Regarding upcoming skill changes and fleet diversity mechanics:
The bonus scales down linearly, so if it's 50% at 6, then it'd be 25% at 12.
And, yeah, I get what you're saying about Shepherds/Ventures. Kind of want to see how it actually works out; I mean, losing a bit of the bonus isn't a huge deal, and just in general I'd expect the various fleetwide bonuses to be less-than-maxed-at-all-times.
That said, I could see maybe adding a tag for certain wings or ships that make their bays not count (or get the bonus). But that's getting pretty off-topic for this thread.
The tag would likely be useful. It would also be ideal to have a way to override the cap before degradation of the bonus begins (or rate of decay but linear degradation means the cap is the most important component) - but, honestly, even if it didn't I don't think it would matter
too much as an initial theory. (At least for my use case, anyway, the API already lets me give free OP fighters/weapons in some circumstances so that might be enough to warrant a weakened fleet-wide bonus to simply have higher numbers for the *damage impulse* factor or, even, increased sustainability of many more bays at a much lower rate.) Just giving overall impressions/theoretical feedback. For general mod-ability, access to this stat would be sweet!
At the end of the day, I am looking forward to the skill revamp and the idea of increased fleet roles and diversity in hullsize/ship types.
Elite skills seem really interesting as a concept! Besides the expanding lore, I am really excited to see how elite skills work.