Oh no 
why does every nerf feels so bad, I mean I would rather have harder enemies to fight rather than nerfing skills but well, im not a specialist in game balancing
Consider it a buff to Flux Regulation, perhaps
But why not apply the discount after summin up individual ship's deployment costs?
That doesn't work well with how the deployment process works - you selecting which ships to deploy, knowing how many points each of them is.
And going back to the topic of fighters - maybe a good idea to counter the mass drover-spark thing would be to introduce an aoe point defence weapon against fighters but with a really big but relatively weak aoe? Basically an equivalent of a weak flamethrower agains bees - useless against few fighters, but good against chipping down hp of dozens of fighters at a time? And im talking about aoe much bigger than the aoe of devastator. Or just to remake the large point defence weapons, as currently they underperform when compared to double/single flak.
Hmm - that feels like the AoE would have to be absolutely enormous, and that'd feel weird. And it'd have to be ubiquitous for it to really make a difference.
One last point - the storm needler is odd. It doesnt really combine with anything well because of its odd range, and even with that ballistic rangefinder it only combines with the small assault cannon. The gauss is simply superior - even with the worse flux stats, especially if you take right hullmods and skills.
It and the Gauss have different roles, I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to compare them. The range is low, though, so to make use of it you kind of have to "waste" some of the range on your HE weapons. But it's a strong enough weapon that I think that's situationally warranted.
I don't think that's a good solution. That basically makes it so that a Reaper (1× 4K damage, reduced to 1900) will end up doing less damage than two Hammers fired back to back (first hit gets reduced to 900, second hit gets the full 1500, total 2400 damage). Not to mention that any weapon that has high per-shot damage balanced by low rate of fire (either directly or indirectly by means of high flux cost) will be severely reduced in usefulness.
The numbers are a bit off - since "-25% hull damage" from the base skill applies first. But "more small hits do more damage than fewer large hits" is an intrinsic property of the effect. For example, without the "every 2 seconds" rule, a Reaper deals 1500 out of its 4000 potential damage, while 6 shots dealing 500 damage each deal 3000 out of their potential 3000 damage.
The problem there is that even an amazing flagship can only be as good as the player is a pilot, and my piloting skills are...questionable at best. I don't want to recall the amount of times I've gotten a 1400+ range beam Sunder killed through getting flanked, or caught by Broadswords, or focussing on one enemy I couldn't take down myself and suddenly realizing my entire fleet has wandered off elsewhere, or getting exploded by a dying enemy ship, or getting my rear blown out by flying ahead of my own bombers, etc.
...Come to think of it, maybe the issue is the ship. Eh, part of the issue 
. My typical flagship is a beam Sunder, which is very much build and used as a support ship (mainly popping the early frigates so my fleet doesn't scatter to every corner of creation chasing every individual Kite). Maybe I need to try a different ship next patch and give the combat build a try...if I can let go of enough campaign QoL and fleet logistics skills, at least.
Sounds like you might be onto something, yeah
The Sunder really is a glass cannon, and the situational awareness required is high. I imagine I'd get wrecked a lot in much the same ways if I flew one - what you've described sounds painfully familiar, hah. Plus, I mean, it's still a destroyer, so it's just going to drop off in the impact it can bring to bear as battles get larger.
If I may make a suggestion - I think the Aurora is probably a solid choice just to get a feel for how much impact you can make. It's durable enough that it's more forgiving, it has great firepower, and its system gives it tons of mobility so you can choose where to apply it more freely.
(I've been using the new Eradicator, myself - it's slower than an Aurora, so requires more "look at the map and consider where you'll be most needed in the next minute or two" - but it's pretty durable, and that helps make up for pilot error on my part.)
Non-cruisers can be viable, too, but just as a point of reference, I think cruisers are right around where the sweet spot is for player control - the combination of enough firepower to make a difference, and enough mobility to get that firepower where it needs to be.
(The Doom is great too, of course, but I wouldn't use it to make the "combat skills are good" argument because it's definitely an outlier.)
https://twitter.com/amosolov/status/1392522197353308161/photo/1
In response to this... will there be an indicator or a tag to ensure dummy skills don't get picked up during those read-outs...
Yeah, skills have tags (like "ballistic_weapons" etc) and ship hulls - though not specific loadouts - are looked at so that, say, an Onslaught doesn't get an officer with Energy Weapon Mastery.
