Ships & Modules

Remove them entirely.

Defenders need to be reworked.

Whoever initially designed them obviously was aware of complications. Defenders trajectory is actually redundant.

1st Method - laser point defence, incoming missiles are destroyed by laser point defence module, it takes no ammo, run on cap. Takes hi slot. Many ships have unused hi slots, this is where laser defence module can be good.

Laser defence system

2nd Method - decoy flare is launched, which attracts incoming missiles, warheads are lead away and explode safely. Hi slot module, consumes charges.

3rd Method - Ship jamms incoming missiles, by making its radio signal off the actual ship, missiles are confused. This effectively lowers ship's vulnerable to missiles signature. Module actively jamms missiles by lowering effective signature. No extra objects or particles. Guaranteed efficiency, minimum calculations.

I believe it was mentioned in passing by one of the devs that defenders needed to be reworked-potentially in the role of a new ship with a dedicated role as a defender, though I can't imagine where I read such a thing. I highly doubt though that they have actually considered doing anything with defenders since no one uses them, and thus no one complains about them. I think the idea of having a T1 destroyer dedicated to destroying drones & bombs would be kind of nifty, but not all that useful. In the end, it would be a better solution to just remove them entirely since they were never viable in the first place. At least FoF missiles can be useful in some cases.

Point defense and those should be better than defender missiles

A shield logistics ship which screen larger percentages of incoming fire from any direction, thwarted by engaging from an opposing directions simultaneously are a must to be honest.

Defender missiles are indeed next to useless in their current format.

I like some of the ideas suggested - particularly the flare/decoy launcher. Not sure whether it would be chance based or what, I don't really want to get into the details, but the premise is interesting (and in fact the mechanic would be almost identical to current defenders, except hopefully it'd work properly).

Whether these new modules would need a launcher hardpoint or not I'm not sure; probably not as otherwise you'd be very restricted on which hulls you could fit it on, and Minmatar would once again benefit a lot on the most commonly used hulls (BCs) while Gallente/Amarr/Caldari would not (Caldari in there because they'd need to sacrifice their only source of damage, which is the flaw in the current design of defenders in the first place).

I think allowing them to hit drones is a horrible idea, and another indirect nerf to droneboats that will hit Gallente hardest. If you want to shoot drones just target them and shoot for crying out loud. We don't need Hurricanes and Cyclones flying around with spare highslots filled with defenders that automatically shoot down all the enemy's drones, while at the same time they're spitting out full damage with autocannons (and their own drones). That would be dire.

Either way, they need to be reworked or removed from the game. I have OCD about the fact that my character has defenders trained to lvl2. But I refuse to train them to 4.

:D

-Ed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS

That's all I want.

I like the idea of a drone that would lock onto and engage missiles. This would have to be a small sized drone, and you would need drone navigation to at least 4 for them to be very effective. The longer the flight time, the better chance your drones have of shooting down the missile. I think it should focus on the speed of your drones, their locking time on the missile (new skill for this perhaps?), and the DPS they can put on the missile in a relatively short amount of time.

I prefer this to a module, but I agree that defender missiles are useless in their current state.

How about we get sandcasters as well? http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Sandcaster

Wow... it's like.. Missiles were OP for pvp right?

Defender missiles currently suck (bigtime) and are completely useless in game.

To make them anywhere near effective they need their own dedicated launchcer, it's ROF needs to be at least 1/sec.
Once activated the launcherr needs to auto lock incomming misiles, and auto fire in response (assuming it has ammo)..

CIWS or a laser equivalent as a point defense (mid-slot) module would be a nice additrion (in the same way that ECCM is vs jammers).

The advantage of a missile system over something like CIWS is range .. missiles >10km only .. CIWS <2km only