Player Features and Ideas Discussion

In the light of the recent Stealth Bomber cloak changes, I've seen alot of threads suggesting a change in the behavior of Defender Missiles. However, most of the posts ask for renovations to the AI of the Defender Missile, rather than player control. I have a new idea to incorporate Player Input, and at the same time hopefully create a new tactic in Null-sec fleet combat

The Defender Missile has fallen off the wagon in terms of player usage, at a price of 4.68 isk per unit, the missile is actually less than a single piece of tritanium. The reason for this utter abandonment is a complete and utter failure to perform the task it is assigned to perform, as it utilizes a convoluted system of AI to target incoming missiles that does not scale at all to any amount of missiles greater than one. It is my opinion then, that the purpose of these missiles be changed from a primary goal of countering missiles, to a new role of countering the many ISBoxed bomber wings of today's Null-sec.

I propose a new system that will utilize these lost sheep of a Space Weapon into something actually useful. By creating a new module in conjunction with these changes named the "Point Defense Tracking Computer", Interdictors and T1 Destroyers will be given the ability to target incoming bombs at a rate of 6s per bomb targeted up to a max of the players targeting skill. However, this module will be relatively CPU heavy, and will constitute a major choice in the players fitting of their ship.

Previous Defender Missile:

AI Targeting of Incoming Missiles

10s Flight Time

8,000 M/s Velocity

One Damage Type

New Defender Missile:

Manual targeting of Bombs through the use of "Point Defense Tracking Computer"

8,000 M/s Velocity

5s Flight Time

Multiple Damage Types at an amount 1/3 of Current Bomb HP (Unaffected by Low-Slot Damage Enhancers)


By eliminating the automatic targeting aspect of Defender Missiles, and scaling their usage only to the Destroyer sub class, Fleets will have to choose between having tankier Interdictors or having the possibility to significantly scale down the damage of a bomb run. That is, if the interdictors are paying attention!

By no means will a single destroyer negate a bomb run however, if each missile can only do 1/3 of a bombs effective EHP and they are not the same damage type as a bombs highest resist, it will take 3 missiles to kill a single bomb. By this, each missile capable interdictor or destroyer will only have the possibility of stopping two missiles a piece if they are otherwise unjammed.

As a whole, I think these modules are best suited to Destroyers, as a Destroyer has a reasonable amount of speed and tank, while not being as easy to maintain reps on as say a cruiser.

TL;DR:


Make Defender Missiles more accessible to player base by giving them a niche function to help manage, not destroy, the bomber fleets becoming prevalent in Null-sec, while keeping player interaction to a maximum



Sorry for the wall of text, and additional ideas would be great!