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[Brainwright]

Quantum Disruptor got nerfed hard.

It's not hard to see why : making a brief window of opportunity for extreme damage is nigh impossible to tweak in the current state of the game.  You either have enough time to land a reaper torpedo or you don't.  There is scarce little in between.

So instead, redirect the disruption from a general disruption to something specific.  Disrupt the engines in a particular way : lock the current heading and accelerate fully.  Even one or two seconds of this is invaluable not only for throwing off a target's aim, but for keeping an aggressor from backing off or dodging them entirely.  This also doesn't prevent ships from getting away when they've already started backing off.

There's a lot of room to tweak this, too.  If you give the target the zero-flux speed boost during this time, it would probably make getting around behind the target harder and would be something useful you could do to allied ships.  Only issue is whether the AI could handle it.

[TaLaR]

This would purely an anti-player griefing ability. AI doesn't significantly rely on precise maneuvering. Player does. AI usually doesn't do the winning move even when one obviously exists and it's perfectly capable of executing it stat-wise.

At the same time rather useless to player as well - I can outmaneuver AI as is, a system that doesn't help me win the flux war (free damage/absorption/dodge otherwise unavoidable shots/etc) isn't good enough. Harbinger (with character skills) is fast enough to not need system to approach any fleeing target. Not fast enough to outmaneuver shields like a phase frigate, but proposed system won't help with this.

Hard to not waste charge of this system too. As player, you'd just bait this system by entering it's range with a safe movement vector, then start doing whatever you were actually intending to. But good luck tracking enemy cooldowns, there is no standard UI for this (maybe there is a mod?). Would be annoying as hell.

[Megas]

Doom had this system briefly between Fast Missile Racks and Mine Strike for a release or two:  Interdictor Array.  It knocked out some engines, but usually not enough for a flameout.  It was a joke.

Quantum Disruptor needs to be good again if it stays on Harbinger.  Quantum Disruptor needs more range (without the need of Systems Expertise) so Harbinger can use it with beyond short-range weapons, and it either needs charges again, much faster recharge, or overload duration much longer than a frame or two.

If none of that is good, then swap systems back to their original owners (Quantum Disruptor was originally Afflictor's, and Entropy Amplifier was originally Harbinger's).  Original Quantum Disruptor was overpowered and better than Entropy Amplifier.  Today, the reverse is true, Entropy Amplifier is better than today's Quantum Disruptor.  Then again, Harbinger is not mobile enough, and it needs to paralyze enemies with old Quantum Disruptor to help defend itself, but Quantum Disruptor today is useless at that.

[Brainwright]

This would purely an anti-player griefing ability. AI doesn't significantly rely on precise maneuvering. Player does. AI usually doesn't do the winning move even when one obviously exists and it's perfectly capable of executing it stat-wise.

At the same time rather useless to player as well - I can outmaneuver AI as is, a system that doesn't help me win the flux war (free damage/absorption/dodge otherwise unavoidable shots/etc) isn't good enough. Harbinger (with character skills) is fast enough to not need system to approach any fleeing target. Not fast enough to outmaneuver shields like a phase frigate, but proposed system won't help with this.

Hard to not waste charge of this system too. As player, you'd just bait this system by entering it's range with a safe movement vector, then start doing whatever you were actually intending to. But good luck tracking enemy cooldowns, there is no standard UI for this (maybe there is a mod?). Would be annoying as hell.

Yeah, mine strike has all the same issues.  Piddly little mines?  AI can just maneuver around and shoot with PD!  Wasted charges! useless!  Pretty easy to bait mines, too!  Just drive forward and press the Doom until it uses all its charges!  Useless!  Totally junk system.

Except, I know the AI relies on fairly precise maneuvering, so I know why mine strike works so well.

Doom had this system briefly between Fast Missile Racks and Mine Strike for a release or two:  Interdictor Array.  It knocked out some engines, but usually not enough for a flameout.  It was a joke.

Quantum Disruptor needs to be good again if it stays on Harbinger.  Quantum Disruptor needs more range (without the need of Systems Expertise) so Harbinger can use it with beyond short-range weapons, and it either needs charges again, much faster recharge, or overload duration much longer than a frame or two.

If none of that is good, then swap systems back to their original owners (Quantum Disruptor was originally Afflictor's, and Entropy Amplifier was originally Harbinger's).  Original Quantum Disruptor was overpowered and better than Entropy Amplifier.  Today, the reverse is true, Entropy Amplifier is better than today's Quantum Disruptor.  Then again, Harbinger is not mobile enough, and it needs to paralyze enemies with old Quantum Disruptor to help defend itself, but Quantum Disruptor today is useless at that.

It's not slowing down a ship, it's speeding up.  More like a malicious phase skimmer in behavior.

