Strike Crafts (Fighters and Bombers)

For a multitude of reasons im absolutely against this. Biggest of which would be the performance drop. I once had a fleet which carried 300 something strikecraft. Game slowed significantly when zooming in. 

I have to agree. The numbers on the screen would be nuts. I have been in engagements with 4 other AI's and it was already pretty crazy with the strike crafts, bombers, missiles.

I do agree with docking and launching part but they are doing it now already it seems. Unlike sins, still can't chose the type of craft yet unless I missed something.

But paying for the craft, that sounds really expensive and they would need some srs buffing to justify that. It be cool though if there was more custom options and interactions for them. Like replace the Sova build corvettes ability with some kind of minor customizable strike craft unit, like they could specialize at stealing anti matter, recovering wreckage or crippling a targeted ship (like its engines or weapons).

It might be a late now though for such changes. I am sure the devs are set in stone on the project at this stage leading up to its full release.

I am against this simply due to the cost suggestion for each fighter. Money is already tight until end game so this would result in never building a carrier until late game, which by then it doesn't matter what you build anymore since you have critical mass. Having to shell out money for each fighter would cause a drain every time you try to initiate even a small skirmish. Not a good idea.

I think sorties do make sense. Limit the effective combat range so fighters and bombers return to the carrier and refuel and rearm. If they run out before they get back they die. That way carriers are forced to stay close

I'm against the idea of cost though, it would be too costly for what effectively would become a throw away unit.

Launching fighters and redocking needs to have the option to be automated and should be on by default. That would decrease the performance hit if fighters auto docked when no enemies were in range.

Additionally fighters and bombers should have a target circle not a target. The ship or station they you order them to attack is the primary target for bombers with everything else in the circle being a secondary. Fighters will primary serve to be a bomber escort and will focus on other fighters, bombers, and missiles en route and in the circle and as a secondary they will attack the target if none of that other primary is in the circle.

Bombers that either are not on target to hit the primary or arrive after the primary has been destroyed will instead target something else in range they can fire on.

Over all I think this would be better strike craft game play.

Another change should be, carriers have strike craft, no other ships have them.

Instead other ships that would have a strike craft should instead have something else be deployed.  A good idea for some of the support capital ships would be a smaller version of the ceilo command ship.

While combat capitals might launch a heavy weapons platform.

This will make carriers more unique and important.

Additionally to lighten the proverbial load, I'd rather have the non capital carrier ships, like the Percheron be upgradable instead of building more of them.

Those carrier ships are functionally useless outside of being a carrier and with my above suggestions they would need to be closer to work so having them not just be balled up near the fight and instead have a few that have larger capacity and be more defensive would be better.

Lastly (and most controversial) 1 squadron of fighters/bombers should take up 1 fleet supply to limit spam and performance hit.

(Scorch me all you want I still think it's needed)

Disagree with this statement, that would just cause people to either only build carriers or not build them at all due to taking up too much supply. Only way around this would be to increase the supply limit drastically.