On 2008-11-13 12:59, Admiral Tiffy Rando wrote:

Instead of a large costly weakly defended platform that takes a long time to build, howabout a pilotable ship.

On 2008-11-29 23:38, Fatal Iwancoppa wrote:
still, dreads allways just go and blow platforms........ they should do more damage against dreads and stations then smaller ships to discourage use of dreadnaughts. realy, this shouldnt be Dreadspace.

On 2008-10-26 13:48, Tiffy Rando wrote:
I know this is old hash, I do remember making this suggestion something like 4 years ago. However the current features in the game are somewhat more congruent to the idea and I think it's time to ressurect it.

Right now I think that we all agree that planet def is a mixed bag.

When a planet is working properly (again, when), and it has been well built, it is actually quite difficult to bomb, and if even one person is defending it pretty much is enough to halt the solo bomber, even the Command dread/supply team + analogs.

However I think that we all agree that planet defense needs to be a little more agressive.

Fighter bases are out of the question because of what they do to server stability, and the uberpwn death bases of 1.483 that fired AM torps and assault beams are out of the picture because it would greatly discourage new players to see their little frigate or scout get instapopped every time they approach.

So then, what?

Well now defense platforms are a part of the equation, assuming that people remember to build them. However while they provide adequate missile spam and point defense, they really don't do much of anything, let alone scare off the ambitious bomber dreadnought.

(edit) I've been informed that current platforms actually DO carry core weapons, and as Jbud discovered if you have ENOUGH of them they are quite capable of killing things.

[EDIT] I recently faced down against an ICC planet smothered in about 25-30 platforms... They were pretty hardcore for a littlewhile but no one re-supplied them and they sort of stopped shooting after a bit. Myself and 2 or 3 other ships were able to defeat the cluster easily.

So who is really going to supply 30 or so platforms? When a single platform takes up 4,000-5,000 or so resources. Planets seem to average about 45K resources after they've been around for a while. It turns into a logistics bucket team... Are any of us really that ambitious? Or would we rather be directly engaging the enemy.

So my idea comes from an incident where Jackswift, or shigernafy or someone had added four 1.483 style ion cannons to a pirate shipyard planet in the beta to keep people from capping it. Well, it pwnt face. The thing was evil encarnate.

So here's my idea. We take an upscaled (1.483 style) QST, Ion Cannon, or Stellar Incinerator beef it's damage up, and slow down it's projectile velocity. Then take the whole package and put it in a somewhat larger platform equipped with just the single core weapon.

If it's still unclear where I'm going with this, look at it this way. Having two or three of these added to the other orbital defenses of a planetary cluster, would keep the big, heavy sluggers out of play until the area denial platforms were removed. The only way to take them out would be a strike group of agile fast moving vessels that could evade the slow moving projectiles and destroy the emplacements.

Balance would be simple, make the Area Denial platforms VERY expensive, and take a VERY long time to build, and then make them realatively fragile.
However give them very long range, enough to take potshots at a missile dreadnought attempting to pick them off from the sidelines.

I personally would enjoy this becaue it would turn each invasion into a multi-stage skirmish, where the first ships in play would be the scouts frigates and destroyers.

If your thinking that defenders will just park dreads on them, think about the long range destroyers and frigates that each faction has. Nimble enough to evade, ranged enough to keep away from dread beams

Well I guess what it comes down to is should defense platforms be split up into a defensive PD/missile type, and a long range super heavy weapon offensive type?

[ This Message was edited by: Tiffy Rando on 2008-11-13 13:04 ]