Next Version of P&N: suggestions

[jimbob]

For new weapons,

Is it possible to make a weapon that specifically targets the self-destruct component? Put it in the computer warfare Category I guess... a group of elite hackers remotely messing with the control features of the other ship. Heck, you could have one component that shuts down (read destroy) the self-destruct, and another that sets off the self-destruct! This would definitely decrease the number of people using the self-destruct component as defence from pirates in the mid to late game. Suddenly everyone will need to build the defence marine guys (defence parties?) to protect their ships. I think this would cause players to deeply consider their options when designing their ships... the mind games could be very fun.

And how about beaming marines across (capture from a distance weaponry). A short range direct fire weapon with the 'boarding party' effect would do (hopefully it's possible). This would differ from the psychic line of attacks in that defence marines would counter the attack. Any self-destruct mechanisms would still go off, but probably shouldn't destroy the attacking ship because the ships were never docked. The supply use would be astronomical, and the component very expensive in Radioactives. I don't know if the component would be destroyed after use (it's the marines that die after all) or should just have a firing rate of 15+ (gotta make some new red shirts for the next group of 'volunteer' marines).

Lastly, each of these weapons could be small, super high speed attack pods with small Groups of stormhackers/stormtroopers in them. To do this I propose a missle that has good to excellent damage resistance but moves slightly slower than most missles. Change the damage type to either destroy the self-destruct component(when shields are down) or attempt ship capture (when shields are down).

Just some new weapon ideas. I hope some are feasable.

-Jimbob



[This message has been edited by jimbob (edited 11 October 2001).]

[Suicide Junkie]

Fighter-launched seekers: Sounds good, but the damage will have to be vastly increased. Fighter's rocket pods in the normal game do almost 10x the damage.

Ship capture is an ability, not a weapon type, so we can't put it on missiles or ranged weapons. I tried a boarding component for fighters, but SE4 dosen't even bother to check for its existance on units.

[Verigen]

What do you mean ship capture is only an ability and can't be used in beam weapons? If so, how do allegience subverters work? They are ranged and make ships switch loyalties. Why would it not work?

[Phoenix-D]

Different ability.

Ship capture sets off SDDs, converter doesn't. Ship capture works on MCs, converter doesn't.

Phoenix-D

[AJC]

I tried higher damages with the fighter missiles, it gets a bit overwhelming since the PD only usually get to fire once since they are moving so much faster in my mod. The Fighters are firing the seekers in swarms. so 100 fighters with 1 missile each in my mod can do up to 500pts damage per volley and the shear number of fighter missiles can quickly overwhelm point defenses...

the null space missiles are particularly nasty!

If the missiles were slower - then maybe more damage would be workable.

[This message has been edited by AJC (edited 11 October 2001).]

[jimbob]

Phoenix and Suicide,

Poop. So much for beaming in the expendible security officers. How are abilities defined, are they all 'range zero' effects?

What about a weapon that specifically targets the SDD? I'm guessing that this would be possible. Then there would finally be a need for defence marines.

Jimbob

[Rollo]

I like the idea of seekers launched by fighters and want to point some things out that I have found when playing Phoenix-D's techmod (early Versions). One has to be very careful to make them balanced. Their damage/kt/turn should probably be lower then the standard rocket pods, because they can be fired from range before the fighters can be destroyed. The Small Missile I suggested by AJC seems okay in that respect, because their damage/kt is lower and like the rocket pods they can fire only once per combat. Another thing to take into account is the tonnage, if you can fit too many of them into a fighter they will be very hard to stop, because each PDC shot will kill only one seeker (damage will not carry over to other seekers in the group). Making them too small (1kt for AJC Small Missile) will create huge seeker Groups that will be very hard to shoot down (maybe that is desired, but it can be unbalancing). Another thing is the reload, to make them a little different from the pods, perhaps a reload of 5 or 10 could be considered. Of course damage and tonnage have to be adjusted accordingly.

All those balance issues can be resolved, but one thing I have noticed with fighter missiles might be a problem. Here is part of an email that I wrote to Phoenix-D some time ago:
"... I also found an odd bug when using seeker weapons on fighters: If I didn't select all missiles to be fired in tactical combat, they would still be released, but wouldn't move because they didn't have a target. While this is not so bad, here comes the odd thing: After I have some seekers sitting in space doing nothing, all seekers fired by this or other fighter Groups would run out of fuel after moving only one space. Don't ask me why, very strange. Seeker fired by ships seem to behave normally (at least if fired by the enemy)... "

Maybe you can try and to reproduce this bug. It could be a serious problem, if the fighter missiles get too small and the AI decides not to launch all of them at once (it does that sometimes with large Groups of sats or many WPs). Humans can be notified of this bug and advised not to launch partial volleys, but the AI cannot.

Rollo