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[landryraccoon]

Right now, fighter pilots are treated as disposable. Does anyone ever take recovery shuttles, except for RP purposes? From a gameplay perspective, you're incentivized to just pick up more crew when you run low. There's no reason to try to save pilot's lives.

Contrast with marines, where your elite marines are a precious resource and players don't want to squander them. You actually care about marine losses, because replacing them with novice marines is a big deal. Keeping your experienced marines alive feels like an investment.

I think there's a huge design space open here to make players care about their fighters more. If pilots were a resource that gained experience and became elite over time, players would feel more invested in their carriers. Perhaps pilots ought to be a separate category, like marines, instead of drawing from general crew? It would make sense : A pilot has to be highly trained, and the difference between a novice pilot and an elite pilot SHOULD feel like a big gap.

Having a fleet with elite pilots, the player should want to invest in skills and mods that reduce pilot losses. It also could affect gameplay a lot: Do I want to accept potentially higher losses of throwing elite bomber squadrons against REDACTED or a star fortress? Maybe I want to invest in more expensive, heavily shielded fighters so my elite pilots will last longer, even if it costs more OP / potentially deals less damage? Or I could RP that the sector is just a harsh, deadly place and my pilots will die a lot, but at least now there's a tradeoff where I'll never have elite pilots. The decision space would be really interesting imho.

[Dwarden]

agree, i would like to see stuff like novice, regular, veteran and ace fighter pilots ... giving even more reason to rescue those more skilled ones

[landryraccoon]

Another thought I had was that this also works for threats the player encounters. For example, a bounty to take on an Astral with elite pilots vs novice pilots would feel like a big step in difficulty.

[Harmful Mechanic]

I really like this idea. It also make automated fighters less of a no-brainer choice.

[SafariJohn]

Hopefully novices would be about equal to current performance.

[Amoebka]

This potentially enables a tedious-but-optimal strategy of grinding pilot XP by doing trivial battles with recovery shuttles and durable fighters, and then switching to "spending mode" for difficult ones.
The only reason grinding marine XP isn't a thing is the ease of obtaining fully leveled ones to begin with.

[Dwarden]

This potentially enables a tedious-but-optimal strategy of grinding pilot XP by doing trivial battles with recovery shuttles and durable fighters, and then switching to "spending mode" for difficult ones.
The only reason grinding marine XP isn't a thing is the ease of obtaining fully leveled ones to begin with.

well there could be something what could differentiate training vs experience gained

[Serenitis]

Not super keen tbh.
We've had multiple types of crew before, and it was a mess. Not to mention the weird gamey behaviour it encouraged.
We also do not need yet another 'commodity' to micromanage, there's already more than enough - And this would become a micromanagment tax on using crewed fighters at all.

Ideally you'd want to have the pilot 'expericence' attached to the LPC rather than being another resource in it's own right, so you just straight up avoid any of that.
And you can then directly control which crews belong to which carrier.
LPCs of the same type still all stack together, but the ones with the highest level/xp are put at the 'top' so they get used first.

It also make automated fighters less of a no-brainer choice.

Disagree. Drone fighters are v. good, but they lack the range of options available to the crewed ones so they're never a "no-brainer" choice imo, as there are roles they simply cannot fill.
And in addition you'd possibly get people ignoring crewed fighters entirely just to avoid doing any of the micro for this, which might be a "no-brainer" choice for those who dislike such things.

[Grievous69]

Lmao was this posted because of the post of reddit? Where I said Recovery Shuttles is a joke when you can simply buy crew at stations instead of wasting OP. Well then isn't it much easier to just rework (or even better remove) the hullmod? There really is no need to make the game needlessly complex, it has enough of that already. While we're at it, Expanded Deck Crew and Blast Doors are also weird hullmods that are just boring and overshadowed by other hullmods or skills. We keep getting new hullmods yet some old ones are just clutter currently. Also it avoids posts like this where people want to introduce yet another game mechanic to satisfy all 10 players who enjoy crew tetris.

Lmao #2 at "drones are no-brainers". Like what's even the argument there. Drones are either PD assistance or super specialised bombers (only one drone). What about all other roles? Only drones I ever use are Sparks and Wasps when I don't have Sparks yet. I'd hardly call that a no brainer.

[Drazan]

A good idea what comes up every once in a while is that recovery shuttles should be a fleetwide budff, so you could apply that on your support and logistic ships. They launch it after the battle and search for survivors.

[Grievous69]

A good idea what comes up every once in a while is that recovery shuttles should be a fleetwide budff, so you could apply that on your support and logistic ships. They launch it after the battle and search for survivors.

That's actually really smart and it encourages you to deploy support ships. There just have to be some balance levers and scaling so a single fast frigate doesn't give you the full bonus.

[Megas]

I do not take Recovery Shuttles because OP is too valuable to waste on for saving few pennies on a cheap resource.

Expanded Deck Crew is overshadowed by skills, but it is the only option of boosting replacement rate for those who do not take Leadership.  (I have no room for Leadership when I have Combat/Tech/Industry all at 5.)  If anything, Expanded Deck Crew either needs to cost less OP or restored to its former glory.  I try to squeeze Expanded Deck Crew on most of my carriers if I can because I have no Leadership.  (And if I could spare one point for Leadership, I probably would throw it into Crew Training to boost max CR of alpha core Radiant and the rest of my ships.)

I have used Blast Doors early in the game when I fewer hullmods.  Blast Doors is a starter hullmod (like Dedicated Targeting Core), and it outlives its usefulness later when player gets better hullmods to spend OP on.

As for fighters, if there is a no-brainer option, it is Broadswords.  They are very durable and effective compared to other fighters of their cost.  My goto midgrade choices for fighters on carriers tend to be two Broadswords and a Claw, or Broadsword, Claw, and Talon.

No to crew xp.  We had it before, contributes to inverted difficulty (50% max CR from green crew in weak ships during early game is not fun), and it defeats the purpose of itself by endgame when player can guarantee a steady supply of elite units.  Crew Tetris is bad.

[Grievous69]

You start out with Reinforced Bulkheads also, which costs the same and is straight up better.

[Megas]

You start out with Reinforced Bulkheads also, which costs the same and is straight up better.

I used that too.  Although, most of the times I used it for was for the guaranteed recovery before I get Hull Restoration or s-mods on a bunch of ships.

Early in the game when player does not have a lot of money and excess crew, reducing crew casualties can be useful.  I have used Blast Doors instead of or in addition to Reinforced Bulkheads.

Recovery Shuttles, I do not get that hullmod until much later when I have money to burn and can buy it from Open Market or something.

[Amoebka]

Reinforced bulkheads and blast doors stack. One doesn't obsolete the other, because if you want to hull tank you use both.