I'm uncertain if Steve has already encountered this problem, or if this is something that has already been discussed, but hangars, in their present iteration, are massively overpowered.
Hangars eliminate maintenance requirements for parasites, allow for easy and rapid transfer of ordnance, fuel, and supplies, and launch and retrieve craft instantaneously. They're cheap, and absurdly efficient at what they do, with a tiny mass penalty. (Seriously, 100t of extra space is somehow enough for maintenance gantries, fabricators, crew spaces, ship-to-parasite transfer systems, and maneuvering clearance for a 1000t parasite?) And that isn't even going into the inherent superiority of parasite ships that can sacrifice endurance for performance.
Right now, carriers can uprate their capabilities by simply replacing their parasites, which is fast, cheap, and doesn't require yard time, unlike the time-consuming and expensive process that is upgrading full ships. Carriers thus have a much longer service life than other ships, which are useless once outdated. Parasites are hard to detect because of their small size, and can afford to be much faster; they can often outrange and outrun their opponents. And thanks to the increased susceptibility of box launchers that render them unviable for use in larger ships, they can outgun them too, and the sensor nerf means there simply isn't enough time to throw out enough AMMs to counter a box-launcher salvo.
It's ridiculous. Carrier-parasite is clearly the most optimum solution for anything, and it shouldn't be. I'm proposing a few rather simple changes to bring hangars and parasites back in line with the rest of the game. Effectively, hangars should be designable components with background techs, like magazines, with their costs and crew requirements correspondingly affected.
First : For their volume, hangars are entirely too efficient. It's unreasonable to expect that 100t of clearance is enough to manoeuvre a 1000t parasite, or to inspect, service, or repair it. I'm proposing a new line of techs, termed 'Hangar Overhead' that governs how much overhead a hangar needs to support a certain volume of parasites, starting from 100% overhead at TL0 and maxing out at 20% overhead.
i.e. Hangar Size = Hangar Capacity * [100 + Hangar Overhead]/100
So a 1000t capacity hangar with 50% overhead will be a 1500t component, while with the 40% overhead tech, it'll be a 1400t component. Civilian hangars will be cheaper but have twice the overhead volume of military hangars.
Second: Launching and retrieving parasites from hangars should not be instantaneous. Larger hangars will have a lower relative surface area compared to smaller hangars, so they should take longer to launch all their parasites. Larger ships should also have less space to manoeuvre, and take longer to launch. Another line of techs, similar to missile launch rate, will govern this factor.
For the sake of consistency, let us assume that this follows missile launch rate.
Launch/Retrieval Time = SQRT[Parasite Size in HS]*(Hangar Handling Modifier)*150sec/(Parasite Launch Rate)
Hangar Handling Modifier = SQRT[Hangar Size in HS]
The parasite launch rate tech line is identical to the missile launch rate tech line.
There could also be a tech that prevented parasites from being recovered while in motion till it was researched, similar to the Underway Replenishment tech line.
Third : Hangars should never completely remove maintenance requirements, and should also not be able to fully repair parasites. It makes no sense and has no basis in the real world. Even the most modern aircraft carriers could never maintain their airwing at peak operating conditions for an arbitrary amount of time, and could never properly patch-up a battle-damaged aircraft. There will invariably be some component or the other for which a spare is not on hand, or which cannot be repaired on site. What hangars should do is extend the maintenance life of parasites, modified by the size of the hangar itself. A new line of techs governs this, termed Hangar Maintenance Modifier, starting at 25% and ending at 5%, and MSP is drawn from ship stocks to maintain parasites.
Hangar Failure Rate = (Parasite Failure Rate)*(Hangar Maintenance Modifier)/(SQRT[(Hangar Size in HS)/10]
What this means is that parasites in hangars have their maintenance clock tick at a slower rate than normal, and consume MSP at this lower rate : this signifies that the hangar fabricators and maintenance facilities can service most of the parasite's systems, but some systems (i.e. precision instruments, critical machinery, etc.) cannot be manufactured on board and are consumables. Larger hangars are also better at extending parasite life, but dedicated maintenance facilities should be needed to properly maintain or repair ships.
In effect these proposed changes now provide adequate incentive to actually upgrade or replace carriers. Early game carriers will, like missile and beam ships, be crude, bulky, and pretty terrible at what they do. As technology improves, carriers will be able to hold more fighters, launch them faster, and keep them in peak condition for longer. It also provides an interesting dynamic between larger hangars that take longer to be emptied but can maintain parasites better and smaller hangars that have faster response times but aren't that good at maintaining stuff. It's also now possible to 'ambush' a carrier before it can finish deploying its complement.
This is largely just a skeletal idea with mostly placeholder values, what do you folk think?
Edit : I made a new topic so as to not interrupt the present debate on research methodologies in the suggestions thread.
