Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Easy solution: if you're in empire space and have your security setting on green, it will only shoot down missiles coming at you. In order to have it shoot missiles coming at friends, you gotta lower your security to yellow because in empire space that'll make you go suspect. And either way you'll get a weapons timer.

Here's some thoughts to improve its ease of use:
1.) it only shoots missiles headed to fleetmates if your security is yellow or red, regardless of the space you're in. This just gives you the option to protect only yourself if that's what you wanna do.
2.) it shoots the first valid missile when unscripted, however there are scripts that make it fire at only one specific size class of missile.
3.) should have 4 sizes of defender missile: light, heavy, cruise, and citadel cruise. These would shoot down their own size missile perfectly in one hit. You can't mount defender missiles any bigger than the launcher you have mounted - bigger launchers cost more powergrid. Light: 1MW Heavy: 20MW Cruise: 400MW Citadel Cruise: 2500MW
4.) each missile should do a false area effect damage (not actually rendered) which would do not only full damage to the missile it targeted, but also a small amount (maybe 1/3rd) to all of the rest in the same volley. So if you hit a volley with 3 defenders, it takes out the whole volley. This is to put these on par with other disruption modules, a few of which can potentially reduce an enemy ship's offensive power to zero.

You could just have the existing tech II variants for defenders too: Precision hits one missile at full damage, fury hit multiple missiles (calculated as AoE but *only* against incoming missiles) for less damage by using multiple smaller submunitions. This basically models existing anti-aircraft missiles with the same effects. To soimplify calculations I would suggest applying the effects to groups of incoming missiles en-masse so if 2 defender precisions are fied and hit they remove 2 missiles from the incoming volley without messy calcs to figure out which two.

The proposal as a whole is a pretty interesting idea, that said I think its still going to have to be a high slot mod, and honestly missiles are in such an niche place for most pvp that I don't see any real justification in creating a dedicated defense system against them. You're never going to stop the tengu hordes and until my poor missile boats get mods that improve their performance like turret boats get TCUs and TEs I don't see how adding a superior anti-missile system balances out.

I like this idea. It enables a variation of the tracking disruptor that affect missiles.

The mechanic should be slightly different, however.

The module should still be loaded with ammo and activated against a particular ship, however when fired it has a % chance of destroying each missile in the salvo fired by the enemy ship if it hits a missile while in range.. Meta 0 would start at 15% , like how tracking disruptors (unscripted) have a 15% impact.

The module would come in two variants. Light defender launcher with a normal rate of success against rockets and light missiles, and a lower rate of success (base 7.5%) against heavy missiles and torpedos and cruiser missiles.

Heavy defender launcher would be the reverse, stronger vs larger missiles and weak vs smaller ones.

No scripts for the module, but heat would work (increasing firing rate).

If you introduce a chance to destroy the missile, then the effectiveness is gone completely, remember that each missile in this draft requires a countermissile. Even then it needs to catch up, and deal enough damage to the missile. One reason of posting the topic is of the incomming rebalance of Missile HP. Different missiles will have different hp, Wich would be in line with the light and heavy defender missiles.

If however your talking about if one of your defender missiles would hit a salvo the entire salvo would be destroyed, that too might be to powerfull, especially if you stack a few missile point defense systems.

I don't believe there should be any form of destroying an entire volley either by introducing aoe, or % chance with defender missiles. Thats what the smartbomb combination(s) are for. However, i do think that a meta or T2 version that uses up multiple ammunition at a time could be the way to go, to be able to deal with missile volleys

The system is intended to facilitate small gang. Like tracking disruptors, the bigger the fleets get, these modules would become increasingly less powerfull. To stop a tengu horde, you would still revolve back to Firewalling.

The problem of "niche place for most pvp" is a matter of the state missiles are in atm. And then in particular the Heavy Missile damage application abilities. Missiles of all sizes are still in a verry good place, but in order to use them effectively you need to fly with a slightly different setup then a gun boat. Because of that, only pure missile doctrines like the tengu are really effective. It is not a matter of how effective the system really is, but more of a perception of the majority of the people that do NOT use them.

In any regards that would not change the defender missile current predicament. if you already think its a Niche place, you would most likely not use missiles or missile defense systems yourself, that is your playstyle. The module would have little or no effect on you or your playstyle, just as the tracking disruptor has little effect against my playstyle. That doesn't mean that i don't think the tracking disruptor shouldn't exist, or in extension, a viable missile alternative.

