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The Dr. Device (obvious Ender reference)
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CaleAdaire
Deep Core Mining Inc.
#1 - 2012-01-11 15:27:11 UTC
So while re-reading Ender's Game for the thousandth time, a solution to the wanton Supercap problem began to formulate. A small ship, killable by cruisers or frigates, and thus encouraging subcap ships in fleet battles, that comes in and using a destabilization device ruins cap ships.

It cannot fit any weapons or defenses, this will encourage attacking fleets to fight to protect them and give defending fleets a chance to kill them. It would need something like an activation timer, so its not a cap killing easy button. And would do damage based on ship mass/distance.

This way if you have large capitals all mobbed up in one area, then a large number of them will take considerable damage. The counter is to use Capitals strategically and fight in small gangs. Also the Mass/Distance will allow people to see this thing and run, thereby reducing the damage they take, and then return to the fight. Additionally, the lower your ships mass, the less damage you take, so the weapon doesn't become the "End All Be All" to war; and the more spread out you are, the less damage you take. That is important because it allows for the fielding of multiple caps in incredibly large scale battles, but requires much more support because they are more spread out on grid.

This is a rough idea and needs some refining. So... please don't flame, either up or down vote and provide positive criticism or help fill holes in the idea.

Trust in God, Have Faith in Fusion.
mxzf
Shovel Bros
#2 - 2012-01-11 16:13:42 UTC
Here's the problem. If you implement Dr. Device as it's shown in the books, you end up with a 1H-KO weapon that can be used against fleets. But if you don't do that, you're talking about a souped up SB effectively.

Personally, I think the souped up SB might be the better solution. Just make some more bombs that do like 200k damage but have 10k+ sig radius (meaning they only really hit supers, since carriers/dreads top out at 3.1k sig). I think it'd be much simpler to implement and just as effective at providing a counter to supers. Numbers are subject to change of course, but it's an idea.
Sishen Gzi
Hellion Support Services
#3 - 2012-01-11 16:39:04 UTC
I like the idea of a Dr. Device weapon, it might be a good use for another tech 2 destroyer. It's been a while since I read the book, but if I'm remembering it correctly the weapon used the mass of the target as a catalyst for the explosion. So, another way to do it is to have it be some type of a beam weapon with a mid range that has to be activated on a target for a certain period of time, maybe base this time on the mass of the ship. At the end of this cycle it destroys the ship in an contagious explosion which has an area of effect based upon the mass of the targeted ship. Any ships within this area are destroyed in a contagious explosion which has an area of effect based upon the new ships mass, and repeat.
CaleAdaire
Deep Core Mining Inc.
#4 - 2012-01-11 17:09:10 UTC
One of the things I was thinking was making it only able to target Capitals, maybe something like this in the description.

"Due to the nature of the weapon and the specialization of the frigate systems needed to implement (the device) very little room was left in the way of targeting systems and offensive/defensive capabilities. Due to this (the device) cannot fit any additional modules and can only be used against (Super?) Capital Ships due to their immense Signature Radius."

And yes Sishen, the Dr. Device uses mass as the catalyst for the destruction of the target. And MXZF, I thought making it able to damage smaller ships, while not being able to target them with the damage calculator Mass/Distance would discourage bringing 5 to 10 supers and then defending with a Drake blob on top of them. Hanging out next to Supers should be dangerous and this weapon makes you want to defend one Super, but run from 10 because of the indirect damage you would take from the Device.

Trust in God, Have Faith in Fusion.
Sishen Gzi
Hellion Support Services
#5 - 2012-01-11 17:27:36 UTC
More realistic to give it a horrible scanner resolution so it would take it minutes to lock sub caps but since titans and motherships are so huge they can be locked in a normal amount of time
Sishen Gzi
Hellion Support Services
#6 - 2012-01-11 17:52:47 UTC
Just to expand on what I earlier posted on having the explosion area tied to the mass of the target you could make the explosion radius(meters)=10( mass of target (in kg)* pi )^(1/3) which would give an amarr titan an explosion radius of roughly 20 km, an abaddon 7 km and a crucifier 1.5 km, that's just a rough equation and you would need another one for the amount of time the device needs to be active, it would probably be pretty much instant for a frigate but over a minute for a titan. Giving the ship a horrible scan res would ensure its place as a fleet anti-cap weapon, sure it can insta kill a frigate but who cares if it takes several minutes to lock one, by the time it has a lock it's dead.
CaleAdaire
Deep Core Mining Inc.
#7 - 2012-01-11 17:59:21 UTC
Sishen Gzi wrote:
Just to expand on what I earlier posted on having the explosion area tied to the mass of the target you could make the explosion radius(meters)=10( mass of target (in kg)* pi )^(1/3) which would give an amarr titan an explosion radius of roughly 20 km, an abaddon 7 km and a crucifier 1.5 km, that's just a rough equation and you would need another one for the amount of time the device needs to be active, it would probably be pretty much instant for a frigate but over a minute for a titan. Giving the ship a horrible scan res would ensure its place as a fleet anti-cap weapon, sure it can insta kill a frigate but who cares if it takes several minutes to lock one, by the time it has a lock it's dead.

Actually I like that, it fits really well with a little tweaking and adjusting. And I'm glad you didn't assume it was an instakill for Titans, I was thinking a squad of 4 or 5 of these would be needed to to kill a Capital and it would take some time. However, the damage from the explosion of one Capital would have to damage nearby Caps somewhat close to what this weapon would do. After all, we want to discourage blobs of Caps, not ensure new blob tactics.

Trust in God, Have Faith in Fusion.