I call it Ewar just to give it a label, but it doesn’t affect targeting. It’s a turret weapon that does no damage, but instead reduces the resistance(s) of the target ship.
This is just an idea I’m throwing out there and don’t want to make this a long read. So, I won’t list too many possibilities/options.
Three New Triglavian skills required for small, medium, & large. Medium and large require the prior skill to be at lvl 3.
Can be mounted on any Trig ship, but only a special set of T2 Trig ships get a 20% bonus per level of skill.
Small - T2 Frigate, 5% at skill lvl 5, 60 sec ramp time
Medium - T2 Cruiser, 7% at skill lvl 5, 90 sec ramp time
Large - T2 Battleship, 9% at skill lvl 5, 120 sec ramp time
Each size has a signature radius that it is associated with.
Targeting a smaller signature radius reduces the effectiveness… maybe by up to 50% if a large is used against a frigate.
Targeting a larger signature radius reduces the ramp time… maybe by half at maximum if a small weapon is used to target anything larger than a battleship.
The resistance reduction effectiveness starts out very low and ramps to max over time.
In the neighborhood of 5% starting effectiveness seems reasonable looking at how numbers stack.
So, a ship with a small weapon that maxes out at 5% reduction starts at 0.25% reduction.
Like other turrets, 100% effective up to optimal and then about 50% effective when you reach the end of falloff range.
A new set of ‘frequency crystals’ are used and determine the resistance type that is reduced.
Switching crystals is instant, but can only be done when not firing and so the ramp up is reset.
CCP could even play around with crystals that have longer/shorter range, less/more effective, longer/short optimal/falloff, affect multiple resists, etc.
Use of multiple weapons of this type on the same target have stacking penalty.
The strongest is 100% effective, the second strongest is 86% effective, the third is 57% effective, etc.
Concord ships should get a bonus against this weapon.
Some Comments:
As this is a reduction, the weapon is most effective against the ships with the highest resistances. For example, if the total reduction is 10% and the target’s resistance is 90%, the target’s resistance is reduced to 81%:
90% - (10% x 90%) = 90% - 9% = 81% … 9% reduction
If the target’s resistance is 75% the reduction is less, but it’s still quite effective:
75% - (10% x 75%) = 75% - 7.5% = 67.5% … 7.5% reduction
This would prevent logi from being completely useless, but make logi really struggle when the reduction becomes greater. Especially in large groups where these weapons might be targeting multiple ships and the enemy switches targets between them.
Larger groups who are going to alpha a ship off the field might use this to butter up a ship before hitting it, but this gives the target a blatant warning.
Smaller groups would use this to crack open a tough nut.
Won’t be much use for a ganker since it’s expensive like other Trig ships and still not very effective by the time Concord shows up.
NPC Trigs would only use the types of ammo for the damage they do.