Limpet mines - good idea or unbalanced?

Miramor · Post by **Miramor** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 1:43 am

I've been getting a little annoyed that the Dostoevsky seems to be the only medium fighter with any anticapital ability, so I've come up with an idea for making fighters that can't carry torps just a little more useful against capships... limpet mines.

The idea is, they're high-yield mines occupying a medium-missile slot, which you drop onto a capship and detonate at a later time. They don't have to have as high a yield as torps, because they're put down inside the capship's main shields. On the other hand, you have to get really, really close to the capship to drop them, and they have a nice long lock time while they look for the best spot to secure themselves to. Sort of like the Flashpack in WC4, but less powerful (and less cheesy).

I don't *think* this would severely screw up combat balance, but it would be nice to have the input of some of the devs. Also, I'm still thinking about how the detonation would work. I guess things could be kept simple and limpets could be given a one-minute delay, or there could be some sort of thing where for instance a set of three limpets would all set themselves to detonate after a certain time when the last was laid down. Alternatively, a new keybinding ("k" perhaps) could be used to detonate limpets and other such devices.

(Such a keybinding could have other interesting uses. For instance, there could be floating turret ammo that would stay stationary relative to some target, and when triggered would wake up and fire disruptor bolts at enemies for a few minutes until it ran out of power. Or smart mines that would lock onto the nearest enemy fighter and follow them when activated.)

Post by **loki1950** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 2:15 am

There are a whole range of mines hat we could come up with they have been part off naval ops for a long time fire barges at harbor mouths could maybe be considered as archetypes an other type that was proposed a while back where SPEC interdiction mines and or torpedoes.As for balance issues there a couple way to go about it make them rare,tricky to place and or arm(new way to kill yourself

)So balance should not be an issue just inconvenient(more work

)

Enjoy the Choice

Miramor · Post by **Miramor** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 2:37 am

Tricky to place sounds like the best way to do it, as rarity can range from circumventable to annoying and difficult arming could add a random death factor that wouldn't be so great. Maybe have them only placable near turrets, where the armor is weaker? Or just require you to hover a hundred meters above the capship's hull for 15-20 seconds to get a lock.

(To make the latter more difficult, it might be a good idea to have better turret AI for dealing with stealth fighters. I figure I could start another thread about that.)

Re SPEC interdiction stuff, that sounds pretty cool. It would be interesting to have pirates lay interdiction hardware and mines along flight paths as a sort of low-risk ambush.