Stasis Webifier

[darloth]

Turret that automatically targets enemy capital vessels like a beam weapon, tries not to target things already webbed.

Reduces enemy ship acceleration by 50% and interdicts FTL.

Useful as a no-ftl-cost combat-only interdictor to force things to actually fight at planets orbited by an appropriate defense station, to punish bombers, that sort of thing. Essentially, an auto-targetting version of the tractor beam.

Would function similar to the tractor beam, investigating the acceleration value of the target's mover and then applying 50% of that acceleration every tick in the opposite direction to their velocity vector (so as to actually catch things, and not just give them less engine thrust and send them flying helplessly into the void - amusing though that might be).

Only bit I'm unsure about is the targetting. I think if I make a hidden ability that auto-targets and auto-activates, it should work, but it's the "avoids already webbed" and only capship things I'm not 100% certain about. Still, you think it's worth testing? I think it would be a good addition to the range of interesting and useful subsystems, especially for defense stations, and it would do something about bomber spam.

[DaloLorn]

'Hidden ability that auto-targets and auto-activates'

How about an effector? :P

Sounds interesting, and potentially more effective than the actual FTL Jammer. (On another note, you're pretty active. :P)

[darloth]

Well if you're inhumanly fast on the fingers, tractor beams already do this and more!

regarding the effector - could be possible, could be, but I don't believe we have any control over the targetting priority of effectors. We -do- have target control over abilities, and can make them not target things which are already webbed. If we can persuade an effector-turret not to 'shoot' things that are already webbed, great.

Oh, and abilities automatically cover stuff like "My target moved out of range, I should stop doing that effect I'm doing on them and remove the status I added", wheras to my knowledge effectors do not.

Abilities do a lot of the work for us - they already auto target and auto activate, see the Support Beam for a good example. It's just that since I want to be able to stack several of these onto one ship, I thought it would be convenient for the player if the buttons for them all were hidden. The actual subsystem should work perfectly well even if there are buttons for each instance and they CAN be individually targetted.

Tell me more about your thoughts on balance though please, you and @Alarcarr have played a LOT more multiplayer than I have. If I implemented this, what would it do to the game? :)
I hear from Iilya that ships showing up, doing damage then buggering off before the fixed defenses can kill them is a problem, so this is a potential solution to that (with its own checks and balances, namely cost and that it doesn't do any extra damage so you're trading snare for DPS) that also has what I consider to be other interesting uses.

Regarding being active - yes, right now. But then some weeks I won't do anything and you'll probably never even see me, and then other weeks I won't get around to even doing a simple tiny thing. But, you and Alacar said you'd actually like me to contribute and give opinions on things, so here's some initial contributions and opinions to start out :)

[DaloLorn]

Oh, effectors can handle it. (Except the 'remove status' thing.)

You overestimate my experience, balance discussion is purely theoretical from my standpoint - Alar's the one that needs talking to.

Alar and I have been known to go off like that, too. :P

Edit: To be perfectly honest, I like having someone to brainstorm ideas with. Alar's modus operandi since we started working on this seems to be to go 'Is it balanced?' and accept/reject it depending on the answer, and I can't always understand his thinking on the same level as yours. (My fond memories of how the Ancient Gravitational Collapser was conceived are also helping here. ;))

[Alarcarr]

This will be good with correct numbers but , i guess will be more a snowball/secure kill tool that u only need when u are ahead.

and interdicts FTL.

Thats its pretty heavy to balance , we already have that but its not automatic.

you and @Alarcarr have played a LOT more multiplayer than I have

In the past @DaloLorn used to play as much tryhard MP as you do.

The MP broken subsystem have a easy solution as we know: if we dont want to be MP abused it hide it in the grid .So can be included and indirectly disabled for MP if need.