[Drogoth]

DISCLAIMER: If any of the things I'm about to mention are already implemented and I've just missed them, or if they've already been brought up, or they'd be impossible to create for any and all reasons, disregard me completely, Im totally ballparking and may be way out to lunch.
--

Ok, so I was really bored today and just stared at a wall, thinking about things that would be cool in Freespace, and I finished another playthrough of WiH recently. The thing that struck me was that the UEF outranges the GTVA by a fairly substantial margin, and the GTVA's main weapon (beam cannons) are fairly short range. After that, as we saw, jamming can completely nullify them. The reason this isn't in BP discussion is because that was only the springboard that got me thinking. I was basically brainstorming how could ships get their beam weapons in close range fast. Against the shivans it was never an issue, against the UEF it was. So anyways, end of the day I thought up a lot of things I think would be cool, and some are downright ridiculous, but if any are workable or make sense i figured I'd throw it out there.

So my ideas are as follows:
(Blue Planet got me thinking, but is not what these ideas are for, these ideas I think would be cool just in general, pan game)

Weapons

-Bomb-pumped Lasers (Beam Warheads)
My solution to getting beam weapons into range of enemy capital ships without exposing yourself to return beam fire, or to long range missile bombardment as you close the range. The idea is basically that a missile has a beam emitter on its front, flies out toward the target and detonates. The force of the explosion is channeled to the emitter to create a short lived (compared to the actual ship based beam duration) and lower damage beam that can hit the enemy ship. This is additionally immune to the jamming used against current beam weapons, because the missiles would have individual guidance systems, just as our on-fighter missiles do, which don't appear to be affected. If anything, more ECM support would have to be developed to counter this threat, lowering enemy electronic warfare capabilities. Anyways, pack loads of these missiles and we can get beam fire in high numbers over incredibly long range.

-Flak Missiles (maybe?)
The inspiration here for me was the slammer from WiH. Basically, cap ships could try to thin out bomber squadrons by firing these missiles towards them, detonating them sending a cone of flak forward, hopefully destroying the fighters. Problem being fighters/bombers would most likely easily avoid these missiles once they were fired

-Mines
Pretty simple idea really, mines that track onto enemy IFF, collide and detonate. Require fighter sweeps to eliminate, but would be highly effective in jump node defense or areas where you know the enemy capships will have to jump in without recon.
         - Smaller mines that put out a huge load of flak to act as anti-fighter mines maybe? But fighters would be able to deal with that fairly easily to that might be wasted.

-Arbalest
The Arbalest would be new ship class, either a destroyer or in the frigate size range, built around this missile warfare, while the Orions and the Hecates with their fleet elements would handle the close in warfare and the fighter ops respectively, the arbalests and their fleet elements could hang back and bludgeon the enemy from range. This might be particularly effective in dealing with threats the Sathanas

Support

-ECM Missiles
In keeping with the missile theme here, we want to maximize the number of missiles that get through, thus we seed our salvo with EW missiles that lower the effectiveness of enemy defensive fire and interfere with fighter targeting systems. Pretty much just really bursty jamming that plays havoc with sensor arrays rather then with communications.
Defensive ECM missiles that do the same thing to missile guidance would help in defending against incoming salvos

-Fighter ECM
Could be loaded on Capital Ship missiles and sensor arrays, or compacted in a smaller form into fighter missiles. Fighters could fly a support role and launch one of their ECM missiles which then creates false sensor images of other fighters (2-3?) that look real and attract enemy weapons fire. The only way to ascertain whether the target was real would be for a fighter to attain visual ID. Would be useful to fake some fighters and bombers when attacking cap ships.

-Cloaking ECM
Have an AWACS ship in the area 'mask' the signal of a cap ship or wing of fighters, holding their emissions down so that they could only be detected at very short range

-Footprint Magnification
Once again relying on an AWACS ship to fake out  enemy sensor arrays by making a ship look like something its not. Either by masking part of its emissions (make an orion look like Deimos for example) or making it look more nasty to discourage attack (Triton disguised as Deimos). Adjustment would of course have to be within reasonable limits there's only so much that fancy sensor manipulation can do. A Perseus would never be able to pretend to be an Orion with the support of even two AWACS ships

-Shield Transfers
Make defending ships easier as the larger ships could emit beams that increase friendly fighter shield recharge by maybe 25%?

