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News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Ideas to make Electronic Warfare/Coordinated Maneuvers more interesting  (Read 6024 times)

nomadic_leader

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Like really, how can it make every other ship go so much faster?? handwave!
But that's nothing new about these ideas, that is the very basis of EW/CM.
...
You know there is a already an EW ship with the Omen, right? Some more couldn't hurt, though.

Yes, that's the problem. The basis of EW in starsector isn't so amazing. Of all the wild, interesting, fun, fancy stuff you can do with ship systems, hullmods, etc that EW could be, all we get is speeding up of friendly ships (or slowing down enemy ships, or whatever) through a handwave. Speed and weapons range is the least compelling and least credible thing for EW to do. It isn't actually EW. It's a couple arbitrarily chosen stats changed to adjust gameplay as a reward if you click a particular skill button or capture a random point on the map. It's then called EW for flavour.

I know this approach is taken to maintain some perfect balance with the AI, but it's underusing SS' potential. Let's have more oddball stuff like the Omen.

Here or a few ideas off the top of my head. Yes, each one would require some AI work to be used intelligently/hilariously by the computer:

-Ship/system that causes all ships within radius to overload
-Ship/system that disables all shields for a short period within radius
-Ship/system that hacks in some/all of the following ways:
-Enemy and/or friendly ship moves in random directions or disable thrust for a little while
-Messes with ventilation system and causes flux buildup faster
-Enemy turrets fire inaccurately or on friendlies for a little while.
-Messes with enemy missile guidance/IFF systems
-PD stops working
-PD fires on ships own missiles
-Compromises life-support and kills a bunch of crew (and decreases CR in combat)
-Causes reactor to go critical occasionally
-Various 'hacking weapons' that do the above via drones, beams, munitions, and sub-munitions bearing TEMPEST-style emissions

-Ship/system that confuses recognition of friend/foes
-Ship/system that causes enemy drones to attack their friendlies
-Ship/system that makes friendly turrets fire more accurately for a little while
-Ship with a really giant sensor radius.
-Drone that latches onto enemy drones/fighters/frigates and briefly take them over
-Ship/system that jams enemy ships and makes their sensor radii much smaller.
-Ship/system/hullmod that causes enemy missiles to go stray, target their mothership, etc
-Long range, fast missiles that have no warheads but act as probes with a sensor radius, who orbit enemy ships they find, highlighting their position.
-Ship/system/hullmod that gives the ship very small visibility radius (invisible until really close to it)
-Ship/system that reduces both teams' sensor radii for a little while.

To me this esoteric stuff just sound more fun than the utterly sterile, not really believable, yet no doubt frigidly balanced implementation of 'electronic warfare' we have now.
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