As many people have said on other threads, the Destructor weapon can make capturing beacons way too hard (even if you don’t have so many guards focusing on the beacon that anything nearby dies).
I’ve seen a number of suggested changes to fix this, mostly based on reducing the AoE radius, or making the AoE not prevent beacon capture if your shields are up.
I have a different suggestion, involving more a fundamental change to the mechanics:
The weapon doesnt do normal AoE damage. The only direct damage caused is to the ship hit by the beam, just like all the other lasers.
However, the weapon also inflicts a debuff on the target, that for several seconds acts like a negative pulsar and deals damage to ships allied to the victim.
This will have several interesting changes to gameplay:
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It still functions as an area-denial weapon
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But you will have to actually hit the target to have an effect (no more just shooting the beacon to stop anyone capturing it). If you can avoid being hit, you might still be able to cap it.
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Enemies affected will have to keep away from their allies, which could help to break up frigballs (especially if the range or damage of the debuff scales with ship size).
What are your thoughts?