Player Features and Ideas Discussion

An idea has occurred to me.

Right now we have 15 kinds of Warfare links; 3 x skirmish, 3 x info warfare, etc etc. They are all basically the same thing, with exactly the same PG and CPU cost, and just bonus different things.

My proposal would be to replace them with one generic module, the Warfare Link. You could then have a script which could be loaded into the module, which would then deliver a bonus as per the script.

This would, firstly, simplify the market tab and manufacturing of these items. The tech-2 warfare link would simply add a greater effetiveness multiplier to the script than the tech 1 version. The scripts could be researched separately.

Secondly, it will allow greater flexibility for battlecruisers and command ships fitting one warfare link. For example, your squad boosting Nighthawk could begin a battle with a skirmish warfare link script running, to gain points, then cycle to a siege link once the battle is joined, and a skirmish mobility script to help people GTFO.

For fleet command ships, you can use the full 3 links and chop and change wht you want on the fly - but of course would only gain racial benefits to the specific links which your ship is designed to buff.

This could be done in a more limited fashion, by forming mining, skirmish, armour, info and siege links, which can only fit the types of scripts specific to those links. Either way, this will add a huge degree of felxibility to the gang booster role, especially in the tier-1 BC and field command ship roles.

It also, dare I say it, makes sense from a RP perspective. The warfare link is a computerised module; you are commanding ships and giving bonuses remotely, theoretically via magic or a least via some form of EM communication beam. Like a radio or something. i dunno. So the commands are a form of encoded transmission, so why do you need a completely different set of hardware to transmit a signal to give a shield bonus versus a skirmish bonus? Makes no sense.