Ah, I see the git gud brigade has arrived.
Interdiction Disruptor - new defensive module idea
- Thread starter rootsrat
- Start date
I haven't lost an interdiction with my type 9 with NPC , commanders is a different ball game .
The general consensus is to submit as you ain't going to win against a commander . Why ? Shouldn't you have a least an equal chance of winning ?
But no because the instigator decides he wants to interdict they know they can win , they generally end up facing you , they have a combat ship which out performs in every single way apart from jump. Get a cutter some cry some people don't have them ? Get guid others cry but you are but in a one sided interaction you can can try .
Don't go there ok so now all trade CG are empty what next ? Ok do it in PG and Solo ( don't even go there that argument has been going on for as long as the game has been alive ).
It's not like saying this anti interdictor stops it all it may make it harder for wide interdictors to interdict at some of the angles or may may long range a bit shorter and also it's gives a cargo more of a chance to win it ( not 100% say 50-50 instead of 0% ). It should be harder for a small ship to interdict a med or large , or a med ship to interdict a large and and equal ships should be 50-50 or even 60-40( cos I'm in a good mood this morning)
It's the chance of winning that's the issue not the interdiction itself . Yes you can drop boost and high wake but you still need to drop off those medical supplies to help the poor orphans....
Even the ax commanders needed help against the thargoids .
It would help if MLF was based on actual mass. Looking at you Type 9.
All the Imperial ships are ideal runaways
But the Clipper is a hidden gem.From memory I once proposed a 'tether break' version of the bomb- so it was like a torpedo in that it was single use. Here I'd make it a once per trip module that you detonate as a last resort.
Although I agree with you in that these numbers (excuse the pun) exist in a vacuum and relate to little, FD can and should use them for interdiction calculations. Each ship has them currently and its then reworking a formula to plug them in. If done right (and since only one ship can interdict at a time) it would achieve whats outlined IMO.
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Holy crap, I didn't realize (before looking at the suggestions forum) it brought a whole army of newly registered minions and spam bots with it. Gankers must be getting desperate.
@rootsrat , I think you're on to something!
Cutter's not a transport ship though? That's multirole?
Only transports I know of are Hauler, T6, T7, T9, with Keelback and T10 being combat transports.
In ED any ship can do almost anything so for me there is no real distinction. Look at PP, a great many people use Cutters because they are survivable and can haul the amounts required.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
It's not about surviving the interdiction. I can do that perfectly well.
But that kinda goes back to what Rootsrat was saying right? If the cutter is the go-to for hauling for it's survivability (because it's designed as a multipurpose ship), then what's the point of a T9 or T10? Like, if it's infeasible to fit a T9 as a hauler because it's too chonky and slow, and so the only way to survive is to carry less than a Python's load and fit everything else with defences... that sounds like some bad design.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
Just to add regarding SCO - this is did make avoiding getting interdicted at all easier, yes. But it also made poatitioning yourself for the interdiction easier.
It's not balancing things out as it's available to both sides. If you have 10kg on one side of the scale and 1kg on the other, and you add 5kg to both sides, the imbalance is still there.
And the imbalance is the only reason for my suggestion.
It's not balancing things out as it's available to both sides. If you have 10kg on one side of the scale and 1kg on the other, and you add 5kg to both sides, the imbalance is still there.
And the imbalance is the only reason for my suggestion.
I'm not so sure it did make avoiding interdiction easier. Most interdictions happen during the last few seconds before arriving where you're slowing due to gravity well and they're behind you so faster than you plus they're not trying to hit that magical can drop speed just tag you and ruin your approach. SCO is a big initial boost and then for most ships a long coast phase and that's the phase you're usually caught. There's some small interaction with the durations before NPCs jump you but it's also not good for short distances so I'm not sure I actually see a practical difference. There is a more notable pvp effect if they were waiting at the star and not near a port but both sides can boost there.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
One tip I can give you for that stage is - if the station happens to be orbiting a landable planet - try and get into Orbital Cruise. You are immune to interdiction there. From OC to can plan your approach to the station better, use the SCO in the right moment to get yourself closer and drop.
Do you sail an oil tanker into a battle without escorts? Of course not. Same holds true for ED, where you either swap ships or get someone to help- if the place is hot you plan for that, rather than fly in and grumble when it goes wrong.
The true, underlying issues are:
the T series are pointless
co-operative teamwork is somehow forgotten
C+P is trash
interdiction is random and somewhat illogical
ship metrics such as mass lock, hull mass, SC agility are used superfically (and are, IMO the answer to this proposal)
SC stealth under-developed
All these (plus more) feed into the underlying systems that should make SC travel and attack / defence more involved. Making a module that puts a finger on the balance is not going to really help, when FD could much more easily look at the formulas that dictate interdiction to begin with.
I know the tricks I just don't think that SCO has had a significant effect. I'll usually get picked up 10-30mm from the station which is often still too far for orbital cruise and gravity well stuff. Once it starts you lose control of your ship so you can spin but you can't redirect or drop into your destination.
