Disruptor ?

[XenonSurf]

Why would you pay 1M+ and use a disruptor?
The result of keeping all ships in a location by preventing them to jump is a bit meager, and expensive... I see no real advantage, even if you ensure that the objectives you have to kill remain within your range. This can also turn the tables against you, because I guess (I haven't tried it, no reason to do so) that it also affects yourself.
Is this a pure Multiplayer weapon?

XenonS

[DaveK]

Hmmmm

Two opposing views that appear quite regularly (not just wrt disruptors) are

1: money is too easy to get in game and should be harder to obtain (as if RL isn't enough of a struggle for we poor wage slaves ) ... and so to make money easier to get rid of/have some reason to exist ... 2: have some things that are very expensive to get/use to act as money sinks.

In various forms these viewpoints have been discussed from the time of Legends, through EM and EMII and still appear in the latest Legacy. I can't speak of times before Legends 'cos that's the first game I discovered in the Evoverse.

Are disruptors a vital part of gameplay? ... or are they a 'luxury' item for some combat jocks? As a non-combat oriented sort of player, any in-game item that stops nasty pilots from leaving my vicinity or keeps me in their vicinity is not getting my vote for most requested item to be easier to use

Why would you want to fly out of the gated systems? Why would you want to find the planet with floating trees? There are many activities that you can ask the 'why would you ...' question about.

The real questions in this case are, I feel;


is any players' gameplay affected by the use or non-use of disruptors?
does anyone use disruptors at 1 mill+ a pop?
would they use them is they were cheaper? why?
and in terms of SP vs MP ... can NPC use them? Would anyone want to trap AI in the vicinity? why?

[Marvin]

1: money is too easy to get in game and should be harder to obtain....

Next time somebody makes that suggestion, have him hire a flight of five AI pilots ... then ask him how long his money lasted.

[XenonSurf]

Oh, but: it's not the money matter that puzzles me with the disruptor, but its utility. In military operations, you care like kissing your sister about money Also most missions have negative profit relation, especially if you hire pilots, but that's totally fine IMO.

But I'm really puzzled about the utility or urgence to keep enemies in your sector. But then: I most likely miss something - as usual when doing the first time something in EL...

I've heard about a nice Boom this weapon does, so I probably will spend a million to enjoy, but..humm...I dunno, maybe something for masochists to find themselves alone against 5-10 AI ships to take out (without reloading the game preferably).
But it^s the challenge level that I really like in this game, like trying to succeed a spy mission in a Nebula, haha...No stealth possible, no jump drive, all against you...In such a situation it would be huge if instead of disabling jump drives a big bang of a weapon would create an artificial black hole that sucks your enemies - and you - towards the center... Because you are warned in advance you have some chances to escape, THAT would be a nice weapon!

XenonS



[Edited on 5-13-2016 by XenonSurf]

[matchbox2022]

There was a vote about changing them to a more "change combat rules / shield draining capital ship" weapon, just search for the poll in the threads....
Think the idea must've died off, but seemed like a fair chunk of people were for at least some changes.
The animation changed at least

[XenonSurf]

Hi Matchbox, thanks to point me, yes, I found it in the meantime. It's interesting. I would welcome a more effective weapon against CAP ships. I only succeeded once to kill one, and only with the support of another friendly CAP.

Greets,
XenonS

[DaveK]

. . . it would be huge if instead of disabling jump drives a big bang of a weapon would create an artificial black hole that sucks your enemies - and you - towards the center... Because you are warned in advance you have some chances to escape, THAT would be a nice weapon!

XenonS

[Edited on 5-13-2016 by XenonSurf]

Wow Xenon - that's set a real challenge ... how can we explain the science behind the technology used to create an artificial black hole with technology small enough to fit into a missile? Why would it be just used to suck local ships in, when it could be used to destroy capital ships (moths in a flame) whole stations/cities, asteroid fields, planets and possibly stars? It makes Fulcrum Torpedoes look like a peashooter.

If we could build the technology it could be fairly easily modified to create a wormhole, allowing gate free, very long distance travel (giving the equivalent of gated access to any system you have the coordinates of), though probably as one shot affairs since stabilising the WH wouldn't be easy - so it would be costly to commute to an uncharted system, though very quick .

Having an installable uber-weapon/ultra-long range transport system on player (and NPC) ships would modify the gameplay and power balance muchly!

... a nice (though scary) weapon indeed!

[XenonSurf]

The scientific principle is: the energy maintenance law, you cannot create a phenomen of x energy without putting x energy POTENTIAL at work. Actually we CAN create black holes in particle accelerators: but its effects only last for billion of billion fraction of a second...not enough to cause havoc

That's why a weapon put in a missile - in far future - only has limited effects and duration. CAP ships will be safe as well as planets and stars. Other smaller ships will have their navigation sensibly disturbed, a gravitational effect towards the center of the explosion. The player will have to use this situation to his advantage: escaping or fighting.

XenonS

[Edited on 5-21-2016 by XenonSurf]

[DaveK]

micro BH then !

If so I think we can get a viable explanation together and fine tune the size to drag objects with the mass of a ship but less than an asteroid or station module. Similarly the resultant short lived BH wouldn't have the energy density or longevity to function as a short term gate to distant lands

All you have to do now is sell it to the community and Vice! The visuals (if they could be coded) would be very impressive. How would it differ from a sparkly version of a FT, since FT's have been dropped because they were too poky?

