Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Edit 1: I first necroposted to this thread following CCP's announcement that the new weapon disruptor would affect missiles only. This is a mistake for the reasons I outline in the following, yet chronologically preceding post.
Edit 2: After reviewing the 2015 damage charts, I felt compelled to revive this proposal.

I know I've seen threads before about new ewar that disrupts drones and missiles, but I can't seem to use the forum search on my phone. At any rate, it's been awhile since I've seen one so here's another for the pile.

As we are all aware, missiles and drones cannot be countered with neuts or directly with weapon disruption. Drones can soldier on through jams and damps on top of that. So here, for your viewing pleasure, is a proposal to kill these two birds with more ewar.


Gonkulator* I - A set of ewar modules that affect missiles and drones (self controlled "smart" weapons).
When unscripted it interferes with the target ship's self propelled weapon systems guidance array thereby decreasing the max velocity of drones and missiles.

Drone Interference Script: Further decreases drone max velocity and reduces drone optimal/falloff and tracking. Reduces missile effects to negligible.

Missile Interference Script: Further decreases max velocity of missiles and increases explosion radius. Reduces drone effects to negligible.


Why one module to tackle two separate weapon systems?
Because tracking disruptors tackle three weapon systems.

Unlike the tracking disruptor, which is effective against any ship with guns which is most of them (total ships, not "in" ships) without needing to switch scripts, this module would need a script (and probably a reload cooldown) to be effective.
With the exception of the prophecy, geddon, and typhoon, missile ships are not also drone ships. There aren't really enough dedicated drone platforms or missile platforms to justify requiring a separate module for each.
I think a lot of our ishtars online or tengus online complaints could be satisfied by throwing shiny, new ewar wrenches at them.
Take that domis, ishtars, geddons, tengus, mordu's legion, and carriers! You done been Sat on by the Bull!


*Hogan's Heroes? Anyone?

I've been told you can jam out drones too.

Why not Missile AND Drone disruptor in one module?

I think the answer is simple: It would be too powerful. That's the main reason CCP didn't just make a Missile-Script for trackingdisruptors as they originally planed but made a seperate module out of it. Such "mandatory" modules are not good for gameplay, "choice" is the keyword here.

Nothing in general against the concept of a "Drone-Disruptor". But if it get's introduced, it should also be a seperated module.

I had the idea to make defender missiles attack both missiles and drones, and to fit in a medium slot. It could then be made into a secondary disruption type for Caldari, as the other three races have two types of EWAR.


Since defender missiles don't do a whole lot of damage and drones have a lot of hit points (relatively speaking), I figure defender missiles should deal a small amount of damage to a drone and also stun it for a few seconds. Hit the drone with enough of them and you can kill it, but if you only hit it with a few you are still taking it out of the fight for a while.


I had another idea to make this new defender missile into Caldari's primary EWAR/disruption and make ECM be their secondary. This is because ECM affects everyone equally unless you have ECCM which is a module with no purpose other than defending you from ECM--while all other forms of EWAR or disruption affect different targets disproportionately.


ECM could further be made into a tertiary for all races, which makes sense because it affects everyone pretty equally. Give every EWAR ship a role bonus to the strength of ECM jammers of it's opposing race type, for instance an Arbitrator would have a bonus to Ladar jammers in addition to its other bonuses. Caldari dual-EWAR ships could have a bonus to the strength of multispectral jammers which would then be weaker than the old racial jam strength but easier to employ. This would make ECM available to all, but not really something common to specialize a whole ship into.

Drones already have a counter. Shoot them.

I did read it, and yes, I am continually surprised in game by how few people shoot at drones.

That is a terrible idea.

5 small drones have about as much EHP as the frigate deploying them has.

Shooting drones is a zero sum outcome unless you are a ship size larger and can handle the additional flights.

Once again what is the counter? Because as we have explained, it isn't shooting them.

On one hand, It's a counter sure. It's not a very good one most of the time though.
On the other hand, most combat ships are equipped with the counter by default.