Player Features and Ideas Discussion

perhaps one way to balance this is to make the missiles lockable like the bombs and have em show up on the over view

I have been considering the whole POS problem.

Then I realized there is a simple fix!!

" Due to the nature of the 'Long range target acquisition' modules sensitive electronics any significant gravitational or electronic mass makes a positive target lock impossible. This means the ship must be anchors at least 250KM from any structure or stellar body."

This keeps them on grid with a POS but not close enough to really matter.

For the Artillery units to fire they have to be anchored, the un-anchor process could take say 2 minutes, this means they can be taken out before they can get away.

As for gate camps, there is nothing to be done about them. there would have to be as many spotters as there was artillery units to be effective and that means 2x the manpower to camp that way.

What is your point? I never said anything about locking from inside the POS, I can sit on the very edge of a POS's shields and JB, or I can assign fighters. These are strategies that are already used by players. Why would they not be used here?

Even if you gave it a 5 minute movement timer, you'd have to fight the fleet + a POS. You might not intend this as a way to set up easy gate camps, but we'd make it into one.


So you can siege outside a POS, but you cannot fire artillery? It just seems so... artificial. As I said before, this is an overly complicated idea and it's little touches like this and the overview adoption that make it feel so unpolished. This also doesn't stop me reinforcing a POS from an off grid safe, rendering the POS guns pointless.

It just sounds like the kind of mechanic you'd find in home brew software, sure it sounds fun but it doesn't quite fit with existing mechanics and makes a bit of a mess of the interface for it to be functional.

This is broken, here is why:

Pos modules. Sit 2 km outside pos shield, fire away. All the kills, none of the risk.

Which brings around the next question, of what problem does this solve? It doesn't make missile boats any better.

That would be hilarious in HiSec...

Lil Joey is mining... suddenly missiles appear out of nowhere, and hit lil Joey.

Lil Joey is into armor, when suddenly the missiles stop. Elsewhere in that system, the launching ships are busy exploding thanks to concord.

Least effective suicide gank EVER... LOL

I've read most of the thread, and though it is a lot of work considering the plethora of other things that need attention before adding more crap in, here are my thoughts on this.

Interesting.

I see the need for 2 modules for this to work.

A broadcast module.

A locking module.

The way I envision this going, I see a ship on grid with hostiles. He needs to lock a ship, and use the broadcast module on it. This broadcasts that ship on the overview over a huge range (system wide? 10AU, 15AU, ??AU?)

Clearly your average pilot flying thorugh the system will see this, but not be able to warp to it, lock it or in anyway interact with it unless fleeted ofc. (This would need a new filter in the overview settings 'off grid pilots.')

To lock on and engage the target, a capital sized ship would need the locking module. Which would also broadcast the capital over the same range.

The things I think you would need to tweak are the range of the broadcast module (15km? 25km? 50km?), and how the locking module restricts you.

My thoughts on the locking module are this. The locking module puts you into a similar state as siege mode. You must be well outside the range of any anchorable structures to activate the module. You cannot move whilst in this mode. You cannot be repped in this mode. Your weapons gain x% range. But do no extra damage. Just a flat damage at all ranges, based on the existing mechanics (ie. sig radius, speed, etc.) Your position is broadcasted as a warpable signature during this time (maybe?)

I see this being a capital to capital sized weapon and being useless for smaller ships, maybe getting a few lucky shots off on a stationary BS at 20AU? ;P

I see cov ops rushing off to get intel on the arty position. And cocky gangs hoping to get an easy kill on some capital arty, warping to the signature and getting baitraped. Or more likely an interesting split in fleet battles. But it must be fairly easy to find and create a fight around the arty ship, otherwise you are just creating a great deal of agro.

I must say though, as fun as linking two grids like this is, it's not one of the most important things in the universe.

TL;DR: Broadcast and capital lock modules. Big stuff shooting big stuff on different grids. Not really important.

I must say though, with the incoming DUST514 release, a new capital ship idea? Capital Artillery, can fit uber ground strike weapons to produce console gamers tears (the tastiest of all tears), or nice artillery weapons for 'spazeshup battels.'


EDIT: The poster above me has the idea.

I recall a thread similar to this popping up once. It boiled down to firing bombs with a warp drive from across the system. A spotter had some sort of module that provided fire control linkage to the firing ship.

unfortunately, all the firing ship would have to do it fire, cloak up, and await the module cycle timer ebfore decloaking to fire again.

WAAAYYY OP. So no.

So basically a (very slightly weaker) remote DD that can be fired from a cloaked ship. Yes, definitely a good idea.

Of course they will.

They already are, and this won't make them more or less dangerous.

Heck, a cyno alt is the most obvious, bypassing entirely the intent to have another player help move jumping caps.

If they have enough to bring together the number of ships needed to be actually dangerous with this, they probably have gone straight to hot dropping already.
This compares poorly at best to that mechanic of overwhelming advantage, so is hardly notable as a likely path to be abused.

In small scale PvP, your points cover the topic neatly.

I am referring more to fleet level actions.

While I am sure, as many will state, that players will look for ways to twist this to some unforeseen advantage, I am not concerned too much.
We already have too many easier ways to gank and get killmails for this to impact too much that way.