"Reclaimable scrap" for dead large things seems like an awesome idea. It would give those cleanup drones a use again. (Do AI's get cleanup drones?)
I agree, it sounds like a neat idea - but I don't think it does much to address the problem raised in this thread.
Single-HW, full cap of Fighters/Bombers/Frigates (the triangle) Mk I-III: 2,150,400 resources.
Cap of Flagship Mk I-III: 1,400,000
[...]
Anyways, some food for thought. Personally I would not rate a cap of a single starship I-III as 70% effective as a cap of I-III of the triangle ships, but I suppose this is where we pay for the survivability of starships.
Resource recovery from starship remains is basically a way to temporarily increase the player's income, with the potential caveat of being unable to recover the remains. However, fleetships will usually be the primary resource drain, and I assume no one is suggesting that fleetships will leave remains. That means that even with a fantastic 25% resource recovery rate, your refleet time will still be very large. Mk I-III of the Combat Starships is 7,000,000 resouces, and the absurdly high 25% of that is still only 1,750,000 - less than the cost of the Mk I-III fleetships.
Basically, there seem to be three possible ways to reduce refleet time:
1) Reduce resource costs.
2) Increase player income.
3) Increase the player's resource cap.
1) Reducing resource costs across the board is roughly the same as increasing both the cap and the income simultaneously. I assume instead that some of the high cost items, like TDLs, LT-Fs, or starships, would be the only units to receive reduced costs. Right now the have 50-67% the damage and 150-200% HP for 150-200% cost. If the cost comes down significantly, one of the other two also needs to come down for balance. Disposable starships is not in the plans right now, I think. (Although a disposable Neinzul combat starship might be amusing... 10:00 lifespan, no repair...) But weaker starships means you need more of them, with all associated increased build costs.
2) Not happening. Anyone still remember build 5.035, the first Harvester re-balance attempt? By bringing harvesters "in-line" with Econ stations, the player economy became incredibly overpowered. That patch got me my first 10/10 win, at a time I was still losing more than half my 9/9 games. A high enough income basically means the player can never be defeated, unless a single attack is so strong as to crush ALL human resistance at once.
3) It allows players to "pre-pay" the re-fleeting costs. It also makes economic techs even more powerful, since that extra production is unlikely to go to waste. It also means that it makes it even harder for the AI to kill the player quickly, since a large reserve could keep a re-fleet cycle going much longer, even when the game is otherwise lost. Of course, with the invention of the smart Threatfleet, the AI has basically given up on the idea of attrition warfare anyway, so this may be less of an impact than I think.
Remains recovery is a sub category of #2. Econ Stations is part of #3. A suggestion from last time, allowing the player to build his own distribution nodes, is also a variant of #3.
Honestly, I don't know if there is an easy solution. Nothing that been suggested seems to work, and there aren't a lot of other ideas I can see.
I do agree the OMD was overbuffed, which isn't helping the issue. Again, my opinion on it is that it's current range + damage (and DPS) + spawn rate all together make it OP. Even if only one of these is nerfed, and it will be fine. Which one(s) to nerf though is the question.
This is off-topic for this thread, but I disagree. I really like the OMD as it stands now. It's like an Ion Cannon for starships. It actually makes you concerned when you find one, and you need to plan how to deal with it. They're also rather rare - Aside from AI Homeworlds and Core worlds, you see them in less than 1% of systems (except Peacemaker, of course).
