[ Gooder Eve is a series of on-going articles that examine ways in which Eve can be made Gooder. Some are serious, some are not, but all are intended to create debate, dialogue, and discussion. So enjoy! ]
You just need a couple of minutes. Your gang is forming up in system, but the enemy fleet is already reported in the next system over. If they arrive too soon you won't be able to mount an attack. What can you do? Right now your options are limited, but what about that new ship? Y'know the one you bought and fitted yesterday? The Gate Jammer? It's bigger than a Battleship but smaller than a Carrier and comes with zero cargo space but a large fuel bay... why you ask? It needs lots of fuel to power the Gate Jammer module it carries in its sole high slot. And what exactly does a Gate Jammer do? Why, it jams gates of course.
You warp to the Gate at your optimal, which is about 10k depending on your skills and lock the gate. Once the gate is locked you activate the Gate Jammer mod, which works a lot like an ECM mod, depending on your skill level you finally get the Gate jammed and the timer starts running. You only have a couple of minutes and the damn thing is burning thru your fuel, but for now NO ONE CAN USE THE GATE.
Gates are mechanical devices of some sort or other, so why shouldn't we be able to jam them up temporarily? Right now the only thing that hinders gate fire is lag and server issues, why not allow the activation of a gate to be momentarily hindered by the player?
Moving expensive cargo? Putting up that new POS tower? Lock down the system for a moment or two. Obviously such a ship would need serious drawbacks to balance game mechanics, but that should be easy enough to control. We could limit the fuel bay to only hold enough for one cycle, we could limit the cycle time (much like a bomb launcher) so it can only be used every so often, we could limit the activation range so enemy forces could have a shot at pointing the ship once they burst through the gate... which means our Gate Jammer is probably heavily tanked but comes without offensive weaponry. Maybe it has higher than normal ECM strength or something, similar to an Impel level of resistance?
This wouldn't work in hi-sec though, but maybe it would work in Low-Sec? Maybe the gate guns would still fire, hence the tank on the ship. So the higher the system security the harder it would be to jam a gate?
I mentioned this yesterday over on Mule's blog in the comments and I thought it was worthy of its own post.
What are your thoughts? Does a Module or a Ship make sense that could lock down a gate for a few minutes?
You just need a couple of minutes. Your gang is forming up in system, but the enemy fleet is already reported in the next system over. If they arrive too soon you won't be able to mount an attack. What can you do? Right now your options are limited, but what about that new ship? Y'know the one you bought and fitted yesterday? The Gate Jammer? It's bigger than a Battleship but smaller than a Carrier and comes with zero cargo space but a large fuel bay... why you ask? It needs lots of fuel to power the Gate Jammer module it carries in its sole high slot. And what exactly does a Gate Jammer do? Why, it jams gates of course.
You warp to the Gate at your optimal, which is about 10k depending on your skills and lock the gate. Once the gate is locked you activate the Gate Jammer mod, which works a lot like an ECM mod, depending on your skill level you finally get the Gate jammed and the timer starts running. You only have a couple of minutes and the damn thing is burning thru your fuel, but for now NO ONE CAN USE THE GATE.
Gates are mechanical devices of some sort or other, so why shouldn't we be able to jam them up temporarily? Right now the only thing that hinders gate fire is lag and server issues, why not allow the activation of a gate to be momentarily hindered by the player?
Moving expensive cargo? Putting up that new POS tower? Lock down the system for a moment or two. Obviously such a ship would need serious drawbacks to balance game mechanics, but that should be easy enough to control. We could limit the fuel bay to only hold enough for one cycle, we could limit the cycle time (much like a bomb launcher) so it can only be used every so often, we could limit the activation range so enemy forces could have a shot at pointing the ship once they burst through the gate... which means our Gate Jammer is probably heavily tanked but comes without offensive weaponry. Maybe it has higher than normal ECM strength or something, similar to an Impel level of resistance?
This wouldn't work in hi-sec though, but maybe it would work in Low-Sec? Maybe the gate guns would still fire, hence the tank on the ship. So the higher the system security the harder it would be to jam a gate?
I mentioned this yesterday over on Mule's blog in the comments and I thought it was worthy of its own post.
What are your thoughts? Does a Module or a Ship make sense that could lock down a gate for a few minutes?