Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Something that has driven me crazy from both sides of the explosion is how instantaneous it is from being in a not-pod to being in a pod. There's a few issues with this hurried smashing of dreams.

• The victim's pod is immediately vulnerable. This might not be an issue for most people in most circumstances, but very often, much too often, this leaves the victim unable to act entirely. Slow loading, or lag caused by the explosion, or even the connection just all around being too good for everyone puts the victim at a disadvantage. While they may be very responsive or have properly planned for the event, they are very likely to have no opportunity at all to act.
• AoE damage can take place very quickly, exacerbating this.
• Conversely, the attacker may have no opportunity to know it's time to target a pod, instead. Particularly if they're dealing with delayed damage or a great deal of lag.
• The victim has very little time to agonize about their very expensive ship getting blown apart before them, they may even have zero chance to see the loss of their own ship.
• The victim doesn't have to wait as long to reship, but the fairness of this can be argued either way.
• The victim will be at the mercy of the session-change timer, so they will not be able to immediately dock. The fairness of this can also be argued, but this is a variable that could be independently controlled by other rules, not merely a side-effect of another mechanical limitation.

A suitable change could be as simple as making the ship-death take longer, so that transitioning to a pod isn't immediate. Only a few second's delay could even this playing field for both the attacker and the victim and be less of the who-has-a-better-computer game I hate so much.

This could also offer the opportunity for the attacker to switch to tracking speed scripts and drone sizes or for a heavy-interdictor to switch from infinipoint to AoE.

hmm
Give me an extra second to put my bubble up before the pod comes out .....

+1