My main complaint with interdiction is that the vast majority of the time by the time you've won you're now pointing the wrong direction 3ls away from the station. You win the mini game and you're penalised for it by having to now wrangle a whale around for another approach. Interdictions are a well meaning idea but how they are implemented is obnoxious. Unfortunately it appears that a lot of the supercruise mechanics were designed to enable interdictions.
I'd suggest that instead your module should allow for supercruise slip streaming. When behind another ship in supercruise you can "slip stream" as they exit a gravity well at the expense of supercruise turbulence behind them as they enter a gravity well. The goal here is to move interdictions from the end of your trip into the middle where you've got space for it and the extra distance isn't as much of an inconvenience.
The effect I'd like would be increased acceleration when behind a ship leaving a gravity well.
Decreased stability and increased decelleration when behind ships deep into a gravity well.
Some form of SCO assist so that if they boost away from the body you've got a snowballs chance of catching them if you have your own SCO and can hold it as long as they do.
It'd also allow wings to meet up and solo players to get a speed boost from NPCs inside shipping lanes but mostly the aim is to move interdictions towards the middle or 3rd quarter of any trip.
Because camping sucks more and it was a well meaning attempt a a viable alternative to camping.
Station drop zones were much larger but were shrunk because traders got annoyed at the travel time to the station.
I'm sure that there are many people who assume an inherent advantage for the attacker, even in scenarios where no such advantage exists, and this presumption is keeping them from getting better at the tunnel game. However, there are almost certainly situations where the interdictor has a mechanical advantage they aren't supposed to have.
All true, but all beside the point.
My CMDR's trade ships are usually shieldless and none of them have ever been shot down by anyone or anything. I don't realistically expect to ever see a rebuy screen in them, outside of very contrived scenarios featuring competent gank wings that have been forewarned of my CMDR's routes as part of a deliberate challenge/test. Preventing an interdiction tether at all is frequently possible and if that fails, submit/high wake is too easy and usually happen before additional attackers can even be pulled into the instance and get their bearings.
But again, the countless ways to escape from hostile encounters and the extreme bias toward the defender in almost all other circumstances, does not mean that the tunnel game implementation is free from problems.
It's not so much that winning is impossible--I've seen plenty of CMDRs beat many back-to-back interdictions--it's that the penalties for fighting and loosing an interdiction are much greater than submitting.
Outside of those situations where the entire point is to tie up hostile CMDRs for as long as possible, my CMDR would submit to every CMDR interdiction even if there was a 90%+ chance of beating the interdiction. I know I am safe from all but the very best pilots during that tiny short cooldown window, but a long cooldown can easily be a rebuy screen, even against mediocre opposition. Ten short cooldown submits is safer than one long cooldown hostile encounter.
If I'm alone and dropping into a populated system where I expect hostile to be present, I'm not going direct to my destination, I'm pointing away from all gravity wells and opening up distance as quickly as possible, so my velocity increases as quickly as possible, so my sensor range increases accordingly, so I can see everyone and assess them as threats. If anyone is following, I'm further from gravity wells than they are and will remain out of range, barring better use of SCO on their part. Normally hostiles will turn back, looking for other targets, rather than follow somone out on to space forever...at which point I can loop around and make a high speed pass toward my target, either automatically dropping out if someone I can wing with has a beacon, or gravity breaking into my actual destination or a convienent orbital cruise zone.
I don't see this as unfortunate. The game is supposed to enable interaction, between CMDRs and NPCs aswell as between CMDRs. Large segments of the gameplay are dependent upon non-consentual interaction and since so much time is spent in supercruise (even after the addition of SCO) interdictions cannot be overly difficult.
If interdicting targets was always a major ordeal half the combat and combat adjacent mission in the game wouldn't work, piracy and anti-piracy escorts couldn't be a thing, and SC would be little more than a waste of time; they could go back to that idea of selecting a destination and playing a short loading screen animation as we functionally teleported around systems.
I do agree that the tunnel game was poorly implimented, bias or not, but anything that makes opting out of encounters too automatic, or that shortens encounter windows too dramatically, deletes gameplay.
The ideas that haulers don't have a chance during or after an interdiction, or that being in proximity to a station is safer for haulers, are both fallacies. The attack window within station masslock is much, much, longer than a short FSD cooldown and often longer than a long one. Stations also do not automatically engage law breakers, unless they are shooting at or are hostile to the station, and most gank vessels can survive being attacked by a starport much longer than lowest common denominator traders can survive being attacked by that ganker.
Anyway, before the minigame interdiction was automatically successful. A tether just yanked the participants out of SC and into the same normal space instance. We also had a 20km, rather than 10km dropout distance around stations. I've always felt it was an all-round better, and more balanced, setup...more emphasis on piloting and tactics for all involved.
Up until much later than this change it was possible to reliably manually dropout much closer than the current dropout distance. So, there was a skill based option for avoiding some of that transit time, but the automatic option still put one outside sensor range of the station's entrance and allowed for a stealthy approach.
We can still manually drop out, but the accuracy of doing this is now in tens of kms, rather than the one or two km precision that was previously possible. Of course, Engineered trade ships can now cover that 10km distance faster than even a perfectly timed manual drop out could, which reduces encounter windows even more.