My goal was to permit the parent ship to just infiniboost whilst tugging the escorts along. If that is possible with an energy drain to the cap's power cell, I'm all for it.

As for the GWG being an AOE appliance: Maybe it would make more sense. I wanted to limit the number of ships able to escort a capship easily, because players might surround themselves with balls of fighters otherwise.

Thanks for all the replies to my post. In reply to them:

Turbo on cap ships:
I guess there is no good reason to not have it.

Instant hit weapons:
I did propose recharge times close to a minute. Also no auto-aim, a slow turning turret, and 10km range. This will make them useless against fighters unless one is flying right at you about to kill you and you happen to be aiming at it at the time.

As for visibility, an X-ray burst of such power would almost definitely generate emission of other EM waves, so the turret would generate very bright white flashes when firing. It would look like cannons firing :) (IRL it probably would not, but I like the idea of cannons firing). To be honest it makes little difference if they are made visible or not, both would look cool.

As for firing broadsides with torpedoes as the only tactic:
Since this tactic would be effective only at short range it would be bad for killing the enemy because they are also able to damage you quickly, and you are in the blast radius of their explosion should you kill them, possibly losing your own ship as the result. Also since torpedoes have minutes recharge time this tactic would be very difficult to excecute correctly without the other ship damaging you more than you are damaging it.

Another tactic would be to use fighters to take out part of their air defence, and fire torpedoes through the blind area generated.

Role of fighters:
Whilst the uses you describe are all valid for fighters I was only considering their combat uses. Ferrying things back and forth is a logistics use, which would of course be important, but not really related to battle. Scouting is a good use though.

Of course if other ships have turbo, so should cap ships. I think that the energy required to turbo should be reworked so that it depends on ship mass, and be (slightly) exponential. So it would take very little energy (relatively) to turbo a small fighter, more for a cargo ship, and a hell of a lot for a huge capital ship. That's fine for the capital ship, though, because there's room for a bigger reactor and more batteries. That would also make it interesting because cargo and equipment would effect how much power drain you experience to turbo.

Instant hit weapons: I prefer a plausible reason why they fire slowly rather than simply "so they're not effective on fighters." Simply because they use so much power is fine with me, and a side effect is that it makes them less effective on fighters. Slow aim and limited firing arcs are fine ideas, too, since these weapons would be bulky. I think they should have auto-aim, though. They would be plenty effective against a single fighter, should someone be fool enough to attack a cap ship in one fighter without support from his friends. The ineffectiveness comes in when there are dozens of fighters (at least more than one), and the big weapon blasts one just fine, but while it sluggishly recharges, the rest do a lot of damage. That's why the smaller anti-fighter weapons are necessary. One hit from a 16 in. gun on a battleship would do a fighter in, but it's better to use the AA machine guns to take them out and save the big gun for the enemy bunkers on the shore.

Many battles IRL have been lost because of logistics alone.

An area effect gravitic wake is a cool idea. Maybe if there was a weak one as a natural effect of boosting, and a device to enhance it. Not only could escorts piggyback, but enemies would have to counter it during an attack. The drain should come from the cap ship, though.

I like the idea of multiple batteries, one for each weapon. Maybe not each weapon, but some. Some super huge capital weapon ports maybe could have the option of having a battery attatched that is dedicated to that weapon (but draws from the main reactor). Otherwise the weapon would draw from any available battery.

Alright, I consulted my older brother's tactical genius and decided to take a gander at a this.

'Havoc' Flak Cannon
Class: Anti-Fighter Capital Weapon (CvF)
Port: Small Capital Turret
Damage: 72/36/18/9
Splash: 75m
Refire Rate: 2.4 seconds
Ammo: 250
Mass: Medium
Velocity: 140m/s
Range: 200m
Force: 10000/1000/100/10

Dësc: Unlike [Scuba Steve's] the 'Beehive' flak system, which launches missiles to discriminately seek out enemy targets, the 'Havoc'-class Flak Cannon functions far more like its terrestrial relative. It starts out by firing a single, spherical slug which detonates into 512 individual bomblets, which detonate in turn into 512 smaller bomblets, and the cycle continues until the third iteration. The resulting cloud of metal, although short-lived, not only softens up fighters, but oft sends them spinning wildly one all three axis as well.

'Mayhem' Flak Cannon
Class: Anti-Fighter Capital Weapon (CvF)
Port: Large Capital Turret
Damage: 144/72/36/18
Splash: 100m
Refire Rate: 3.0 seconds
Ammo: 200
Mass: Heavy
Velocity: 160m/s
Range: 300m
Force: 15000/1500/150/15

Dësc: Same as havoc, only bigger and better.

