One of the things the game lacks is what I saw years ago when I was playing Descent Freespace and/or Homeworld Complex. Flaks. Since the game includes projectiles, it wouldn't be absurd to include flaks. You wouldn't approach to a shivan ship without fear when long range/short range flaks are locked on you.
Flak Cannon (Overall): A delayed projectile, like missiles, but won't follow. It is fired as-is, from point A to B, if you are not there, you won't get hit. Eve already has the mechanics for this (bombs). It's resolution determines how further AoE damage you get. It has very fast rate of fire and consumes your ammo like there is no tomorrow (overloading it makes sure this will happen) Playing more angular game will help you to survive.
All flaks have very long falloff and should have a short optimal. If enemy is burning towards you from 100km without changing it's direction or speed, they will have trouble. If they just choose to orbit you @ 10km and saying "haha this smartbomb dominix is going to die with this 40 frigates", and if there is a flak equipped, watch the show.
- Flaks also have explosion velocity like missiles, but much faster.
- Explosion radius is lower than missiles.
- Travel velocity is faster than missiles, but lower than projectile ammo (visible while travelling), so the closer you are to the flak owner, the harder to escape by manuavering.
- Flaks' damage is joke when only one equipped. It should get exponentially more dangerous when you equip more and more (like when 8 frigate is much dangerous against a battleship than only one, the reverse role). So, each flak cannon you equip increases flak damage and explosion radius something like 1.75x, changes with meta of item.
- Flaks can be equipped with all types of damage. EMP/Therm/Kin/Exp.
- Tech II flak cannons can be equipped with webber ammo, when explodes in area, slows the targets for very short amount of time. (Since it is launched very rapidly, it can apply this one after another)
- Because of their fast rate, they should consume a lot of powergrid.
- Since it is only fire&forget gun, it should consume little cpu.
- Reloading ammo bay of an empty flak gun should take long time (20-30 secs).
- Its ammo bay should be big.
--High Slot--
40mm flak cannon (can be fit on destroyers)
80mm flak cannon (can be fit on cruisers)
Dual 80mm flak cannon (battlecruiser)
Quad 80mm flak cannon (battleship)
Octuple 80mm capital flak cannon (capital ships)
For working modern physics, I highly suggest checking the flak frigate, flak destroyer, cruiser with flak cannons, battlecruiser/battleships with rapid sweeper systems(flaks) and finally mothership (capital ship) with rapid sweeper system in latest homeworld 2 complex mod.
Here is a link to very short youtube video where a battlecruiser is battling against corvettes (a carrier vs fighters/frigates equavalent for eve):
Flak fightI raped a lot of BS while roaming with tons of frigs. There is something missing in the game. A fearsome feeling. A feeling that reminds me the danger of approaching to bigger hulls. Drones shouldn't be the only answer. A "battleship" should have much more gun slots. More generalized, the bigger the ship, the more it can(should) equip. Not only 400 resolution guns, also smaller gun slots. "Fear from the big fish" concept shouldn't be destroyed while keeping "protect the small guy so they can enjoy". There must be tools for those who are using big hulls against massive surround situations. I don't say everyone in a bs hull should kill everything smaller, but not being able to touch frigates with a ship geared for "battle" makes me wonder...
Back to the concept, flaks might make this game a little bit more challenging when considering battles like tons of small ships to larger types of ships. It is one more way (or tool) to defend what seems "undefendable".