Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The Hybrid buff announced today got me and my friends talking. As part of the way to fix the "Armor tanked ships can't get into web range" problem, we suggest a new type of propulsion module. This is in addition to the AB and MWD.

The "Pulse Warp Drive" (PWD)

Fitting: Similar to MWD.

What it does:
~60 second cycle time. The first 10 seconds are the "Warm up" period and the last 50 seconds are the "Cool down" period.

Durring warm up you get roughly twice the speed boost of a MWD (so 10x speed or so). And have it set so that you hit that max speed right about at the end of the 10 seconds.

Then you get 50 seconds of "cool down" where your speed is set back to normal (1x speed).


During the entire cycle the following restrictions should apply:

1) No other active AB or MWD or PWD
2) No cloaking (to remove cloak-MWD type possible overpowering)
3) No warping (to remove insta warp type issues)


Why this is useful



You would use this mod in order to get into tackle range of ships which are a little bit faster than you are. Then once you are in range you attempt to point/web/scram them. Hopefully they are now going slowly (since you are also going slowly). But also, hopefully, now your friends can catch up to you and help out.


Story & Role play bits

I mentally picture this a someone who has massively overloaded their warp drive. Or detonated a small nuke in the afterburning chamber. Or as a real-true turbo boost type button.

What about the Dramial
I don't really see the tri-prop Dramial getting too much extra advantage from this. If they activate a PWD, (and get to go 12Km/s) they are then committing to going slow for the next 50 seconds.

If you compare with a MWD equipped ship that gets to go at 5x speed all the time, to the PWD ship which gets to go at 10x speed for 1/6th of the time, it should actually let the MWD ship catch the PWD ship for a few seconds before it gets to pulse again.

Alternatively, a 'cepter with a PWD could possibly catch that Dramial for a second or two and web it down.


Thoughts?

It's a little unrefined, but an interesting idea. I'd expect it to use a significant quantity of cap as the limiting factor, rather than a timed disable.

If it's set up properly, this could be used as a replacement to on-grid jumping. Lock a target, activate the module, jump to target using a significant % of cap. It would give brawler ships a method to close the distance and snipers a method to stay out of range, in that the average unmodded ship would not be able to lock at 100km+.

A sympathetic fleet beacon module could be added as well, that lets any fleet ship jump to a ship with the active module...