Cargo Hatch Disrupter... LOVE IT!

http://elitedangerous.com/extra/pick_of_the_week/peek_of_the_week_51.jpg

The peek of the week is awesome! It'll fill my Pampers when a pirate launches one of them at me, good god! Will there be any way to defend? Target the Disrupter and fire lasers/missiles/etc?

Will we see a Cockpit disrupter that'll rip out pilots too? Now that's scary... it had better cost a bomb though :eek:
Defence as suggested by Dinklebob: "Have it latch onto the cockpit and slowly start cutting the glass with a laser. You activate Cockpit Defense and have to use your hat switch to move a targeting reticle over the droid's latching feet to blow it off."
http://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/2grjfp/cargo_hatch_disrupter/

Don't get me wrong, I'm no PvPer; I'm a mostly trader/explorer: since I upgraded to standard beta: 100+ kills (all NPC), 200+ deaths (mostly by NPC ramming haha! At least 10 by other players). I just love the scare factor of other players... that's half the point of open play right? My current L6 is packed with missiles just in case :)
 
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I expect you'd first have to get the target vessel's shields down and then disable it's engines. Then there would be some kind of targetting involved similar to how you scoop cargo, I reckon. Sounds doable.
 
I expect you'd first have to get the target vessel's shields down and then disable it's engines. Then there would be some kind of targetting involved similar to how you scoop cargo, I reckon. Sounds doable.

And a tractor beam that:
  • pulls the target in place
  • prevents the attacker deploying their other hardpoints, thereby making them vulnerable to counterattack
Could possibly work alongside the FPS/ship-boarding mechanics already planned as an expansion
 
And a tractor beam that:
  • pulls the target in place
  • prevents the attacker deploying their other hardpoints, thereby making them vulnerable to counterattack
Could possibly work alongside the FPS/ship-boarding mechanics already planned as an expansion

No to tractor *beams*
 
This will be amazing. If it's something you have pilot up to the other ships hatch and lock on, yes it will require a drives disable.

So let's hope they fix that. Because ad I demonstrated in my subsystem targeting video, currently most of the time you disable drives the disabled ship keeps flying away at over 200 speed. So if disabled drives don't stop ships or there is no "tractor beam" this item will just be a novelty.
 
I hope that what it's for is to distinguish pirates (which are good) from pure griefers (which are bad). A pirate could approach his prey, fire the disruptor which clamps on to the ship and begins to release cargo at a slow but steady rate, perhaps giving the victim a chance to attempt an escape with what's left of their cargo. The point is, it doesn't damage the prey's ship and doesn't appear to its commander like an out-and-out attack. Maybe even with a disruptor attached, plugging up the cargo hatch, if the ship is destroyed or too heavily damaged so is all the cargo aboard.

This would provide a clear mechanism for a pirate to *demonstrate* that they are only interested in stealing the cargo. If the victimized commander decides to fight back and retrieve her cargo that way, so be it. Sure, the pirate could just communicate their intentions via comms, but this device as I imagine it is much less ambiguous (particularly programmatically) and doesn't require the victim to trust a man with a gun in his hand. Moreover, to make it appealing to the pirate, perhaps the disruptor could be pre-set to go for the most valuable cargo first, which would be better than ending up with dozens of wheat and radioactive canisters.

I wouldn't want it to totally eliminate the traditional, "blast 'em open" style of pirating as an option, but it would be cool to make it a much more heinous level of crime with an associated increase in bounty.

There are probably all sorts of other modifications that could further these causes. Such a device could even have a place in legitimate BBS missions, where the player is tasked with going cold, sneaking up on some particular ship and stealing a particular item or some such. There are all sorts of ways it could be used.

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And maybe nix the "slow but steady rate" part, but rather have the disrupter dump the cargo quickly but only be good for so many tons, perhaps defined by the class of disruptor you buy. If you're pirating in a Viper, you wouldn't want more than the best 8 tons of cargo to be released anyways.

I also had a thought about anti-piracy countermeasures, sort of like those paint bombs banks use (at least in the movies). A container registering as "gold" on the scanner is actually a powerful mine or EMP or some such. Seems like a reasonable thing to me, but might have too far reaching gameplay implications. If it were expensive enough, it could lead to highly interesting scenarios though. ;)

I would love it if the game could incorporate some form of honey pots for sting operations against pirates. A pirates life should be dangerous and require daring. It shouldn't just always be about picking on the weaklings.
 
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Will we see a Cockpit disrupter that'll rip out pilots too? Now that's scary... it had better cost a bomb though :eek:
Defence as suggested by Dinklebob: "Have it latch onto the cockpit and slowly start cutting the glass with a laser. You activate Cockpit Defense and have to use your hat switch to move a targeting reticle over the droid's latching feet to blow it off."

This would be awesome if it was a Thargoid only weapon when they eventually get added to the game. Make it really alien looking and super scary with nasty grinding noises as it cuts through the canopy.