-Local Shield Emitters
Cap ships could be equipped with local shield emitters with a certain range of influence between them (ideally spread across the hull to overlap). Thus, when a bomber wing sends its payload out targeted at a certain point, the local shield emitter could bring up a temp shield (4-5 second duration) about the strength of a fighter shield ballooning over that section. It can take some of the damage negating, or at least lessening the initial damage. However, crushing damage to the shield would overload the emitters, at best increasing their cycle time (already high) at worst, destroying them outright.

The ECM roles I mentioned I thought would be cool, but the AWACS ships wouldn't be able to preform many of them at once, if even two. Basically I really liked what WiH did with their AWACS ships and how they played a very real role in the outcome of the war, and I think they can be broadened and made more dynamic in their role.

Again, if any of these things have been covered, wont work for any given reason, would be to hard to implement, cant be implemented, or are just plain crazy, sorry for the waste of time. But i thought they'd be neat, so I figured I'd get some opinions. And if they are actually good ideas, then their in the hands of people who know what to do with them, because I have literally ZERO idea how to FRED in anyway whatsoever, or do any kind of programming. It's something I'd like to learn when I get the time though.

[The E]

-Bomb-pumped Lasers (Beam Warheads)
My solution to getting beam weapons into range of enemy capital ships without exposing yourself to return beam fire, or to long range missile bombardment as you close the range. The idea is basically that a missile has a beam emitter on its front, flies out toward the target and detonates. The force of the explosion is channeled to the emitter to create a short lived (compared to the actual ship based beam duration) and lower damage beam that can hit the enemy ship. This is additionally immune to the jamming used against current beam weapons, because the missiles would have individual guidance systems, just as our on-fighter missiles do, which don't appear to be affected. If anything, more ECM support would have to be developed to counter this threat, lowering enemy electronic warfare capabilities. Anyways, pack loads of these missiles and we can get beam fire in high numbers over incredibly long range.

Not really doable with the engine ATM. Unless, of course, you use a workaround similar to the one found in FS1 for the beams, then it is quite possible.

-Flak Missiles (maybe?)
The inspiration here for me was the slammer from WiH. Basically, cap ships could try to thin out bomber squadrons by firing these missiles towards them, detonating them sending a cone of flak forward, hopefully destroying the fighters. Problem being fighters/bombers would most likely easily avoid these missiles once they were fired

You mean something like the Infyrno featured in retail?

-Mines
Pretty simple idea really, mines that track onto enemy IFF, collide and detonate. Require fighter sweeps to eliminate, but would be highly effective in jump node defense or areas where you know the enemy capships will have to jump in without recon.
         - Smaller mines that put out a huge load of flak to act as anti-fighter mines maybe? But fighters would be able to deal with that fairly easily to that might be wasted.

We have sentry guns, which are arguably more effective than mines.

-Arbalest
The Arbalest would be new ship class, either a destroyer or in the frigate size range, built around this missile warfare, while the Orions and the Hecates with their fleet elements would handle the close in warfaree and the fighter ops respectively, the arbalests and their fleet elements could hang back and bludgeon the enemy from range. This might be particularly effective in dealing with threats the Sathanas

Say hi to the Solaris.

Support

-ECM Missiles
In keeping with the missile theme here, we want to maximize the number of missiles that get through, thus we seed our salvo with EW missiles that lower the effectiveness of enemy defensive fire and interfere with fighter targeting systems. Pretty much just really bursty jamming that plays havoc with sensor arrays rather then with communications.
Defensive ECM missiles that do the same thing to missile guidance would help in defending against incoming salvos

-Fighter ECM
Could be loaded on Capital Ship missiles and sensor arrays, or compacted in a smaller form into fighter missiles. Fighters could fly a support role and launch one of their ECM missiles which then creates false sensor images of other fighters (2-3?) that look real and attract enemy weapons fire. The only way to ascertain whether the target was real would be for a fighter to attain visual ID. Would be useful to fake some fighters and bombers when attacking cap ships.

