I feel like the automated ships skill is extremely cool in practice, but has way too little of an impact compared to the alternative. Just 30 points means that with just 3 [REDACTED] version of the kite with 3 gamma cores, i'm already at full capacity... sure i could take a bigger ship with reduced CR, but as much strong a single redacted ship can be, other than the novelty, giving 10 to flux capacitors and vents, and an extra hullmod to every single ship is just too good to pass out. My suggestion would be to raise the maximum points, even doubling it, reducing the points cost of the gamma core while increasing beta and alpha cores cost.
I think it would be balanced if you could have a single good ship with a good commander and enough leftover points for a couple of smaller ships with trash commanders, or a lot of smaller ships with trash commanders , or some medium sized ship with good commanders etc, opening up to various combinations that are impossible right now
Thank you for the feedback, I'm keeping an eye on this. Have you spent much time running with a Radiant with an integrated Alpha Core?
I did, It was the obvious thing to do with that skill, as that feels like the best use case of this skill, and the radiant is quite powerful, but it just starts to feel like a cheaper and stronger paragon that i can't pilot myself once the novelty dies out.
One choice is to make my whole fleet stronger, doubling the vents on frigates, adding otherwise extremely costly hullmod to capital ships etc, the other is to get a single strong ship that i can't even use as flagship and has lower cr than the rest of the fleet.
Even if it was a comparable decision to make power wise, which i think it isn't, as i said before it's just not fun as there's a lot of potential fun things that COULD be done but they just don't work.
One rampart with a gamma core puts me over the limit, i could use an alpha core and lower the cr, but is a shieldless rampart really comparable to a radiant? why would i ever pick a rampart over a radiant? or why would i pick any derelict ship over remnant ships?
There is a LOT of potential that is shut down by being almost forced to just pick the radiant with an alpha core or some slight variations, to make the most out of the skill.
Maybe derelicts should count as half points, maybe by making remnants ships only be usable with beta/alpha cores and raising the impact of the cores on the points, i can see a few ways that would give the player a lot more freedom as to what to do with this skill other than going for a buffed paragon.
If it were me, i would give 75 points and make the alpha core count as 20 points, the beta 10 and the gamma 0 and i would restrict the use of gamma core to only work of derelicts, not remnants (which makes sense as remnants are more complex ships), to give a use case to derelicts. With this you could have a full cr radiant with the alpha core with enough leftover points to get a smaller ship, or some other combination if you factor in having less cr. OR, you could build a small derelict fleet with gamma cores, as with the gamma cores now costing 0, it would mean having the ability to field 3 ramparts with gammas with the same point cost as 1 radiant with the alpha core, which feels more of a fair trade. Having this much breathing room and use case for the derelicts, means that the player can have fun putting together various combinations of ships and cores, both derelict and remnants, which would change the playstyle enough to warrant the use over the other choice
