Many large ships are unusable in normal AX combat. They take massive damage from the swarms, and are unable to effectively avoid swarm missiles like medium and small ships. You can be doing perfectly well for 20 minutes, only to get caught out by a swarm and instantly lose a huge amount of health and module integrity.
This is made worse by the fact that large ships actually take more damage from Thargon missiles. In my testing, a single missile was dealing about 25 damage to a small ship, like an Adder, while dealing closer to 100 damage to the largest ships, like the T10. Swarms are debilitating for large ship users.
This has recently been made much worse by the changes in Thargoid behavior. Before, you could boost away and reverski to kill solo interceptor swarms, but nowadays, if you move too far away, they just warp out. The only place they DON'T warp out is in Conflict Zones, but there, the swarm is so distracted by NPCs and changes direction so constantly, it becomes effectively impossible to hit them with Flak. And of course, without killing the swarm, you really can't go for a large ship, as they shred shields and missile you like crazy, and you can't dodge due to your lower speed.
I don't mind the fact that medium ships are preferred, but it would be nice to be able to use larger ships in some circumstances, like for a support craft or to run Multicrew. So I'd like to suggest a new module, the Guardian ECM.
Distributor Use: MASSIVE
Range: 3000m
Damage: Up to 32 Thargons with a full charge.
Cooldown: 60 seconds
This ECM would allow you to charge up and destroy up to 32 thargons per pulse. After this, it would have a VERY long cooldown, something like a whole minute. It should also take a large amount of distributor power, to prevent you from running several of them too easily, and take a long time to boot up, as well. If someone wanted to run a dedicated ECM-Boat, that would be fine, but they'd need a systems-enhanced power distributor to run it. That would probably be the first time anyone's ever run a sys-enhanced power distro in the history of elite.
Now, what would this actually accomplish? The most immediate thing would be the instant destruction of Cyclops swarms. These swarms are very annoying, because Cyclopses lose hearts so fast they basically respawn instantly. Therefore, we also need a way to destroy them just as fast. One pulse would destroy them, allowing the large ship to fight unhindered for a brief period.
For larger thargoids, the main impact would be in size of the swarm and difficulty eliminating it. A Basilisk swarm could be destroyed completely if two players pulse at the same time, or it could be made into a Cyclops swarm, allowing it to be more easily destroyed with flak. Medusa and Hydra swarms would take more effort, but those swarms also tend to be spawned more rarely, so it's more acceptable for them to take longer to destroy. Still, if you had 3-4 players with Guardian ECM, you could instantly destroy them.
As we all know, many players actively choose to fight by a planet to avoid needing to fight swarms. This would be a great way to help even things out, in exchange for a small sacrifice in a utility slot and some intentional use.
It's high time Humanity advance our anti-swarm technology. Now, as the war moves into the second half, is the perfect time. Let's go, human engineers! Let's see some advances in this area!
This is made worse by the fact that large ships actually take more damage from Thargon missiles. In my testing, a single missile was dealing about 25 damage to a small ship, like an Adder, while dealing closer to 100 damage to the largest ships, like the T10. Swarms are debilitating for large ship users.
This has recently been made much worse by the changes in Thargoid behavior. Before, you could boost away and reverski to kill solo interceptor swarms, but nowadays, if you move too far away, they just warp out. The only place they DON'T warp out is in Conflict Zones, but there, the swarm is so distracted by NPCs and changes direction so constantly, it becomes effectively impossible to hit them with Flak. And of course, without killing the swarm, you really can't go for a large ship, as they shred shields and missile you like crazy, and you can't dodge due to your lower speed.
I don't mind the fact that medium ships are preferred, but it would be nice to be able to use larger ships in some circumstances, like for a support craft or to run Multicrew. So I'd like to suggest a new module, the Guardian ECM.
Guardian ECM
Power Use: LargeDistributor Use: MASSIVE
Range: 3000m
Damage: Up to 32 Thargons with a full charge.
Cooldown: 60 seconds
This ECM would allow you to charge up and destroy up to 32 thargons per pulse. After this, it would have a VERY long cooldown, something like a whole minute. It should also take a large amount of distributor power, to prevent you from running several of them too easily, and take a long time to boot up, as well. If someone wanted to run a dedicated ECM-Boat, that would be fine, but they'd need a systems-enhanced power distributor to run it. That would probably be the first time anyone's ever run a sys-enhanced power distro in the history of elite.
Now, what would this actually accomplish? The most immediate thing would be the instant destruction of Cyclops swarms. These swarms are very annoying, because Cyclopses lose hearts so fast they basically respawn instantly. Therefore, we also need a way to destroy them just as fast. One pulse would destroy them, allowing the large ship to fight unhindered for a brief period.
For larger thargoids, the main impact would be in size of the swarm and difficulty eliminating it. A Basilisk swarm could be destroyed completely if two players pulse at the same time, or it could be made into a Cyclops swarm, allowing it to be more easily destroyed with flak. Medusa and Hydra swarms would take more effort, but those swarms also tend to be spawned more rarely, so it's more acceptable for them to take longer to destroy. Still, if you had 3-4 players with Guardian ECM, you could instantly destroy them.
As we all know, many players actively choose to fight by a planet to avoid needing to fight swarms. This would be a great way to help even things out, in exchange for a small sacrifice in a utility slot and some intentional use.
It's high time Humanity advance our anti-swarm technology. Now, as the war moves into the second half, is the perfect time. Let's go, human engineers! Let's see some advances in this area!
