The "Lightning flare" is a combination of the properties of a flare and a lightning mine. The projectile is fired instead of deployed and continues moving on a trajectory at a given speed until it loses energy. The moving projectile has the same effective perimeter as a lightning mine, shocking anything in range.

This gives us a usable AOE against bots and players without the prolonged life and subsequent server cost of regular lightning mines. It also makes a lightning style weapon that is not unfairly targeted/prioritized by AI assets in the game. The limits of range and speed control server load and allow them to be used for farming but have finer control over potential server load due to the dramatically shortened life span. It feels like this should/could mean such a weapon would have more ammo to help it's usefulness.

This suggestion is intended for a turret weapon though upon writing I realize this could be equally reasonable as a large port weapon or other mounting.

Possible uses

1. Apply damage to groups of bots in pursuit.
2. Apply damage to players who have the ever difficult to manage latency issues.
3. Possibly stackable? (one giant limited lifespan electric ball of multiple projectiles)
4. Applicable in furballs where group members and self are not harmed by the weapon.

I think this could also help with issues in the Unknown System. One problem we find there is due to the large number of bots in sector and the aggressiveness of those bots once disturbed, you end up stacking avalons on bot covered asteroids and with groups this causes a very rapid calculation by the server for collisions and kill announcements. There really should be an effective means for players to combat these sectors without such a server impact.