So since SS+ cut the Castle with its range extending system, the analogue I could make might be dated to people who actually used to get that beast and toyed around with it a lot, but I still want to pitch integrating that sort of stuff into the game. Not just as a single unique ship but as a series of ship systems that can be re-used on different sizes and classes of vessels to achieve different affects and use-cases. And in that spirit, here we go!
Siege Ships; Siege craft are geared towards making use of longer ranged sustained guns to provide long-range fire support. Ship system is a toggle, all soft flux the ship has when you turn the system on is turned to hard flux and the active vent is disabled (to discourage microtoggling, would need to be balanced, and maybe combined with a relatively long wind-down time before you can vent or shield again), shields are disabled and engine functionality severely reduced, and the system generates hard flux at the rate that it would generate soft flux from its shield. All weapons on the ship have their range reduced by 300 and then multiplied by four (give or take some tweaking and balancing, of course. Or being made into a per-size type deal like some hullmods are).
This gives the ship an exacerbated range curve on its weapons. PD and knife-fighting weapons are basically disabled, close support weapons are extended into artillery range and normal-ranged in-between guns are given a range boost enough to be able to lay fire on enemies as they close in on the ship but if the ship is caught by an interceptor its inability to knife-fight puts it at a huge disadvantage, and LRM's are an active hard-counter that forces an undefended siege ship to drop its range to fend off enemy barrages
Artillery Ship; geared towards using strike-weapons for a staggered close-support assault. This ship is meant to use close support weapons when it isn't using its system, as opposed to the siege ships. The system is again a toggle. This time when you activate (and deactivate) the system your ship generates a good chunk of soft flux (enough that venting after firing and then turning the system back on as soon as the vent ends doesn't actually save time), and while active the engines are slightly reduced and the guns don't work unless at 0-flux. In exchange, when at 0-flux instead of getting a speed boost, all weapons get a flat 400 and then x1.5 range boost (antimatter gets up to 1200 range, the 800-1000 range cannons to 1800-2100).
These ships, while not being extreme-ranged, are able to toe up to the engagement of an enemy who's being held back by a friendly ship and lay down alpha strikes at a range safe from all but close support and other range-boosted vessels. The 0-flux restriction and the focus on (frequently flux-inefficient) strikes means that against other ships that are capable of long-range harassment these ones will generally lose a long-distance punch-out, but because it has the ability to raise shields as needed and then drop them without needing to drop its commitment to the long-range mode and has only slightly decreased maneuverability it is much less vulnerable providing close support and reacts better to nearby threats
What do you guys think? Anyone else miss the Castle's firing platform mechanic?