I feel one major problem with the defender missiles is that the majority of targets don't use missiles at all. You face the problem of either balancing it to be too weak overall or too strong when it actually gets used.

I think if it were to be able to attack drones as well, it would be less niche, and would be easier to balance into something a PVPer can casually fit and assume it'll get at least some use. It doesn't need to kill drones in one hit, it can simply deal similar damage to (or less than) similarly-sized missiles but bypass the need to target the drones individually. If the target choice algorithm is simple enough, a volley of defender missiles could reliably go to the same drone even if you don't know which drone it'll be till they get there.

I'm saying they should be best at shooting down missiles but should be able to assist damage against drones so that they aren't useless in engagements in which the enemy aren't using missiles.

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There could be three defender missile sizes, all able to be fit into the same launcher. The larger ones have a longer range and higher damage, but travel slower and deal less damage to smaller drones, plus they fire slower and you can't fit as many.

Light Defender Missile
volume: 0.015 (capacity: 40 @0.6 m3)
damage: 20 (27.5 @skills 5)
duration: 4s (2.754s @skills 5)
explosion radius: 32m (24m @skills 5)
explosion velocity: 170m/s (255m/s @skills 5)
velocity: 12,000 m/s (18,000 @skills 5)
flight time: 4s (6s @skills 5)
range: >48km (>108km @skills 5)

Heavy Defender Missile
volume: 0.03 (capacity: 20 @0.6 m3)
damage: 56 (77 @skills 5)
duration: 6.4s (4.4064s @skills 5)
explosion radius: 64m (48m @skills 5)
explosion velocity: 108m/s (162m/s @skills 5)
velocity: 9000 m/s (13,500 m/s @skills 5)
flight time: 8s (12s @skills 5)
range: >72km (>162km @skills 5)

Cruise Defender Missile
volume: 0.05 (capacity: 12 @0.6 m3)
damage: 160 (220 @skills 5)
duration: 8.5333s (5.8752s @skills 5)
explosion radius: 128m (96m @skills 5)
explosion velocity: 66m/s (99m/s @skills 5)
velocity: 6000 m/s (9,000 m/s @skills 5)
flight time: 16s (24s @skills 5)
range: >96km (>216km @skills 5)


I balanced them such that each deals about 80% of the DPS of its offensive counterpart, and they fire fast enough to respond to their corresponding short range launcher, though individual pilot skills may vary enough to break this trend at times. The explosion radius and velocity are adjusted so that each size will hit its corresponding drone size equally well, beginning with the light defender being set to a value somewhere between light missiles and rockets. This potentially sets a problem as the heavy and cruise defenders maintain 80% of heavy and cruise missile DPS while having a greatly increased potential to hit drones of the corresponding size. So the damage of heavy and cruise defenders may need to be reduced.

The damage reduction factor should probably be low, like with precision missiles, balanced so that while the larger defenders will tend to deal less damage to smaller drones, it will only be a little less. Or if the drones are webbed and painted, the larger missiles could easily do more damage.

Assuming the missiles deal omni damage, everyone has max skills, no ship skills or other outside bonuses are involved, and the missiles deal full damage to drones, it would take:

24 light defenders or 66 defender launcher seconds to destroy a Hobgoblin II
17 heavy defenders or 75 defender launcher seconds to destroy a Hammerhead II
12 cruise defenders or 71 defender launcher seconds to destroy an Ogre II

Missiles should have hit points equal to their corresponding defender's base damage, so that they always die to that size.

That depends on wich defender missile is loaded. EG if your fighting a drake that also has defender missiles fitted you could opt to go light missiles, to take out its defender missiles, or you could opt heavy missiles takeing out its heavy or heavy assault missiles. The drake could use light defender missiles to counter any defender missiles fired at him ( a smart choice?) or fit heavy defender missiles to reduce incomming dps.

I like the idea of having a mid-slot for this rather than wasting a high slot.

As far as mechanics go, and the issue of targeting specific missiles; why not just have the module reduce one of the launcher stats such as RoF or capacity (pushing it with that one.) You can then dress it up however you like with sparkly pixels. The idea being that you simulate the destruction of missiles by reducing potential DPS.

What form it takes is largely irrelevant, be it flak cannons, lasers, or defence missiles.

That is correct, but for me thats a valid trade off, more general use vs a verry small niche use