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How to keep people from running

#1
so a random thought plopped up today:

How do we stop ships from just using their cruise mode or a warp rail to get away?

The cruise disruptor missle from freelancer is as far as i know guaranteed to be in, but how would it work in LT?

Cruise drive isnt a dedicated switch that you throw and the engine goes "cruise", but instead more energy gets allocated to the engine and it slowly goes to cruise mode.

So how does the cruise disruptorprevent people from going to cruise?

Flat speed debuff/ drag increase?

Does it change the energy-thrust curve?

Something else?

:think:



What i also want to addressin this thread are other forms of demobilisation and defenses against those restraints.
  • disruptor missle
    fire it at enemy -> keeps him from cruising
    Could have a limited strength, a battleship drive wouldnt care for an anti fighter missle.
    Defend yourself by shooting it down / avoiding to get hit
  • Tractor beams
    Latch onto your target and keep it from flying in general
    Defense: no idea, maybe only works when the targets shields are down? :think:
  • disruptor beam
    Maybe a not as restricting thing as the tractor variant, has the same effect as the disruptor missle
    Defense: maybe having a greater strenght drive as the beam can stop? :think:
  • disruptor field
    same thing as with the beam, but as area of effect bubble
    Defense: ?? Suggestions welcome
These are just a few random ideas of mine, other ideas would be appreciated.
How can we stop ships from fleeing with cruise drive, how can the one trying to flee still escape?
:think:


as a connected thought:
How do we disable warp rails temporarily without having to damage/destroy the stations generating it?

In freelancer the tradelane gates were indestructible and were just shot to disable them temporarily, but this wont work in LT as they are not just hardcoded indestructible devices.

So how could warp rails be disabled temporarily?

Similar to the cruise drive with missles/beams/bubbles?
(Different ones? the same ones? )
Or differently?


Also:
how could we prevent usage of wormholes?
Or do we always allow their usage?

Could we have again some missle/beam/bubble variations to prevent WH (and by that also jumpgate) usage?

Let a jumpgate be a wormhole creation and access control mechanism! :D

But how to make a forcefully closed wormhole accessible again?
Anotther device to overpower the disruptor?
:think:


i want to hear some ideas people!
disruptors, defenses, effects, all of them!
:D
Last edited by Cornflakes_91 on Wed Jul 27, 2016 5:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: How to keep people from running

#3
Maybe have it so that if someone gets hit while spinning up their cruise drive, there is a huge increase in chance to damage it, and thus disabling cruise for awhile just like the trade lanes?
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Re: How to keep people from running

#4
Or the fluctuation in power disables it...

Could be that you need to drop shields to power the Cruise Drive. Because any surge in power can disrupt it.
Also explains why shooting while it's on is bad, and why your agility is highly impacted.
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Re: How to keep people from running

#5
Well, the cruise drive isnt a dedicated piece of equipment but just the normal engines being overdriven.

But that gives me an idea:
Maybe engines get more susceptible to being "shorted out" for limited amounts of time when they are above an treshhold of energy allocation?

So a disruptor missle shorts out the drive, deactivating it completely for a short period, after which the drive has to spool up again.

And the beam/field variation induce the same effect on a cruising drive, while your board computer prevents powering up to cruise levels to prevent shortouts?

:think:


Ninja: i'd rather not have the cruise drive disabling shields, seems a bit too much for me.

shooting while its on isnt bad, you just generally dont have the power to do so
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Re: How to keep people from running

#6
Don't forget Ion Cannons which can disable a ship once the ship's shields are down.

Natural wormholes should be impossible to destroy but easy to blockade. I think a military force on either side of the wormhole would easily shut it to traders and explorers. Constructed wormholes on the other hand should be able to be destroyed. Do constructed wormholes exist in both systems or do they only exist in one system? If it's both then destroying one of the constructed wormholes would break the connection between the systems. If it's just one sided then a faction would have to locate a natural wormhole which leads into the connecting system and then locate and destroy the constructed wormhole.
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Re: How to keep people from running

#7
BFett wrote: Natural wormholes should be impossible to destroy but easy to blockade. I think a military force on either side of the wormhole would easily shut it to traders and explorers. Constructed wormholes on the other hand should be able to be destroyed. Do constructed wormholes exist in both systems or do they only exist in one system? If it's both then destroying one of the constructed wormholes would break the connection between the systems. If it's just one sided then a faction would have to locate a natural wormhole which leads into the connecting system and then locate and destroy the constructed wormhole.
Im thinking specifically of things that dont destroy or need the destruction of something to work.