-Cloaking ECM
Have an AWACS ship in the area 'mask' the signal of a cap ship or wing of fighters, holding their emissions down so that they could only be detected at very short range

-Footprint Magnification
Once again relying on an AWACS ship to fake out  enemy sensor arrays by making a ship look like something its not. Either by masking part of its emissions (make an orion look like Deimos for example) or making it look more nasty to discourage attack (Triton disguised as Deimos). Adjustment would of course have to be within reasonable limits there's only so much that fancy sensor manipulation can do. A Perseus would never be able to pretend to be an Orion with the support of even two AWACS ships

Interesting idea.

-Shield Transfers
Make defending ships easier as the larger ships could emit beams that increase friendly fighter shield recharge by maybe 25%?

Not supported by the engine.

-Local Shield Emitters
Cap ships could be equipped with local shield emitters with a certain range of influence between them (ideally spread across the hull to overlap). Thus, when a bomber wing sends its payload out targeted at a certain point, the local shield emitter could bring up a temp shield (4-5 second duration) about the strength of a fighter shield ballooning over that section. It can take some of the damage negating, or at least lessening the initial damage. However, crushing damage to the shield would overload the emitters, at best increasing their cycle time (already high) at worst, destroying them outright.

Relatively easy to do via sexps.

[CaptJosh]

The local shield emitter idea actually sounds a lot like the substitute shields they came up with for the SDF-1 in Robotech, where they'd have these big...Photon discs, I think they called them, that were controlled by operators and moved into place to intercept an much incoming fire as possible. Though this idea sounds  like it's just to try to protect critical systems and defenses for a little bit longer during an attack...

[bigchunk1]

The weapons.tbl is a beautiful thing and there are tons of creative opportunities to be had.

The Beam Warhead idea can be done if you are willing to put it on a fighter instead of a bomb. I'm thinking of a Kamikaze RBC.

Missiles can do some interesting things. Weapons that force a tactical responce are of great interest to me. I was thinking of a cluster warhead which deploys slow moving but high area damage mines on detonation. This mines would detonate after a set amount of time. An evading player will have to think quickly and burn out of the way to avoid taking a heavy hit.

Here's a few of my favorites from mods I have played:
BPWIH: Shrike - long ranged EMP warhead
BPAoA: Balor - rapid fire cycle weapon with low energy consumption
Cardinal Spear - ?? - High damage single shot plasma gun mounted on bombers for use against capital ships
Descendants of Sol - Springfield - A high damage high velocity sniper rifle which is hard to use due to a long cool down
Casualties of War - Banshee X - A rapid fire pulse cannon for strafing subsystems. Very high energy consumption.
Wings of Dawn - Heavy Swarm Missile - a large slow moving cluster of warheads which is effective against wings of units
                       - player mounted beam cannons -    



 

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Gotta table my subspace flak idea some day ...

[BengalTiger]

Weapons
-Flak Missiles (maybe?)
The inspiration here for me was the slammer from WiH. Basically, cap ships could try to thin out bomber squadrons by firing these missiles towards them, detonating them sending a cone of flak forward, hopefully destroying the fighters. Problem being fighters/bombers would most likely easily avoid these missiles once they were fired

Modern missiles have proximity fuses which detonate them at a small distance from their target aircraft. The warhead explodes and sends a cone of thousands of metal shrapnel.

This could be doable in FS by pimping the Inferno to have a detonation range, say 30 meters, and giving it a smart spawn, with the spawn angle set to some 15-30 degrees. That would make all the bomblets fly forward, and most should get a lock on the target, or any nearby bombers/fighters, and the hit rate would get much bigger than when the bomblets shoot out in random directions.

You could also use a smaller cone (5 degrees or so), and have the missile spawn 20-30 unguided projectiles when it explodes (the engine won't handle thousands of shrapnel).

-Mines
Pretty simple idea really, mines that track onto enemy IFF, collide and detonate. Require fighter sweeps to eliminate, but would be highly effective in jump node defense or areas where you know the enemy capships will have to jump in without recon.
         - Smaller mines that put out a huge load of flak to act as anti-fighter mines maybe? But fighters would be able to deal with that fairly easily to that might be wasted.

Just go with the sentry guns.

Unless you use untargetable, kamikaze asteroids in an asteroid field. Those would be nasty.