And giving the current harbinger entropy amplifier is laughable.  It's already got plenty damage with phase anchor and entropy amplifier would be ruinous to every ship in the game short of a Paragon.

Face the facts : old quantum disruptor isn't coming back because it's bad.  Adding it back in demands hard nerfs to the Harbinger.

What it needs is better dogfighting as it's prone to being swarmed and surrounded every time it pushes aggressively.

[Megas]

Movement Disruption at a glance looked more like immobilization.  So, it looks like you want Harbinger to drop space grease under the target and have it slide wherever.  With constantly backpedaling enemies facing their target, it would probably function like an awkward tractor beam.  If it ends up working like a tractor beam (because of everyone points at their enemies), then make it a tractor beam, but it would look better if a capital ship sucked in a small ship than the reverse.

Face the facts : old quantum disruptor isn't coming back because it's bad.  Adding it back in demands hard nerfs to the Harbinger.

What it needs is better dogfighting as it's prone to being swarmed and surrounded every time it pushes aggressively.

No, Harbinger does not need nerfs if Quantum Disruptor gets better.  Harbinger with old QD was only overpowered with Reapers.  After Harbinger lost Synergy mounts, it became inferior to Afflictor ever since, and it did not punch much above its weight, if at all, like Afflictor and Doom could.  QD being used against you could be annoying, but just that, annoying.

Without QD, Harbinger gets shot at every time it decloaks to attack, not unlike a no-shield armor tank like Vanguard.  Right now, the only recourse is it use Ion Pulsers and maybe shut down the enemy before it shoots back much.  Normal Phase Lances are not an option because its beam reach is longer than its system.  (HSA Lances have too short range.)  Other weapons do not stun the enemy, and Harbinger takes unavoidable damage trading shots, just like Vanguard.  If Harbinger had Rugged Construction like Gremlin or Grendel, trading shots like this would be okay, but it does not.

With cloak delays and most weapon reloads, Phase Anchor is mostly useful for death prevention and avoiding d-mods on phase ships.  With weapons that reload faster than AMBs (which is nearly all of them), after ship decloaks and attack, I wait too long (at least without elite Field Modulation) before my ship can cloak again, which is too late for the faster reload time to be of much use.  If I want to use AMBs, Afflictor uses them better than Harbinger can.  Phase Anchor is great on Ziggurat though, because it has Experimental Phase Coils to mostly eliminate the cloak delay, which works great for needlers and tachyon lances without cloaking delay getting in the way.

[Brainwright]

No, Harbinger does not need nerfs if Quantum Disruptor gets better.  Harbinger with old QD was only overpowered with Reapers.  After Harbinger lost Synergy mounts, it became inferior to Afflictor ever since, and it did not punch much above its weight, if at all, like Afflictor and Doom could.  QD being used against you could be annoying, but just that, annoying.

Without QD, Harbinger gets shot at every time it decloaks to attack, not unlike a no-shield armor tank like Vanguard.  Right now, the only recourse is it use Ion Pulsers and maybe shut down the enemy before it shoots back much.  Normal Phase Lances are not an option because its beam reach is longer than its system.  (HSA Lances have too short range.)  Other weapons do not stun the enemy, and Harbinger takes unavoidable damage trading shots, just like Vanguard.  If Harbinger had Rugged Construction like Gremlin or Grendel, trading shots like this would be okay, but it does not.

With cloak delays and most weapon reloads, Phase Anchor is mostly useful for death prevention and avoiding d-mods on phase ships.  With weapons that reload faster than AMBs (which is nearly all of them), after ship decloaks and attack, I wait too long (at least without elite Field Modulation) before my ship can cloak again, which is too late for the faster reload time to be of much use.  If I want to use AMBs, Afflictor uses them better than Harbinger can.  Phase Anchor is great on Ziggurat though, because it has Experimental Phase Coils to mostly eliminate the cloak delay, which works great for needlers and tachyon lances without cloaking delay getting in the way.

These aren't faults in the Harbinger or Quantum Disruptor, these are faults with the phase system itself.  Every phase ship is designed from the ground up so that it takes damage on leaving phase.  Your needlers on the Ziggurat?  Wasted because the firing time is longer than even standard phase cooldown.  It's still taking damage.  Level up your game and scalp kinetic blasters from the Lion's Guard.

And you don't need ion pulsers to disable return fire.  Elite Target Analysis will do just fine.  I run a Grendel and it increases survivability by quite a lot, more than field modulation.

But phase ships are made to die.  You spend hullpoints like you do flux and choose your fights for maximum benefit.  The hard deceleration after leaving phase guarantees it.  The cooldown doesn't even matter by comparison.  It's like phase ships get hit with Interdictor Array every time after leaving phase.  It sucks, but the ships are workable.

