So there's an
old vehicle dev blog that talks, at the end, about a dropship fighting a Marauder HAV by neuting its capacitor.
What is capacitor?Skip this section if you're familiar with them already. If you're not, allow me to explain. Capacitor is EVE's analog to a mana bar. It is required for activation of most modules and regenerates passively over time. The dev blog linked above talks about DUST vehicles having capacitors as well, implying it will be required for active mods and even for turrets. There is no indication that dropsuits will use capacitor, which I think is for the best.
Isn't that just a vehicle nerf?On its face capacitor seems like a way to make vehicles even weaker. All it is is one more thing a vehicle driver has to worry about. Now in addition to cooldown timers, you also have to make sure have enough cap to repair yourself, after all. I believe, however, that with a restructuring of the way active modules work around this new mechanic it could be neither nerf nor buff, but rather a complete change (for the better!) to how vehicles interact with the battlefield.
And what changes might those be?Well, first off, I say we don't need cooldown timers on most active mods anymore. Well, not longer than their activation time, anyway. We could even couple this with allowing them to automatically reactivate when the cooldown ends. This means that when a HAV activates a booster, it reps 324 health once a second for five seconds, then, after five seconds, does it again! When you activate a hardener it increases your resistance by 30% for ten seconds then, after ten seconds, does it again!
You're an idiot, Alan. That sounds OP as hell.It does, doesn't it? Well, don't write me off yet. Remember that these are limited by the HAV's capacitor. Running a shield booster continually, especially while shooting, could drain the capacitor in thirty seconds if not less.
Thirty seconds is a long time, and it still sounds like a huge buff to vehicle hp!Well, you're not wrong, hypothetical conversation partner. This is indeed intended to make vehicles much more survivable. In what I'm envisioning a well fit HAV would be able to continuously tank a single forge gun, and tank against two for a good while. Given this it probably sounds like HAVs, and even smaller vehicles, would be nigh unkillable. Now, while unkillable isn't really my goal, "trickier to kill" most certainly is. This is where we talk about electronic warfare.
What in the name of satan's bright red pecker is electronic warfare?In EVE it comes in several varieties. Sensor dampeners reduce locking range and scan resolution, target painters increase signature profile, tracking disruptors reduce optimal, falloff, and tracking speed, ECM breaks target locks, stasis webifiers reduce speed, and cap neuts remove capacitor.
Those things don't help me kill a HAV!In those forms possibly not, with the exception of cap neuts though I suspect that infantry mounted cap neuts would have a hard time actually draining a HAV's cap. We have to think, instead, how can those things be applied to DUST in an interesting way?
- Sensor Dampeners
HAVs don't need to lock targets, so reducing targeting range and increasing lock-on time is useless. But HAVs certainly need sensors. That's how the operators see outside. So let's make sensor damps an equipment item with cooldown that causes periodic disruptions in the vision of the driver and turret operators of a vehicle. Frequency and duration of these disruptions are a function of the disruption strength of the dampener and the sensor strength of the vehicle, making them more effective against smaller vehicles. Warpoints could be awarded, perhaps a small amount for every friendly able to pass in front of the afflicted vehicle unmolested, or perhaps simply as a flat "vehicle disruption +15".
- Target Painters
-Probably has no bearing on this discussion. A better application of these might be in allowing forward scouts to give firing solutions to artillery vehicles, so they can hit things they can't see.
- Tracking Disruptors
-Used similarly to sensor dampeners, but not affecting the vehicle's ability to see. Instead, the rotational velocity of turrets is reduced, and the controls are scrambled. How badly the controls are scrambled would be a function of the disruptor's strength and the turret's tracking speed. So a small blaster might be largely unaffected, but a large railgun would have be extremely difficult to operate, making this most effective against larger vehicles. Warpoints could be awarded based on the size and number of turrets. +10 for each large operated large turret and +2 for each operated small, for example.
- ECM
-The obvious thing is to have it break all target locks and keep them broken for some period, but so few things require target locks that this becomes unusably situational, and would be used almost exclusively by vehicles. That said, I honestly don't have a better idea. The best I can think of is disrupting the sensors on all enemy suits/vehicles in the area so that their radar is screwed up. Y'know, that on top of breaking locks.
- You probably don't need me to cover how webs and neuts might work, I feel like those are pretty obvious.
So as you can see, it would remain difficult for infantry to kill vehicles without significant effort (you would have to cripple it with eWar before you'd be able to kill it), but much
much easier to avoid being killed by one. One person with a tracking disruptor or sensor dampener will allow a whole group of friendlies to escape a HAV's withering blaster fire. Awarding WP ensures that there will almost always be someone ready to jump in and do so.