Piracy in House Systems

[sovereign]

From the flipside (my gunboat experiences in various places), cruiser missiles from invisible NPC patrols are -really- annoying; and those patrols range out quite some distance in some places. The reason they are annoying is that gunboats have to spaz out to avoid them (I've tried shooting them down, it doesn't usually work). While battleship missiles are overkill and will never hit a gunboat worth it's salt, cruiser missiles do enough damage to make a point and are usually reason to withdraw- or at least tip the odds so that a pair of fighters, an SHF, or a reasonably armed transport can really mess you up. Cruiser missiles mean that other ships have to keep moving, too- if a lucky pulse cannon or NPC takes your shields off, a cruiser missile will blow up any snub ship.

As I recall, battleship NPCs lost their missiles so that they wouldn't fling them at unsuspecting cap fliers while out of sight range. Why not do the same to cruiser NPCs, and give them to bases? They can keep GBs at a fair arm's length (roughly 3.5k, at least) and if the GBs are further than that then you have time to make a decision. Do you turn around, go another way, or take your chances? Those choices are the same as if you see an enemy ahead of you in a tradelane, and should usually be an option for when you undock in most places. The GBs could take their chances and move in once prey undocked, but their prey would be able to influence the scenario to a reasonable extent.

Does that sound reasonable? I'm kind of going out on a limb here, but from my experience I think it would significantly cut down on base-camping style activities, and I can't see any serious drawbacks. Fights on top of bases should be strongly tipped in the favor of the defender, and in places like Liberty the terrain doesn't matter much right now.



EDIT: Just to be clear, I'd like this done across the board. Base-camping can be a real problem for everyone, and everyone should have a defense against it.

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