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Suggestions / Space traps
« on: January 20, 2017, 03:18:36 AM »
I was thinking today about how a mothballed, and freshly captured ship keeps you from burn driving, and how that can screw over a fast fleet from getting away from a slower one that activates it's burn drives. Then I went to thinking about how I could maybe attach a mothballed, and badly damaged ship to a faster fleet, or even a slower one to keep it from burn driving.
Then of course, came an idea of how to et this effect: Traps.
A fleet, perhaps if you've leveled up your character enough in the right tree, should unlock the ability to pay resources, maybe specific trap-resources (Which could be contraband, or military-only in some, or most places, as patrols don't want to run into traps when they run around tolling civvies.) which you could use on the map layer, along with some time, depending on the trap, and your skill level.
These traps could be anything from space caltrops, which don't last long, and you can deploy while fleeing, which damage the CR of a chasing fleet, targeting the fastest burning ships (or the slowest, depending on what you'd have in the front) with smaller ships more affected by the 'damage' they do.
A longer to set up one could be energy siphons, which stealth-stick to fleets when they run over them, and then activate when a ship activates burn drives, siphoning off the extra energy to prevent the burn.
With the new system that's been coming, and space salvage piles, maybe you could even set up more outright destructive traps, litteral minefields of all capacities, and if you destroy a ship, (not a fleet) it drops a scrap pile, so the fleet that it come from needs to decide if it's worth hanging around and salvaging it to recoup what was on the ship, or try and save the crew, or what. Destroying a ship shouldn't be too common, aside from one key thing: Tugs. Not that I hate tugs, but the idea of them is that they are up in front, and pulling the bigger, slower ships. Smash a tug, and you've possibly just slowed his entire fleet down a burn level.
Again, this should, ideally, affect smaller ships more harshly then bigger ones,(because a mine that might not even break an enforcer's armor will do hell to a hound) but not be unusable by small ships, and should 100% have some cost associated with them, and while the idea of 5 combat frighters, stuffed to the gills with traps, kiting about a deference fleet and leading them through minefields and traps as they taunt them across space, turning and destroying them once the onslaught is too crippled to fight back, that's not really the idea I was going for here, and while this would theoretically be a big buff to any pirate captain, AI or no, who managed to both get ahold of trap parts, and the skill levels to set traps, 'The Law' could also make use of speed traps, maybe slowing a fleet down by 1-4 burn speed after several traps while the quick patrol waits for more substantial back-up to come so it can bring justice to an invasion fleet, or a more simple speed trap to catch smugglers easier.
EDIT: After bein reminded that Hullmods are not going to be a thing, and thus skill-point based unlocking likewise, maybe it'd be more fitting to just buy the traps whole, and have a 'deploy trap' button on the ability bar? Still keep a pricetag on it, perhaps more-so if it doesn't require any other investment besides money and cargo space.
TLDR: The base idea I want is for fleets to be able to spend resources if they have the captain-grade training to set up traps to hinder other fleets, either to catch them if they're slow, or to escape easier.
Then of course, came an idea of how to et this effect: Traps.
A fleet, perhaps if you've leveled up your character enough in the right tree, should unlock the ability to pay resources, maybe specific trap-resources (Which could be contraband, or military-only in some, or most places, as patrols don't want to run into traps when they run around tolling civvies.) which you could use on the map layer, along with some time, depending on the trap, and your skill level.
These traps could be anything from space caltrops, which don't last long, and you can deploy while fleeing, which damage the CR of a chasing fleet, targeting the fastest burning ships (or the slowest, depending on what you'd have in the front) with smaller ships more affected by the 'damage' they do.
A longer to set up one could be energy siphons, which stealth-stick to fleets when they run over them, and then activate when a ship activates burn drives, siphoning off the extra energy to prevent the burn.
With the new system that's been coming, and space salvage piles, maybe you could even set up more outright destructive traps, litteral minefields of all capacities, and if you destroy a ship, (not a fleet) it drops a scrap pile, so the fleet that it come from needs to decide if it's worth hanging around and salvaging it to recoup what was on the ship, or try and save the crew, or what. Destroying a ship shouldn't be too common, aside from one key thing: Tugs. Not that I hate tugs, but the idea of them is that they are up in front, and pulling the bigger, slower ships. Smash a tug, and you've possibly just slowed his entire fleet down a burn level.
Again, this should, ideally, affect smaller ships more harshly then bigger ones,(because a mine that might not even break an enforcer's armor will do hell to a hound) but not be unusable by small ships, and should 100% have some cost associated with them, and while the idea of 5 combat frighters, stuffed to the gills with traps, kiting about a deference fleet and leading them through minefields and traps as they taunt them across space, turning and destroying them once the onslaught is too crippled to fight back, that's not really the idea I was going for here, and while this would theoretically be a big buff to any pirate captain, AI or no, who managed to both get ahold of trap parts, and the skill levels to set traps, 'The Law' could also make use of speed traps, maybe slowing a fleet down by 1-4 burn speed after several traps while the quick patrol waits for more substantial back-up to come so it can bring justice to an invasion fleet, or a more simple speed trap to catch smugglers easier.
EDIT: After bein reminded that Hullmods are not going to be a thing, and thus skill-point based unlocking likewise, maybe it'd be more fitting to just buy the traps whole, and have a 'deploy trap' button on the ability bar? Still keep a pricetag on it, perhaps more-so if it doesn't require any other investment besides money and cargo space.
TLDR: The base idea I want is for fleets to be able to spend resources if they have the captain-grade training to set up traps to hinder other fleets, either to catch them if they're slow, or to escape easier.
