I've seen the idea of specialist ships mentioned occasionally in other topics (namely in comparing the use of ship sizes and destroyer fleets), but found no topic specifically about this or how to implement it.



I'd rather like to see 'specialist' ship modules added to the game. These would be large (taking up a large amount of tonnage compared to the ship's size) modules which focus that ship into a specific role. Some of these might even be restricted to specific ship classes. These would limit the ability to put defensive modules and weapons on a ship, but give it a different benefit. Additionally, I think most of these would need to 'not' stack within the same fleet. So they are designed so that you only use one in a fleet, the probable exception being a cloaking device.



*I'm not putting percentages and such in here because these would obviously take a fair degree of balancing. Any number that I put to them would be arbitrary and, essentially, a 'guess' at what might be fair. So I'll instead just state the principle of what each example might do.



For instance:

Cloaking Device: Corvette/Destroyer only. Cloaks the ship from sensor detection.

Command Console: All ships receive a bonus to accuracy.

Tactical Display: All ships receive a bonus to defensive modules.

Scanner Probe: Allows ship sensors a chance to detect cloaked ships within their range.

Science Station: Boosts science production by an amount, for each system visited. (I imagine this would only be granted to any given faction once for each system that it visits. The idea being that it is flying around in 'Star Trek' fashion, scanning anomalies and other interesting space things.)

How would these specialist ships fit in with the game? What specific purpose would it do?



Because we still have a problem with the mono hull mentality; not too many people make specialized fleets that are souped up to the max with strategic resources. With attrition being the strategy of the day, how would specialist ships play?