-Arbalest
The Arbalest would be new ship class, either a destroyer or in the frigate size range, built around this missile warfare, while the Orions and the Hecates with their fleet elements would handle the close in warfare and the fighter ops respectively, the arbalests and their fleet elements could hang back and bludgeon the enemy from range. This might be particularly effective in dealing with threats the Sathanas

More on this in Teeth of the Tiger when it gets released.

-ECM Missiles
In keeping with the missile theme here, we want to maximize the number of missiles that get through, thus we seed our salvo with EW missiles that lower the effectiveness of enemy defensive fire and interfere with fighter targeting systems. Pretty much just really bursty jamming that plays havoc with sensor arrays rather then with communications.
Defensive ECM missiles that do the same thing to missile guidance would help in defending against incoming salvos

There is this thing called an "Electronics" flag, combine that with the "EMP" flag and you could get an enemy capital ship temporarily combat ineffective. For reference- check TotT Intro, mission 3.

Spoiler:

The Tiigran-Merisst use a swarm bomb called the Falconet, fired from the T-MB Cataphracts against the Lamias, causing their Flak and Beams to lose accuracy

As for defensive missiles- EMP missiles also temporarily disable bombs causing them to float with 0 speed for some time. Turrets with EMP missiles should give the regular ones more time to shoot the incoming bombs.[/color]

-Fighter ECM
Could be loaded on Capital Ship missiles and sensor arrays, or compacted in a smaller form into fighter missiles. Fighters could fly a support role and launch one of their ECM missiles which then creates false sensor images of other fighters (2-3?) that look real and attract enemy weapons fire. The only way to ascertain whether the target was real would be for a fighter to attain visual ID. Would be useful to fake some fighters and bombers when attacking cap ships.

Simply launching swarm missiles that have a long lifetime, fly really slow and have the "bomb" tag would keep turrets busy. You could make a semi-transparent model of a fighter using the same evil black magic they use to make glass textures, or a model with it's only texture being a glowmap. Then use some kind of "no-collide" voodoo to keep enemy shots from hitting the semi-transparent model.
In the end you'd get a missile projecting a hologram of a fighter around it, which AI turrets would really love to shoot at.

-Cloaking ECM
Have an AWACS ship in the area 'mask' the signal of a cap ship or wing of fighters, holding their emissions down so that they could only be detected at very short range

And a feature request from me:
A "Max Detection Range:" and "Max Targeting Range:" feature for the ships.tbl. The first one would define where a ship appears as a blurry dot on sensors, the second would define where it becomes a clear contact that could be targeted.

-Footprint Magnification
Once again relying on an AWACS ship to fake out  enemy sensor arrays by making a ship look like something its not. Either by masking part of its emissions (make an orion look like Deimos for example) or making it look more nasty to discourage attack (Triton disguised as Deimos). Adjustment would of course have to be within reasonable limits there's only so much that fancy sensor manipulation can do. A Perseus would never be able to pretend to be an Orion with the support of even two AWACS ships

SEXP's I guess...

[Drogoth]

-Bomb-pumped Lasers (Beam Warheads)
My solution to getting beam weapons into range of enemy capital ships without exposing yourself to return beam fire, or to long range missile bombardment as you close the range. The idea is basically that a missile has a beam emitter on its front, flies out toward the target and detonates. The force of the explosion is channeled to the emitter to create a short lived (compared to the actual ship based beam duration) and lower damage beam that can hit the enemy ship. This is additionally immune to the jamming used against current beam weapons, because the missiles would have individual guidance systems, just as our on-fighter missiles do, which don't appear to be affected. If anything, more ECM support would have to be developed to counter this threat, lowering enemy electronic warfare capabilities. Anyways, pack loads of these missiles and we can get beam fire in high numbers over incredibly long range.

Not really doable with the engine ATM. Unless, of course, you use a workaround similar to the one found in FS1 for the beams, then it is quite possible.

Well glad to hear it might be possible, as it was frankly my all star favorite idea of the bunch

-Flak Missiles (maybe?)
The inspiration here for me was the slammer from WiH. Basically, cap ships could try to thin out bomber squadrons by firing these missiles towards them, detonating them sending a cone of flak forward, hopefully destroying the fighters. Problem being fighters/bombers would most likely easily avoid these missiles once they were fired

You mean something like the Infyrno featured in retail?

