Hi, I'm new here, but I've been following Starsector since 0.3x. I've played some similar games, when it comes to handling a ship, but also for general gameplay: Mount and Blade, obviously.
I don't think I'm the only one, but I don't like controlling big ships. Cruisers, capital ships, well, anything larger than a frigate.
In early game, I usually enjoy the ride alone in pretty much any frigate, except the Brawler for some reason, so everything is fine.
In late game however, I feel quite useless in my tiny frigate. I always go for the Hyperion since it exists, and especially now that it can blink all over the place. To me it's the only correct choice, and I think it's a problem, but I'll get to that.
I try to invest in some combat skills, but I know they would be way more useful (or rather, way less pointless) if I were in a larger ship. And the "hit and run forever" tactic isn't going to work anymore, since CR is going to drop faster for frigates, if I recall correctly.
Everytime I feel like I'm better off investing in tech or leadership skills, since it would upgrade my frigate as much as the rest of my fleet.
That's where my idea comes in. I don't know if "overtuning" is the right name for it. It would almost be like refitting a ship, except instead of using OP, it increases the CP cost of the ship and it costs a great deal of credits, and you would be able to upgrade the ship more overall.
I don't really know what the best shape for it would be, but I think being able to directly increase dealt damage, and decrease damage taken by a percentage would be a good start. In fact, it could have similar effects to the combat skill tree. Maybe it would allow to change the ship system, or unlock more hull mods for more customization depth. Who knows, a Brawler with a phase teleporter might be useful after all...
Just increasing the OP of the ship would make it worse, as we would just rack up all available hull mods, throwing off the specialization aspect. Changing hardpoint and turret sizes and numbers would feel off too, for obvious reasons.
In short, it would allow to make any frigate (or any ship) as (or even more) powerful and important as a capital ship, while still played like the same ship, and costing about as much as a capital, both in credits and in CP. The cost, both in CP and credits, wouldn't be linear of course, but it wouldn't have a limit, unlike refitting. That's where all the balance difficulty is at I guess.
I think it would be something great to evolve with for players who don't like excessively big fleets, and in the future, trade and industry, or just players who have so much cash that they don't have a clue what to do with it.