Overview: The Assault Frigate is a linebreaker and area denial assault ship. It is slow and lightly armoured, but possesses considerable firepower and has numerous modules to grant it short-term enhancements to its straight line speed.
The Assault Frigate is intended to stay close behind the front line and give supporting fire. When a beacon is taken, or when the team needs to withdraw, it can use its mines and modules to provide area denial and extract itself and others. Assault Frigates can also take advantage of self-destructive modules that increase damage as health decreases, or even those that cause damage to themselves. This is intended to provide high-risk, high-reward play options
The intent is to produce a ship that can and will engage at close quarters, dealing high damage and generally making a nuisance of itself. However, the ship should be relatively slow, weak and hard to maneuver so as to require support to work efficiently.
Stats: Not sure on the specifics here yet, but for now same as current LRF. Empire Assault Frigates would have to be nerfed considerably to get rid of their insane hull-tanking; this ship is NOT meant to be acting as a bullet sponge!
Special Module - Assault Thrusters:
Cooldown: approx. 40 seconds. Assault Frigate teleports 5000m directly forward. This teleport can take it through objects and ships, but the Assault Frigate is destroyed if it materialises inside an object.
Active Modules:
_Reverse Thruster: _As now, save that cooldown is linked to the Assault Thruster - if one is activated, both go onto cooldown - and the same criteria (killed if teleporting inside a ship or object) applies.
IR Pulsar: Module redesigned as follows: All enemy ships within 800m are unable to lock on to any enemy ships. Existing locks are broken upon entering IR Pulsar range. The Assault Frigate is affected by its own IR Pulsar - this is to encourage coordinated pulsar strikes. Duration approx 10-15 seconds.
EM Scattering Field: Module redesigned as follows: ships more than 1,500m away cannot lock on to the Assault Frigate while the EM Scattering Field is active. Moving does not deactivate the field, but Micro Locators and Spy Drones disable the field. EM Scattering Field cannot be active at the same time as IR Pulsar, Reverse Thruster or Assault Thruster.
_Martyrdom Overdrive: _Duration: about 6-8 seconds. 40 second recharge. While active, main weapon damage is increased proportional to the amount of health lost (health being calculated by (hull + shield) / 2), up to a maximum of +50% damage, plus a base damage modifier of +1%. Higher models increase base damage %.
Reactor Overload: Active duration 8-10 seconds, recharge time 80 seconds. If the Assault Frigate is killed while Self Destruct is active, they explode. This explosion uses the same damage, radius and aoe duration as a guided torpedo.
Killsight Designator: Duration 12-15 seconds. While active, all friendly ships engaging a ship locked onto by the Assault Frigate inflict +8% damage.
_Assault Protocol: _Duration 4-6 seconds. While active, the Assault Frigate may continue to capture beacons even while taking fire.
Missiles:
Unique missiles available to the Assault Frigate are:
Minefields.
Hull Bombs: Hull Bombs cause a large explosion centred on the Assault Frigate, dealing heavy damage to all ships in range (about 1000 to 1200m) and line of sight. Weapon also deals hull damage to the Assault Frigate. Damage is Kinetic.
Main Weapons:
Unique main weapon available to the Assault Frigate are:
Disintegrator: This functions as a Singularity Launcher, but causes Thermal damage instead of EM. It also has a slower, but larger projectile similar to the red singularities fired by certain PvE boss ships.
