samepage But when can we start to have the PDs dealing damage to ships? I would love to see more use of them rather than just for anti-missile defense.
Equalizer it means PD must be made much more effective than they are in this prototype
mystique Something like my machine gun might work. (see link) It still needs debugging, but the concept is obvious.
Dalas120 Though I do still need to think some more about PD anyways...
Ok, so here's a dramatic and completely-not-thought-out-at-all idea.
What's one of the big costs of PD on live? Surface area. What's one thing small ships have lots of? Surface area.
So, what about changing the role of PD from dedicated anti-missile defense, to small ship utility weapon. Now that we have flak as a large scale anti-missile weapon, PD could be balanced specifically around smaller ship use, which might even help fighters be more viable.
PD could take up even more surface area (to make it hard to use on large ships), but gain the ability to shoot and damage enemy ships (probably as a primary role, with anti-missile as moderately effective utility). This could potentially be combined with the minigun/mass disintegrator/plasma blaster/gatling laser idea of being especially effective against armor.
Hopefully, small ships might become more viable in a supportive role, able to either flank/shoot enemies or block missiles (or go minesweeping while the main ship is somewhere else?) depending on the situation. And it somewhat mitigates the all-or-nothing missile issue that old PD had, because 1) clustering PD on a fighter makes much, much easier to focus down than distributing it across a large ship like it is currently, and because 2) you can't remove all of PD's value by not bringing missiles - the PD fighter could still shoot and deal meaningful damage.
This also means that large ships (many of which have rear PD) would have some firepower on their back and sides, which I think is great for the fantasy aspect of things (though an unwanted nerf to flanking rammers).
Or as a really, really crazy idea - maybe have PD deal very little direct damage, but inflict some kind of "molten" or "acided" or "plasmaed" status effect makes an enemy part more vulnerable to damage and reduces's it's penetration resistance. That way PD would function as a support weapon, able to boost ally damage and destroy enemy missiles. Whether it makes sense for PD or not, I think more supportive weapons are definitely a good thing, to encourage weapon combos instead of weapon spamming. This would also prevent the already-weak flanking rammers from being nerfed, since rear PD on large ships wouldn't do much damage to a flanking ship.
This is all just something I thought of and wanted to write up; I haven't thought through all the implications and I'm not sure if it makes any sense!
