Topic. In order to take down some of the stronger cap ships, Avalons would be... really nice. Please?

I think the idea is that Avalons will be introduced as more powerful, harder to aim, and along with destructible ordinance. That was the impression I had.

There is a technical caveat relating to making certain weapon types reliably collidable by other weapon types, such that turrets on capships can prioritize incoming torpedoes and defend against them. That's the only thing holding it back.

The last two months have been extremely busy with another project. But yes, I hope to get to this before long (ie, possibly after E3 next week). There are a lot of things I want to do with capships that are essentially contingent on having larger ordinance to shoot at them, and also to defend against.

If I might make a suggestion, give capships anti-ordinance turrets with weak shields independent of the host capital ship's shields (enough so they can be broken by a fully charged heavy power cell and two N2s) and make their armor about that of a Behemoth Heavy. These turrets would not attack players, but only torpedo weapons and such that are aimed at them or their allies (to identify this you could force players to target the entity a torpedo will explode on, otherwise the torpedo would just fizzle when it hits something that wasn't targeted... you could think of it as a pool player calling their shot, and in turn capital ships would have access to this information and use it to assess threats) and they would be equipped with training sector-style death rays and have 1500m targeting ranges with 5 second cool-downs on the death rays. This would provide two different ways a group of players could take out a capital ship: they could either overwhelm the remaining anti-ballistic turrets with torpedoes (which would require 3 perfectly timed torpedoes assuming that they might be going at 200m/s against one anti-ballistic turret) or they could send assault fighters over to the capital ship to take out the anti-ballistic turrets (since they are on the outside of the ship's shields, as described above), creating a blind spot for the bombers to fire into. The rest of the turrets would behave as they currently do.

Dunno if that's more complicated than what you had in mind, or if you have something else in mind.

Edit: might I also suggest that, once torpedo weapons are implemented, you make missiles accelerate slightly rather than stay at constant speeds or to add the firing ship's speed like flares do. Otherwise people might still just use missile stacking, in most situations.

Chaak has a really good idea. Please implement something like that. Currently combat involving capital ships is very boring.

+many to Chaak.

explodable/interceptable ordinance +cardinality of the set of rational numbers.

Evolving ST idea:

1) Make Avalons require active aiming, like a laser guidance. The pilot must keep the capship illuminated all the way, until it explodes, and it only explodes on marked ship. Every second target is not market the torpedo turns in random direction.

2) Add more shield turrets, dedicated to detect avalon's laser guidance and shoot incoming heavy ordnance only, as:
tridents: 2 turrets bow/stern
Connies: none, those are transports, not battleships.
Other Cappies: More turrets, proportionally

3) To detect incoming ordnance, the shield turrets must be mounted in "masts", outside shield, or else it does not "see" the guidance laser.

4) Create Small and Large shield weapon, just like shield turret, and equip some 1/4 of cappies' and 1/2 of Connies' escorts with one of those, wile also offering it for players.

5) Make avalons slow and big as an Aerna Seeker. Preferably a torpedo-like object attached to 2 Large ports, but outside of bombers' hull.

Comment: Once a Avalon is detected, the same logic for normal defense turrets can be used if it is big and slow as a ship/bot, and ship is 'illuminated'. Think of a remotely-guided kamikaze ship!

The laser-guided torpedo idea is pretty cool (reminds me of players vs. gunships in Half-Life 2) and opens up a lot of possibilities for fighter coverage, but it comes with a few problems. People could steer them up close without aiming at the target capship and then at the last second point at it, so the capship would not know that it is aimed at it until the very last minute.

That is covered, ST, by the torpedo runs in circle (random spiral) if no capship is illuminated, and it have very limited turn ratio. And also that it does not explode if hits anything not marked. And space does not reflect laser, so no use in aiming near but at nothing.

When you launch a torpedo and does not keep 'lock' on target, it will make random turns every second and will not got any near a straight line. And since it only "sees" a narrow cone ahead, a few seconds not marking target will probably result in a lost and harmless torpedo.

And make sure one cannot turn off the marker laser while torpedo is running.

Add two more topics:
6) Avalons does not explode against stations. If they hit a station, it dies silently. And targeted stations, after 3secs, sends Aerna Seekers against its attacker and incoming torpedo.

7) Torpedos only can be launched after acquiring a lock by illuminating the target for 3secs (or 5). If laser guidance is lost for more than 2 secs, it requires another 3sec lock.

Check wikipedia's Laser_guidance and Laser_designator. It will not work in foggy/stormy sectors...

Question: Why would we downgrade to lasers?

People could still aim at a nearby asteroid. Just saying that with this solution, weapons threat is not absolute although you do have a point that it would be nice for game-play if the bombers had to face their target up until the point it hits.

One thing we could do is take my original suggestion, and add a condition for the torpedo being able to blow up on its mark: if the player had the target targeted when he fired the weapon and if the dot product of the player's ship to its target and the player's ship to the target object is kept greater than 0.5 throughout the torpedo's lifetime... (this means if the player kept his ship aimed within a 90 degree cone of the target object).

All this is getting much too complicated, though. My original suggestion would be fine, and there is no need to punish fire-and-forget once ordinance becomes destructible.

in the short run, could we just have a bot, like a pet Stygian, that can be used to deshield a cap?

not everything needs to be soloable kthx

Disagree. With sufficient pilot skill and time, every PvE aspect of the game should be soloable.

Double disagree, if some things require more than one person it keeps everyone from being hermits

VO lacks, and will always lack, the playerbase necessary for what you suggest to be a good idea. Go diaf; tyia.

Making everything soloable ruins immersion and fun. If you can solo everything then you essentially can be the most powerful person in the universe, which shouldn't be true for the types of ships we fly.
Teamwork is fun too.

By 'soloable' I believe Lecter means "If you are a hermit, you can spend the time and $$$ to do it by yourself eventually." Kinda like health insurence. you can either pay it off over the rest of your life or you can take it up the ass by some big corporation.

bump