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[oo7squid]

A thought hit me today, after I spent 10 minutes chasing stupid lasher class frigates, I reckon that a graviton or a tractor beam that would draw enemy ships towards the ship.

TRY it!

[Tarran]

There's an obvious problem with this suggestion: It would make small ships way too weak, as being able to draw small ships towards you would remove one of their most important advantages: Being fast.

[harperrb]

Big ships are underpowered as it is.

Small ships also out number.

I like this idea.

Give me a tractor beam.

Tie its negative force  to the mass of the target, so I can grab and hold fighters and perhaps only slow a lasher.

[NikolaiLev]

There are two implementations we could use for this.  Firstly, it'd be an energy weapon mount of some sort, but this seems questionable at best since you could lose out on quite a lot of firepower.

Or, it could be a hull mod, where as soon as something is within range, and you're targetting it, you begin to tug on it.

Problem being, what's to stop this from being totally ubiquitous?  It would probably have enormous utility.

[BillyRueben]

Big ships are underpowered as it is.

Really? I have no trouble soloing against an AI fleet with a single capital class ship, and I'm sure many people here are better at the game than I am. As for the AI, have you ever tried fighting the Venture before you have more than a couple of destroyers? It doesn't end well.

I don't like this idea, because it takes away the advantage of playing as a small vessel. For me, the best part about playing a frigate in the late game is to be able to dodge all the enemy fire.

[Tarran]

Big ships are underpowered as it is.

I disagree strongly. I have not found big ships in any way underpowered.

This is from someone who completed Forlorn Hope with only moderate damage and 95% score.

Small ships also out number.

Yes, but not very effectively. In Forlorn Hope, I must have taken out around 3 times my FP in Frigates alone.

[FlashFrozen]

I've already attempted to make a tractor beam, but just telling you, the game mechanics atm don't exactly let you play with mass and inertia transfers.

At best, I've got a beam that works in a tractor beam-ish way. It'll hold things down at 0 m/s and they won't be able to move from that spot. Also makes waffles

[MidnightSun]

Yeah, don't really like this idea, since it's hard to balance in the game. I guess you could allow shields to block such a tractor beam, and have the beam generate very high levels of flux, proportional to size of the ship being drawn closer? That, and perhaps make fighters immune ("too small to target"), since such a beam would destroy any fighters.

As for the AI, have you ever tried fighting the Venture before you have more than a couple of destroyers? It doesn't end well.

A Venture? What's so tough about a Venture? With just an Enforcer and one or two Lashers, it's more than feasible to crush a Pirate Carrier Group with a Venture flagship.

[BillyRueben]

I've always just had trouble damaging the damn thing with anything less than equal tonnage.

[Hardlyjoking67]

I don't know if I agree with this idea. I think that this would defeat the purpose of having a balanced fleet. The point of smaller and faster frigates and fighters is to catch the other smaller frigates and fighters. The Capital ships are designed to take on other capital ships and anything else that is stupid enough to get close to them. I generally think, as a rough rule of thumb, that each "level" of ships, so to speak, can only take on other ships that are either one level up or down. So a frigate should really only be used against other frigates, fighters, or whatever is above it (destroyers i think). Realistically, the frigate won't have enough firepower to take down a cruiser (?), or level 4 ship, and definitely not a capital ship (level 5), but it will have enough speed on it that it will be able to avoid its superior firepower. The bigger ships are protected by bigger ordinance and smaller ships are protected by better speed. If you throw in something that takes away that advantage, then you unbalance the relationship between the two and nullify the use of smaller ships. That's why you have smaller ships to screen your advance, no need for a capital ship to engage fighters and frigates. If you really want to use the capital ship for everything, then you probably need to outfit it with salamanders to slow down enemy ships.

[MidnightSun]

I've always just had trouble damaging the damn thing with anything less than equal tonnage.

They do have unexpectedly high resilience, and can take a ton of Harpoons to the hull without exploding. But ultimately, its (usual) lack of heavy-hitting weaponry outside of missiles (easily handled by Flak), large size, and low speed don't make it very intimidating in AI hands, at least.

[hadesian]

Maybe all weapons can disable engines? Or is this already in game, I've personally never seen it occur.

Right now the sole way of doing this is with a Tempest of Thunder wing, being the fastest ships in the game. The thunders also have Ion Cannons so they'll knock out engines.

[Hardlyjoking67]

I'm pretty sure that any weapon can disable the engines. Fighters are particularly susceptible since they have poor armor. Its just that weapons that have EMP payloads seem more likely to disable enemy systems.

[IIE16 Yoshi]

Any ship can have it's engines burned out by any weapons if they get shot in the ass enough times. EMP weaponry works much better, that's why Salamanders virtually guarentee a flameout. Good EMP damage, combined with missile splash means they knock out a whole block of engines at once.

[Sarkovar]

have you ever tried fighting the Venture before you have more than a couple of destroyers? It doesn't end well.

Use the Trollfest, err I mean the Tempest. Circle it, and its mining blaster can't touch you. Flak cannons are worthless against anything bigger than space debris.

Just make sure to replace the gravitron with the heavy blaster or it would take an hour.

The poor thing can't even limp away from you, it'll just keep flaming out.