Ion cannons affect rapidfire

Ion cannons are pretty bad as they are right now and ion tech is useless. Lets change that a bit. Lore-wise it can be explained by ions interfering with targeting systems.

Refresher of how combat works

- Each round, every unit randomly shoots another unit

- Rapidfire against a unit type gives a chance to fire another random shot after hitting a unit of that type

- Repeat until either 6 rounds have occurred or one side is completely destroyed

Suggestion

- Being “tagged” by ion cannon fire in a given round decreases a unit’s rapidfire numbers by a percentage in the next round

- Scales with number of IC hits taken in a given combat round

- Numbers can additionally scale with ion tech, increasing by some % each level

Gameplay Implications

- Gives an additional use for ion tech

- Makes ion cannons more viable

- Affects RIPs the most as they come in lower numbers, could halve their effectiveness for defence bashing

- Smaller effect on other ships, eg. a cruiser might kill one or two fewer LFs/RLs each round

- No effect in the first round of combat as nothing has been hit yet

- Could be problematic for combat sims but surely it can be worked around

Quote from herhor67

How do you want to implement it without completely changing the current mechanics of battle simming?

You're right it may be challenging to Sim, which I mentioned in the original post.

I simply put forward the idea because I think it makes cohesive sense from both a gameplay and a balance perspective. Whether you agree is up to you. I think it's a valid reason to be concerned and unfortunately comes from the fact that the community keeps GF's game playable for them. Who here actually uses the in-game combat simulator?

I agree to a certain extent. Feels defence is very strong against normal ships but rips can eat through it way too easily.