jaybear74

Honestly the idea of a support class of ships is not an uninteresting one. But it seems to me from the descriptions that we have so far are in some parts less 'support' and more 'Attack strikes in all but name' By that i mean, to me a support class is one that gives benefits to its own team. Not one that does 'damage' whether in hp or 'stun' effects. Tactical use of plane dropped smoke screens, Radar disrupting chaff, some sort of hydro search disrupting 'noise maker' etc. Things that can be tactically deployed in the service of the team sounds great and there are other support/spotting suggestions in this thread that make sense too. Where it gets problematic for me is where the 'support' moves into these situations where you are applying a direct debuff to an opposing players ship that isn't damage. Chaff turning a radar consumable off for example. That would be anger inducing as my ship is being affected by something that isn't a weapon in a really counterintuitive way. Chaff presenting a sort of radar proof 'smoke screen' would be reasonable to me as it is of benefit to the opponent, counters my radar in that direction, but doesn't otherwise nerf my ship as if by magic. My tactic countered by their tactic, Brilliant. My ship systems turned off by voodoo, not good. The stun mechanic is problematic for this reason as well. It creates an artificial debuff to my ship that is not really subject to counterplay if the drops are in the same mode as standard CV drops. And they make less sense than a traditional strike as they do less/no damage. It seems to me that most of what the stun mechanic would do would be to make killing a target through focus fire more straightforward. But focus fire is already an extremely potent tactic in the game. The tactic does not need this additional stun buff. Making focus fire quicker to kill a target doesn't add anything to the game. Creating more variable tactical opportunities by breaking lines of sight, zoning out radar, and what have you makes the game more variable and therefore more interesting.