So I have been having difficulties with retooling and refitting issues, and I wonder how much savings I could get just by having a hangar on every major ship.
So then, I develop a new sensor? Build a 500 ton fighter with a 450 ton sensor and nothing else. Want a new flagship, but don't want to redesign or refit anybody? Build a 300 ton fighter with a flag bridge. Maybe even leave it at the jump point.
It would be more expensive on the ship, paying for the hangar and the hull for the fighter extra, but if I can make up for that with being able to upgrade more easily and save retooling, it might be worth it. Not sure if it would be worth the management headaches though.
Part of my notion is that I want to develop fighters organically, I want to be able to make use of my fighter factories as I build them, and not have them sitting idle while I wait to develop tech. I have been getting great use out of building pinnaces for scouting new systems. I have lost about half of the ones I have built to various hazards, but they got me sensor data on what killed them, and have allowed me to explore lots of systems without fear that there was something there waiting to eat an expensive ship.
Try this one on for size:
Belknap class Point Defence Base 430 tons 19 Crew 54.8 BP TCS 8.6 TH 0 EM 0
Armour 5-5 Sensors 1/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 6
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 1
(Meson Cannon) van den Bergh-Uys Single R1.5/C2 DHM-PPC Turret (1x1) Range 15 000km TS: 20000 km/s Power 3-2 RM 1.5 ROF 10 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S00.6 24-5000 (FTR) (1) Max Range: 48 000 km TS: 20000 km/s 79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
GCFR Technology "Sedan Engine" PB-1 (2) Total Power Output 2.7 Armour 0 Exp 5%
This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 1 sections
Take note, my BFC base tracking speed is still as low as 4,000 km/s.
As it turns out, sub-500-ton PDCs can be built in fighter factories, and can mount any fighter-only system, including fighter fire control. Extremely useful in early game base defense setup, as you can devote your fighter factories to increasing your planetary point defense, with beam mounts that'll track quite a bit higher than your tech level would normally suggest.
The firepower is a bit low for platform, and strictly final-fire, however, you can build a whole lot of them, and at 54 build points apiece, they're very cheap.
Just make sure you build an active sensor rated for missiles on a separate platform, mainly because building 30 of them with active sensors might bite into uridium just a bit.
That aside, though, Michael Sandy, I do like your cut of the jib when it comes to fighters. Modular pods for ships can be pretty handy, and while the initial investment is higher in terms of vendarite and duranium, for the time being, you won't have to pay maintenance on these sort of stored modules, plus, you save a whole lot of resources on refitting/making more shipyards.
I'd like to know just how much fighters can do while they aren't launched. Do weapons fire? Do sensors sense? Etc.
Though, if i recall correctly, survey sensors are on a task group basis. You could actually make some really useful modular survey ships by giving it a hangar deck, good commercial engines, and packing the hangar space with 300 ton gravsurvey/geosurvey fighters. They will actually foot cheaper maintenance, overall, because while hangars are 100 bp (75 vendarite, 25 duranium) of minerals per 21 HS, the survey sensors are just as expensive (100 uridium) for their small 5 HS size.
Another idea could be a multipurpose repair-ship/collier.
Give the ship point defense, hangar space enough to carry some of your larger small ships, damage control, maintence storage, etc.
Give the ship some cryo spaces, and make the stock hangar spaces be filled with fighters which only have magazines in them, with no internal armor at all.
When you need to take in ships for repair, you can temporarily launch the magazine fighters to make space, or you can launch and scuttle the empty magazines, and pick up the crew.
Anyway, for general purposes, unless skill is needed (point defense shiplet or what have you), it might be best to make these fighters conscript only.
As another note, It may be possible that the task force training of fighters might drag down the average task force training of groups. Be wary.