I, too, would like phase ships to be redesigned, and even if they had everything I wanted, Quantum Disruptor as it stands would be bad.  A free shot you can pull off over and over again with the only cost being time is just stale.  It's not powerful, it's just a comparison of your PPT against the enemy fleet.

Worst of all, you're still getting shot every time you leave phase with QD.  You're not going to time it right, it's not going to last long enough for a full volley, and you were already taking fire before you unphased.  It just doesn't do what you claim at all.

Frankly, just fitting the Harbinger with Burn Drive would make it a much more competitive ship.

Movement Disruption at a glance looked more like immobilization.  So, it looks like you want Harbinger to drop space grease under the target and have it slide wherever.  With constantly backpedaling enemies facing their target, it would probably function like an awkward tractor beam.  If it ends up working like a tractor beam (because of everyone points at their enemies), then make it a tractor beam, but it would look better if a capital ship sucked in a small ship than the reverse.

Nope.  Eagle is retreating, you use the system, and it backs off out of range.  If it tries to follow you and fire while keeping out of your range, use the system, and it accelerates back into your range for another round.  A hound starts running to your back side, you use the system, and it just burns away away long enough for you to turn around.

[Thaago]

Ever since I've switched to Advanced Optics phase lances on the harbinger I've had more success. The longer range helps a ton. It does kind of relegate the system to "only do this when I would close to point blank anyways" even with system expertise, but it is still sometimes useful.

[TaLaR]

This would purely an anti-player griefing ability. AI doesn't significantly rely on precise maneuvering. Player does. AI usually doesn't do the winning move even when one obviously exists and it's perfectly capable of executing it stat-wise.

At the same time rather useless to player as well - I can outmaneuver AI as is, a system that doesn't help me win the flux war (free damage/absorption/dodge otherwise unavoidable shots/etc) isn't good enough. Harbinger (with character skills) is fast enough to not need system to approach any fleeing target. Not fast enough to outmaneuver shields like a phase frigate, but proposed system won't help with this.

Hard to not waste charge of this system too. As player, you'd just bait this system by entering it's range with a safe movement vector, then start doing whatever you were actually intending to. But good luck tracking enemy cooldowns, there is no standard UI for this (maybe there is a mod?). Would be annoying as hell.

Yeah, mine strike has all the same issues.  Piddly little mines?  AI can just maneuver around and shoot with PD!  Wasted charges! useless!  Pretty easy to bait mines, too!  Just drive forward and press the Doom until it uses all its charges!  Useless!  Totally junk system.

Except, I know the AI relies on fairly precise maneuvering, so I know why mine strike works so well.

Mines allow a manner of shield bypass, which counts as winning flux war. Attack from one side, drop mines on the other - enemy can't block both. Though this is much stronger than it would have been vs theoretical perfect AI, because actual AI doesn't try to precisely time shield against mine detonations.

Mines do have griefing element vs player, true. An Afflictor with character skills is so fast in a straight line, that you can't avoid a mine dropped right before you (there is some random as to how close the mine drops, you don't have enough acceleration to course-correct vs close ones, I literally tried "perfect" reactions in slowed down time via a mod). So you can't move full speed out of phase, unless you are ready to react by activating cloak in split second reaction (so, never uncloak at full speed near a Doom, you'll die during the cloak cooldown). It is kinda fun to counter once you understand how, so you do have a point here... I don't really like the part where allied fighters become a hazard to avoid though (mines dropped on fighters can detonate instantly).

[eert5rty7u8i9i7u6yrewqdef]

Quantum Disruptor got nerfed hard.

It's not hard to see why : making a brief window of opportunity for extreme damage is nigh impossible to tweak in the current state of the game.  You either have enough time to land a reaper torpedo or you don't.  There is scarce little in between.

So instead, redirect the disruption from a general disruption to something specific.  Disrupt the engines in a particular way : lock the current heading and accelerate fully.  Even one or two seconds of this is invaluable not only for throwing off a target's aim, but for keeping an aggressor from backing off or dodging them entirely.  This also doesn't prevent ships from getting away when they've already started backing off.

There's a lot of room to tweak this, too.  If you give the target the zero-flux speed boost during this time, it would probably make getting around behind the target harder and would be something useful you could do to allied ships.  Only issue is whether the AI could handle it.

Have you considered just making the Harbinger disable enemy weapons for a couple seconds? It would be a lot simpler and more useful to execute than forcing an enemy to move.

[Thaago]

Disabling enemy weapons would be very useful as part of a phase pack! Phase ships are constantly taking attrition from little chunks of damage even when they fly well, and Harbingers are fragile, so giving itself enough time to unload while protecting others would be nice.

Its also a less "unfair" ability so could be longer ranged.

