Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ok, point one, you cannot align a launcher ship and fire it. A proper align has the ship moving at least better than 75% speed, not allowing it to also be completely unmoving to fire.

Any time you have unmoving targets, because structures are always unmoving, or cap ships in siege mode, or any reason they aren't moving. Gate camps where you have stationary ships waiting to jump someone coming in through their side are great targets, yes.

Accept this detail, you won't kill a smart pilot. They warp around, and avoid trouble, and never put themselves into a bad situation. You kill pilots who make mistakes. They might be rare mistakes, or frequent, but every kill mail can be traced back to a bad decision on some level.

I would suggest the spotter be able to bookmark that spot, put it into fleet as the target, and have the launching crew fire on it.

This is not designed to be the only activity on field, but in support of other activity.

And Giz, your examples of HotDrops gone south are inspiring tales indeed. They are, unfortunately, uncommon to the point of being best classified as 'exceptions to the rule', as the phrase goes.

Point 1.) HOTDROP ships commit themselves to battle the moment they portal into a system. The bait commits himself to battle the moment he chooses to engage. In short, a hotdropped force, while typically overwhelming, is vulnerable to counter attack the moment they engage. Believe it or not, hotdrops go south fairly often... there have been several cases where titans accidentally jump instead of portal, resulting in their destruction. There have been many cases of hotdrops being counter hotdropped. There have been several cases where hotdrops were completely obliterated by a "hotdrop" prepared gang. IMO, if you are shooting an enemy, then you need to be at moderate risk of the enemy attacking you back!!!

I reglanced this thread, and re-read your updated OP post... I still see mention of things that are very unclear to me. For clarification, let's define your exact proposal. This is my current understanding, please update it!

Participant 1.) A barrage launching ship. This ship sits somewhere in system and launches a barrage of "cruise" missiles that enter warp, and exit warp and detonate at a point designated by a spotter ship.

-- I see no seige requirement for the barrage ship, although people are suggesting now that it must be at near zero velocity. Either way, the ship can launch it's missiles, and easily warp away or cloak soon after firing (within 30-120 seconds).

-- There is no limit to the range of the "cruise" missiles, meaning they can be anywhere in system (100+ au away from the target).

-- The incoming barrage explodes similar to a bomb, giving damage to all ships and structures within a certain radius of the designated target (which is a bookmark).

-- I heard some mention of restrictions on where a launch can be performed from, like not next to an outpost or POS... but this is really unclear!!!

-- Essentially, I see NO DANGER to shooting people from a barrage ship. You will almost always fire from a difficult to scan down, relatively safe location!

2.) A Spotter ship. The spotter ship performs it's function while cloaked... and hence is essentially invulnerable.

-- The spotters job is to get a bookmark of the target location, and designate the bookmark as the target.

-- It is unclear how the spotter acquires the bookmark. I assume you would have the spotter either fly to the location and bookmark the target area, or they would use combat probes to scan for a target and bookmark it. If you give the spotter another method to bookmark a target from distance, you open up a huge alternative use to spotter modules. Namely, the spotter could bookmark enemy ship locations and warp a fleet on top of the enemy. The enemy would have no IDEA that their position was compromised until the tackler lands on top of them. IMO, this makes spotters too OP.

-- Repeat... The spotter is invulnerable.

3.) The attacked:

-- Nothing forces the attacked to stay put, and a single volley from a single ship should not be enough to destroy most ships. If they are moving, they are hard to hit.

-- They have no warning of an incoming attack. There was some mention of changing local to show ships in space, thereby giving the attacked a potential warning that since there is a missile BS in system they might be the target of an incoming barrage.

-- The only way the attacked can fight back is to decloak the spotter (laughable at best), or have a prober ready with probes that can scan down the barrage launching ship. Assuming the barrage launching ships are launching from an off-scan safe spot, I personally think it's unrealistic to scan down the barrage launching ship before it gets safe.

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Improvements that will make this much, much more feasible:

1.) The maximum range of your cruise missiles are 10 au. Reduce their warp speed accordingly. Now barrage ships will be within scan range when firing.
2.) A barrage ship is unable to move or cloak for 60 seconds after firing a barrage.
3.) The R.O.F. on the barrage launchers is ~20 seconds. (adjust damage accordingly)
4.) To get a bookmark on a target, the spotter must use current bookmarking methods (i.e. probes or flying their ship to the location).
5.) The barrage launcher does reduced damage to structures (this will nerf their use in structure bashing!).
6.) Don't **** with local for the sake of this mechanic.
7.) This is NOT a replacement for cruise missile launchers, but an ENTIRELY NEW WEAPON SYSTEM.

With these changes, we can discuss whether this is a reasonable new weapons system to bring to the game. As you originally presented it, it is not.

I can accept your ideas, as for the most part what I am suggesting is being misapplied to be used against ships in the sub-cap class at all.

Part 1 might bear adjusting, since part 5 is flipped. Unless they have structures or cap ships in system, these won't be much of a worry.
Part 5, I feel, is totally backwards. The blast radius is something that should be so large only structures and cap ships should be concerned at all.
Part 6: I mistakenly used ship interchangeably with pilot. Keep in mind at the context where I was considering how local gave away cloaked ships; not that at actually displayed the ship itself directly

I can see now this was conveyed badly in some ways, which I apologize for. It was confusing at points trying to explain that which seemed obvious to me, but I see now as being unclear.