I asked myself if it would be possible to have some kind of "mass-emission torpedo". At least i call it so.
How it would work and what would it do:
Lets say you are a nice pirate in a cobra (MLF 8) and see a trader called hutton-bob in a type 9 (MLF 16). currently it can be a bit hard to pirate him because you cant mass lock him and he would be able to jump away right after he submitted to your interdiction.
And here the mass torpedo enters the stage, if if hit the target, it would emit a fake mass signature and slows down the FS-drive
the torpedo:
pros of the weapon:
cons of the weapon:
How it would work and what would it do:
Lets say you are a nice pirate in a cobra (MLF 8) and see a trader called hutton-bob in a type 9 (MLF 16). currently it can be a bit hard to pirate him because you cant mass lock him and he would be able to jump away right after he submitted to your interdiction.
And here the mass torpedo enters the stage, if if hit the target, it would emit a fake mass signature and slows down the FS-drive
the torpedo:
- does not work against enemies, who have their shields up, it need to hit the hull of a ship to activate otherwise it would be destroyed by the shields but keeps working if shields activate after the torpedo hits and activated.
- would be a fixed dumbfire weapon (no lock-on, no target-seeking after fired, no gimball or turret version)
- it would come in small/medium/large ... sizes
- the effectiveness (MLF) would depend on the weapon size (f.e. small would emit a MLF 5 signature, medium a MLF 10 ...). firing more than one torpedo at a target would be possible.
- it would stack with your ship MLF, so cobra + 1 small mass torpedo would have a MLF 13 in this example (cobra +2 torpedos = MLF 18)
- after a successfull hit it would activate and stay active for some time (maybe one minute? could be also size dependent)
- does no damage to hull
- could be destroyed by point defence (maybe it would be able to take some hits before beeing destroyed?)
pros of the weapon:
- smaller ships would be able to pirate bigger ones
- the submit and jump away tactic would be countered, at least to some point
cons of the weapon:
- it requires one weapon pod and does no damage
- has to hit the target to activate
- only effective if shields of the target are down (to hit and activate, afterwards shields dont affect the torpedo until it deactivates)
- bigger ships would need more than one torpedo be be mass locked if the pirate uses a small ship
- works only for X seconds before it deactivates and the traget ship will be able to jump away
- could be an illegal weapon, so the user should have to avoid the cops.
- the ammunition could be expensive
