Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Thaago]

I prefer Atropos over Harpoon, as long as its not extreme range thats needed. They have better tracking and higher hitpoints, but lower range. Less total damage in a small mount (2k vs 2.25k) but moderately better armor penetration, so that is roughly even.

[goduranus]

The thread isn’t saying that Atropos aren’t good, but that a trident is a three headed harpoon.

[Megas]

I wish Atropos was a bit more damaging (like 1200).  They used to do 2000 for 3 DP.  Now only 1000 for 2.  They are just short-ranged Harpoons that are a bit sturdier (but cannot hit point-blank like Harpoons).  Stupid fighters making them weak for ships, much like Mora ruining Damper Field for frigates in the 0.8.1a release.

One thing I recently noticed about Tridents is they seem to launch Atropos from further away than Daggers.

I like the idea of support Harpoon fighter chained to the carrier.  Longbows do a good job lobbing Sabots at enemies while chained to the carrier with Regroup.  Having more support fighters would be nice for brawlers like Odyssey.

[Goumindong]

I -think- the use-case Alex is concerned about is battle-carriers (or, especially if the OP cost gets reduced along with a change to a single-fighter wing, ships using Converted Hangar) with a wing of tridents held in reserve, where they'll just hover around the carrier, fire their harpoons at nearby targets, and more-or-less-instantly re-arm.

Which is something of a fair concern; I do do exactly that with Longbow wings on certain ships - leaving them on reserve to fire sabots at whatever gets close, and only rarely giving them an actual engage order.

Yea. Which is why the solution, if you wanted to make sure the tridents name was apropos without making it hilariously OP, would be to give the tridents special harpoons that only had 1200 range like Atropos. Which might actually be a nerf due to the reduction in penetration.

[Alex]

I -think- the use-case Alex is concerned about is battle-carriers (or, especially if the OP cost gets reduced along with a change to a single-fighter wing, ships using Converted Hangar) with a wing of tridents held in reserve, where they'll just hover around the carrier, fire their harpoons at nearby targets, and more-or-less-instantly re-arm.

Yea. Which is why the solution, if you wanted to make sure the tridents name was apropos without making it hilariously OP, would be to give the tridents special harpoons that only had 1200 range like Atropos. Which might actually be a nerf due to the reduction in penetration.

Yeah, that is the probably more-concerning use case. Although That same Heron that's not so good 1-1 could become way too scary in a support role, dumping Harpoons into anything close to overload repeatedly. The AI wouldn't be able to use it this way, but that's kind of an additional problem.

Making a special version of Harpoons, though... that doesn't feel great, i.e. "here's a thing that looks the same but behaves differently". There are other fighter-only weapons, but at least their projectiles are consistent with non-fighter versions in terms of speed, damage, etc. This would feel qualitatively different.

[Goumindong]

You could give it a new special torpedo that split into three. Of which it would get one. You could call it a trident torpedo or trident missile or Trident MIRV* and well have it behave like a MIRV. It would then split as it came in and then arc towards the enemy looking one hell of a lot like a trident.

Not only would it be unique it would be appropriate for its name

More Edits: 750 damage projectile on the MIRV projectile HP/speed path sounds right. Though it would need MIRV range lowered of course.

*We will affectionately call it the TIRV for Triple independent re-entry vehicle. And it will sound gloriously dumb.

[xenoargh]

I second the idea of a little MIRV.  It's a shame that that's a theme only used once.

[DatonKallandor]

Going for a three-headed missile instead of giving the bomber 3 missiles would be good way to stay in theme yeah. MIRVs are cool, so that's another bonus.

[bowman]

I think it would be cool if the Trident had a different role than it does now, in that I think it'd be neat as a Kinetic bomber instead of HE.

Give it a "Trident MIRV" which acts similarly to a sabot but initially moves much faster (you get that nice trident handle/staff section ), then splits into 3 high-damaging kinetic projectiles (say, 250 Kinetic damage, 100 EMP each?) and, potentially very odd: make it actually deal more damage to shields with better efficiencies. Trident gets a bit in its description about "being designed to threaten even the most technologically advanced vessels in the sector"

Depending on lore state, as to whether or not anything new has been designed post-collapse, (it's a little odd because I think it is "no" but the AI wars were all post-collapse, meaning Tri-Tachyon designed an entire fleet of AI-only ships) the Trident could have been brought about specifically to deal with said AI ships and bring Tri-Tachyon down a peg.

[Yunru]

Hah! On the one hand, facepalm, yes. On the other hand, they'd erase far too many smaller ships, wouldn't they? Harpoons on fighters seem pretty dodgy in general.

Obviously they need to fire "Spear missiles" that just happen to do the damage of it's current loadout