I suggest a decent range, maybe 4x the current smartbomb ranges, with neuting amounts about equal to the neuts of the next size down (so a Large Neut Smartbomb II would drain a Medium Energy Neutralizer II’s worth of capacitor). It could take a little more power to operate than a standard same-size neut, and its cycle could be the same time as its single-target relative.
This could be a great tool for fleets to use on other fleets, or for forcing off interceptors.
It also would be pretty weak against solo players, since a standard neut would have a significantly higher range and way more neuting power.
It would not require an active target, giving some cheeky Battleships the opportunity to cap out a Garmur as soon as it lands, making it much easier to lock and catch.
Are there any reasons this should or should not make it into the game?
We already have ECM smartbombs (burst jammers)…
between the grapple, medium/large netus, and smart bombs, there are already a lot of tools available for larger ships to force off interceptors.
and with the changes to how tracking works, it’s a lot easier for interceptors to die.
as for the void bombs – those are more anti-capitol items that do very little to subcap ships.
As for the concept at large: an interesting idea, but it skews the balance further away from balance and adds in more tools to those ships that already have a lot – intercepters are already stuck at long-point range to hold a larger target in most cases, and battle ship neuts can nearly always reach them, plus grapples, smart bombs, and the changes which simplified tracking calculations also made sig tanking worse.
You have to manually pilot around to align out if the warriors are getting to be too much for you already as a simple orbit->warp sun will get you killed. Sure, things get better with halo/snake pods, muta’d faction modules, and pirate variants of the interceptor, but without those it is nigh impossible to really do against ships that have one or more of the already existing countermeasures.
I don’t quite agree with you there. A cruiser in FW space in a brawl setup is very very vulnerable to kiting tackle frigs that do no damage while they wait for their big friends to arrive. Something that can work as a makeshift drone deterrant (stops MWDs and guns, if drones even have capacitors), can put that little bit of capacitor pain onto MWD frigates before they pull away, and can be a valuable anti-kiter tool when used by a fleet of battleships en masse, can be a very interesting addition. It’s also an interesting idea if there could be capital versions, with great range (60km?), good neut power (low-skilled heavy neut), and truly enormous inefficient capacitor use. It could give some dreadnoughts some really cool powers against subcaps, even ones it can’t hit. The tradeoff with that, of course, is the huge power consumption and the immunity to remote cap transfer while in Seige (maybe the module itself has bad range but the Seige Module gives like a 500% range bonus?) makes it extremely difficult to extract the dread after a lot of sustained operation.
Getting to a billion there… yeesh!
Getting to multi-billions there… yeesh!
I think if you flew a multi-hundred-billion-isk AT ship as a simple interceptor you have more things to worry about than a single battleship hitting you.
That is why the neut SB would have the same cycle time but greatly reduced neutralization power per cycle. It is much easier for a single interceptor to deal with when compared to a heavy neut.