[Megas]

@ Brainwright:
The reason for needlers on Ziggurat is both lances and needlers have similar timings, both with long reload delays.  Phase Anchor cuts the delay of both down, and Ziggurat has its unique coils hullmod so it can phase any time after weapons stop firing, which is after cloak delay.  Kinetic Blaster fires too steadily for Phase Anchor to be much use, not to mention less range and efficiency than ballistics.

I guess Elite Target Analysis is an option for shutting down weapons, but if I do not have it, then ion is needed to shut down weapons fast.  My Harbingers are piloted by NPCs, and I do not have fully developed officers during the time of the game that I use Harbingers (not at max level, no elite skills).

Yes, modern QD is bad, and we know why.  Might as well be "without QD" much of the time, especially if Harbinger cannot shut down weapons or kill the target during the tiny overload window.  I would like QD to be better again, and I think it could happen.  Drover and Converted Hangar were partially un-nerfed eventually.  I see no reason QD cannot be tweaked further to be more user-friendly.

[Killer of Fate]

if you change Afflictor's ability to Harbinger's, its name will no longer make any sense.

[Megas]

if you change Afflictor's ability to Harbinger's, its name will no longer make any sense.

Afflictor originally had Active Flare Launcher, then it was changed to Quantum Disruptor (Harbinger may have been added around this time), then it traded with Harbinger for the Entropy Amplifer it has today (and Harbinger got Afflictor's Quantum Dirsuptor).

[Killer of Fate]

yeah, I was just kidding... Sort of... It's obvious Afflictor was still called Afflictor even back when it had Quantum This Raptor, so yeah...

[Brainwright]

Have you considered just making the Harbinger disable enemy weapons for a couple seconds? It would be a lot simpler and more useful to execute than forcing an enemy to move.

I've made a personality out of hyper aggressive phase tactics, and I can say that turning off weapons for two seconds on a cooldown of ten seconds would be fairly useless to me.  For ships that don't have strong shields, I'll be disabling their weapons in a couple of volleys.  For ships that do have strong shields, it's actually a benefit not to fire at me when I'm at full power at low flux.  They aren't wasting flux on weapons, and I've got a very limited amount of time to get what I need to do done.  I want them wasting flux.  I want to be dodging their shots.

So turning off the weapons puts me at a disadvantage most of the time.

And locking in movement is just phase skimmer with extra graphics.  What's complicated about it?

Disabling enemy weapons would be very useful as part of a phase pack! Phase ships are constantly taking attrition from little chunks of damage even when they fly well, and Harbingers are fragile, so giving itself enough time to unload while protecting others would be nice.

Its also a less "unfair" ability so could be longer ranged.

Now, what exactly does this mean?  How often should a Harbinger be able to emerge, fire, and dive without consequence?  I doubt once every ten seconds would even get through a Dominator's shields.  And then you've got the armor to break.  But if its disabling the Dominator's weapons for two seconds, that means it's shutting down the Dominator's weapons for one fifth the time.  If one fifth isn't enough, would one quarter be enough?  One third?  And how effective is this when you bring in other ships? 

It looks to me that if it's useful for the Harbinger, it's too strong for use with allies, and if it's toned down for use with allied ships, it's useless to the Harbinger itself.

@ Brainwright:
The reason for needlers on Ziggurat is both lances and needlers have similar timings, both with long reload delays.  Phase Anchor cuts the delay of both down, and Ziggurat has its unique coils hullmod so it can phase any time after weapons stop firing, which is after cloak delay.  Kinetic Blaster fires too steadily for Phase Anchor to be much use, not to mention less range and efficiency than ballistics.

I guess Elite Target Analysis is an option for shutting down weapons, but if I do not have it, then ion is needed to shut down weapons fast.  My Harbingers are piloted by NPCs, and I do not have fully developed officers during the time of the game that I use Harbingers (not at max level, no elite skills).

Yes, modern QD is bad, and we know why.  Might as well be "without QD" much of the time, especially if Harbinger cannot shut down weapons or kill the target during the tiny overload window.  I would like QD to be better again, and I think it could happen.  Drover and Converted Hangar were partially un-nerfed eventually.  I see no reason QD cannot be tweaked further to be more user-friendly.

There are two modes of using phase anchor : reducing cooldowns and venting soft flux.  Needlers, thumpers, and phase lances are flux efficient compared to their other alternatives, this wastes one of the most useful benefits of phase anchor : you can use the most flux costly weapons in the game and vent the soft flux in complete safety.  Stacking the most flux intensive weapons will always throw more hard flux at the target.  You only use other weapons if the flux gets too high for the vents and caps you want to put on the ship.

So needlers and lances are for bullying weaker ships.

Drover and Converted Hangar were partially un-nerfed eventually.  I see no reason QD cannot be tweaked further to be more user-friendly.

Your voodoo word games are weak.  The problem with Quantum Disruptor isn't that it's hard to use, it's that the notion of a consequence-free action either wins the game or it does nothing at all.