Combat is too easy to run from

New Ship Idea

from Sins Forums
One issue I have noticed is that fleet combat isn't that decisive because if one side is outnumbered they can easily warp off, even with the tower that slows the speed of hostile warps it doesn't give you enough time to kill much more than a few ships.

One idea I had to counter act this was to add cap ship that has the ability to prevent ships within a certain radius from warping off. I think something like this would be best suited for a cap ship with low offense and fairly strong defense, some of the other ability's it could have would be along the lines of fleet support, maybe couple of passive fleet boosters such as shield recharge, targeting. Or it could even be a hostile fleet debuffer such as reduced range, speed, (these two would be good considering the primary ability of the ship) or reduced damage, shield recharge. Considering the power of the primary ability of the ship while active all weapons should probably be disabled, this way if you want to use the ability you have one cap ship less for dps.

As for the range of the warp disabler if it is a ability that can run forever with a toggle switch it shouldn't be too large and/or the ship should also no longer have the ability to move while the ability is active, or at least at a significantly reduced speed. If the ability is only able active for a certain amount of time and requires antimatter to activate then the radius should be fairly large.


My ideal ship would have these ability's:

1. Warp Disabler (effects all ships in range) - lasts for 30 seconds (doubled each level), large radius, while active all weapons and ships engines are disabled.

2. Reduced Velocity & agility (effects hostile ships in range) - lasts for 30 seconds (doubled each level), slightly smaller range than warp disabler, level 1 is 10%, each level after adds 5%

3. Passive Shield Boost - passive ability which improves the shields of all friendly ships in range

4. Overheat engines - provides a quick burst of speed to help get into range of a hostile fleet at the expense of some damage.


As for antimatter costs using 1 & 2 should require all the ships antimatter maybe 200 antimatter and 100 antimatter, and 4 costing 50. This way you couldn't burn on top of the fleet stop them from warping and slow them down.


These are just rough ideas, feel free to add any other suggestions or why you think this is a terrible/great idea. :)
13,301 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Phase Jump Inhibitor, its in the game, and every race has it.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Honestly, I like how it's difficult to force a decisive engagement. It keeps the snowball factor from getting too big in the late game, and makes the decisive battles all the more fun--when you jump in and see the enemy turn toward you, it puts a smile on your face. It also allows for more strategic consideration--this is one of the few games where you can adequately trade space for time.

There already are some capitals with jump-block abilities, but granted they only work on single ships.
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah, but he's saying even with that, it doesn't give you enough time to kill more than a couple extra ships. That's been my experience.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
There are some ships that specialize in stopping ships from jumping out - the best is the Jarrasul Evacuator (Vasari capital) that can mass block phase jump for a group of ships.

The AI is sometimes overly cautious, but if you threaten the right planet he will show up to defend it to the death.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
I agree that the current Phase-Jump-Inhibitors don't do quite what I was hoping they'd do. They do make it easier to take out those pesky scouts or small raids that tend to pop in and pop out, but it doesn't present a "do or die" situation to an attacking fleet of significant size. When I build a planet up for choke-point defense, I want that sucker to be a WALL ;)

Once the modding tools are out, we can presumably make PJI's more to our personal taste by changing the modifier to jump time (say, to 1000% instead of 250%), or possibly return them to their previous functionality of preventing jumps entirely (there's still the issue of whether that should prevent jumps to grav-wells not owned by the PJI owner).

I think we could also mod in the four abilities you mention for a new cap ship, as I've already seen most/all of those those effects in game (edit: as mentioned above, some of those abilities are already in, no modding necessary). There may be some balance issues with a "mobile PJI", but they could be worked out.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
We're playing around with the idea of making PJI's effects stack...
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Phase Jump Inhibitor, its in the game, and every race has it.


End of quote


I love how people don't even read the man's post before making a response.

He knows. They aren't effective and if you play the game it is easy to see this is the case. I also made a gripe about phase tag in my post. Phasing is way too easy in this game and it makes scouts and siege frigates stupidly powerful.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
ye, i played a game to today me and 2 TEC NPC's, 2 Hours in i found myself playing phase tag against them, they would send in a couple of siege frigates, bomb my planet then run off. By the time ive mustered up an attack to fend them off ive lost the planet.

The phasing needs to be changed its way to easy for siege frigates and scouts to phase into one of your planets, either bombard it or scan the system then phase back out again. Hanger defenses are pretty useless, unless uve got at least 3 of them but even then they cant bring down at more 6 siege frigates before your planet has been bombarded.

Please fix this, either make better planet defenses or make the siege frigates less powerful.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
What the TC is looking for is basically the Sins version of a Star Wars Interdictor cruiser. Something that can make its own little grav well so that ships cannot jump out.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

What the TC is looking for is basically the Sins version of a Star Wars Interdictor cruiser. Something that can make its own little grav well so that ships cannot jump out.
End of quote


interdictor cruiser is exactly what i want to see.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
The fact you can run from a fight is very good, and I like it. While you run away you leave your planet undefended. So you better regroup fast and come back!