Edencom ships do have potential, but the chaotic nature of the gun really kills it.
We need a way to bring order back to this weapon.
a few Possibilities to bring order back around this chaotic weapon.
(This is a collection of various ideas to fix the ship and are mostly standalone fixes/tweaks and NOT a unified fix. )
A New command burst module or script that will polarize the fleet so that you don’t get friendly fire.
I think this is one big problem that stops a lot of groups from using them. I live in a wormhole and this ship has been banned by my corp and other corps as you end up killing ur mates. Vexor Navy Issue | Bedawo ZiK | Killmail | zKillboard
So one way is to have a command burst that applies a “polarity” that prevents getting hit by Vortons projection coming from the other member of the fleet.
Another way to restrict targets could be a new type of bomb that will give polarity to all targets in the
ship in the affected area and they will have Vorton projection jump priority higher than the other ship the projection can jump to.
Or we could reuse the auto-target missile mechanics to get more control over the targets getting hit.
The other problem with this ship is arc jump distance, now the Vorton Projector is really cool if it can do the 10 jumps or even 5 jumps. The problem is both in PVP and PVE, that targets won’t always be in sufficient number or in close range to each other. This is especially true for NPC as they will quickly spread over. I tested the Thunderchild in low-sec and it is limited. 2 problems, first is well the randomness of arc jumps you kill the trigger before time as you can’t exempt it from getting hit. then NPC will start spreading and since the Thunderchild has the DPS of a frigate on a single target situation where all the NPC are too far in-between to get the arc to jump.
SO I think the first problem is that the flat 10km jump is really bad. One possibility I see is that if the Vorton projection did not hit its 10 targets it will leave a trace on the ships that it has hit. Kind of a static charge. the more it builds up the farther the arc can jump on the next round. So in basic, the Vorton will get +1 km jump range minus 0.1 for each ship that got hit. so if it hits 5 targets, the next cycle the jump will be 10+0.5 (10.5km), and so the next cycle still is just hitting the 5 targets, now it hits 6, this lowers the effects so calculation gets a bonus of 0.4 instead. this should also have a cap so that it won’t get infinite jump range. the effect should be in a buff/debuff form so that the first bonus you got will go away after a moment.
also, I find that the 10 km jump range jump for the Skybreaker is good but when you get on the thunderchild this is kind of bad. I suggest that the medium Vorton gets a bit more jump range stock and more on the Large Vorton projector.
Still a problem PVE or PVP is when you have below 3 targets, the Vorton DPS is tied to the total number of ships getting hit. now, this is cool if you do hit 10 targets, is really really bad below 3 or 4 targets hit.
I have been wondering how to make it better without making it overkill.
So you have 1 number of targets 1 2 or 3. the weapon can apply a debuff or buff. and a medium module to the target that got hit. one like I said above would be to get more arc jump range. It also could be scripted into a form of DOT et EWar debuff. kind of a way to overtime rebalance the fight so that it is not so 1 sided.
When I tested the Thunderchild when I was at the point that I had 1 BS to kill this took 5 minutes! ! You literally have time to go bio and get back after doing both #1 and #2… this takes forever. At this point, a t1 cruiser gets you a better isk/minute than the thunderchild can. So PVE wise using Edencom to farm pve site outside HS is really really really bad.
So being able to leave debuff values or DOT each time the weapon is not hitting its 10 targets will make this weapon more valid.
The other way is to give the ship the capacity to control the number of jumps vs the total DPS. less target you get more damage out per target. You get more total DPS out of hitting 10 targets than 5 or 1. on the Medium vorton gun raw damage without low-slot DPS module. gets me with my skill 179dps / 1455 alpha using electroPuch. x10 that a cool 1790 DPS. but say I max my jumps to 5 not too bad, but then not exactly effective. and 1 well really bad. so when setting to hit 1 target it should get the change the alpha to something like x2. this would make my 2900, or maybe to more like 1.7 this would get some 2400 alpha getting us in the 400dps ballpark on single targets.
the other possibility is to give all Edencom ships a drone bay and bandwidth to be able to use drones and get the drones immunity to the ships vorton projector as this is also a huge problem on the thunderchild, drones are useless while using the main gun. Maybe this way the solo target DPS would not be sooooooo bad. In this way, the Skybreaker could control some 5 light drones and carry 5 giving it 3 spare drones. The Stormbringer would have 5 med drones in the bay and control 5, and the Thunderchild could carry 5 large and control 4 or 5 large drones.
At the current time, the only real way to use this ship is to have a fleet with more than 10 or 20 of them, and this kind of limits the use to Null sec blocks. In wormholes, the only use we have for it is camping a hole to prevent shuttles to pass it during evictions. Making them less useful than the Praxis/Gnosis/Sunesis ships.
HS ? run anomalies and hope that some guy doesn’t land next to the NPC while a suspect. when that happens this happens… Stormbringer | 1KOZAK1 ua | Killmail | zKillboard lol.
CCP needs to give us some control over this weapon. Possibly here the mechanics for arc jumps to an additional target should also follow the ones for auto-target missiles. If your main target is an NPC you get an NPC timer and so they only hit the NPC until you get a PVP timer by getting aggressed or by aggressing a player by making him the main focus or primary target of the weapon.