Posted - 2009.07.08 15:15:00 - [1]

 

Station games suck! I mean they really suck. Bumping a harrassing ship off of a station can be a complete nightmare that is intensely frustrating. At the same time bumping can't be made so easy that it becomes impossible for a ship to find safety in a station.

I'm proposing for consideration a new class of drones that would use repellers to effectively "bump" a ship. In truth the "bump" would actually be a reverse thrust enacted on the ship by the repellers on the drones. Sort of like a reverse tractor beam. This would keep drones from making reaching warp an impossibility.

So, I launch my 5 light repeller drones. Upon launch my tactical overview comes up and my mouse pointer becomes the end of an arrow drawn from the center of whatever my drones are orbiting (currently my ship). By manipulating the arrow in the direction I want the drones to repel an object and clicking I give the drones their angle of attack. I then set them to engage the ship I want repelled and they go to work.

For ships that are moving this would have a sort of webifying effect. However, there would be angles involved that would cause the ship to deviate from its set course. These angles would not move the engaged ship's actual heading....so a ship can still warp.....not sure i explained that correctly. If the chord from the nose to the tail of the ship is on the Y axis the drones would have no effect that swings that chord off of that axis. (?? I'm confusing myself??) The important point is that a ship would still be able to get to warp normally.

Also, unlike with webifiers, enough drones would actually cause forward movement to be completely stopped and even reversed. Also, incorrectly set drones would actually help the engaged ship move towards its desired goal. (could be useful for anyone who's ever waited for a battleship to get back to the gate after an engagement.)