Was thinking longer range and warship mounted with a proximity fuse

-Arbalest
The Arbalest would be new ship class, either a destroyer or in the frigate size range, built around this missile warfare, while the Orions and the Hecates with their fleet elements would handle the close in warfaree and the fighter ops respectively, the arbalests and their fleet elements could hang back and bludgeon the enemy from range. This might be particularly effective in dealing with threats the Sathanas

Say hi to the Solaris.

Fair enough, I'm not familiar enough with Solaris's actual combat performance, the one time I see it in action the Hood jumps out pretty fast so I lack knowledge of the Solaris's extended combat capabilities. That being said, thats due to my ignorance and not looking at raw data most likely

Allthough I'm wondering, is the GTVA working on an equivalent missile ship for operations in Sol? Or is that something we have to wait to find out?

On the topic of shield transfers, bummer.

Glad the ECM ideas were well received, and once again, if they already exist and I'm just stupid (more then possible) then disregard me haha

-Mines
Pretty simple idea really, mines that track onto enemy IFF, collide and detonate. Require fighter sweeps to eliminate, but would be highly effective in jump node defense or areas where you know the enemy capships will have to jump in without recon.
         - Smaller mines that put out a huge load of flak to act as anti-fighter mines maybe? But fighters would be able to deal with that fairly easily to that might be wasted.

Just go with the sentry guns.

Unless you use untargetable, kamikaze asteroids in an asteroid field. Those would be nasty.

Damn that would be scary. On the topic of mines just because I like the idea would it be possible to supplement sentry guns with mines if the mines were small, and had stealth gear so could only be targeted at very short range if at all? Provides a little more use for them then hunter killers in an asteroid field

[BengalTiger]

Was thinking longer range and warship mounted with a proximity fuse

That's easy to construct, just make the missile big. IIRC it's also possible to have missiles spawn different types of submunitions, so there could be, for example, a mix of very destructive, unguided warheads set to blow up more/less when they reach the target(s) as well as less powerful heat seekers.

Now that we're at it- guess I'll spend some time building weapons. This thread is good for inspirations.

Glad the ECM ideas were well received, and once again, if they already exist and I'm just stupid (more then possible) then disregard me haha

-Mines
Pretty simple idea really, mines that track onto enemy IFF, collide and detonate. Require fighter sweeps to eliminate, but would be highly effective in jump node defense or areas where you know the enemy capships will have to jump in without recon.
         - Smaller mines that put out a huge load of flak to act as anti-fighter mines maybe? But fighters would be able to deal with that fairly easily to that might be wasted.

Just go with the sentry guns.

Unless you use untargetable, kamikaze asteroids in an asteroid field. Those would be nasty.

Damn that would be scary. On the topic of mines just because I like the idea would it be possible to supplement sentry guns with mines if the mines were small, and had stealth gear so could only be targeted at very short range if at all? Provides a little more use for them then hunter killers in an asteroid field

That would be a good use for the "Max Detection Range:" and "Max Targeting Range:" features, the asteroid IEDs could be set to appear as blurry dots at 200 meters, become targetable at 150 meters, and detonate at 140.
Now if the mission features a few other blurs on the radar screen that are to be investigated, the player would most likely think the sensors are showing something new behind the asteroid, then for a fraction of a second the Auto Target would pick up the asteroid, and then BOOM.

This should scare people into flying far away from asteroids, or shooting each one on their path.

[General Battuta]

Was thinking longer range and warship mounted with a proximity fuse

That's easy to construct, just make the missile big. IIRC it's also possible to have missiles spawn different types of submunitions, so there could be, for example, a mix of very destructive, unguided warheads set to blow up more/less when they reach the target(s) as well as less powerful heat seekers.

Now that we're at it- guess I'll spend some time building weapons. This thread is good for inspirations.

Isn't this basically just a Slammer?

[BengalTiger]

If the Slammer spits 2 types of bomblets in a narrow cone after reaching a certain distance from it's target, then I guess it is (never checked the .tbls).

[General Battuta]

Just one submunition type, but otherwise yeah.

[Drogoth]

Just one submunition type, but otherwise yeah.

Is there a warship mounted slammer? If there is, I guess i just haven't noticed it, if not, that's what I was aiming for, mainly the longer range but I suppose it would be arguably very redundant as fighter based slammers would do the job effectively.

