Antimissiles: More options than Antimissile Damage
Ebreus opened this issue · 5 comments
Problem Description
I'd like to make an anti-missile solution that's not the simple binary of 'break it's lock with jamming' or 'shoot it down with anti-missile'. I'd like to apply Slowing or Corrosive to them. I want more variety in dealing with missiles more than 'apply direct damage' and 'shut down their tracking'.
Related Issue Links
Add support for different anti missile systems
This is tangentially related as it broadens the options for AM however it isn't exactly what I'm looking for. This is just more options for killing missiles, I want to afflict them with statuses like slow or bleed their missile strength away.
Desired Solution
Add equivalents to Slowing Damage and Corrosive Damage for antimissile turrets.
Alternative Approaches
Add functionality for a field effect, ships with a given outfit will apply whichever effect to all missiles within a set radius of their center. This option has the benefit of allowing the Drak's AM to function as it's name would suggest, actually being a field rather than a hard, but possible, to overwhelm turret.
Additional Context
No response
There's also jamming, of course.
But yes, having some additional options would be great. Due to the way mechanics of missiles work I'm not sure damage-over-time (DoT) is actually feasible, but it'd be great to have if possible.
Other things that'd be great to have:
- ECM: As in, outfits that creates fields that affect all hostile missiles within them, regardless of target. So a fleet could have an ECM ship that reduces the effectiveness of missiles, for instance. This would be particularly great with a slow effect.
- Targeting systems (things that boost the tracking effectiveness of friendly missiles to counter ECM)
- Flares (things that we could drop to draw and detonate IR based tracking weapons.
- Chaff (things that draw and temporarily block the perceptions radar guided weapons. Would allow a player to drop chaff and then make a hard turn, missiles would keep targeting the chaff until they pass through it, and only then would they realize the target changed position)
Of course, I'd expect these things to largely not be absolutes. Flares and chaff wouldn't automatically draw 100% of missiles, for instance, although they could with a high enough value.
There's also jamming, of course.
But yes, having some additional options would be great. Due to the way mechanics of missiles work I'm not sure damage-over-time (DoT) is actually feasible, but it'd be great to have if possible.
My number 1 want from this is actually the Slowing effect. I can see systems like this having a niche in AM paired with long range/slow firing AM turrets.
Maybe even a ion or energy damage, that'd at some point stop the missile? Projectiles will then need to have an energy attribute or something like that (projectiles without an energy attribute won't be affected by the effect). Perhaps an energy generation attribute could be added too?
What I'm pretty much saying is to make the game engine to not see a real difference between projectile and ship objects.
ECM: As in, outfits that creates fields that affect all hostile missiles within them, regardless of target. So a fleet could have an ECM ship that reduces the effectiveness of missiles, for instance. This would be particularly great with a slow effect.
This would work well with the Drak, who are already supposed to have a field, but really just have a very fast anti-missile that can still be overwhelmed.