"Onslaught replaced with a clown car."
Shouldn't that be a bee hive?
I've been thinking about this thread quite a bit, and I think I've come up with decent solutions for the particular problems of slots, controlling wings, and OP costs for fighter wings. I've folded drones into this because I think it makes sense.
Instead of using "flight decks" as the unit of wing slots, I will use "launch bays". Launch bays come in small, medium, and large and work like weapon slots (e.g. in regards to size). Drones are size small, most fighters are size medium, and bombers/big fighters are size large. So a small launch bay could house a drone wing, a medium launch bay could house a drone wing or fighter wing, and a large launch bay could house any kind of fighter/bomber wing, but not a drone wing.
For example, a Condor could have a large bay and two medium bays and a Gemini could have two medium bays and a small bay. This would make the Condor a more powerful and flexible carrier, but the Gemini would still be competitive and be a better drone carrier.
(I haven't put as much thought into this idea as the other two, so it might be a little rougher.) Wings of fighters, bombers, drones, etc. act like wings do now and controlling them would be done through the tactical interface exactly like now. The exception being wings launch from/recall to their carrier instead of burn in/retreat, and if recalled they can then be called out again. Basically the best of both drone and fighter control in one.
This part goes off on a tangent:
Spoiler
With sensor drones controllable in the tactical interface, I think we can eliminate sensor buoys, transferring their effect to the drones that can now be launched from many different ships. I think it obvious that the drones' bonus effect, in this case weapon damage, would have to be limited: both the radius from the drone and how far stacking from multiple drones can go. It's easy enough to expand that to navigation drones that replace nav buoys. Maybe have communication drones that produce command points? — I don't know.
This would make combat more dynamic, and I think more interesting and fun. It would also clean up the lore oddity that are buoys.
The final part of this post is how to determine the OP cost of fighter/drone wings. I have focused on the OP cost of a fighter's weapons as a starting point to balance around. This has come out surprisingly well.
First I ran all the fighters and drones through this formula: OP = (WeaponOP + 5 * X) / X [+ 2]
OP is the OP cost for the fighter/drone wing. WeaponOP is the OP cost of one fighter/drone's weapons in a wing. X is 1, 2, or 3 depending on whether I placed the wing as small, medium, or large: drones are small; most fighters are medium; bombers, the Xyphos, and the Gladius are large. The [+ 2] is for if the fighters/drones in the wing have a shield/phase cloak; I'll admit this is mainly to bump up Daggers.
Here is a full chart of vanilla fighters and drones and their results:
Spoiler
OP Fighter/Drone
10 Broadsword
8 Dagger
11 Gladius
11 Longbow
6 Mining Pod
7 Piranha
7 Talon
10 Thunder
13 Trident
10 Warthog
7 Wasp
15 Xyphos
7 Borer
8 PD (mg)
10 PD (laser)
11 Assault (not used anywhere currently afaik)
20 Terminator
11 Sensor
This formula, however, is just to get baselines. The result would then be adjusted to reflect the wing's actual value in combat.
As an aside, I don't think the Terminator fits with the rest of the fighters/drones and should stay as only a ship system.
I know this doesn't cover many aspects of fighter wings, but I think it's a solid base that we could work from.
Spoiler
I apologize for shifting tenses and stuff everywhere.
