Yes some dedicated Ack-Ack would add some great gratuitiousness to the game.
And speaking of dedicated AA weapons - was browsing around Wikipedia and discovered - The Brits were using Potato Guns in WW2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holman_Projector
Thank god for Wikipedia on sleepless nights.
Berny
lonestar if ur still looking for non-spam challenges maybe i can send u a few fleets (:
i dont think the AOE anti fighter is such a good idea… it could potentially be a game-breaker here…
How would it be a game breaker?
Remember that it would also have drawbacks. While it could hit all targets within a radius of the blast, it would also hit all targets within that radius. Including friendly ones. Very powerful against tightly packed enemies, but if they try to swarm your ships and close to point blank range the weapons will hurt your ships.
It would be really interesting to see how to order fighters around to keep them from getting stuck in the AOE of a blast weapon. I know with my few swarm fleets using the Shield Disruptor I need to do some fancy placements to keep my own missiles from getting fragged. I have done a fair amount of fun and strange orders with my fighter squadrons but I wonder how to keep them away from enemy fighters during an ack-ack barrage.
Berny
No easy way to avoid it. Best to just close to point blank range so that by using the AoE weapons they hurt their own ships, which means it may not be a good idea to use those weapons unless your ships have unusually heavy defenses or lots of repair bays. And this means they’d have fewer guns, since more of their module slots and budget is taken up with defensive modules.
its gotta have real slow ROF or something… cuz with AOE im pretty sure we’re looking at something close 2 100 percent accuracy here…
It could be made to have very low damage though - depending on the distance the fighter is from it. Something between 1-6 Hull and maybe only damage if it hits near and be useless against shields. With fighters - just a few points of damage can make them extrememly vulnerable - as they slow down due to damage. Nothing more exciting than seeing a fighter being hit with a Heavy Plasma Projectile. Make it limited range as well so fighters can stay upwind of it.
Berny
Indeed, I was thinking low damage would be the key. It would be a deterrent to the ‘swarm of killer bees’ effect people achieve with fighters in a tight ‘stick together’ formation. And of course the counter is not to stick together, or to do so loosely.
I’m curious as to what the armor penetration of such a weapon would be. (Assuming that it’s low enough the fighters could actually reflect the blast)
Would it really need to have any armour penetration? Most fighter designs I use and have encountered generally are unarmoured. Slapping armour really does a number on your speed for questionable protection. Unless of course it was dual designed to go after frigates.
Personally I think that a Flak barrage should be minimal enough that all other ships besides fighters could ignore it - except those seriously damaged. In fact it might encourage people to armour some of their fighters.
Berny
judging from the many space sims i played (FreeSpace 2 ftw) heavier fighters usually just shrug them off unless its really concentrated, so that would be the general opinion of the sci-fi people… i guess the shrapnels dont really go as fast as a regulary fired bullet from a contained blast chamber
yeah it would also make a interesting balance… shooting down unarmored interceptors or those annoying superfast rocket fighters… but then again some people tend to armor those too
it shouldnt pose any threat to even lightly armored frigates or cruisers… unarmored ones could still take some “minor” damage from it tho i imagine… its not like even the bare spaceship hull is exactly thin
well i think that it should have really high armour and shield penetration to compensate for low damage
Well flak is supposed to be an anti-fighter weapon - and fighters have no shields and usually no armour.
Berny
Well some people have made there OWN armor, and shileds for fighters to help make them last a few seconds longer under fire, myself included. I think they should have the same amount or one less than the lowest frigate shiled/armor item in game currently. As unlike most people I try to rate my highest shield and armor module at or just slightly above the lowest of the next class of ships. To maintain balance.
Lonestar “The Character”
Comb the desert! you hear me comb the desert!
AoE weapons do have a few possibilities. Flak should be low damage, low penetration. It basically just punishes fragile fighters, but then over time will wear down even armored fighters. Clouds of flak and shrapnel can be deflected by armor, but only for a time. Eventually the armor will fail.
The other approach is to make the AoE do massive damage, huge range, but poor accuracy. But give it a very slow fire rate and huge blast radius. Think of it like lobbing huge nuclear weapons in the general vicinity of the enemy. The missiles should also be quite slow, but when they detonate everything nearby will be hurting, including friendly ships if friendly ships happen to be too close to the blast.
Anyone remember the Bomarc missile? An anti-bomber nuclear warhead. You know your guidence system is crappy when you resort to flinging atom-bombs in the Stratosphere.
BTW even a low damaging AoE weapon would be great to take out those stacked fighters. I have a challenge where like 20 squadrons are stacked one on top of each other. They eat through anything that gets close.
Berny
A flak weapon would have to have some armor penetration, otherwise fighters with just a single piece of ablative armor could stop it all, but it should not have a lot, about 3 seems right. No shield penetration is fine, official weapons don’t need to be balanced with something someone makes for a mod, the mod should be balanced with the game.
Fighter armor is also vulnerable to crits. If you go the flak approach you’d probably have a fast refire rate, large AoE, very low damage. It would eat through even light fighter armor eventually through crits.
just asking… how, supposedly, will this weapon interact with shields?
If we’re still talking about “flak” I would have to say it shouldn’t effect shields at all. It is supposed to be an anti-fighter weapon to balance out the pitifull AAA that cruisers have. It would also punish large stacked formations of fighters since it would effect all of them in the area. I don’t think it should be used as a super weapon against all ships.
Berny