How can i keep someone from using a wormhole without destroying him or the wormhole?
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Re: How to keep people from running

#8
When it comes to warp lanes, you said there was a device that could knock ships out of it.

Perhaps something that disables the lane between two nodes temporarily? Ships would then have to hoof it to reach the next warp lane entryway and it wouldn't make as huge an impact on the rest of the traffic as disabling the whole lane.
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Re: How to keep people from running

#9
Good question.

1. How to disable cruise drives?

A simple "cruise doesn't work now" should be sufficient for LT v1.0. If people want something fancier, let a fan create a mod.

2. Other forms of demobilization?

Whatever happened to "target engines first"?

Side note: this depends on the speed of an engagement. If fights tend to be over in a few seconds, there's no point in subsystem targeting or slowing down opponent ships -- you just blow them out of space. If fights tend to last a minute or two, then some simple engine-disabling effect should be enough to be tactically interesting without slowing down the pace of combat. If fights tend to be 5-10 minutes long, as in the LT Prototype (well, they were for me, anyway), or considerably longer for cap ship engagements, then maybe it's OK to have subsystem targeting and repair mini-games.

3. How to prevent escape via warp rail?

Don't have warp rails.

;)

Alternately, I suppose you could outfit a torpedo with a "rail inhibitor" payload. If it hits the target ship, that ship gets a pretty particle effect and is prevented from being able to enter a warp rail for, say, three minutes. If the torpedo misses, the target ship probably gets away. C'est la guerre.

(I wouldn't advise making it easy to disable warp rails themselves. That should be something that only a serious research effort and big/dangerous device could accomplish, otherwise there'll be no point in the rails as every NPC bandito will be disabling them for fun and profit all over the galaxy.)

One other important note: remember the goal of NPC/PC parity -- if you can do it to them, they can do it to you. Whatever ways we suggest of preventing a target from escaping us can be applied to our ship and the ships of our faction.

So before giving all the power to the aggressor, think carefully about how much fun you and other players will have if NPCs can disable your movement frequently. Would you enjoy having that done to you repeatedly?
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Re: How to keep people from running

#10
Flatfingers wrote:Good question.

1. How to disable cruise drives?

A simple "cruise doesn't work now" should be sufficient for LT v1.0. If people want something fancier, let a fan create a mod.
Point is: what exactly would that effect do?
short out your engines when you are in cruise mode?
Or does just nothing happen when you allocate more energy?
Flatfingers wrote: 2. Other forms of demobilization?

Whatever happened to "target engines first"?
Im searching for ways besides "blow shit up", i wouldhave thought you'd appreciate gameplay expanding ideas/questions ;) :P


Flatfingers wrote: (I wouldn't advise making it easy to disable warp rails themselves. That should be something that only a serious research effort and big/dangerous device could accomplish, otherwise there'll be no point in the rails as every NPC bandito will be disabling them for fun and profit all over the galaxy.)
And without an easy way to disrupt a warp rail the generating stations themself would be damaged and disabled regularily or "high sec" piracy would be practically impossible as pirates could only strike near the end poins which are relatively trivial to defend against roaming pirate groups.
Flatfingers wrote: One other important note: remember the goal of NPC/PC parity -- if you can do it to them, they can do it to you. Whatever ways we suggest of preventing a target from escaping us can be applied to our ship and the ships of our faction.

So before giving all the power to the aggressor, think carefully about how much fun you and other players will have if NPCs can disable your movement frequently. Would you enjoy having that done to you repeatedly?
Thats why im asking for defensive options the same moment as im searching for aggressive options ;)
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Re: How to keep people from running

#13
On the other hand, running away should be a valid tactic for people equipped for that sort of job.

I guess as a pirate or law enforcer you just have to be fast enough to outrun fleeing people, stealthy enough to strike unnoticed, and swift and powerful enough to disable the engines before they can gather their bearings and hightail.

A delay on cruise mode activation may also help - maybe weapons fire in the area delays rerouting, and you need special infallible engine couplings to compensate and reduce the delay? And special disruptor weapons to increase it?
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Re: How to keep people from running

#15
Assuming a warp drive has to create a rift or [techno babble space geek speech] field , then all you would need is a way to disrupt the perfectly balanced field that the drive is trying to create and there you go.

This can be done with either a missile with an apposing field generator(mini warp drive?) or some sort of Beam.

For cruise engines the same theory could apply.
Last edited by stratobrick on Thu Jul 16, 2015 2:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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