Fighter scaling system for carriers

[Travis9x]

I haven't seen/heard of anything planned for the hard-cap on fighter quantity for carriers, so I thought up a system to allow larger and larger carriers to allow for a higher capacity than the current hard-limit of 120 fighters.

 

The logic to having this scaling system is that it is very easy to get a hanger capacity with a minimum of well over 250 of the largest fighters.  But there is currently no way of ever hitting that capacity, since squadron control only goes up to ten squadrons, and only 12 fighters maximum for each squadron.

 

Scaling System for Fighter Capacity of Carriers

• Similar to how the number of upgrades is based on CPU power (actually the total block volume of the ship), the limit of the fighter capacity can be dependent on the volume (CPU power) of the ship as well
  
• The limit can scale in a tier-like system, with stages of advancement
  
• First-Tier - same as current limit.  Basic carriers start with up to ten squadrons of 12 fighters each.
  
• Second-Tier - Large carriers can host/control larger squadrons.  Still limited to ten squadrons, but now each squadron can be up to 24 fighters each.
  
• Third-Tier - Massive Supercarriers can host/control up to 20 squadrons of 24 fighters each.
  

 

This is just a very basic three-tier system, but I think it's a good start.  It can obviously be much more expansive than this, to allow a more incremental increase to carrier capacity & effectiveness, as well as a much higher top-end limit, as ships scale up in size.

 

This can also be combined with another suggestion I made, about having turret size affect the resulting size of the fighter made from it (when creating custom fighters at a fighter factory).  That change would result in more people creating/using larger fighters, thus more effectively using all that hanger space.  (the change would also resolve a problem I pointed out in that suggestion, regarding the current system of converting a turrets into fighters)

 

Finally, this also resolves what I consider a bit of a balancing issue, in that currently even the largest of ships have only a very tiny % of their crew as gunners, miners, or pilots.  This makes things like the XSTN-VI AI upgrade kinda pointless.  My fighter suggestions would make a higher % of a carrier's crew pilots, making that "legendary" and "unique" XSTN upgrade actually mean something for a large supercarrier.