Someone suggested this idea in the better missile thread and I thought it deserved it's own topic.
What about supply ships. There are a lot of weapons like missiles or ballistic weapons that have ammo limits. You can only fire so many shots and then you're done. Well, what if there were a big lumbering turkey of a ship like the Atlas supply ship that ships could dock with and rearm.
The process should cost supply just like fighters docking and take longer depending on how much ammo was being loaded. So a capital ship reloading all it's weapons would take longer then a frigate. And it would increase or decrease depending on how much ammo had to be loaded. So it wouldn't be so much determined by the size of the ship as by actually how much ammo you're loading. If your frigate has expanded magazines for example, it would take longer to reload then an otherwise identical frigate that doesn't have expanded magazines.
Ideally, the FP of the big supply ships would be low enough that you could field one of these without it being a huge deal. It would add a layer of complexity to the battle in that you'd have something to defend and the pay off of defending it is that you can spam your missiles. The supply ships themselves should be extremely vulnerable much like the Atlas supply ships. Garbage shields, nothing but limited point defense. Big fat turkeys.
In addition to allowing ships to rearm in the middle of battle, having one of these ships in your fleet should allow ships to repair faster. So if you have damage that would normally take 12 days to repair without a supply ship, lets say it only takes six with the supply ship or possibly even less.
I even think it would be an interesting idea if these ships could manufacture smaller ships like fighters spending supplies rather then credits. This would make fighters more of a disposable unit because you could always make more. The types you could make might be limited to what the supply ship has taken apart in the past. Possibly give the supply ship it's own "store" window that can be called up whenever in travel mode. And then you can disassemble (destroy/scrap) some a fighter it's never seen before but now that supply ship can build more of those fighters whenever you want. Additionally you might even buy the plans/blueprints for fighters from various shipyards rather then buying the fighters themselves. This might even be extended to various weapons systems. Maybe you can only find ONE of this type of gun in the game. No problem. Take it apart and make as many as you can afford with supply.
The balance for this might be tricky in that it creates economic problems. You might just be able to land at a starbase, buy all their supplies, convert all those supplies into something valuable, and then sell that back at a huge profit. So the system would have to be balanced. Maybe have a credit cost in addition to the supplies cost so you can't use it to imbalance the economy.
I just thought it was an interesting idea.