But don't have the silly mini game, just a chance that they will run out of power and detach before they make it through. Thargoids should be scary and giving them a unique weapon that's attacking you directly as you helplessly sit there watching it cut its way in will greatly add to the fear factor.

Another thought, make it so they don't use it very often. Just knowing that they have this weapon and there is a small chance you'll have to face it will make Thargoid encounters a lot more scary than if they used it every time.
 
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So let's hope they fix that. Because ad I demonstrated in my subsystem targeting video, currently most of the time you disable drives the disabled ship keeps flying away at over 200 speed.

Just a quick thought - isn't this actually what you'd expect to happen? With the drives disabled there is no possibility of counter-thrust to slow a ship down. Unless you mean ships can actually accelerate with drives disabled, which would be very odd.
 
Sounds good even if you're not a pirate, there must be a way to counter it though otherwise a type 9 would be shedding it's cargo for hours.

Maybe if you go to modules you can have an option there to disrupt the cargo door disruptor with a module you can buy?

Put a time on it, something like 3 minutes to shut the thing down so some cargo gets dumped.
 
This will be amazing. If it's something you have pilot up to the other ships hatch and lock on, yes it will require a drives disable.

So let's hope they fix that. Because ad I demonstrated in my subsystem targeting video, currently most of the time you disable drives the disabled ship keeps flying away at over 200 speed. So if disabled drives don't stop ships or there is no "tractor beam" this item will just be a novelty.

Sounds like a missile so target and fire ,cargo hatch opens out comes cargo and it doesnt matter if the ship carries on at 200 ,you have the cargo .doesnt seem like a novelty to me :)
 
Sounds good even if you're not a pirate, there must be a way to counter it though otherwise a type 9 would be shedding it's cargo for hours.

Maybe if you go to modules you can have an option there to disrupt the cargo door disruptor with a module you can buy?

Put a time on it, something like 3 minutes to shut the thing down so some cargo gets dumped.
Should be a module to protect or overide controls so you dont loose all ,we shall see :)
 
I assume this all happens quickly enough that the hatch is opened before the trader's FSD can engage, so the pirate doesn't have to worry about disabling the engines?

That's a cool dynamic then, because it allows the trader to attempt an escape, no comms are involved, and this is essentially the "Stand and Deliver" message that separates pirates from griefers. The pirate just has to stop firing after the shields are down, and the CHD is fired.

On the other hand.... with the way some weapons like 4x cannon work now, isn't there a risk of killing the smaller ships while trying to take down their shields and fire the CHD? Maybe they're relying on the penalty difference between piracy and murder bounties to take care of that. Or maybe just the difference in loot you get, between using the CHD and killing the ship. It will be fascinating to see how this works in practice.
 
And a tractor beam that:
  • pulls the target in place
  • prevents the attacker deploying their other hardpoints, thereby making them vulnerable to counterattack
Could possibly work alongside the FPS/ship-boarding mechanics already planned as an expansion

I'm pretty sure that David has already said there will be no tractor beams in the game. I'm glad in a way because I think that would make combat too easy. I can see a situation where they would be useful on the bigger ships like Anacondas or similar sized ships in rescue missions for example where you have a ship that's stuck in a an atmosphere that's dangerous to humans or in a deep crater or something and has no ship power and failing life support and ship and its crew need pulled out.
 
Sounds good even if you're not a pirate, there must be a way to counter it though otherwise a type 9 would be shedding it's cargo for hours.

Maybe if you go to modules you can have an option there to disrupt the cargo door disruptor with a module you can buy?

Put a time on it, something like 3 minutes to shut the thing down so some cargo gets dumped.
I think a CHD should be a target for the PointDefenceTurret....sometimes it gets it, sometimes it won't.
 
As one with a more piratical nature, this new module is exactly what I want. That said it does need to be balanced. I don't want it dumping a Lakon 9's entire cargo for several reasons.

The first is that my viper/cobra or whatever isn't going to have anywhere near that much cargo space. Even with a few friends, we just couldn't scoop it all. And there is no sense screwing the victim completely like that. Even if we could scoop it all, we wouldn't want to stick around for hostiles to show up. So 3-4 units of cargo per person is all we'd take even if we had space for more. Gotta shoot and scoot, staying in one spot is suicidal.

A related issue is that of how much can actually be dumped. I think currently only the last 16 cans remain, everything else disappears. That's just a loss for everyone involved. A better setup is to have each disruptor missile cause maybe 8 units of cargo to spill. To get more cargo, you'd have to hit them with a second missile and repeat until you had your fill.

I'm not fond of the idea of it dumping the best stuff first either. It seems unrealistic and would be overly harsh on the victim. I'd prefer a random chance setup where every piece of cargo has an equal chance of dropping.

On a related note, the missile shouldn't be too expensive or too cheap. This would need to be examined during gameplay to figure out a reasonable price. It absolutely must be profitable to use, but perhaps only in conjunction with a cargo scanner so you're only using it on targets with good stuff and not on trash like wheat.
 
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