Fully stripping away shields off a player means you may aswell insta kill them because players rarely last much longer than their shield.
The compromise to this is that the firing player also loses their shields, a draw of an effect you could say where neither one has the advantage. Both would likely boost power to recharge shields faster, but if both are anywhere near weapon range to each other, both will suffer the loss of shield arrays.
Stripping from a station means you may aswell not bother putting shields on them at all because of shields have become fully pointless to the game at that point.
As indicated, this would not affect station/city modules, which would be able to survive the EMP blast through more extensive protection from the EMP pulse. Their shields and combat systems will remain online.
Mess with stealth. No. You are seriously at that point just negating an entire type of ship build making them useless.
Also as indicated, this would not impact stealth devices or generators. Ships will be able to remain cloaked after such a weapon is used.
A point blank EMP burst directed at a single ship. This makes it not too griefy. And not to over powered.
It hits only one person and that person is WEAKENED not DEAD.
There are already targeting weapons for this, including both disabling the jump drive as well as EMP. This weapon would be something different, a more broad scope fighter/combat suppression weapon. But with limitations previously listed. Hopefully, the points you raised and how they will not be factors will help remedy certain concerns.
The alert, counter, and escape options will continue to be available. So all players in the sector will be notified that such a weapon is being armed a full 10 seconds before it is allowed to be fired. Much of the time, a player will be able to escape the attack either by jumping away or simply after burning away (and even if they don't escape the blast radius, they can put enough distance between them and an attacker to give their shields enough time to recover).
This means the only reasonal usage in a non-griefing intent is to fire it at someone when they are in your sights, disabling all their shields in one shot and then finishing them off without needing beams.
What would prevent the receiving player from firing back? And what would prevent the receiving player from escaping? The attacking player would also have to wait before they could begin an attack with non-beam weapons. So with answers to these, it will help me build further on a decision to include or exclude such changes.
Also if its supposed to be emp effects you should be changing the emp missile not the disruptor.
Since the effects go well beyond EMP, the 'disruptor' label is probably more appropriate for what the changes would do to the original weapon (EMP, shields, and jump drive). It would disrupt three categories of systems rather than one.
So the same lets say 10 million missile. Can be launched an infinite of griefy annoying times. Its literally so abusable that I can imagine popular servers intentionally writing into their rules a ban for this weapon in particular.
I would compare it to the AWP from counter-strike. Overpowered and banned on 90% of servers because of the imbalance to other weapons. If and when I do host a server of any game, I ban these kinds of weapons.
A good point to consider. The changes may be more of an annoyance to most players rather than a benefit. The goal would be to restrict all ships in the area, not just the receivers. Rather, a more leveling of the playing field overall.
The primary objective of the weapon would still be to disable the jump drive for a rather long period of time, much like it does now. By adding in a short EMP effect, that gives (all) players a brief window of time to either plan an escape or set their energy settings to prepare for localized battle. Once the EMP effect is over, the battle or escape can begin. The next phase is the shield effect. If a player opted to recharge their shields quickly, they'd likely find them already in the yellow by the time the EMP effect ends (I've been trying to sequence/time it this way). This of course could be adjusted further for more/less time for restoring shields before the systems are back online. The final effect of disabling the jump drive would still apply like it does now. So basically, the changes would aim to simply add delays to other actions to give players preparation time, rather than inhibiting what they can do. The only potential exception to this would be how long of a time is provided for shield recharging. If less EMP time, less shield recharge time. If more EMP time, shields may be able to fully recharge by the time weapons come online.
Very good discussion and points on both sides, thanks for the feedback. Hopefully, the details above will help address some concerns while bringing up some additional considerations to review.
Doesn't a Faraday need to be grounded? Which brings up a question: How does the ISS ground out static electricity?
The energy source in EL would be room temperature superconducting hyper capacitors.
Charging weapons first also charges your jump drive ... giving you both an offensive and a defensive option. Charging shields is purely defensive.