Nanook wrote: If you tend to lose masses of ships/fighters, you might want to try another approach.
Why do you associate having to replace losses with having entire fleets eradicated over and over again? If you have 5 carriers patrolling your space to defend against hostiles and each bumping into the occasional pirate, xenon or khaak patrol... You will lose fighters, corvettes or even capitalls eventually. One by one. What compelling argument can you give that justifies having to constantly check every carrier or patrol if it has lost ships, and then having to buy, equip and order around all the replacements so they are back in action?
What great "other approach" would you suggest against eternally-respawning and eternally hostile patrols (xenons certainly) trying to attack your space, other than "send more destroyers"´or "suck less", "play easy mode"?
"Players should be punished with repetitive, tedius and poorly streamlined game mechanics if they allowed their assetts to be destroyed or failed to protect them" - said propably no game dev ever.
Having a resupply system that just keeps throwing assets at a problem is, to me, a lot more boring. :shrug:
Who is throwing the assets at a problem? It's the player who is throwing stuff at something, not the resupply system. The resupply system reduces clumsy and un-fun micro management. It's not a human-wave-thing
Having ships get resupplied to the carrier is a timely process. The ships get ordered, equipped and fly to the carrier. Except the player does not have to do every single action himself.
If X3's prices are any indicator, youd be out of funds fast if you just throw M3 at something all day long.
Also, throwing assetts at a problem works just as effectively without resupply system - but only for big large assetts like destroyers. So players can do what you apparently abhorr anyway since forever. But not with fighters.
The game / AI throws problems at the player constantly. The AI have automatic resupply. Why shouldn't the player?
What if a pirate patrol shot down your factories freighter? Do you want to be forced to replace it manually? Or wouldnt you like the option to have it replaced for you, with your own NPC's (or 3rd party serives...) buying you the freighter, equipping it and setting it up with all settings, route stuff and equipment identical (if available). Save you the hazzle, so that you can move on and just deal with the economic loss? Thats the exact same deal as with fighters on carriers. X4 needs a general purpose replacement system that reduces micro management - for everything that can be destroyed or damaged (stations, ships, wings, fleets, carriers, etc). Simple as that.
A replacement system makes losses more acceptable. This means that players are also less like to save scum (as in reloading the game everytime a player assett goes kaputt to prevent it from happening). This in turn makes the game more interesting for the player, as there are more set backs he actually has to counteract.