Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Interdictors and Heavy Interdictors have no place outside null, not in their primary roles at least. My suggestion is for a new type of probe (Interdictor), script (Heavy Interdictor) and possibly a deployable module, which will produce a different type of bubble which can be used in at the very least Low and Null sec.

The purpose of this module is defensive. All ships inside the bubble would be shielded from attack, including ECM and tackle. How? I'm not certain, one suggestion I have is make them untargetable, but this may (please debate) have to prevent bombs and smartbombs as well. It would have to be a two way thing too so that ships inside the bubble couldn't fire at ships outside. Nor could ships inside the bubble engage one another or involve in any other activity such as mining, remote repair or command links. This would severly limit the use of a deployable version of the module, but someone might think of a reason for that.

Whilst ships inside the bubble couldn't be engaged, the bubble itself can and would have a certain amount of HP, that a large gang could melt in a few seconds and a medium sized gang might take a minute or so to destroy. Ships both inside and outside could engage and destroy the bubble and in the case of a Heavy Interdictor, the script would progressively become damaged until destroyed and would burn out after 3 minutes if not destroyed by weapons fire first. A deployable bubble would take 2 minutes to deploy, but would burn up after 30 minutes of use unless fired on, in which case it would last a shorter period of time.

I envisage this being used in a classic example to defend a low sec mining op. Making such an op significantly more feasible than it currently is. These bubbles would allow warp outs and thus 'may' give the miners a chance to warp out before the bubble is destroyed. Alternatively, it 'may' allow an off grid defense force time to arrive and save their friends.

I hestitate about allowing this bubble to be used in High Sec. I wouldn't want to end suicide ganking, but this is characterised by high alpha strikes. So it may be feasible with high enough material costs to manufacture the charges/modules, so that people would be reluctant to deploy them until a real danger presented itself (ie after the first shot is fired), not have one up at the first sign of trouble. Suicide Gankers would therefore get their lulz by warping in and targetting their victims forcing an expensive deploy of a bubble, but not actually getting to the point where they have aggressed and thus are concorded. If on the otherhand a bubble wasn't immediately deployed, they would be able to get off their alpha strike. There would be plenty of cases where miners would be found unescorted or be so peeved at wasting millions on bubbles. This might require the suicide gankers to do some preparatory work on their victims prior to putting in the actual gank. But I'm sure plenty of people with no intention of suicide ganking will be dong that preparitory work just for laughs anyway.

Another use would be to run small fleets or escorted industrials through gate camps, including bubble camps in null. The fleet would jump in, the interdictor would break cloak and drop the shield bubble which would negate any indiction bubble it was dropped on top of. Then the friendly fleet would have x seconds to warp off, depending on how quick the gate camp dropped the shield bubble.

I think there would have to be a exception made for ships already tackled at the time the shield bubble went up. It would not be right for a tackled ship to be released by an interdictor warping in and dropping a shield bubbles, nor for a tackled ship on the outside to slow boat into a shield bubble and escape. Perhaps cause the modules on the enemy ships to switch off, but causing (due to an unavoidable reflective physics characteristic) for scrambled/disrupted warp drives to remain inoperatable until 5 seconds after the shield bubble was destroyed. The same characteristic would also preventing jumping, both via jump drives and through gates and wormholes. Which would give them an interesting secondary function. Note this could allow ships time to deaggress though and jump through a gate immediately the bubble came down. But the enemy fleet could also time it so that most of their fleet are also deagressed and can jump after them.

So basically, you want to create mobile POS shields? I can think of at least 3-4 ways right now to exploit this. Drop a couple during a fleet fight, dip in and out for free ECM bursts! Need bait? Send in a hictor, and when he hits structure, drop bubble! Whee!