Any use for a really small carrier?

[Skulky]

Well, you can actually specify strategies for PDC, sorta. If you have a dedicated PDC ship and you want it to shoot down mostly enemy missiles, not enemy ships (and it mounts other weapons that can hit ships) or you are suddenly confronted with a bunch of missile shooting *******s and need to convert your fleet quickly, you can set the strategies to target by type: Seekers targeted on us (to keep that ship alive), and seekers targeted on others, followed by everything else.

My second thought, to simulate real life supply and trade within an empire, or maybe just real life supply, your empire could build a certain number of extra ships under control of ministers and produced for free. They would be sent to and from your fleets and between planets generating trade. You could order ships to "escort" which would make them follow these ships around and attack any enemy's within 2-5 sectors.

Assuming pathfinding could be resolved for humans, this could be viable in PBW. adding the idea of making small "raider" ships that woudl fly in and out attacking these supply lines. Also, pirate races in P&N could really pirate stuff at Last.

Trade treaties coudl also be represented by these little ships (few larger than a med transport, most DD or FG size) with their own shipset graphics flitting between empires. You could then introduce a distance modifier (optional) that would mean you could get bettter trade with neighbors and worse trade the further away an empire is.

These ships would be grayed out and not be as visible as your normal ships, they could even be "turned off" so you didn't see them in the empire window or something. Of course, if you left them on someone could slip in a little ES raider and you might think its part of these fleets, or you could have an intel option called "conceal raider in civilian transport" and well that'd be what happened. All sorts of good reasons to mounts weapons on transport hulls.

WOW. that was long winded. I'm thinking SEV at least, Maybe SEIV Zirconium edition, Platinum if we're lucky. If not, SEX???