Suggestion/personal theorycrafting
All fleets operate at the same speed in the campaign map (maybe this isn't even necessary but I just don't like this disincentive of capitals being to make the game a slog - traveling slower)
Burn level determines which ships in a fleet interact first in a battle rather than determine fleet speed
Higher burn ships enter the battle first, then after some time, lower burn ships become available as reinforcements. (I think this should be fairly short, like 1-3 minutes between waves)
If the current burn level of ships is all destroyed the next burn level immediately enters (with a 10 or 15 second warning/delay to allow retreats of heavily damaged ships, etc)
The lowest burn ships in vanilla are burn 6 I think? At 1 minute between waves it would take 4 minutes for burn 6 ships to enter the field
Maybe a catchall level above 10 for anything with more than 10 burn as well
- This lets frigates remain viable later on in campaigns rather than getting instablapped by capitals
- Allows players to continue having a full mix of ships in campaigns and battles
- Provides incentive for fleets to not simply be capitals vs capitals
- Introduces new strategy in fleet composition
- Helps keep battle sizes smaller and more performant
- Introduces opportunity for new hullmods
- Gives another balance lever for some ships (e.g. very tanky frigates with burn 7, very light capitals with burn 9)
and well basically gets rid of the annoyance I have with burn levels = campaign speed
everyone uses the Ox to drag their slow ships around at full speed in campaign anyway so I don't think many people are going to miss it; who even
likes traveling at 12 burn around the map?