Capital Ship Torpedoes

[Ixalite]

One of the purposes of point defense is to shoot down incoming missiles. Many ships have such systems, but they are only good to take down enemy fighters.
It would not be difficult to add a further dimension to combat by including capital-scale torpedoes to the game. It would require three changes.
1: Launcher blocks. These would work the same way docking modules work, except the "down' would always be the rear of the ship (missile) and it would impart a physics "push" when un-docked.

2: kamikaze mode for AI. AI ships should have a setting to simply charge straight at the target and ram, rather then engage in a gun-battle. This target should have to be designated by the target select system, so that Jamming would throw them off target.

3: Disintigrators should Ignore shields. This would permit these weapons to be an actual threat to their intended targets, and make shooting them down a priority.

Launcher blocks would also be useful for carriers, Kamikaze mode would be useful with collision damage enabled, and Disintigrators ignoring shields would also add threat to minefields. ( I have seen far too many players note a minefield, and simply fly through it, taking explosions on their shields.)

 

[PizzaPress]

snip

Sounds good to me. I think the kamikaze can already be done somehow.

Disintigrators should Ignore shields.

Ehh. This means you ignore the player's defense if they choose shield, but not so much if they choose armor. No dice. Also, just too strong. High damage is good enough to make it worth it. You shouldn't solo a bigger ship if they don't have some glaring weakness you can specialize against, you have to use some reasonable percentage of their blocks in AI ships(will be usable at some point) if you use smaller ships. Economy will mean it's expensive to make, and risky to field, a massive ship.
This guy says it better than I can.
http://starmadedock.net/threads/a-manifesto-on-the-relationship-between-fighters-and-ai.1686/

 

[Ixalite]

Have you considered the inherent limitations of a physical torpedo?
1.A single block destroyed would destroy the entire torpedo. You could shield the torpedoes, but that would cost in power, payload, or engines.

2. The torpedoes would be targeted by AI turrets.

3. The torpedoes would be detectable on radar, and could be targeted by players.

4. The torpedoes would be slow. Faster than most fighters sure, but slow compared with any other weapon.

5. If your torpedoes are hit before you launch them, they will damage your ship.

That said, I do feel that you have a point. Disintigrators should, perhaps, simply have a much higher damage, equivalent to very large rockets indeed. If you are going to go to all of the trouble and risk to fire such a chancy weapon at an opponent, it would be foolish to not stand a chance of damaging the ship, no matter how powerful the shields are.