Defensive Armaments: Smoke, Flares, EW, and APS

The inclusion of more defensive-oriented countermeasures to facilitate more diverse options in grid-based combat.

• Smoke - Obscures vehicles and players from direct line of sight
• Flares/ Chaff- Already in SE1 but have it used to 'break' target lock
• Electronic Warfare, pending method of implementation. Similarly could break target lock.
• Active Protection Systems, A compromise to shields and other defensive measures proposed, but effectively destroys incoming projectiles with high probability. Limited by number of charges (usually 2-3) and cannot be hooked up to a conveyor (else infinite charges). Effectively makes armor 'optional' for lighter vehicles and counters heavy weapon spam.

To justify 'breaking target locks. There are 2-3 justifications similar to real life examples on how targets are acquired.

• Optically- Can be broken by smoke, or anything that obscures line of sight, including cover.
• Infrared IR (Thermals)- Can be misled by anything hotter (think, flares) and targets engines
• Radar - Can be hidden away with smaller builds or fly close to voxels surfaces. Targets objects with a lot of mass.

A mix and match of the above can then be applied to SE1's weapons that rely on target lock and incentivizes manual control turrets. This also allows players to choose whether to break away from the engagement instead of a fight to the end.

This can then also be extended to player vs grid combat for more portable options for evading detection (think smoke grenades)