Some modern aircraft and warships do fall into support roles. There's a few of those, but I'm mostly thinking about electronic warfare (ECW), namely the EA-18G Growler.
Essentially, it's a flying radar jammer/disruptor built on the same frame as the F/A-18 fighter jet. But it is absolutely unarmed to my knowledge, save perhaps for defensive short-range missiles.
I think Light fighters could very well be Disco's Growler. Instead of guns, they'd have to choose from a selection of ECW tools in their weapon hardpoints. The more tools of a same category you have, the more effective the resulting effect. I'm not expert in ECW, but from what I understand of it, we could translate it in the following for Disco :
- Powerplant drain (much like what has been proposed above)
- Shield recharge delay (either the time it takes to reactivate the shield, or the speed at which it regenerates)
- Scanner jammer (masks the contacts list, or jams it into unreadable gibberish, or unreadable gibberish with IFF colours depending on the amount of jammers used)
- Repair systems disruptor (Disables any attempt at repair, either via repair beam or nanobots, or directly attacks the bot/bat supply, I'm not sure)
- Missile jam (Torpedoes, CDs and missiles can't get a lock and will go on a flat trajectory if fired, or they don't track as well or as far)
- Weapon systems jam (Slows the refire rate or the range, or both)
- Counter-intelligence systems (Reveal cloaked ships or reduce their remaining cloak time. Would function as AoE projectiles, much like depth charges)
These tools would be "fired" at the enemy, either through projectiles or beams (I imagine the difficulty of hitting a target and the risks associated to it would factor decisively in balancing them) much like mining arrays or repair beams. I think it very important to keep any support capacity an active thing, not just some FLHook wizardy you just type in like /jam and then fly around your target hoping it has better things to worry about. Same as bombing runs, we'd have jamming runs, which would make full use of the LF's zippy nature, and also open them for a devastating counter-attack.
That's all I've got for now. I confess to having no earthly clue as to the feasability of any of these, code-wise, and I reckon they'd need to be fine-tuned carefully to be neither gamebreaking nor irrelevant. I imagine ECW Light fighters as truly support ships, force multipliers, NOT as indispensable table turners. Their abilities would need to be noticeable but not overtly frustrating and with a possibility of counter. I imagine most of this could be solved with simple stats. I'd be very enthusiastic about implementing something like this and would love to work with Devs if need be.
(06-14-2019, 12:25 PM)Sombra Hookier Wrote: If everyone was a bit more like Lanakov, the entire world would be more positive. Including pregnancy tests.