New defence structure: EMP missile

    • Fleet, Defense and Combats

    • New defence structure: EMP missile

      Hello everyone, before i start i will do a TL;DR for anyone who doesn't feel like reading the whole thing, it'll give a clear enough picture if you'll like the idea off the bat or not. :)

      TL;DR
      EMP missile's would use missile silo storage and would only trigger on RIP attacks (not counting MD missions) on the planet/moon, they would fly into the RIP fleet and disable their shields, more RIPs more missiles fire the 1st round and more shields are disabled that round (can happen other rounds too, depending on how many RIPs/missiles you have). Late game defence since there is a lot of people farming with a lot of RIPs late game and a lot of RIPs combined are basically immune to almost any def.

      LONG POST:
      This was mostly meant for protection against RIP farming, since in the late game when higher rank players have a lot of RIPs while your def isn't insanely strong (even when you're a turtle) a pack of RIPs can easily bash your def, you lose a lot while they go back unscratched, PTs are good for early since there isn't a lot of RIPs, but later on they are basically useless against them.

      My suggestion involves a new type of missile called an EMP missile (assuming everyone knows what an EMP is), it would be unlocked only after having your Ion Technology at level 14 and Plasma Technology at level 12, you will also need atleast a Missile Silo level 6 to house them.
      Further Plasma and Energy technology upgrades would increase the radius of the blast.

      Description:
      After years of peace a new threat has arrived that riddles many defences useless to defend against it. The development of Deathstars brought another danger to the playing field, not only can it destroy moons, its powerful shields bounce smaller defence fire with only larger ones making a small dent, Plasma Turrets were effective repellents against these threats at first but with the increasing numbers of Deathstars on the horizon the Plasma Turrets weren't enough to handle this threat anymore, so scientists got together to figure out a new solution to this ever increasing problem. They took a look at Ion Cannons and their ability to produce a small EMP effect on the target, potentially disabling some systems, but only using that would have little effect on a Deathstar so they take a look at another star in the system, the Sun. They note that stars have a potential to produce so called Coronal Mass Ejection which have devastating effects on anything in its path. Instead of using Nuclear technology that has an EMP as a side effect, to lower the radiation effects on the planet, they combine Ion and Plasma to create a sort of strong Electromagnetic Pulse that has both the power and range to affect one if not more Deathstars in it's way. The pulse is strong enough to temporarily disable shields of Deathstars and make an opening for smaller defences to have an effect, be it only for a short time before the Deathstars shields come back online.

      Science behind it:
      I mean it's Ogame, it doesn't really use too much science, but i'll still try to explain (tho i'm no physicist). PTs use concentrated plasma to deal massive damage, think of it as lightning, but bigger and stronger. Lightning also has a so called Lightning Electromagnetic Pulse, but it's focused on one spot and lasts milliseconds and only causes damage to that one spot. Ion Tech cause Ions are the damaging part of EMPs. Somehow in the Ogame universe combining these 2 together creates a large burst of ions and plasma in a wide area, not powerful enough to do massive damage but still strong enough to knock some critical components out, in this case shields. Weapons are more protected against these effects so they survive the blast.

      Calculations:
      Still working on these since i'm not sure how strong/weak it would be either way.
      At the start, having Ion on 14 and Plasma on 12, one EMP missile would disable shields on 2 RIPs, each level of Plasma would increase that effect by 2 and each level of Ion would increase it by 1. So at Plasma 16 and Ion 19, one EMP missile would disable shields to 15 RIPs.
      Since the EMP missile would be big, it would take 5 slots in the missile silo, so at level 10 missile silo, you could house 20 EMP missiles, which can disable shields to 300 RIPs for one round.
      Ofc, if there is less RIPs attacking, not all EMP missiles fire, Example:

      You have the minimum requirements to have EMP missiles and you fill the silos with them. So a level 6 silo can house 12 EMP missiles, having the potential to disable shields to 24 RIPs on the first round. So someone's attacking you with 13 RIPs, 6 EMP missiles would disable shields to 12 RIPs, but since 13 are attacking, 7 EMP missiles would fire to disable all of their sheilds, let's say 12 survive but you only have 5 more missiles, they fire for round 2, only disabling 10 shields from RIPs, 2 of them have their shields intact. Ofc after that you have no more missile and no more chance to disable shields. But this was exampled, if you have more missiles available they will fire each round the RIP/s survive/s.

