Kaeus
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Posted - 2006.03.08 14:10:00 -
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For some reason, many people seem to look down upon the smartbomb. Most claim that it's a CONCORDOKKEN waiting to happen, others claim they're too weak with too short of a range to do anything, and still others claim they're worthless because they damage your drones and friends. Frankly, I couldn't disagree more - so long as you're careful, they're very effective weapons against drones and swarms of NPC rats. Smartbombs have let me take on missions that I otherwise couldn't have taken on alone.
Now onto the point of this thread. I know I'm probably in the small minority, but I would personally love to see more smartbomb lovin'. My idea is to have a variable damage smartbomb that requires two module activations.
The first is a mid-slot charging module which puts the ship into an energy absorption mode, where is gradually drains the capacitor to build up its charge. During this mode, some damage to the shields and armor is converted into stored energy, making it useful as a defensive module in a pinch.
In charge mode, it continues absorbing damage and draining cap, even after it reaches the bomb's maximum charge. The charge module may be shut off at any time with no penalty to stored energy. Multiple charge modules may be used to speed up the charge, and a single module can spread its load across several smartbombs.
The second module is the smartbomb itself. In and of itself, it does no greater or worse damage than a standard smartbomb. Each charge point, however, increases the damage dealt by the smartbomb by 10% of the base damage and the range by 5% of the base range. So, a smartie that deals 100 damage as a base with 30 charge points, would deal 400 damage. If it would have a base range of 2000 m, it would have a range of 5000 m with 30 charge points.
This might seem a bit overpowered, but if the charge limits are kept reasonable, it can make smartbombs more useful and can really spice up engagements. It would also give smaller ships and ships with limited drone capacity a fighting chance against ships that deploy masses of drones.
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