4.75 Discussion

[Circadian_Lupine]

The idea of making something available to fighters to give them a chance against battleships is a good one, but a shield draining only weapon isn't really going to do much. While 160k shields are a gargantuan undertaking to drop, they pale in comparison to the 300k+ of hull that's left after they go down. An energy weapon sounds good, as does an enormus price, since we don't want everyone with a falcon and some balls to go around challanging capital ships. But it's going to have to do some hull damage too in order to be worth any price at all, expecially since mounting a couple is going to take up weapon hardpoints that could be used for hull-damaging weapons. We probably want to keep it most effective against capital ships, so people don't use them to gain an unreasonable edge in fighter to fighter combat. For that maybe a slow moving plasma based energy weapon? Something like an extreme version of the lavablades and firekisses sold in liberty. 20k - 30k shield damage, 10k - 15k hull damage (yes i know more shield than shield is unusual in an energy weapon but for what we need here it fits), 150-200m/s velocity, and a refire rate of 0.5 to 1.0. A slightly increased range would be in order to reflect the massive increase in power, probably 900m - 1200m. Considerably more powerful than anything else for sale, but i imagine that the price will be astronomical, and perhaps an energy useage of 3k per shot will keep people from abusing them in dogfights instead of bombing runs on cap ships. On an eagle that would allow a pair to be fired 2 or 3 times before the fighter has to break off and recharge.


On a side note, i'm dropping my movement to increase the mass on capital ships as it would make asteroid field navigation damn near impossible. Maybe we could just give anything larger than an armored tranport a top speed of 100m/s instead of the traditional ~78m/s? It would prevent rear hits while docking, that's the most frustrating problem.

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