It is no secret that fighters, (and by extension carriers) are in a pretty poor place at the moment.
They have sub par performance in terms of damage, application, and tank compared to a HAW dread, and even compared to a marauder they fall behind in everything but buffer tank.
One primary issue is how squishy fighters are compared to how large their sig radius is, which allows them to easily get shredded. Not only is this a combat efficacy issue since a carrier is 100% reliant on the detached dps and utility of its fighters, but fighters are also not exactly cheap which means you hemorrhage isk.
I want to propose an overhaul in terms of how fighters are stocked, produced, and used. Fighter bays would be removed and instead replaced by a manufactory bay, where limited production chips (LPCs) would be installed for the carriers on-board manufactory to produce. A durability indicator would be displayed based on how many replacements they have left, similar to a laser crystal. This would be the consumable aspect or “ammo”, which addresses several issues without making them too strong or cutting out any industry/consumable aspects.
You can still defang a carrier, since said carrier is limited by how fast they can restock fighters from their on board manufactory, but it is not crippling to the carrier pilot if they lose a few fighters here and there. A carrier pilot is rewarded by properly managing fighters and keeping them alive, since any small losses are easily kept up with, but a bad carrier who feeds entire wings will quickly find themselves out of fighters and completely defenseless as the trickle of replacement fighters are crawling in.
But what about fighters left in space one might ask? Well, you are still able to scoop them and have them as items. When docked, a carrier pilot is able to manually shove them back into a launch tube, or reprocess them for minerals.
also
**-**buff (light) fighter application because having a base explosion radius of 185m+400m (and there are no skills that can improve this) as well as 105m/s+70m/s explosion velocity on “light fighters” is absurd. this is nearly as bad as a literal torpedo, which also has application skills that can improve it. I dont want them to be super frigate obliterator 9000s, but i mean come on…
…all while having less dps than a marauder?
**-**make fighter sigs fighter sized