E-war: Accuracy Inhibitor

I remember seeing the destroyed and forgotten edit preview version of Star Wars at the Dominion Theatre, London. The experience was nearly 4 hours long, including a little queuing. I have read that Lucas denies that it ever was a complete version. The canyon scene was a classic, the scale of the attack on the Deathstar was at least five times larger than the later film and the battle to get to the canyon was much much longer. During that battle there were many failed attempts on the canyon, before LS using the force came through. Most of these scenes were removed, after press criticism on how long the battle lasted and on how many x-wing squadrons there were, and there were lots.

Yes it was silly, but fantastic for a young boy to watch.

This version of the film was only ever shown in two theatres for a short number of weeks. The film disappeared, a new edit was made and several months later the standard version was released.

Well, the story tells of "thousands" of attackers, among whom the hero is "one of many."

Players of the "Red Baron" type want to be that hero on their first try and without the support of those thousands of "nameless" comrades-in-arms.

That's basically the whole story behind the "Red Barons'" complaints about the overly strong defenses of large ships and the low durability of small ships.

The issue is less one of the quality of the storytelling, and more one of people seeing it and then believing it an accurate depiction of how things would work in real life (or a sim-game). Flying in a strait line without plot-armor is how you travel, not how you avoid getting shot.

E-war that eats in to weapon-accuracy could help people live long enough to learn to actually avoid turret fire instead of flying strait in to it.

Because of grav-drives, jump drives, and the universe having a fixed speed-limit small ships are actually at a significant disadvantage in mobility unless the server rules force it to be otherwise. If the rules do allow smalls to have higher mobility then I often enjoy taking advantage of such (though doing so solo makes it rather hard to have enough ammo/fuel to finish a fight against all but the smallest larges).

I want e-war to have all the extra strategy and design considerations e-war entails. As for favoring small ships, that serves two purposes:

1) E-war is a force-multiplier, and big ships don't need an even better average against small ships than they already have. To be sure aces don't need the help, but most people aren't aces, so favoring small ships will generally keep it more balanced.

2) Because most people aren't aces, they tend to fly smalls once or twice in combat, either strait in to a large's turrets, or "serpentine" without any consideration of timing, and then they give up on smalls in combat. A bit of extra survivability without doing something silly like making cockpits invulnerable could help to encourage people to try again until they learn how to get it right.

As someone who used to play EVE Online quite a lot, some fights are not worth fighting and sometimes it's not worth to even fly armed to begin with. That's why some ships need survivability (in a sense of somehow buying a few seconds of lifetime to escape in a calculated way) rather than a buff to take on a bigger or just more powerful enemy head-on, which is what you are proposing.

If I don't involve gravity drives (because they are an exploit or at least something that breaks the rules of the game) but keep jump drives as a consideration, higher acceleration and turning capability of a small ship does allow for getting away. If you start accelerating from a large ship and it follows you, you will be faster and therefore gain range. Turning, or flying in a direction different from the one your enemy is facing, should work out even better considering how most big ships have rear-facing thrusters for acceleration and need to turn to chase you properly.

It's all about finding that advantage.

As for small ships in offensive combat, they should be either for fighting other small ships (in a relatively fair fight) or for support roles. Flying a small support ship in a large ship fight si skillful (as it should be) and you once again have to think about your advantages like being fast and keeping transversal velocity. Though I don't know what kind of support ships would you have in SE combat. Maybe bombers with large guns that can precision-strike parts of a large ship but I can't think of much else.

"...That's why some ships need survivability..."

-An accuracy inhibiting e-war turret would improve survivability the same way a tracking disruptor improves your sig-tanking ability, e-war isn't always used offensively. That said this isn't meant to be exclusively a 1v1 type of thing, there's nothing stopping people from using this to help protect drone-swarms, or from trying to use a fighter/bomber fleet to engage much larger but less numerous opponents.

"If I don't involve gravity drives..."

-Much as I'd like to hope the game-breaking exponential-output-propulsion system that gives dreadnaughts the ability to effectively instantly achieve the game's speed-cap in any direction they'd like with little regard for their previous speed and heading, Keen likes them (its why they're still in SE1). Additionally one should consider that not everyone builds large-grids that take 3-5 business days to get up to speed under normal thrust, and while a small may out-turn and accelerate such larges that wont nessicarily make them able to escape weapons-range before a large has hit the universal speed-cap. But now we're wandering away from the point of the thread.

"As for small ships in offensive combat..."

-In SE1 most things look good on paper in SvL and it isn't uncommon for people to ignore smalls in favor of focusing the often more dangerous larges, but if you do it enough you start to see there is a difference between anti-small builds and anti-large builds. As for transversal... SE isn't EVE, most turrets track fast enough that transversal isn't a viable defense and small-pilots need to actually properly evade incoming fire, though weapons having poor accuracy can help with that. :)