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[TaLaR]

Often certain ships can't be effectively used in fleet because at base Burn they would slow the fleet down, while paying full price of Augmented Drive Field makes them unviable.
And if I build ADF in, such ship will have a dead hullmod if/when I drop fleet base burn later.

I always build my fleet for 20 sustained burn. This can be achieved by:
1) 10+ base burn ships only. Early frigates start + occasional Shrike/Falcon(p).
2) 9 base burn fleet + navigation skill. DEs and Falcons, but also large ADF capitals like Onslaught or Paragon. Cruisers or fast capitals would overpay for ADF, as such not competitive.
3) 8 base burn fleet + navigation skill + 2 tugs. Cruisers and fast capitals (Odyssey and Conquest), but I can't use most normal capitals - they would either slow me down or underperform due to overpriced ADF.
4) 7 base burn fleet + navigation skill + 4 tugs. Slow capitals focused. Not sure if it's even viable way to build a fleet with low DP skill caps of 0.95. But 8 burn cruisers and fast capitals are wasted in such fleet.

[Dex]

I dont know man, i think thats the fair trade off. you cant go stupid fast with stupid large ships without stupid large tradeoff.

Why you need to go so fast at 20 anyway? With the navigation skill alone youre usually able to outrun whatever you cant outfight.

[Megas]

At least Augmented Drive Field can be s-modded in (which I plan to do to every ship with base burn of 7 or 6.  But, yes, +1 version would be nice.

[intrinsic_parity]

I s-modded augmented drive field on a few ships and heavily regretted it. Tugs are so much better if you need to go fast.

[Twilight Sentinel]

There's a few problems with tugs.  First is obviously the sensor profile, if you want any kind of stealth you can't be using them.  Second is they take up limited fleet slots.  Especially if you like to use frigates, you just often don't have space to fit them in your fleet.  Lastly they are expensive to run, building in augmented drive field instead means you're spending less resources if you're going on long trips to explore or claim distant objects.

[bobucles]

+1 burn...Isn't this called an Ox tug?

[intrinsic_parity]

I don't think ADF is bad, I just don't think it's worth building in. I'll build in ITU/heavy armor/hardened shields instead and pay 10-15 OP during exploration for the option of removing it at a later point, although I probably just don't bring any 7 burn capitals exploring... Odyssey and conquest are plenty good if I need exploration capitals.

When you reach the point of multiple 7 burn capital ships, you're never going to have a great sensor profile (and the changes to phase ships and high res sensors make it a lot easier to compensate), and you really shouldn't be exploring with that fleet, plus 4 tugs gives you more base (non sustained) burn which is a huge upside when fighting remnants IMO. With the new incentive to avoid bloated fleets, 4 fleets slots feels like a much smaller price to pay, and colonies still eliminate any money/resource concerns in the late game, plus gates now make long distance travel cost much less fuel. 

Also, late game fights are waaaaaaay harder now, so permanently losing OP for campaign benefits feels like a bad decision to me.

[Megas]

Even with Augmented Engines on burn 6 or 7 capitals and Navigation, player still needs two tugs to reach burn 20.  I would like not to bring more tugs than I need.  Bringing four or more tugs because of no Navigation and/or Augmented Engines hurts.  Tugs are fuel and fleet slot hogs.

[intrinsic_parity]

I don't think there are any combat capitals with 6 burn? And I actually can't imagine a world where you don't either take or re-spec into navigation by the late game. So 4 tugs is always enough. Idk, I'm doing it now and it really doesn't feel like a burden. The important part is just to have colonies to supply fuel. If you have that, just put 3 prometheus in your fleet and your range will be fine, or take the fuel reduction skill.

At this point I have 40 million in the bank. That's my point, I got to a point in the game where I can't pay for my ships to be stronger with money (but I need them to be), while fuel is essentially unlimited. Losing combat power I can't buy to gain something I can pay for feels very bad at this point in the game. With hindsight, I think it's worth paying a few extra OP to have a less expensive hull mod built in early on, so that I don't lose out on something I can't get back.

[Megas]

It is the civilians with burn 6.  When I wrote capitals, I meant civilians (Atlas and Prometheus) and battleships alike.

I have been through four tugs in previous releases (due to no Navigation in some of those games), and I did not like it, especially if my fleet did not have multiple capitals.  I prefer no tugs at all, but with too many burn 8 ships plus Navigation, I see no way to reach burn 20 without tugs.  Two tugs late in the game are acceptable, but more than that is too many.

The only reason I would take the fuel skill (which I do have) is because I want Field Repairs and colony skills, which I do want at the moment (plus the supply skill in Industry 3 is underwhelming, so more fuel is almost a no-brainer at 3).  If I did not want those, I would stop at Industry 2, if I took Industry at all.

[Twilight Sentinel]

At this point I have 40 million in the bank. That's my point, I got to a point in the game where I can't pay for my ships to be stronger with money (but I need them to be), while fuel is essentially unlimited. Losing combat power I can't buy to gain something I can pay for feels very bad at this point in the game. With hindsight, I think it's worth paying a few extra OP to have a less expensive hull mod built in early on, so that I don't lose out on something I can't get back.

If money is no longer an issue, couldn't you get a new capital ship at that point and build in different hull mods?  One or two with ADF makes sense when those are your only capitals.  When you're at the stage of having 10+ in a fleet, it obviously doesn't make sense to build ADF into them anymore.

[intrinsic_parity]

At this point I have 40 million in the bank. That's my point, I got to a point in the game where I can't pay for my ships to be stronger with money (but I need them to be), while fuel is essentially unlimited. Losing combat power I can't buy to gain something I can pay for feels very bad at this point in the game. With hindsight, I think it's worth paying a few extra OP to have a less expensive hull mod built in early on, so that I don't lose out on something I can't get back.

If money is no longer an issue, couldn't you get a new capital ship at that point and build in different hull mods?  One or two with ADF makes sense when those are your only capitals.  When you're at the stage of having 10+ in a fleet, it obviously doesn't make sense to build ADF into them anymore.

That's what I did, but now I have two capital ships with 6 story points invested that I don't really want to use any more. Story points are not unlimited (I guess technically they are but I can spend them way faster than I can get them). Wasting a ton of story points like that to make my capitals moderately more efficient and then abandoning them feels bad now that I've done it. To be fair, I have a huge amount of story points tied up in ships sitting in storage because I've done a lot of experimenting, so maybe in a game where I was more carful about spending them, one capital with built in ADF early on might be good. It's definitely not worth doing it on every capital ship in the late game just to avoid using two extra tugs though.

Also, civ ships can just install militarized subsystems or ADF without needing any story points, they have nothing else to spend the OP on anyway.

[Dark.Revenant]

Built-in ADF on your first capitals makes sense.  I mean, sure you can't build-in one of the hullmods you might have wanted (like EMR or ITU), but you can easily squeeze in Heavy Armor and Hardened Shields.  A deficit of 25-30 OP is hardly worth scrapping a capital and losing the story points you already invested.

[intrinsic_parity]

When I'm trying to kill really difficult end game bounties, or remnant fleets with 3 radiants (starting to see a lot of those) losing 20-30 OP really hurts.

[Rauschkind]

yeah, i wanted that too. i think best option now is to accept maxburn 8. story points are limited and i dont think its worth it to use them to build in  AFD into cruisers. plus... there are more powerful options.
for caps its not so easy. i think its affordable to use story points to upgrade them, but as it is it does not really seem to be a choice but a compulsion, and that i dont like so much.