully engage their weapons. This can often mean the difference between an attack killing a target (optimal outcome) or merely overloading it and hoping the long range missiles can get through the enemy fighter screen and finish it as it limps off. The escorts for your long range support ships are to ensure that they don't get similarly surrounded and sniped while your "away" at the enemy battle line.
4) Carrier weakness/uniqueness from the large fighter nerf that's coming will be addressed because they will all have built-in hullmods reducing fighter replacement time substantially- both to give them the actual sense of being a carrier and slightly weaken the fighter strength of standard assault vessels so comparison between the two classes can be more easily drawn. It isn't as noticeable for frigates or destroyers since the majority of them can't field fighters if they aren't carriers, but the lines get really blurred above that. Cruisers meant to be hybrids (like the midline Eagle or Megalith, for instance) will still feel that way because of their ship systems. For many carriers, limited ammo being a factor will also greatly increase the strength of the majority of carrier-based ship systems in comparison to the current release, so that will also make them stand out more.
5) ITU can stack in this mod with the built-in range modifiers to make some ships unique (Paragon, Megalith, Astral and Apogee), or the general range modifiers of cruisers and capitals because they need them to feel as powerful as they do.
6) The Dominator is terrible when flanked and not recommended as a stand alone ship so that's probably why you didn't have much luck in the simulator. It benefits the most from larger fleet actions where it can be supported, and there is shines, as it can outmatch or keep pace with almost anything of its class no matter the tech level. Impressive for such an old geezer, I promise you.
As a side note, improving shields is useful, but its shields are also terrible because it is low tech and from back when shields were new. Rely on them against fighters, but rely on your armor and massive forward dps combined with your Ammo Feeder to engage other ships.
To be honest, I more fear a Dominator catching me over-extending with its guns in range far more than an Aurora or Eagle. If it engages its ship system, even at low flux I'll probably be lucky to escape with my armor intact, if I escape at all.
*Edit* Actually for a really good example of this, try out the "Last Hurrah" mission. If you are unlucky enough to get the spawn where the Onslaught actually comes in first (doesn't always happen) escorted by the two Dominators and a frigate/destroyer screen, you will see just how hard a nut that can be to crack through a frontal assault.