Hey Meso, thanks for the feedback!
Originally I set the hullsize to fighter like you suggested via script, because I wanted it to be affected by things such as that funky fighter nerf from Kadur Remnant, carrier buffs, etc, and the various other effects like that, but I ran into a bunch of issues doing this:
- No visible HUD status bar (the one that hovers over ships)
- AI would often times ignore the ship and prioritize defending against anything bigger instead, even though threat-wise it'd be better flickering shields against the 'fighter'. for AI fighters this isn't an issue since they're pretty dumb, but it felt almost exploity under player control
- AI controlled versions could not be commanded, appearing only as green blips on the command screen, and only taking action when enemies got close
- Ships with fighter hullsize crash the game when retreating
With MagicLib I could have easily addressed the first issue, and just nerfed weapons for the second, but the last two points discouraged me from pursuing that route. Since the fighter hulls disappear from the command screen,changing flagships meant you couldn't swap back to it, otherwise I could have possibly circumvented it with some scripting, and from what I gleaned from alex, the last issue is pretty much unavoidable. So while switching hullsize was what I would have prepared, it doesn't seem possible without bringing about even bigger issues.
I've done a lot of playtesting, and outside of ship systems that should affect it logically not actually doing so, I haven't had any game-breaking issues besides AI doing weird things with collissions since they still see it as a frigate, and thats mostly on the part of the einhander refusing to pass through ships. I don't know if there's any alternative I could pursue to address those points, though.