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[Wyvern]

What bothers me about bonuses with low caps, such as Phase Coil Tuning, and the carrier skills (and what Tactical Drills used to be with +10% and a 120 OP limit) is not the distribution of the bonus across multiple hulls, but the lack of fine control. If these skills worked based on what you have deployed, that would be one thing, but having a situation where a ship is weaker because of the mere existence of another ship that's not even part of the battle... annoys me.

Edit: Like, say I'm cruising around with the Ziggurat as my flagship! I pick up Phase Coil Tuning, Elite Field Modulation, etcetera; really focus in on being the best phase ship pilot I can be. Now, what happens when I end up in a battle with some random dinky pirate fleet that really just isn't worth deploying the Zig? Well, obviously, I swap over to a cheap lesser ship. Thematically, this should be another phase ship; perhaps a Harbinger. Practically? I cannot afford to have another phase ship in my fleet, because that will weaken the Zig when I'm using it, and dramatically weaken said other phase ship when I'm using that instead of the Zig.

So I'm going to suggest that - where possible - these skills should be changed to be based on what you have deployed to battle, rather than what's in your fleet overall. As an added bonus, doing this would make it make sense to return Tactical Drills to its initial +10% damage at 120 DP.

Exceptions:
• Bulk Transport and the fuel/supply usage bonuses from Containment Procedures / Makeshift Equipment are entirely non-combat skill effects, and would make no sense to scale with anything other than your full fleet.
• The sensor bonus from Phase Coil Tuning is also a non-combat effect... but one that can be partially or completely 'lost' due to how sensor mechanics only consider the values from the top five ships. In short, this sort of bonus already has capped scaling from just how sensor mechanics work, and should not also scale down as your fleet grows to include more phase ships. I would suggest changing this to a flat +120 sensor strength bonus for the single highest sensor-strength phase ship in your fleet, with no DP-scaling involved.
• Field Repairs and the crew-loss reduction from Containment Procedures should simply work at their max effect. These are not highly-valued skills, so a small buff like this isn't a balance problem.
• Crew Training is the annoying one here - due to how max CR is implemented, it's not practical to have this depend on deployed forces rather than the entire fleet. I would greatly prefer if this skill just gave a flat +15% max CR to combat ships (or, perhaps, non-automated combat ships? That sort of limitation feels thematic, but would also require some re-balancing of the Automated Ships skill given how it uses CR limitations as an internal balancing factor). However, the skill's already over-budget for being a mere tier 1 skill, and just flat buffing it doesn't feel like the right call to me either. So... not sure what the right answer is here.

[FooF]

Yeah, when I read your self-quote in the other thread, my immediate thought was the suggestion here. Another positive I thought of: If I don't deploy those Shepherds, their drones don't count against my Carrier skill cap. Likewise with Tempests or Ventures (which I've railed against for a little while now).

Regarding the exceptions, I think you're on the right track but the only skills I feel are disproportionately affected are the Carrier and Phase Skills. If these two were modified to only count deployed ships, I really wouldn't care too much about the rest. Going above 240 DP on these isn't a huge deal one way or another to me.

[Draba]

I think the ones with 240 DP limit could simply be removed, they aren't doing much.
Running around with more than what can be deployed isn't very practical on the campaign layer. Having some ships on the bench for special situations and/or CR replenishment doesn't feel like it's worth it even if it's "free" on the skill side.
Upside is that this way there is a nudge towards "standard" battle size, downside some UI clutter. Fine either way.

[Megas]

Crew Training is not the only feature that does not need crew to benefit.  Expanded Deck Crew hullmod is another.  Probably better to rename the skills and hullmods if it really a problem.

Yes, the 240 DP limits should be removed since it is not practical to bring more ships.  Aside from deployment limits, the bonus XP multiplier is another incentive to keep fleets small too.  I would like to bring a huge fleet with extra ships, but less bonus xp discourages this.  I used to bring massive fleets in older releases to mitigate CR drain from chain-battling (like relief pitchers in baseball or substitutions in other team sports), but I do not want to sacrifice bonus XP to do this in modern releases.

• The sensor bonus from Phase Coil Tuning is also a non-combat effect... but one that can be partially or completely 'lost' due to how sensor mechanics only consider the values from the top five ships. In short, this sort of bonus already has capped scaling from just how sensor mechanics work, and should not also scale down as your fleet grows to include more phase ships. I would suggest changing this to a flat +120 sensor strength bonus for the single highest sensor-strength phase ship in your fleet, with no DP-scaling involved.

I ignore the sensor part of Phase Coil Tuning.  All I care about are the speed and PPT buffs.  The sensors part of the Phase Coil Tuning can be removed, and I probably would not miss it.

• Field Repairs and the crew-loss reduction from Containment Procedures should simply work at their max effect. These are not highly-valued skills, so a small buff like this isn't a balance problem.

