Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I think the person back on page 1 hit the nail on the head. Use an updated FoF code. Effectively assign missiles a unique flag, when a Defender is launched it searches for the nearest hostile target with the flag and goes after it. Each time a missile is assigned to another missile it increments a counter. When this counter hits 1, (which should take enough missiles to kill it to do), it loses the unique flag that allows it to be targeted. Obviously a friend or foe identity system to stop it shooting friendly missiles should apply, and variant ammo types that only work against specific missile types would be fine too.

Launcher wise they should be either Mid's or Lows. Both are vital to normal defenses so that's where these belong as it directly impacts your existing tank, (or your existing offensive boost module's, but either is a big hit). I'm not sure they would need to use Launcher hardpoints though. The different sizes should effect their starting interception range and i'd be fine with two variants per size, a fast reloading steady firing low ammo capacity model and a super rapid firing high capacity really long reload version, so you can have the speed to stop a lot of missile for a short time period or the steady interception of a percentage of the incoming ordnance.

Overall they'd represent a very specialized anti-missile defense that doesn't help vs anything else, which is a clear tradeoff in defence options much like specific resists vs all round resists.

As far as anti-drone goes, i'd be fine with the option to fit them with drone killing missiles and even missiles, (Lore wise we coudl say they produce ultra breif targeted spikes of high intensity jamming), tailored to each weapon type that act to degrade their performance in an equivalent fashion, though they'd need slightly different mechanics, but that would let the same modules provide specific defense vs alternate weapon types instead. Hell you could even have penetration aid missiles designed to stop defender missiles, though that might be going a bit meta :p.

As i said in the F.A.Q. section of my first 2 posts, the flagging of this system as electronic warfare, makes it so that sieged phoenix and the leviathan are immune, non sieged phoenix, like every other dread is still vulnerable to electronic warfare, and thus should be vulnerable to this as well

I think defender missiles would have a decent use if you made the following changes

Create 2 specific launchers for defender missiles - Heavy Burst and Light launcher.

The Light Launcher will have a decent sized bay for the missiles (60 ish) and a very short cycle time (under 2 seconds) this is designed for cruiser sized vessels, a short cycle is there to try an allow you to kill several missiles from a single volley from Heavy/RLMLs, these would also get the same penalty as the RLML with a 30 second reload timer.

The heavy burst launcher will work a little like a rapid launcher, however will fire the defender missiles in burst fired groups 3 at a time from a single launcher. This means you only need to sacrifice a single slot in order to offer more protection, this module is designed to be fitted to BS sized ships. They would carry alot of missiles in the bay and would have a 30 second reload timer, i would go with 60 in the bay @ 2 seconds per cycle at max skills. giving 40 seconds of good coverage people can extend this in smaller fights by trying to time thier cycle useage, just like what you would do with an ASB.

Next allow defender missiles to hit drones and missiles. They should be effective vs sentry drones but less effective due to motion vs. standard mobile drones.