Idea to improve the interdiction mini game

[Ryan P Bodfirst]

I've never really thought the interdiction mini game worked that well - it's ok but it's very binary - you either submit and fight/run if you can or try to complete and fail - there's no in-between. Also there's no real incentive for me to fight it once I get past a certain point and no benefit of being more skilful and hanging on for longer.

It also seems either ridiculously easy to win (like against NPCs) or pretty much impossible (as against other comanders with top end interdictors) and in the latter case is largely a waste of time trying to evade.

So here's a suggestion:

1. You can still submit to the interdiction straight away - the way you can now with the same result - with the benefit of less FSD cooldown.
2. However, if you decide to fight it - the longer you last before losing gives you a benefit of being further away when you come out into normal space from your interdictor. (And also possibly less FSD cooldown period?)

This means at least I have an incentive to keep fighting for as long as possible as it may just give me enough distance to get away in time.

Now this would need balancing but I think it might make the interdiction less of a forgone conclusion. It also gives the attacker an incentive to be skilful and finish it off quickly to get as close as possible to the ship he's interdicting when the interdiction ends and give him/her the best chance of catching his victim!

So skill will count for something on a sliding scale rather than it just being all or nothing - I mean I never find myself hanging on - I either win very easily or I just know it's impossible and as there's no benefit to fight on longer so I just submit and take my chance...

Changes such as above I think could make the whole thing a bit less predictable in the final outcome and give a real incentive to do as well as possible - for both sides. And if you still just want to drop out for what ever reason you still can using the normal mechanic.

 

[Ryan P Bodfirst]

A few other ideas to make it competitive:

1. Maybe the interdictors energy levels after exiting the interdiction are reduced in proportion with how long he spent interdicting. So if he wins the interdiction but takes a long time - when he drops out the ships energy banks are reduced. Again an incentive for the defender to battle it out and hold out for as long as possible to use more of the interdictors energy and an incentive for the attacker to be quick. Possibly some kind of threshold would work here beyond which the effect starts.
2. Perhaps also the interdictor gets increased heat levels if he takes too long or goes over a threshold time.

 

[tolm]

I like where you’re going but the energy thing doesn’t make sense to me - the longer it goes on the more energy both ships would be using, I would have thought. I guess here could be increased SYS drain from using the interdicter but doesn’t that already take capacitor power?

Like the distance idea a lot, though: longer you hang on the closer to escape you were and therefore the bigger head-start you get. You’ve still been interdicted so I think he FSD cooldown should still apply but the distance increase makes sense and seems like it could be balance / fair.

 

[Ryan P Bodfirst]

Yeh you have a point here - I guess I'm thinking along the lines that the interdictor unit itself is consuming energy so only the interdictor takes the energy hit.