Advanced Tachyon Ping Ideas

posted on November 5th, 2010, 3:49 pm

This involves modifying the vessels that use tachyon pings to send out the pings on a subspace carrier wave using hundreds of different modulations at once.  This would disrupt nearly every cloak field that gets hit with it including the more advanced cloaking methods.  Each shot sends out a ping on a different set of modulations using some of the same modulations as the previous ping.  Making it very hard to adapt to.

Plus, I was thinking of extending a dampening field out into space, reducing the effectiveness of the cloak field and reducing the effectiveness of enemy sensors, weapons, engines, and shields.  But because this can only be on one modulation at a time, it may only be able to effect cloaked vessels and remodulating the field would take a lot of energy because of the size of the dampening field.  Adapting to a specific modulation would be easy.

posted on November 5th, 2010, 3:54 pm

I'm not sure I understand.  Is this different from the green graviton-tachyon ping?

posted on November 5th, 2010, 4:09 pm

Well, let's just say that it disrupts the cloak field on EVERY cloaked ship that gets hit by it.

posted on November 5th, 2010, 4:12 pm

I don't know, I like how pinging vessels doesn't decloak them automatically - if the enemy doesn't know you've pinged them, or you can make them think you didn't see them, you can set up a nice little trap or pick and choose priority targets while they have no shields.

Likewise as the ping-ee, you can sometimes get away with being pinged if the pinger is not paying attention, which is also nice.

posted on November 5th, 2010, 5:19 pm

I don't know, I like how pinging vessels doesn't decloak them automatically - if the enemy doesn't know you've pinged them, or you can make them think you didn't see them, you can set up a nice little trap or pick and choose priority targets while they have no shields.

Likewise as the ping-ee, you can sometimes get away with being pinged if the pinger is not paying attention, which is also nice.

That's in fact partly why it was changed to the current state 

posted on November 5th, 2010, 5:30 pm

Not if there are booby traps all over the map.  And I said it disrupts the cloak field, I didn't say it decloaks the ship.  The ships would still be cloaked.  It would just make every vessel (friend and foe alike) that got hit by the ping visible to every player (freind and foe alike) that has a vessel or station near the area that the ping took place in.  Just make sure you don't have any cloaked vessels within range of the ping or the enemy can see you as well.

posted on November 5th, 2010, 5:32 pm

So in other words, there is no change at all from present.

posted on November 5th, 2010, 5:38 pm

The gravaton tachyon ping reviels your vessels to the enemies?  Here's the situation:

Player 1 sets up this new tachyon detection system
Player 2 is allies with player one and has more than 20 ships in that area that are cloaked.
Player 3 is enemies with players one and two and has the same number of ships with relatively the firepower as player 2.

Player 1's tachyon ping goes off and reviels every cloaked vessel in the area to all three players in that area.  So player 3 now knows where player 2's ships are and players 1 and 2 knows where player 3's ships are.

posted on November 5th, 2010, 6:05 pm

Ah I see, you mean you want this for a unit, rather than talking about if it is codeable. It might help if you direct it to a specific unit/faction there as well in that case

posted on November 5th, 2010, 7:48 pm

It's an interesting idea, but the only thing it would add I think is to make people not move cloaked fleets near allied cloak detection.  But at the point where they'd be detected by it, they're probably pretty near a base anyway and are fairly safe.

If it was added, there would have to be a way to turn it off, because it's a weapon that can hurt its owner.

posted on November 5th, 2010, 9:39 pm

What about those temporary replaceweapons like the ones on the Dominion miners?

posted on November 5th, 2010, 10:30 pm

No offence but this seems pretty pointless to me, all it could accomplish would be to hurt the player or allies of the player who use this without adding anythign new, as cloak detect has allowed a player or its allies to see cloaked vessels since vanilla as they share the same line of sight.