[General Battuta]

Well you could put a Slammer on a warship turret and it'd do the trick. Though yeah, could use extended range. Would not be much fun to fly into though.

[StarSlayer]

How about a beam cannon that silently judges the enemy's tastes until he simply dies of shame?

[Droid803]

I've put a slammer on a Fenris before.
Couldn't get close.
Damn thing is scary.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

How about a beam cannon that silently judges the enemy's tastes until he simply dies of shame?

I'd see that in the next JAD

[headdie]

How about a beam cannon that silently judges the enemy's tastes until he simply dies of shame?

I'd see that in the next JAD

speaking of jad can we have a massive subspace missile uber strike using this http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=75602.0;topicseen ?

[Reprobator]

And a Request from me:
A "Max Detection Range:" and "Max Targeting Range:" feature for the ships.tbl. The first one would define where a ship appears as a blurry dot on sensors, the second would define where it becomes a clear contact that could be targeted.[/color]

I agree. the actual detection system lacks of modding ability imho.
$Max Detection Range : Number
but instead of
Max Targeting Range:
i would replace this by
$Emission signature force : Number
'Cause depending size of ships or weapon (actually we can detect/target bomb ) the targetting range would depend of your own detection system and your target's signature ; this would allow flexibility with stealth fighter etc...

[Marcov]

I've got some ideas.

1. Kamikaze Drone - This is not your regular Kamikaze fighter. It's a Strikecraft filled with Cyclops/Bomber torpedoes with its shields and weapon reactor stripped out. However, the engine is still there. When summoned, these Drones jump in VERY CLOSE to the target warship - as in like 300-50 meters away from it. Then, boom.

2. Non-Lethal Ion-Blast Missile - Works perfectly for capture operations. It's less immoral and impersonal to use this than your basic Laser Primaries, as it can't kill anyone. This missile's design combines the shield damaging capabilities of the Circe, the Subsystem-destroying of the Akheton SDG, and an added EMP effect as well as the energy draining ability of the Lamprey. Fire a couple of these to an enemy fighter/bomber and it will be FULLY disabled; it can't move, it can't fire, its shields are disabled, and there's nowhere to go.

I also thought you could make Uber-versions of this; one that could take out entire capital ships with ease. So, you can actually capture stubborn fanatic Rebel warships who don't want to surrender (e.g. Imagine if the Colossus fired these at the Repulse. Koth would have no choice but to be boarded).

3. Bomb-Killer Torpedo - Works excellently for defense of capital ships against bombers. When launched, these torpedoes target any incoming bombs, and explode in a massive shockwave, obliterating all bombs in the area. However, damage is sacrificed for shockwave radius, since you wouldn't need a deadly torpedo to bring down fragile bombs, anyway.

[-Norbert-]

1. Kamikaze Drone - This is not your regular Kamikaze fighter. It's a Strikecraft filled with Cyclops/Bomber torpedoes with its shields and weapon reactor stripped out. However, the engine is still there. When summoned, these Drones jump in VERY CLOSE to the target warship - as in like 300-50 meters away from it. Then, boom.

Sounds a lot like the SSM strikes from BP: WiH, where the missiles' model is replaced by that of a drone.

2. Non-Lethal Ion-Blast Missile - Works perfectly for capture operations. It's less immoral and impersonal to use this than your basic Laser Primaries, as it can't kill anyone. This missile's design combines the shield damaging capabilities of the Circe, the Subsystem-destroying of the Akheton SDG, and an added EMP effect as well as the energy draining ability of the Lamprey. Fire a couple of these to an enemy fighter/bomber and it will be FULLY disabled; it can't move, it can't fire, its shields are disabled, and there's nowhere to go.

Stiletto? Okay, the Stiletto doesn't have an EMP effect and isn't manouverable enough to chase most fighers, but that is easy enough to change in tables alone.

I also thought you could make Uber-versions of this; one that could take out entire capital ships with ease. So, you can actually capture stubborn fanatic Rebel warships who don't want to surrender (e.g. Imagine if the Colossus fired these at the Repulse. Koth would have no choice but to be boarded).

Why would you want an "instant win" missile? Just finding a blind spot and blasting away with ion cannons and ion missiles to take out even the biggest capship sounds really boring. Much better to have to take out each subsystem by itself on capital ships.