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.
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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.