A new ship class for the game, that of a carrier. (think aircraft carrier)
Being introduced as the most expensive ship class available to the player.
Whats being proposed is a new module that can be researched and subsequently put on a ships hull, that is if your ship has enough space. The module itself should be relatively large due to its offensive capabilities (ill get to that) and so that only large/huge hulls can mount them.
Once a hull has a hanger bay (or more than one) it can launche a number of fighters when its the ships turn to fire in combat(say 5 fighter at a time for each hanger module installed) these fighters/bombers/assault craft or whathaveyou will then cause damage to enemy ships.
The cool thing about the carrier is that because it doesnt do any damage directly it is a low priority target compared to any other friendly ships in a fleet engagement, thus it will be left untill last to be attacked. The fighters however have the capability to deal a great amount of damage (or greater amount of damage than anything else at your current tech level) than anythnig else. So it will be the very last ship destroyed in most cases in fleet battles, giving you a huge advantage. However to balance it out these new modules should cost a great deal, not just to build but to maintain every turn (talking 100bc's easily here) so at any given time you will have a maximum (if any) of a handfull of these ships.
It also opens the doorway for other options whilst assaulting planets if a carrier is present in an invasion fleet. For example having another invasion option, like "Airstrike/Orbital bombardment" etc providing new tactical oppitunities.
Aesthetically i can see it very satisfying watching wings of smaller ships scramble out of larger carries whilst in combat, doing bombing runs on other capital ships etc.
Of course gameplay wise you can go in another direction, i mainly want to see carrier class ships/smaller fighters become a reality in GC2. And the entire idea is in keeping with the evolution of naval warfare, even though the sea and the space are massively different they do offer similar strategic challenges which could shape the development of such vessels.
