Wait, wait. Too high? Six feels, to me, like the minimum acceptable value here - that's the point where I can apply full benefit to a single Astral if and only if I have no other fighters in my fleet at all.
...Of course, that is an Astral, so if you want it to not be higher than six, I can live with that, even if I'd prefer seven or eight just to allow for an Astral and some spare change. But being able to go over the limit with a single carrier would just feel wrong.
+50% fighter replacement rate is a
lot. Having a single ship exceed the limit actually feels fine to me, even good - I think it would really help sell the scale of that ship. (I.E. "wow, the Astral is such a big ship, it can't even get the full bonus", etc.) Anyway, if it ended up with, say, +30% or whatever, that's... still huge.
Currently, 6 bays is nothing, but perhaps Alex has decreased the scale of battles that even a single capital ship is a centerpiece of the fleet. We will see.
Right - plus, this incentivizes having a few carriers as part of your fleet, rather than it being a carrier mono-fleet.
The bigger issue I'm going to have with this skill is that Shepherds are going to needlessly dilute this bonus.
I'd presume that it doesn't count bays with built-in fighters? I don't, personally, in the end-game, use Shepherds or Ventures, but having fighter bonuses get eaten up by Tempests would be kindof annoying. (I think there was some comment from Alex that ships with only built-in fighters would neither count towards the limit nor benefit from the skill? But I don't remember where it was.)
I went back and forth on this, but ultimately, built-in decks both count towards the total and benefit from the bonus. It gets too weird otherwise, especially when you consider the breadth of possibilities for built-in wings in mods.
The Tempest is actually, I think, a fairly decent example where it'd be useful... well, more so than the Shepherd, anyway! Though I suppose it'd be useful as long as the Shepherd is useful as a combat ship, i.e. in the early game.
That is very interesting. I wonder how much that fix will change the AI behavior in heavy fighter spam situations. Certainly, it should make improve the odds for the gunship in 1 on 1 gunship versus carrier situations. It does make me wish we could test some of the AI modifications and fixes Alex has waiting for the next release, just to see the effects. AI is such a huge factor in this kind of testing.
I think it'll help in some specific cases, and not really have much of an impact in others. E.G. I don't think the Hammerhead is much affected by this, for example, due to the typically-"manual" guns being on hardpoints. For the Medusa, the "manual" guns would often both be able to focus on the same fighter, so it's much much more affected.
After a bit of testing, the Heavy Blaster Medusa seems to perform about the same vs a 2x Broadsword Condor, though the fight goes differently. Prior to the change, it would be able to "wear down" the fighters, then get in and do some damage to the Condor, before it bounced back with some fighters and ... either won or lost, very close either way. Now, it deals more consistent damage to the Condor throughout, but still wins or loses in a very close manner.