The goal of this thread is to take a look at the target leading accuracy part of Fighter Uplink, call into question what value (if any) it provides and suggest an alternative. It is not to suggest a sweeping change to wing skills, that was already discussed on March 10th this year on these forums and possibly before that as well. But, if no changes are done to the carrier skills in general, I would like for there to be a change to Fighter Uplink. This is why;
I suspect the target leading accuracy buff of Fighter Uplink is either completely useless, or it buffs some stat I'm not aware of that doesn't actually impact aim, or it only affects fighters with a weapon that it can turn in its mount. I have a video showcasing why I believe this and I ran this sort of test a fair bit over my time playing SS and just today to get the footage, though I would like more input on people's opinions on the actual in-game effect of this target leading accuracy and not what the text on the skill says. I tried to skim through a forum search about target uplink but didn't find anything really talking about the target leading aspect part of the skill.
~~IMPORTANT NOTE~~
I'm not saying the perditions should or should not hit the Medusa in either case, but I think shows that the fighters do not change their heading to account for 'increased target leading' for weapons that cannot turn. That, paired with the warthogs example too!
Currently, my assumption is that the target leading accuracy has no effect on the actual operation of any fighter or wing currently in vanilla besides maybe aspects, which the player can't normally use, and likely only a few niche wings throughout mods as well. That's because I think the target leading accuracy doesn't change how fighters aim their ship, it only changes how it aims their guns, which just about every wing to my knowledge does not really do or already has a perfect accuracy weapon, like a laser.
My suggestion would be to remove target leading accuracy and apply a maneuvering bonus of some % to the fighter, or maybe add another flat top speed bonus on top of the % top speed bonus, or maybe a 25% range bonus to weapons, or... you get the idea. Just throwing ideas out there.