17 replies to this topic

[Stormhawk]

Improbable suggestion coming up.

I have never liked the way FoC handles interdiction. I dislike how one interdictor can lock a massive fleet in realspace by itself, no matter where it is. Any semi-competent commander in this game can just sit his interdictor at the very back of his fleet and completely prevent escape of a smaller fleet, when it is clearly shown in several books that interdictors have a limited enough range that even diversionary attacks can disrupt the field long enough for a sizable fleet to escape. Garm Bel Iblis' maneuver at Qat Chrystac with Orthavan and Iron Fist's escape from Stellar Web at Vahaba come to mind. What I would regard as optimal is doubling the radius of each interdictor's gravity well, the one that disallows ships dropping out of hyperspace, and somehow only preventing retreat for enemies in that radius. Very likely impossible with the engine, but I thought I might as well give it a try. Maybe there are alternative solutions that we can think up.

[evilbobthebob]

Making a retreat prevention radius is impossible, I think. The gravity well radius is entirely possible though.

[Tropical Bob]

I have never liked the way FoC handles interdiction. I dislike how one interdictor can lock a massive fleet in realspace by itself, no matter where it is. Any semi-competent commander in this game can just sit his interdictor at the very back of his fleet and completely prevent escape of a smaller fleet, when it is clearly shown in several books that interdictors have a limited enough range that even diversionary attacks can disrupt the field long enough for a sizable fleet to escape.

I feel like the distances represented in PR are well under the interdictor range.

I mean, preventing escape, reinforcement, and regular travel are what having an interdictor is all about. If you see the enemy has an interdictor, you can always send an assault bomber squad after it. Even if you force it to disable its interdiction and make a run for cover, that's a window to retreat.

[Stormhawk]

I have never liked the way FoC handles interdiction. I dislike how one interdictor can lock a massive fleet in realspace by itself, no matter where it is. Any semi-competent commander in this game can just sit his interdictor at the very back of his fleet and completely prevent escape of a smaller fleet, when it is clearly shown in several books that interdictors have a limited enough range that even diversionary attacks can disrupt the field long enough for a sizable fleet to escape.

I feel like the distances represented in PR are well under the interdictor range.

I mean, preventing escape, reinforcement, and regular travel are what having an interdictor is all about. If you see the enemy has an interdictor, you can always send an assault bomber squad after it. Even if you force it to disable its interdiction and make a run for cover, that's a window to retreat.

That's not quite true. When one orders a retreat, the 20 sec. period allows the controller of the interdictor to have 20 free seconds to shoot you before he reactivates the grav well generators 1 sec before you hyperspace out. During those 20 secs, he either reinforces his interdictor with fighters or retreats to to a more safe place to reactivate it, defeating your bomber strike.

[Tropical Bob]

That's not quite true. When one orders a retreat, the 20 sec. period allows the controller of the interdictor to have 20 free seconds to shoot you before he reactivates the grav well generators 1 sec before you hyperspace out. During those 20 secs, he either reinforces his interdictor with fighters or retreats to to a more safe place to reactivate it, defeating your bomber strike.

That's still the purpose of having an interdictor. He is using up supply to have it there, after all. That means your fleet is immediately more powerful at equal supply.

[Stormhawk]

I feel like the distances represented in PR are well under the interdictor range.

We have to take some liberties with range in PR. We have Mon Calamari cruisers with maximum ranges about 4-5 times the length of the ship, when turbolasers are known to be able to fire from low orbit onto the surface through an atmosphere. Perhaps I'm being picky, but I would prefer it if interdiction were not quite so powerful and far-reaching.

[Phoenix Rising]

I'm not thrilled with it either, but, as you've guessed, there are few options.