'Pandemonium' Flak Cannon
Class: Anti-Fighter Capital Weapon (CvF)
Port: Extra-Large Capital Turret
Damage: 288/144/72/36
Splash: 150m
Refire Rate: 4.0 seconds
Ammo: 150
Mass: Massive
Velocity: 180m/s
Range: 450 m
Force: 20000/2000/200/20

Dësc: Same as havoc, only powerful enough to send Chuck Norris reeling.

IFF Scrambler
Class: Advanced ECM (CvF/FvC/FvF)
Port: Large Capital/High-Powered Electronics
Range: 500m

Dësc: The IFF scrambler is, without a doubt, the most dangerous device in electronic warfare. When a ship is within the field the device produces, no observer can identify anything about the ship other than its mass and what can be determined at visual range, and the ship itself cannot identify any object other than by the aforementioned methods--even if the object in question is outside the field. It also plays bloody marry hell on the radar of any ship within the field. These qualities make it the ultimate sneak-attack device, as well as making it highly illegal.

[EDITED FOR CLARITY]

I see we have someone who is a veteran at tinkering with EV. :)

I really like the concept of your flak cannons, I just think having SO MANY bomblets will be overwhelming both visually and to the processor of whatever computer. Also, the damage is way high. The first one should be big (like a direct hit would have a chance of taking you out), but drop off much more dramatically. Maybe: 10000/500/20, and each bomb sprouts ten bomblets, and covers a wide area. That way, each bomb would end up with 1000 tiny bomblets at 20 damage each (20000 damage possible) rather than 134217728 tiny bomblets at 10 damage each (1342177280 damage posible). Very cool concept, though, and mines that split like that would be cool, too.

Your IFF scrambler is kind of like one of the stealth ideas I've suggested. I like that, too.

Professor Chaos, vIsitor has somewhat mis-labeled his weapons' stats and you have mis-read them. You read "impact" as "damage" when it is supposed to be "force" - how much it pushes something. His weapons' damage is their third stat and is actually relatively low. However, I agree with you on the 10 bomblets instead of 512 bit -- actually, I am not even sure the current engine could support "bomblets" instead of just spheres of damage and force. We do need a flak cannon though - it would look cool!

I feel silly. Yeah.... those numbers are perfectly reasonable! What I was trying to do is cause Chaos and Confusion. Almost worked.... I only confused myself.

Maybe a different weapon that exerted massive force like that. There wouldn't be much mass in a bomblet to exert that much force, the mass would have to be going extremely fast to have enough energy. I think that a tractor beam/repulsor beam combo would have interesting effects for disorienting an enemy. Maybe some sort of a "gravitic mine" or "gravitic missile" that in addition to causing damage emitted gravitons or antigravitons (or something) that changed the course and speed of ships within the blast radius.

Thanks for catching that....

Yeah, ok I've edited my post for clarity, sorry if I confused you Prof.

The whole bomblet thing is how flak works; an individual shell isn't likely to hit anything, but a barrage of bullets is. I concede that such a number is probobly a bit high, but I really just took a random number (8) and gave it an exponent of 3 (8^3=512). Perhaps 125 bomblets?

As for the IFF scrambler, I had that in mind ever since I read there would be IFF prejectors on the EV:Nova progress log. So, yeah, I've had that in mind for quite some while...

PS: Profesor Chaos, I have done some tinkering with the EV files in my day, but I never really came up with anything special...I've neither the time nor the experience to even duplicate anything those wily plug-in developers are doing today. Just reading about some of their exploits makes my head spin.

Just a comment, though: give it a few years and more paying members and I bet we'll all be surprised just what the server (and client computers, I'm drooling over that Mac Pro...) will be able to handle. A flak cannon would be very cool and makes a lot of sense.

Off topic: I made an EVO plugin where every ship was an insect. "Carriers" had a "Gnat Bay" that held 100 "Gnats" that were super fast and maneuverable and could "bite" you (tiny gun) at close range for minimal damage. Also, each Gnat had a Gnat bay with 100 Gnats, so once one was "hatched" the screen would be full of them. Sadly, EV had a limit on sprites on the screen, soon nothing could be spawned in the sector because it was infested with gnats.

Professor Chaos: We already have a concussion mine which does no damage but exerts a large force on objects within the blast radius.

vIsitor: Can't we just have a blast sphere, or 17 blast spheres (primary shell and 10 bomblets)?