[TrashMan]

Apoligies if this isn't the proper place, but the FSO/SCP sub-forum  seem to just be release notes, not actual discussion/suggestion

Anyway, I was thinking of a proposal for a way to make electronics work much more flexibly (and with beams)... or a new type of disruption effect.  Basically like overheating.

Electronics weapons would impart a certain amount of disruption damage ($disrupt_damage, defaults to weapon damage if not specified).
Every ship would have a certain amount of tolerance, like a gauge/bar that needs filling ($disrupt_tolerance, default calculated by ship HP or volume or size class, if not specified) and would loose it at a certain rate ($disruption_loss).

A ship could have modifiers applied, much like weapons have, but for systems instead of damage type.
Like  +modifier_weapons  0.5  would trigger weapon shutdown at half the value, +modifiers_engine 1.5 would trigger weapon disruption at 1.5 the value. So each ship can have subsystems of different resistance to being disrupted.
Add a certain amount of randomness and you have a nice system where you can keep a ship suppressed by keeping it's disruption high enough.

This would make this type of disruption work with beams and make it more flexible.
A small downside of the engine having to track the disruption buildup for each ship, but it should be negligible.

[0rph3u5]

Couldn't you make that with the Leech parameter if the engine would track weapons energy for turrets?

(For a systemic solution, to go from energy to heat management, it could easily be done by putting the frames of the weapons energy HUD gauge in reverse order, so the it builds up rather than drains)

[TrashMan]

I didn't mean to make it heat I mean it functions sorta like heat.

As in, disruption praticles/charge builds up on the enemy ship causing trouble it if passes a treshhold and it aumoaticly radiates/disspates with time.

For a practical example, let's say a shivan destroyer has a disruption trehshold of 1000 (0.8 engine modifer and 1.2 navigation modifier) and it dissipates 50 per second.
A player with disruptor missiles (that does 500 on hit) and a captial ship with a disruptor beam (that does the same over it's 5 second fire period, with 10 second cooldown) shoot at it.
As soon as disruption has built up to 800, the engines get disrupted. When it passes above 1200, navigation gets disrupted. With careful timing the player can keep the ship disrupted for longer. Although this would require a disruption gauge or value to be displayed for the targeted ship, unless you want to palyer to eyeball it.