      Other notes:
      I have to still figure out how this would affect other ships if they were combined with the RIP fleet, since having the EMP not affect those ships would be a bit of a flawed part. Also thinking it should affect allied ships but on a smaller scale since they'd be furthest from the blast and such. Taking suggestions.

      Cost:
      Metal: 300.000
      Crystal: 500.000
      Deuterium: 350.000

      Still thinking this part over aswell, since making them too cheap would be OP and making them too expensive wouldn't make them viable early.

      Counter-Strategy:
      Since they would be destructible the same way IPMs are, it's no use bombing them, one way to bait them out would be to have waves of 1 or more RIPs in front of the main RIP fleet to get rid of some of the missiles. This in term makes the attacker think of cost/profit margins since he'd have to sacrifice RIPs to get rid of some of the missiles while keeping an eye on the bashing limit aswell.


      That's pretty much it i think, please be gentle, my first suggestion post here. Any thoughts/suggestions are appreciated :thumbsup:
    • I'm not expert as attacker , but in a hand your idea sound interesting to introduce new settings, in the other need to evaluate the balance.

      I don't do a simulation, but maybe effect you propose is too big, because if any attack will give a more or less sure lose of 1 rip, then farming never will be exist ........ in front of a cost for defender not big.

      Maybe instead to deactive 100% of shield, could be more interesting to reduce efficient of shield (or lose points, or lose random effect to reflect attack fire, etc) ........... and by a research defender could increase effect over shield efficient and in same way attacker could have other research (or same ) to have viceversa effect.

      And maybe any emp missile need to effect a shorter number of rip , or we could think that they have effect in any kind of ships (in that case maybe it need to talk about a point shield over it have effect, talking about a sum of shield and of course increase effect of your idea) .......... so attacker could use a strategy about use fake ships

    • Yeah, the balance is what still bugs me, the thing is that yes, this would make attacker lose more RIPs, but at the same time he wouldn't just go in for mindless bashes, i've seen it happen many times where like 3-4 people get together, have like 1000+ RIPs flying on a turtle that has a lot of def, but that def is useless against RIPs (if you want a balanced defence, the PT count isn't the highest) and so they can mindlessly bash you time and time again w/o losing anything, with this missile they'd have to think twice before mindlessly bashing you, since it takes up space that ABMs could take, the attackers could also use that to IPM and clear some of the more threatening defences before the attack hits.

      Yes the 300 RIPs count is a bit high early-mid game, but when people have like 1000+ RIPs, that number is normal, especially since you won't have an insane level of missile silo, most stop around level 10-12. But like i said, this idea was something i came up on the spot when i was being attacked by 1400 RIPs (3 players) and my def wouldn't even make a scratch nor would they profit from anything except a few of my sats.

      Hmm, the idea to reduce it's shields enough so that small def can hurt it too makes sense aswell, it could be made that the EMP missile reduces a set number of shield points, so if the enemies shield tech isn't high enough, the missile could fully disable the shield, if it's high enough, it would only reduce it's effective points. Both ideas are good cause it would make small defence actually do something to them.
    • The EMPM should not be destroyable by IPM, because that would be too cheap. Another thing is Iontech. There are people who save in unbuilding (? Abriss in german. Just the opposite of building something). These like to keep their iontech on a minimum to be able to save more resources that way. But thats only a matter of selecting a different tech for this idea.
    • About Ion,
      I res save in deconstruction but i dont try to keep ion low. You can save so much res in mine Construction. the deconstruct is used to build up to that. the point of decon is that its cheap and accessible. ion helps with this. i have ion 13 on a 96 mil points account. i got it to take down a big building. Ion Level 12 definitely payed back.
      Dor - Cygnus - En