A new item, eh, i'd say either an Aura or otherwise some kind of AoE toggle with the effect.

Lets call it the "Fleet Protection Link" for now.

This item would, in essence, depending on the tech level of the slave, absorb a percentage of its taken damage and impart it to the FC at a reduced amount. The lower Tech the ship, the more damage the FC Absorbs from slaves that are hit, but the reduced amount of damage the FC actually takes stays static- in my eyes at least. The item would also use a fairly high amount (or if not replacing, increase the energy usage of an Aura).

IE; FC using, lets say, for shits, a swarm of T3 slaves, (iirc minimal slots)
The Aura would absorb (just numbers off the top of my head), say, 70% of the damage, and impart 90% of it to the FC, 10% is negated (FC takes 63% of the damage slaves are hit by).

This means, with these numbers, assuming the slave has 30% to all but mining (Paximinus), and it gets hit by say, a 150k blow to... Energy i guess, the slave takes 105k after resists, 31.5k after the Aura, and the FC as a result takes 66,150 damage that ignores resists. If it were Mining damage instead, the Pax slaves would take 45k after the Aura, and the FC would take, 94.5k.

Resists of the slave make a huge difference in this scenario, and im not sure the FC's resists should factor in, unless the slaves resists are ignored, and the damage is transferred before they take effect. If that were the case then the same scenario would play out as followed;
Slave takes a 150k Hit to Energy, 105k is transferred to the FC, FC is an EFDN so, they take 52.5k Energy Damage after Resists. Slave then either takes the unmitigated rest of it, or 30% resists factor in now, and they take only 31.5k instead of 45k.
The same scenario with mining ends with the slave taking, 45k, but the FC takes 75.6k.

Lets say you use 2 T20's.
The Aura would absorb, say, 5% of the damage, and impart 90% of it to the FC, 10% is negated (FC takes 4.5% of the damage slaves are hit by).

These are just examples, but the idea is, a method to give FC's more diversity in how they set up, and add more options in slave swarms by giving them more viability throughout the game. But it still gives risk- arguably moreso than higher Tech slaves, since the FC takes the brunt of all damage increasing with the lower tech of slaves they decide to use. This also makes sense, as arguably an FC wants themselves to be the target for hard hitters that can pop slaves, without slaves(or fighters) an FC is no more than a hulk of floating scrap after all.

This should in practice yield almost no effect(if not no effect entirely) for FC's that use the highest tech slaves available so that it hardly changes anything regarding High Tech balance, where i'm sure most FC's sit at right now anyways with their Selens, Lions, PBF's, etc.



Fun Fact: If this were to be an Aura, AMP'ing it would cause you to take more damage than the enemy actually dealt. Taking the earlier example, FC would absorb '525%' of the damage the slave took. So Assuming 150k, they'd take 105k after resists, after the aura, they'd take 0, and the FC would take 165,375 damage, assuming the static reduction is AMPed too, so.. AMP can be bad, who knew?