Suggestion: New Equipment

[Ven Mkoll]

I think that there is a big opportunity for engaging new play styles by giving us new equipment. At the moment, the only real way you can help your wingmates in combat situations is by force of arms alone. I would like there to be other ways to contribute to wings, like running a ship dedicated to Command and Control, a Fleet Tender rearming, repairing, and refueling ships, to even perhaps a ship devoted to electronic warfare. Ideas I've been playing with:

1. Advanced Sensor Equipment Replacing an medium-large internal slot, a piece of equipment that drastically increases the sensor range of a craft, even perhaps giving us a new interface that allows a pilot to scan for targets faster and at longer range than currently possible. Perhaps such equipment would enable better targeting of stealth ships? To counter this, perhaps the power drain of this equipment would be large, making combat pilots reluctant to spare internal modules like SCBs or hull reinforcement while making perfect sense to a vessel that will tail combat vessels outside of weapons range and provide drastically improved battlespace information to it's wing. Without a built in directional information like a bearing system included in game though, guiding wingmates onto stealth targets or long range intercept vectors would be difficult.
2. Advanced Targeting Perhaps like a low power fixed laser, replacing a weapon hardpoint, with effectiveness being proportional to the size of the mount and countered by distance to target and the effectiveness of the target's ECM (finally giving us a better use for current ECM equipment), that allows for wing weapons to stay on target longer, allows a much smaller spread during chaff deployment, and better subsystem targeting.
3. Sensor Jamming Replacing a weapon hardpoint, with effectiveness being proportional to the size of the mount and countered by the level of the hostile's equipped Sensor package, a piece of equipment that can jam hostile NPC and player radar, concealing the approach vector of friendly ships until a certain distance (Think Raptor from Battlestar Galactica). To counter this, perhaps this equipment has a large power requirement or jams all sensors in range, and not just the targeted ship.
4. Ammunition Carriers Using interior slots like the refueling limpets currently in game, that allows transfer of ammunition stores from one ship to another. To balance this, make it so that the ammunition stores explode if reduced to a certain integrity, making combat vessels very wary of carrying any significant amount of extra ammo. This would enable wings to have a friendly vessel sit right outside of combat zones, able to rearm them more quickly than having to return to a station or outpost.
5. Repair Equipment Using interior slots like the refueling limpets currently in game, that allows deployment of repair limpets that can help repair another vessel's armor and component damage. The Repair equipment wouldn't be able to self-repair though. Uses for this would be a support ship staying outside of a combat zone, repairing other ships that need it, for larger vessels to have a few of these installed so that they may repair their smaller fighter wingmates, or for the fuel rats to help repair an explorer's broken canopy out in the void.

I think that these different play styles would be useful and fun even without a big payout, promoting group combat and teamwork, but I understand that to be a real alternative to combat such things need a monetary benefit. I also understand that to replace a combat dealing ship in PvP with a support vessel requires the support vessel to have way more pros than cons.
Figuring out the best way to offer rewards for engaging in these play styles would be somewhat tricky. It would be difficult for a fleet tender to get shots off at a combat target without getting severely damaged and putting the longevity of the mission at risk. In reality the best way for these play styles to work is to have their pilots being rewarded as if they had gotten a shot off, or make in-game funds transfer a thing so that the wing members are responsible for reimbursing their support ships.

Original Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/3sg9g9/suggestion_new_equipment/