After looking at the Radar whilst dogfighting an NPC Interdictor I had a thought about extra modules that could be employed in combat. While Things like Silent Running are a cool part of the game this whole area has scope for potential expansion.
I noticed the Radar ping refresh rate on the scanner that radiates out with every ping and thought how beneficial a jammer would be to break up your ships movement on enemy radar screens. If the ship movement is tracked even between pings, a module or weapon that could stop this prediction and make the ship movement on the scanner erratic on the screen as the sensors struggle to track it. This could appear as the same scramble from ships that are out of range but at a slower rate, equal to the radar pings of the sensors.
This would help mainly when out of visual range as it would make it harder to accurately follow a ships tail and get a firing solution. To avoid a continual use of this jamming it could have a cooldown or cycle time and be used in a weapon group of its own or linked with weapons.
Other types of jamming could include a module or weapon that increases the radar return of the user's size, making the yellow (or red) icon fill part of the radar screen with it's signal and obscuring other vessels in space.
Duplicates, decoys and false signals could be a really useful addition that would allow the production of decoy targets that appear and move as the target craft. When these decoys are scanned, it is identified as a decoy and removed from the hud and radar. If this weapon forced the attacker to lose a target lock it would give them a 50/50 chance of locking onto the decoy or player and buy the ECM ship time to move into a better position.
Another module or weapon could be short term cloak, or more powerful form of temporary silent running that could enhance the effects of shutting the vessels heat sinks. They could be effective for only 15 or so seconds before switching off without shutting down the vessel's shield generator. The trade-off being that heat would increase much faster than usual with no way of shutting it off until it finished it's cycle, meaning potential damage to ones own craft if not used with care.
Obviously there should be ways of mitigating something this game changing to prevent it becoming one sided. Sensors could now come in different "flavours". They could be effective at different areas of counter jamming and worse at others as well as standard middle grade which is balanced but less effective at each type.
The abilities could increase with the class of the sensor suite module to allow increased protection from more powerful forms of jamming.
Now that we have wings in the game, the ability to role specialise a vessel becomes more viable. This could allow the Wing members to slave their sensors together and allow faster sensor scans and longer sensor ranges.
This is a whole new system to implement and probably deserves a post to itself.
I think this could really give combat a real boost to its current simple depth and create a more interactive environment requiring a bit more intuition and skill! Post suggestions and other ideas below!
Fly Dangerous!
Spiegal
I noticed the Radar ping refresh rate on the scanner that radiates out with every ping and thought how beneficial a jammer would be to break up your ships movement on enemy radar screens. If the ship movement is tracked even between pings, a module or weapon that could stop this prediction and make the ship movement on the scanner erratic on the screen as the sensors struggle to track it. This could appear as the same scramble from ships that are out of range but at a slower rate, equal to the radar pings of the sensors.
This would help mainly when out of visual range as it would make it harder to accurately follow a ships tail and get a firing solution. To avoid a continual use of this jamming it could have a cooldown or cycle time and be used in a weapon group of its own or linked with weapons.
Other types of jamming could include a module or weapon that increases the radar return of the user's size, making the yellow (or red) icon fill part of the radar screen with it's signal and obscuring other vessels in space.
Duplicates, decoys and false signals could be a really useful addition that would allow the production of decoy targets that appear and move as the target craft. When these decoys are scanned, it is identified as a decoy and removed from the hud and radar. If this weapon forced the attacker to lose a target lock it would give them a 50/50 chance of locking onto the decoy or player and buy the ECM ship time to move into a better position.
Another module or weapon could be short term cloak, or more powerful form of temporary silent running that could enhance the effects of shutting the vessels heat sinks. They could be effective for only 15 or so seconds before switching off without shutting down the vessel's shield generator. The trade-off being that heat would increase much faster than usual with no way of shutting it off until it finished it's cycle, meaning potential damage to ones own craft if not used with care.
Obviously there should be ways of mitigating something this game changing to prevent it becoming one sided. Sensors could now come in different "flavours". They could be effective at different areas of counter jamming and worse at others as well as standard middle grade which is balanced but less effective at each type.
The abilities could increase with the class of the sensor suite module to allow increased protection from more powerful forms of jamming.
Now that we have wings in the game, the ability to role specialise a vessel becomes more viable. This could allow the Wing members to slave their sensors together and allow faster sensor scans and longer sensor ranges.
This is a whole new system to implement and probably deserves a post to itself.
I think this could really give combat a real boost to its current simple depth and create a more interactive environment requiring a bit more intuition and skill! Post suggestions and other ideas below!
Fly Dangerous!
Spiegal
- lol but seriously I love the idea. I would like more modules, more choices. Because as it stands, yeah there are a few different builds per-ce, but generally for each different role, the builds are alike. 