Player Features and Ideas Discussion

F.O.F missiles, as they currently stand have the targeting priorities of a LSD tripping blind man. They hit rocks, fleet-mates, neutral structures, and basically anything other than what you want them to hit.

The Fix:

Turn F.O.F. missiles into HARM (high-speed anti-radiation missile) variants. Essentially, if you are the victim of E-War effects (ECM/Tracking DIsruptor/Sensor Damnpener etc) - the new HARM missiles will track onto whichever is the closest ship performing the E-War actions. Essentially it 'follows' the jamming signal back to the broadcasting ship.

If this is technically possible - you now have the opportunity to provide an aggressive method of dealing with e-war, counterbalancing the possible overpowering nature (especially with NPC E-War factors), as well as giving a sense of empowerment to a pilot suffering ECM versus the current sense of powerlessness.

Further development:

Possible turning all the different types of these missiles into EMP (not the damage type) but a counter ecm activity. This can be accomplished in different ways depending on what works best from a balance standpoint.

1. Pure Damage done - IE launch enough of them to destroy the E-War ship
2. Some form of target dampening (IE each hit provides a debuff to the targetting range lasting 30s or so)
3. Some form of ECM - IE each missile has some arbitrary set ECM strength that when hitting the E-War ship disrupts that ship's ability to target.
4. Module disruption - each missile hit results in some arbitrary delay in the ability to reactivate the E-War module
5. Neut - Each missile results in some neuting factor on the E-War ship

Any thoughts?

Most BS have slots for this, so it's not "bad" in that regard ... but there are numerous ships that don't have any launcher slots (most frigs, dessies, cruisers, and BC, not to mention T2/navy/pirate variants and T3).

It's not a "bad idea" on paper ... but the reality is that it would most likely make a number of ship hulls "useless" again...

Would there be HARM drones too?

I kind of like it, but non-missile ships could use something in the same vein, hence drones.

Thinking about it. I can't really see it being an "anti Ewar" module, Perhaps if you had numerous missile types, 1 for ECMs, 1 for SDs, 1 for TPs, 1 for TDs (why there would be a TD aimed at a missile boat is beyond me, but maybe it could cause some people to use those extra missile slots on their ships that always have neuts in them)

Really though, that would be rather difficult to balance.
On the other hand I had a thought. Rather then trackign Ewar, they jsut track sensor strengths that are lockign onto you.
See HARM works by riding a radar beam from a SAM site, or radar array, all the way down to its source.
What you could do is have 4 missiles, a gravmetric, radar, ladar, and megnetometric version. When cycled they'll search otu and attack the closest/highest sensor strength that's locking onto you. (perhaps a variant of this would be a dedicated frig or destroyer (and equivalent but larger classed cruiser/BC, and they can instead make them fire at people targeting an ally).

It would balance to an extent because if the highest strength lock that's on you at the time is a logi, the missiles will instead target the logi. Also they could be countered simply by a ship carrying a passive targeter since as far as the game's concerned, those ships don't output a signal that the HARM could follow back to target.

Here is a question, since passive targeting modules were mentioned. Since Passive Targeting modules do not alert the target to a target lock, can you achieve a lock on a target with one while jammed? If not should we be able to use them to?

Would this not be the logical counter to an ECM module as the current ECCM, target boosters and auxiliary targeting arrays don't seem to have nearly the strength of a ECM or be able to counter swarm ECM as the NPCs like to do.

Passive targeting systems by their very nature use a targets own emissions against them or other non-emission based means of achieving target lock. It only make since that a Passive Targeting system would be able to lock a target by locking on to the jamming signal itself. Like any choice by using a Passive Targeting module to counter the possibility of ECM, you have to accept not using a potentially more useful module if you don't need it to counter ECM.

Why does every other weapon system need the same bonus missiles do? If you give other weapon systems FOF missiles, then will missiles get instant damage? As it stands FOF missiles are pretty terrible, this could change that.

I've been flying a drake with a few reloads of F.O.F. / Auto-targeting missiles for near a year, and the one single time they shot at a building was also the one time I needed to destroy that building to finish the mission.

Anti ECM frigs like these could make Marauders useful for PvP. If they didn't have to worry about their sensors....

tough