Safety fuses.

Yes.

The Avalon does not detonate until the launcher is clear of the Avalon's blast radius. If the Avalon strikes something before that time, it lands with a hollow metal clunk.

I think the problems this fixes are obvious. I would suggest that all rocket weapons have such a fuse added to them as well.

It's a variation on the timing fuse, but yes it accomplishes the same purpose. I'd be happy to try one or the other to see if it works.

One of the advantages of giving the Avalon a timing fuse though is that it would contribute to fixing the uber-mine exploit, in that if as I suspect the reason that the uber-mine exploit works is that time is judged based on distance traveled, an Avalon moving at 0 would never arm.

And all that would remain is a way to clear it up after a certain time passes.

Weapon lifespans are purely time-based, not distance based. The avalon torpedo lasts for two minutes, I believe.

If we were to implement your timing fuse idea, it would work the same way. It would arm after two seconds, not after traveling 70 meters.

Ok, cool.

So the 'uber-mine' then only lasts two minutes? That's not so uber. :)

Heh, but if you hit the uber mine, KABOOOOM =)
Anything can be a mine, just need to go at the proper speed and fire.

i like the nuke to go off while the launcher is still in the damage zone.. it's funyn as hell to see furball run into his own nuke while he tries to kill me with them.

Yeah, but it's not funny as hell when Prometheus ships can pull it off without killing themselves.

i know..

Waiting for rockets to get out of damage radius is way too long.

Proposal:
Rockets/Torps etc don't 'arm' until either:
A. The shooter is not the closest ship to the rocket,
or
B. The rocket has had enough time to move 1.1x(trigger radius)

Notes:
If the shooter re-entered (or stayed in) the trigger radius the rocket would
explode.

B varies from 2/3 to 1/8 of a second for all non Avalon rockets, and would
be 2.2 seconds for the Avalon.


This would solve the problem without making the valk overly powerful.
-Eldrad

So you're trying to give us even more of an advantage by allowing us to get clear when we light off nukes?
I can guarantee you that adapting to a two second safety fuse would just require some slight modifications to my flight patterns. It wouldn't be that hard at all...but then I'd have even more of an advantage because I'd be at 100%, not 60%.

You want nukes to go off right away. It makes things more fair with Prometheus drivers. Trust me on this.....

Cmdr. Freeman, make an Itani or Neutral Territories account and ask someone to suicide bomb you with avalons in a Prometheus. Then come back and tell me how it's fun and balanced.

To suicide bomb me, they have to catch me.
I don't flag cap anymore, since it's financially worthless...

All I'm saying is that I realized several ways last night to still operate with all the restrictions proposed...and in some cases, possibly even become more deadly. And of course once I fine-tune the necessary new maneuvers, I will tell the rest of the Serco.

Cmdr. Freeman: I don't doubt that you have, and that it might even be possible to be more deadly with a delay timer than getting into 80m and using the prox fuse as a ram.

But the point is that with the delay fuse, using the weapon takes skill and avoiding the weapon takes skill. I can live with that, even if it means that the Prom overtakes the Valk as the uber-ship in the hands of a good pilot. That is no less fair that the current situation of the Valk adding several levels of apparant skill to every person flying it, and something which can be dealt with in do course.

But at present we have a weapon that takes virtually no skill to use, and which cannot be avoided no matter how skillful you are. That's the only problem I have with it. I don't want to nerf it, just increase the skill involved in using it and allow skillful use to use it as something other than a suicide weapon.

All this talk about dodging and avoiding the attacker at present is just BS. There isn't a player out there that can both fight successfully and keep his attacker at greater than 80m at all times. Watch the range the next ten or 20 times you are in dogfights with anything and then tell me its always possible to stay outside 80m - whether you are carrying the flag or not. And even if theoretically you could, the burden of skill is overwhelmingly on the side of the one that must evade. It is _easy_ to just charge straight up to something, watch the range and then push the trigger when the range goes below 80m, and once that's done its _impossible_ (lag aside) to avoid taking roughly ~12000 damage.

If you are a big believer in the nuke and your skill, then do me a favor and decide to use the nuke tactic all the time for a while.

a centaur can take out a prometheus but it is wicked hard.
A ragnarok might be able to with it's other 2 small slots, but it has less health.

Prometheus' are a pain.

The key to keeping your enemy away is the 'Select Nearest Enemy' button...it's there for a reason, people.....
I have it mapped to a very acessible button on my joystick and I hit it about every 5 seconds. If you use it well, you can easily keep enemies at huge distances.

Cdmr. Freeman: It's mapped to my joystick too.

Cmdr. Freeman, I don't have a problem if you shoot a nuke at me. But the times that I've been hit by proximity rockts they've been shot by proms that were not facing me. Yes if you can out pilot a fighter in a prom the result would be that very little damage is done to your ship, but if both pilots are good then you won't be able to acomplish it.
Again my perposal would not nerf the nukes, they would still be extremely powerful and deadly, just never instantaneous.

Not facing you? Dang.

I always manage to at least be running on a collision course with or parallel to someone when I vaporize them.

Yes if you are on a colision course that's fine, it's not a game flaw. The problem is that you don't have to face your opponent to use it.

So you want proximity fuses abolished alltogether