An idea that might help in mixing the fleets up a bit might be to add auxillaries as modules for ships. I have seen some discussions that people sort of mention these things in the threads but not as an overall discussion.



Given that these modules are providing fleet bonuses versus indivdual ship bonuses they should be larger modules than the others with some classes of ship getting a reduction in size bonus. For example, only the optimal ship class could actually reach the cap so lets say BB's are the optimal class for C3 modules and can mount 10. Other classes might only mount 1-8 modules of the same type depending on available space. A DBB might mount 8 while a corvette might only be able to mount 1. There would also be a Fleet Cap based so the overall Fleet bonus could not exceed 10 or 20 percent total bonus via modules. Not knowing the underlying system I am not sure how complicated this would be. Maybe without certain modules on ships certain cards cannot be played in combat?



One example that immediately comes to mind is a repair ship module that allows the ship to repair other ships in the fleet. It takes an awfully long time to repair ships now and many times I find it easier to scrap the damaged ship and replace it with a new one (assuming my fleet alsts long enough to do so). A ship loaded with this module might increase the rate of repair like 1% per module with say a cap of 10%. Repair would be on the same tree as the Ship Classes are.



Another example might be a commandship module. This would run some sort of C3 system that provided some sort of fleet bonus bonus of say 1% damage with a cap of say 10%. C3 would be on the same tree as the CP increases are.



A third example might be an EW module. This would would increase the defense or evasion of the fleet by 1% with a cap of say 10%. This would be on the same tree as weapons.



A fourth example might be a missile interdiction (and maybe later fighter-ish interdiction) which increased fleet protection against missiles by 1% with a cap of say 10%. This would be on the same tree as weapons are.



There are probably other ideas that folks could come up with but this would help a bit with fleet survivability and recovery after battle as well as increase the variation of the roles of ships. The idea of the caps is that you cannot make the fleet invulnerable but you can increase the overall fleets chances of surviving an encounter. This may not be a perfect solution but fleshed out more I think this would help distinguish the ships more and give them more of a role feel rather than attack of the clones.

There already is a fleet speed, critchance, repair and sight bonus module. There's a single ship offense and defense buff, fleet versions should be added. The -HP malus of the offense module should be axed.

The speed and repair modules should be separated into fleet and ship modules so that you can make either single speedy/selfrepairing ships, or a fleet repair accelerator or something.

Good ideas, chuckrman, but perhaps it could simplified. Have a dedicated flak module, for example, - massive in size - that takes half the ship's space. That ship would be dedicated to providing flak cover for the whole fleet. Individual ships could still mount their own "regular" flak modules if desired. The "mega module" would cost much more, take up much more space, cause a significant malus (sorry, TheBoz, but I think specialized mega-buffs need a penalty), but allow a significant boost to the module's role. How about a "Deflector Projector" or a "Shield Swarm"? These could affect not just defense but offense as well. Imagine a long range kinetic cannon - it wouldn't be able to mount any other weapons, but woe to he that passes before that bore!



Sacrificial "speed repair" ships, "warp bump" ships to increase speed, EMP ships, beam "dazzler" ships, R&D observer ships... Yes, more large dedicated modules would be deeeeeelicious!

Moved to the proposals section.