Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Blindfire Module

Drone users have drones, missile users have FOF, turret users have, erm.... Smartbombs?

How about a new High slot module: Blindfire, which allows a ship to activate turret based weapons that target any ship that is using an offensive module against you with a 100% miss chance, modified by a new skill that gives a -5% per level chance to miss. This will allow jammed ships to have a small chance of being able cause some damage to attacking ships.

I imagine it would work thusly:

1. Turret module is activated
2. Chance is calculated, if they have a chance then ...
3. Normal rules of tracking etc apply when calculating a hit.


To further enhance this I would suggest that drones, FOF missiles and the new Blindfire module have some intelligence in the targets they choose in that they try and hit appopriate ones. For example, light missiles will prioritise frigates over battleships if available, drones will attack the relvent sized targets if available and turrets would do the same - large turrets would try and hit battleships over frigates if available etc.

And before people complain and say "but your jammed how can you know what targets are there?" remember, your overview is never jammed so until ECM modules ALSO jam your overview I think that this is viable. Come to think of it, how cool would being able to jam someone's overview be (hmmmmm....) ?

years ago, i proposed a thing that we have now in our military.

our radar systems can use a link system (general term to keep uncle sam off of me) so that ships can communicate. if these ships are "linked up" my radar system can paint the target on yours. you may not be able to target someone, but you know where he is.
now, with turrets, all you need is a direction since we dont have gravity to deal with.

we could introduce a new module that is like ECCM, but instead of pumping my radar up, i can take a bearing from someone else and "blind fire". would be skill based so you could train a blind fire skill or something, but if you and fleet member both have these modules, you will gain a 50% (for the sake of numbers) chance to hit modified by both yours and your fleet members skill.

this would kinda be like command ships, but in an electronic warfare setting. you could add this master module to a command ship, then anyone around who wants to be effected by it would have a sub module.

would be more to train, could gimp tanks and help ships go boom.

just a thought.

this would be a mid slot item...(a reply to the post below)

Such a module would be more appropriate as a mid slot item, as that's where the targeting and electronics stuff goes.

As to target linking across multiple ships, I agree there should be more ways for fleets to interact with each other, and that seems like a fine start, especially as they are working on devaluing other command ship functions. As someone who never flies a command ship off grid I dislike that the little I can do to bolster new friends into the game is being depowered due to the abusive actions of others playing in an entirely different way.

I've seen it a time or 2 before.

ECM should be countered by passive targeters, which by their description is someone looking out a window and calling out numbers the old fashioned way. A passive targeter should get you one or two unstable targets, with transversal determining when the lock breaks because the poor tech taped to the window can't keep up.

Alternatively, ECM could simply disallow all targets except the jamming ship. Your sensors should be able to lock the guy flooding you with noise...

Are you implying that red crosses are not the real ship models in the game?

Heh passive targetter giving you a single lock (or extra for additional passive modules) but much slower targetting speed when jammed could be interesting. (not saying its a good idea but its certainly an interesting one).

EDIT: Having it lock on the end of cycle (so it takes awhile to relock someone after being jammed) plus being chance based (different to the jamming) could be a good counter to ecm for people solo roaming, etc.