No replies to this topic

[Mad Dog 312]

I got an idea to tweak the Beagle Active Probe to help its usefulness, and possibly help balance ECM at the same time. Keep in mind this came to me at 3 AM while dealing with a puking sick baby, so please take that into consideration before/while flaming me

Background: (feel free to skip this section)

An active pinging RADAR / LiDAR / Magnetometer (or whatever MWO wants to use for the BAP) can be both steerable and adjustable in amplitude (based on available power). ECM measures in the real world can be completely countered or reduced in effectiveness by whoever is scanning for them by providing more wattage to the signal which can overwhelm the ECM.

The Idea:
A BAP would provide the current increase in scanner range AND a reduction in area of effect to ECM inside the range of the BAP. This isn’t a hard counter, but a reduction in the effective hiding bubble provided by the ECM.

Examples: (using simple regression to keep the numbers easy)

1 BAP vs. 1 ECM might reduce that ECM’s effective range from 180M to 90M.
2 BAP’s vs. 1 ECM would reduce the bubble to 45M.
2 ECM’s countering 1 BAP, each ECM would ‘see’ half the normal reduction of 90 taking each to a 135M ECM bubble.

If the developers really want to get tricky (although this would differ from TT) when a BAP and ECM are fighting one another, each unit could start producing heat relative to the amount of counter devices trying to stop it.

This way, 1 BAP vs. 1 ECM = minimal amount of heat is produced by each unit trying to counter the other – easily manageable.

6 BAP’s trying to lock onto a single light with ECM: Not only would the light mech have an effective ECM bubble smaller than the mech (around 3M if scaling is linear) but the ECM would be nearly melting from trying to counter the ridiculous amount of active scanning coming it’s way. The light pilot may be forced to shut off the ECM in order to be able to fire weapons without overheating.

While I don’t think my solution is perfect, I don’t think it would break any game mechanics either. As a bonus it would even (slightly) more realistically reflect how active scanning / countermeasures work in the real world.

Comments?