You could possibly do something with projectiles or projectile-based abilities to disable engines, causing affected ships to be lost upon retreat. The problem with that is you would be treating hyperdrive the same as sublight, when it's clearly not. The hardpoint or ability would have to affect enemy ships throughout the course of battle - if only because there's no way for it to do otherwise (short of perhaps a scripting workaround) - while not changing sublight performance. Even if you did something like an ion stun with a 0.01% speed reduction (it may or may not work with 0%), I'm not sure that ion stun wouldn't have other side effects to it not associated with interdiction.

I never liked the fact that multiple GWPs had no benefit. You could likely add a cooldown to the ability to make the CC-7700 worse than the Im418, but I'm not sure how well that would work. It's probably the best the way it is - for now.

[Tropical Bob]

I feel like the distances represented in PR are well under the interdictor range.

We have to take some liberties with range in PR. We have Mon Calamari cruisers with maximum ranges about 4-5 times the length of the ship, when turbolasers are known to be able to fire from low orbit onto the surface through an atmosphere.

This is true.

You could likely add a cooldown to the ability to make the CC-7700 worse than the Im418, but I'm not sure how well that would work. It's probably the best the way it is - for now.

Perhaps that would be the way to fix the retreat cooldown/interdiction activation issue. Make the cooldowns for the interdiction abilities 20 seconds, or just slightly above that, meaning that if the ability is forced off to save the interdictor, it can't reactivate until the retreat timer is over. Then, it would be beneficial to have more than one interdictor present in addition to preventing the "wait until 1 second is left on the timer and activate, rinse and repeat" nonsense.

[Stormhawk]

You could likely add a cooldown to the ability

I really like this. If it were around 30-60 sec, a sacrificial attack on the interdictor could disable it (or make it flinch, as I believe Zsinj phrased it) enough for the fleet to make lightspeed. Of course, this becomes useless against several spaced-out interdictors, but if your opponent has invested that much in trapping you here, you probably deserve to be trapped.

Edited by Stormhawk, 29 June 2011 - 01:32 AM.

[Zeta1127]

The add a cooldown idea sounds like the best way to handle interdictors.

[Phoenix Rising]

It might be, but it's not something I want to implement right away in case it doesn't work out.

[Stormhawk]

As sort of an afterthought, could Interdictors lose shields, or at least shield regeneration when their projectors are powered up? I can't cite a specific canon source for interdictors being shieldless with generators online, but from Bacta War comes an example where an Interdictor's commander survived a proton torpedo attack by diverting power from GWP's to particle shields, lowering the interdiction field. In addition to the cooldown, I think this would go a long way towards making interdictors much more reasonable in reach and effectiveness. As is, there's little to no point to having multiple interdictors.

[Phoenix Rising]

I think there's a pretty good chance the engine would take something like that, although I haven't tried it. Certainly there's enough evidence that GWPs take huge amounts of power and might leave other systems in a less-optimal state while active (not much different than forcing it to halt movement).

[Zeta1127]

There are numerous examples of interdictors being forced to retreat by concentrated proton torpedo strikes that would normally be withstood by a comparable ship that wasn't an interdictor.

[evilbobthebob]

Immobilizer 418 cruisers and early versions of the CC7700 are already quite fragile in game. I certainly don't rush them into a fight unsupported! Personally, I don't think any more changes need to be made to interdictors except for the interdiction ability cooldown, which does seem like a good idea. It makes choosing to activate the field a more important choice, at least once the AI are competent enough to focus fire on it properly if their retreat is prevented.

[Phoenix Rising]

Well, maybe I kill the shield recharge and only cut engines to 50%. With a cooldown, I think it makes less sense to go immobile (no pun).

[Stormhawk]

Were you planning to make the cooldown from activation or from shutdown? I believe it should be from shutdown, since if it were on activation, an interdictor could power up, interdict for however long the cooldown is, then be able to drop interdiction to avoid attack but immediately reactivate the field. Could it be coded so that the cooldown timer starts from the lowering of the interdiction field?

[Phoenix Rising]

I have no choice in that matter - the recharge timer begins when the ability has expired. Always. If you manually deactivate before the ability is done, cooldown is scaled accordingly.