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Interdictor devices |
Enterprise
Chief Marshal
Joined: May 19, 2002
Posts: 2576
From: Hawthorne, Nevada
|  Posted: 2010-08-24 11:34
Food for thought.
Split the Interdictor device into two seperate devices
The pilot flying the dictor could choose between a Defensive Interdiction Device or an Offensive Interdiction Device.
They work as follows:
The DID prevents enemy ships from jumping due to fluctuations in space-time frequencies that interfere with the exit destination of all FTL drives. The result is that ships not having their FTL drives attuned to such frequencies causes all jumps to occur outside at the edge of the field which is 1.5kgu in diameter.
Silly fiction material aside, it just basically prevents enemy ships from jumping in, but not from jumping out. Thus it is purely defensive in nature, preventing close jumps and and formation drops on stations. Very good for holding a position in deep space. Planetary dictors act like this as well.
The OID prevents enemy ships from exiting the area by the same concept as the DID, however it instead only affects the entry point into FTL tunnelling.
Same diameter, 1.5k. Its only effect is to prevent enemy ships from escaping, but it doesn't stop them from jumping in.
Now you may think then well, you need two dictors in order to have full coverage instead of just one, and you get more range for it. Thats the basic idea.
-Ent
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Exodus™
Grand Admiral
Joined: July 07, 2010
Posts: 21
From: Miami, Florida
| Posted: 2010-08-24 14:24
-OFF TOPIC- : Dont interdictors work by manipulating the gravity? its more like a Gravity-Well Device.
back to topic, i dont think the devs would consider this, as they seem to never do.
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Marius Falix
Grand Admiral
Joined: July 05, 2010
Posts: 268
From: Luyten
| Posted: 2010-08-24 15:14
what if someone jumps in, it gets cancleded by the DID and then he recharges and jumps them again WITHIN the DID field... inter has now been point jumped even tho Defence field is up and made to stop this.
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Shigernafy
Admiral
Joined: May 29, 2001
Posts: 5726
From: The Land of Taxation without Representation
| Posted: 2010-08-24 19:32
This is probably too computationally expensive to consider. The way the dictor works is that as your ship is traveling, the jump drive is checking whether it is in a dictor field and is out of fuel a number of times each second; if not, then your ship moves x gu forward.
But lets think about how to do this. One way to differentiate the Defensive and Offensive Interdictor device is having it check whether you're coming closer to or going further away from the device. Defensive doesn't let you approach the device, but you can leave. Offensive lets you come toward it but not away. Except that if you're caught on the edge of the field, you would still get stopped as you passed the ship. So generally speaking, the Offensive would still be defensive, just with a slight delay.
Or how about having DID not disable the JD, but just abort any jump taking place; the OID doesn't actually end jumps, just doesn't allow them to begin. Except that here, the mismatch the switched - the DID works fine.. for the first fraction of a second, then it just sees that the ship is jumping, and aborts its jump.
And a combination of the two would be where the computation comes into play. You have to check the location of the jumping ship and the device each fraction of a second. You then have to save that information and check again the next fraction; if there's still a dictor (ID check - same dictor?) in range, then check the delta on the two of them. Is it less? Is it a DID? Ok, then abort the jump.
Right now its just "field? yes, abort." You've increased the computation for jumping about fourfold just to enable the device. Considering jumping is a relatively common endeavor, I don't think this will be high on the list of features... until we start running DS on a few supercomputers.
tl;dr - i dont think the devs would consider this, as we seem to never do.
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