Industry needs all the help it can get.  The annoying thing about Field Repairs is it is the only 240 DP skill that counts all ships instead of combat ships.  It is annoying that my haulers are draining repairs from my combat ships.

[SCC]

Do you expect the game to track the number of total DP deployed since the start of combat and dynamically reducing bonuses for all ships after you go over that number, or does this apply only to currently deployed ships, making it so that you would only exceed current 240 DP skill limit in some fights against stations?

As an added bonus, doing this would make it make sense to return Tactical Drills to its initial +10% damage at 120 DP.

I'm not sure if this is true, because TD were changed from 10%@120DP to 5%@240DP because people complained about the limit being too small. The issue of public perception would remain.

• The sensor bonus from Phase Coil Tuning is also a non-combat effect... but one that can be partially or completely 'lost' due to how sensor mechanics only consider the values from the top five ships. In short, this sort of bonus already has capped scaling from just how sensor mechanics work, and should not also scale down as your fleet grows to include more phase ships. I would suggest changing this to a flat +120 sensor strength bonus for the single highest sensor-strength phase ship in your fleet, with no DP-scaling involved.

PCT getting double taxed seems like an oversight. Alex should fix this.

I would suggest changing this to a flat +120 sensor strength bonus for the single highest sensor-strength phase ship in your fleet, with no DP-scaling involved.

Is this really any different than a +120 sensor strength bonus to your fleet? If it scaled with biggest phase ship's size, maybe it would matter.

• Crew Training is the annoying one here - due to how max CR is implemented, it's not practical to have this depend on deployed forces rather than the entire fleet. I would greatly prefer if this skill just gave a flat +15% max CR to combat ships (or, perhaps, non-automated combat ships? That sort of limitation feels thematic, but would also require some re-balancing of the Automated Ships skill given how it uses CR limitations as an internal balancing factor). However, the skill's already over-budget for being a mere tier 1 skill, and just flat buffing it doesn't feel like the right call to me either. So... not sure what the right answer is here.

It would be funny if CT straight up had cap for max bonus, so if you really, really wanted, you could have eight 100% CR Glimmers, if these were all the combat ships in your fleet. It would be impractical, but hilarious. Well, it would be, if not for Atlas Mk 2 and Prometheus Mk 2... They would have to lose civilian subsystems to stop people from getting free Remnant escorts for their capitals.

[Killer of Fate]

all this would mean is that players would spec into larger ships more, cause then the fleet size restrictor would become an issue and not a DP-size restrictor

So, you would see people bring 4 Astrals and deploy them one by one during longer engagements. Instead of 4 Condors or 2 Herons

This would also cause Phase Ships to work similarly.
Though phase ships are a bit... Differently balanced.

But it would end up favouring Doom even more.

You would have people make a fleet with a large sum of fodder idiots, and then they would just spill some ultra amplified with those skills idiots to help them out. Winning by sheer buffs. And making the game even more twisted by the power of admiral skills...

I think? That's my pet theory. What would actually happen is obviously unknown

[Wyvern]

Do you expect the game to track the number of total DP deployed since the start of combat and dynamically reducing bonuses for all ships after you go over that number, or does this apply only to currently deployed ships, making it so that you would only exceed current 240 DP skill limit in some fights against stations?

I'm okay with either of those implementations, but I'd imagined the game would continue to count at least retreated ships against the per-battle limits. Possibly also destroyed ships.

I would suggest changing this to a flat +120 sensor strength bonus for the single highest sensor-strength phase ship in your fleet, with no DP-scaling involved.

Is this really any different than a +120 sensor strength bonus to your fleet? If it scaled with biggest phase ship's size, maybe it would matter.

Yes, actually, because the Phase Field hullmod's effect scales based off the total sensor strength of the five phase ships in your fleet with the highest sensor strength; increasing the sensor strength of your phase ships makes your fleet sneakier.

There's probably some better option here than just adding a flat bonus to the single highest, but I'm not sure exactly what. Just removing the scaling entirely would lead to really super-sneaky fleets if you carted around the Zig + 4x Doom. +120 was picked because that's a total sensor strength bonus equal to +100% of 1x Doom + 1x some phase frigate, which is about the best you can get with the current 40 DP limit. I suppose another reasonable option would be to just divide that by 5, and give +24 sensor strength to all (combat) phase ships? That would be less effective for fleets with just one or two phase ships, though.

[Megas]

Just removing the scaling entirely would lead to really super-sneaky fleets if you carted around the Zig + 4x Doom.

I use this (and more phase ships) already for my late blueprint raider fleet.  Ziggurat for the 75 DP paper tiger (to help scare away merchants), Dooms, and Afflictors to escort my 20 Phantom fleet to raid big homeworlds with my "IT'S OVER 9000!" ground power to steal blueprints (from Kazeron and others), and to pick off occasional nearby bounty fleet the fleet can handle.