To discuss Recovery Shuttle, one must know what it does first.
- Non-Logistic Hullmod
- Reduces the casualties suffered by fighter pilots by 75%.
- OP Cost: 3/6/9/15
- Sindrian Diktat/Lion's Guard, Remnants, Persean League, Luddic Church, and Independent can access this.
- Cannot be installed on automated ships or ships with no fighter bays.
My problem with this? It barely does anything. It's not noticeable to the player, it's not significant, and worst of it all, The AI fleets are hardly affected by it.
Through the opinion of others...
... why use recovery shuttles and blast doors when you can just buy new and just as efficient fodder [crews] at the nearest starport?
[In reference to the amount of crew loss] .... Recovery Shuttles are mandatory unless you like to bleed crew.
Without skills, Expanded Deck Crew is handy, and Recovery Shuttles is useful for not losing as much crew with Talon dominated wings.
... Crew losses are very severe when trying to employ this even with recovery shuttles, and that means sacrificing more performance for sake of economics of the tactic. Additionally, it's unlikely that you need to nerf fighter performance to make this tactic unviable. Future additions to the campaign layer probably will not let this sort of high crew loss rate be acceptable without say forcing you to go and get more too often or forcing you to keep your crew from committing mutiny for using them as fodder.
Doesn't need Surveying stuff as transports do that without having to sacrifice combat ability. I would instead use Recovery Shuttles to protect my precious crew.
As some folks already mentioned, we're talking about harsh, dystopian reality here, where people supposed to sell themselves for anything to get chunk of credits ... Well, they can even consider it lucky to serve under more or less caring space commander, as myself, since I tend to roll with Hardened Shields, Blast Doors and Recovery Shuttles whenever I can.
it's a strange discovery that this hullmod is any at all effective. It is a reduction of the crew tax for using wings. Once you start rolling in the credits, this hullmod becomes obsolete at this point. In the early game, you don't even start off with this and might not even see this until it's way too pointless and late to get them.
For the AI... this hullmod is ultimately useless. If it ever gets an autofit of this hullmod, they are fighting at a 15 OP disadvantage. Most of the time when you encounter an AI fleet either you die or they die. Crew casualties become pointless.
Maybe... the hullmod could either be converted as a logistic hullmod with reduced OP cost or they can use a minor buff in refitting time to synergize with expanded deck crews.
I do not know. Maybe it is perfectly balanced as it is or maybe it is just a hullmod that people will take early and then skip over like the Dedicated Targeting Unit vs Integrated Targeting Unit.
I offer this thread for people to discuss its usefulness after they are bankrolling in credits.