I have some feedback to offer about my two favorite player skills that feel as if they're being hamstrung by other aspects of the game's design. I humbly request that more consideration be given to Derelict Contingent and Wolfpack players. I am not a big fan of mods (except Adjusted Sector) and am concerned that I may be violating gameplay balance in a way that I do not understand by modding out the 30 ship limit. If there is a justification for the ship limit, I would be happy to hear it.
I found that I most enjoy playing as terrorist pirates like Saw Gerrera's rebel alliance cell and the OPA's Free Navy (I love free ports). I use fast cruisers, wolfpack tactics, and carrier spam to the extent that the actual fighter skills are useless. It feels so powerful even in the late game that I would call capital ships obsolete if not for the 30 ship limit. This limit is is the only design decision that Alex has made that I cannot figure out. It makes no sense to me in universe or out; real admirals can direct dozens of ships in a single battlegroup and it feels terrible as a frigate enjoyer to be pigeonholed into using larger ships. Ship descriptions even allude to the Domain shifting away from the decisive battle doctrine to the cruiser school/carrier support doctrines just like contemporary navies. I would like to do this myself, but cannot while respecting the 30 ship limit. The Atlas and Prometheus especially defy every aspect of my personal doctrine by having large sensor signatures, lacking shielded cargo holds, being unable to escape or defend themselves, and requiring an inefficient mix of either S-mods, Bulk Transport, or Navigation to use realistically on the campaign map. I dislike these ships and resent that vanilla players have no choice but to use them.
TL;DR My quantity-over-quality playstyle is severely punished by gameplay limitations that I do not understand. I will accept these unfortunate circumstances and admit that I failed to respect the game's design philosophy if the following questions can be answered:
1) Why is there a 30 ship limit? In terms of lore and gameplay.
2) Why must ships produced at my colonies be produced without D-mods? I want D-mods. My own system defense fleets build ships with D-mods. Why does my ship quality being set to 0% not affect this? Deliberately blowing up my own ships is not fun, especially when I pull Erratic Fuel-Injector or Damaged Flight Deck. I can buy D-modded ships on the open market at my colonies, but tragically dont have room for commerce on my primary orbital works world.
3) The Derelict Contingent description claims to affect "all ships" but does not seem to reduce my system defense fleet deployment costs when I fight alongside them. Is this a bug? Or am I misunderstanding the distinction between "fleet" and "all ships"?
I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read this or offer insight. If answers for these questions already exist somewhere, I failed to find them.