[XenonSurf]

Such an idea is actually used in another space game: Galaxy On Fire 2 HD. It's not exactly the same: a moving light cloud approaches that you can avoid or fly in; if you get sucked in you are then 'warped' into a region of space controlled by some tough baddies, some Vonaries maybe? You then have some tough time before the cloud appears again and you have to do some savant manoeuvres to reach it... I liked this idea a lot.

XenonS

[DaveK]

Sounds good, but remember that you will be avoiding the BH and hopefully seeing the other ships being sucked in ... or, if a NPC uses the weapon (or you screw up) you will see the effect of being sucked in ... along with other hostiles perhaps.

If you (as well as the hostiles you targeted) are sucked in and then spat back out elsewhere (randomly) the game will have to handle your and the NPC's reappearance anywhere in the Evoverse and then the game will have to handle how the hostiles respond.

Finally there the issue of how you get back into known space - assuming you kill/escape the hostiles and have enough fuel or construction capability to get home. It's not a given that you will be dropped at random into any one of the trillions (yes that's thousands of billions = billions of millions) sectors that comprise the navigable Evoverse. In theory you could reappear outside the returnable distance (20 000 sectors in any direction from Sapphire) - statistically you are more likely to return further away than you can jump back from, given the Evoverse is 'infinite' - I have a profile where I'm 100 000 000 sectors from Sapphire - with no fuel an unable to move or even manoeuvre.

Still not sure how it differs from the FT of the golden age of EM/EMII

[Marvin]

In theory, you'll find yourself a lot more than 400 years beyond EM after you escape the black hole's event horizon.

[XenonSurf]

Well, now i remember that such a thing was already in the Elite space game in the 90s, it was called Witchspace...a place where you got sucked in and had an almost impossible situation to solve... I now can fully see the function of a Disruptor in MP play, I mean, I should not be able to escape at any time just hitting ALT-F8 So, a disruptor is closing the hole when the mouse gets out of it...
But in SP, such a mini blackhole as a weapon would make more sense, but I admit it poses serious gameplay and developing problems. Speaking more generally, I think about some weapons with 'bizzare' effects that would re-shuffle the power balance when you alone face 5 enemy fighters, and such a weapon ought to be very expensive too. But that's all much easier said than done.
Also: space and planetary combat in EL is as good as it can be IMO (except the too peaceful disputed areas when you simply fly through), so there's the danger to worsen an already good gameplay design, I admit.

I have a profile where I'm 100 000 000 sectors from Sapphire - with no fuel an unable to move or even manoeuvre.

If you have 10 cargo bays with a build constructor, or a single deploy constructor, then you can come back without having a fuel converter, unless you have 0 fuel already...

XenonS


[Edited on 5-22-2016 by XenonSurf]

[Marvin]

I now can fully see the function of a Disruptor in MP play, I mean, I should not be able to escape at any time just hitting ALT-F8 So, a disruptor is closing the hole when the mouse gets out of it...

It might be necessary to extend the MP escape (ESC) time ... put it back to where it was originally. Or extend it even further than that.

[DaveK]

Build constructors only work within a 20K limit from Sapphire. Deploy constructors work anywhere but you now need a star or a nebula to extract fuel from - and they are as rare as hens' teeth beyond 20K. The only way you can travel 'out there' is to choose a course, get to 5000+, go inertial and wait (for weeks or years in RT). Marvin experimented and found that it takes about 90 mins to traverse a sector so 1 000 000 sectors takes about 1.5 million hours which is just over 170 years in real time. I suspect Vice will have created new games in that time

Still, a sphere of 20 000 sectors diameter contains trillions of sectors to visit

[matchbox2022]

Well, now i remember that such a thing was already in the Elite space game in the 90s, it was called Witchspace...a place where you got sucked in and had an almost impossible situation to solve... I now can fully see the function of a Disruptor in MP play, I mean, I should not be able to escape at any time just hitting ALT-F8 So, a disruptor is closing the hole when the mouse gets out of it...
But in SP, such a mini blackhole as a weapon would make more sense, but I admit it poses serious gameplay and developing problems. Speaking more generally, I think about some weapons with 'bizzare' effects that would re-shuffle the power balance when you alone face 5 enemy fighters, and such a weapon ought to be very expensive too. But that's all much easier said than done.
Also: space and planetary combat in EL is as good as it can be IMO (except the too peaceful disputed areas when you simply fly through), so there's the danger to worsen an already good gameplay design, I admit.

I have a profile where I'm 100 000 000 sectors from Sapphire - with no fuel an unable to move or even manoeuvre.

If you have 10 cargo bays with a build constructor, or a single deploy constructor, then you can come back without having a fuel converter, unless you have 0 fuel already...

XenonS


[Edited on 5-22-2016 by XenonSurf]

Know this is a lonnnnng time coming, but I'd still personally love to see this be a thing in some capacity against swarms of fighters and capital ships to have more usefulness. MP has died off a lot recently, so the entire point of having it "break gameplay against humans, and destroying their stations...." just doesn't seem to add up any longer. It'd be even better to have to defeat an enemy before they can get in range of launching it in the capital ship escort missions...since those are too easy as is.