I’m wary of suggesting this, since it sounds too much like I’m obsessing about canon here. Not to mention that the team is probably thinking things up as I type. Nonetheless, I am attempting one more roll of the dice to see if this idea is useful.
Having tried to work out how the Clone Wars might be different in gameplay, even with the proto-imperial tech, I was thinking about how EU material from the Original Trilogy emphasised that the Rebel’s Starfighters were innovatory somehow. Something about their hyperdrives.
With this, I remembered that the Prequel Trilogy shows fighters as less mobile. The N1s needed to link the Padme’s diplomatic cruiser in Ep 2, with Obi Wan’s fighter needing a massive hyperdrive ring.
While there are plenty of EU examples to the contrary, there does seem to be a lot of stuff about fighters that need carriers of some sort to get to other places. If we try and reconcile this with various hyperdrive equipped fighters, we might say that the latter are only good for short ranged jumps.
Building on this , I wondered if there is any way this could be represented. Hero only fighter units (all others come from carriers)? Small hyperdrive rings as mini-carriers? Fighters can only move between systems if a ship is in the fleet?
I know that most things I suggest are over-thought, complicated or make the game less fun. I was previously wondering about making fighters less useful and thus making corvettes much more useful until fighters suddenly jump up in power, and make them good only for anti-fighter duties. I did have a silly idea about giving station fighter complements lots of different fighters depending on the location, and then having the republic replace these fighters with standardised units, to represent the republic’s growing influence. Maybe show limited capital ship hyperdrives by featuring certain battlecruisers as garrison only units? All of this is useless. Other than the usual ‘add this unit’, I am beginning to feel like I can’t make any useful suggestions.
So, I am basically saying that this is probably a worthless suggestion, and that I am really wondering if anyone can think up something like this that would actually work. I don’t want to obsessively adhere to canon though if it makes the game less fun, or deviate from the winning formula the team already has. Maybe it should be exactly the same in tactics as ICW, only with cosmetic differences. I really don’t know.