Sonar

1 point yellow item.
Detects unfriends, regardless of obstacles in the way, and keeps them visible for 5 seconds.
Radius about twice as big as the splash of a ballpark mortar.
Radius is increased by upgrading.
Perks and talents are split between extra radius, duration, and cooldown.
Base cooldown of 20 seconds.

The idea of this item is mostly to help speeders on their scouting runs so they don't just run into a group of unfriends and die early on. It'll also help enforcers and fixers prevent flanks, or even counterattack. Making it only 1 point is necessary so that fixers may utilize it, but also because it has no direct combat usage and making it 2 points would render it unviable.

 

I would use that if I was an enforcer, I don’t know about speeder though, but you know, like the idea though!

 

Is this for the benefit of the wielder or would it allow the entire team to have that awareness as well?

 

Full team. It's the same as spotting them normally.

 

You mean a radar; the sonar would show you the wrecks on the sea floor ;-)

 

8 secs, 2 slot weapon, overall range (it must not be aimed)

 

Nah, I meant sonar lol. They're the same thing, but one uses sonar waves while the other used radio waves. Typically in nautical warfare they use sonar waves because sound travels very fast under water.

 

It’s a good idea, but would you sacrifice a slot for it?
It’s useful for the first minute of the battle, and possibly if a speeder tries to run, but otherwise it just blocks a slot from stun, nitro or ob.
But however, if we take this into a bigger new consept...
Abilities
Each ship could have 1 ability equipped, like sonar or maybe weapon cooldown decrease for x time. Abilities would have cooldown, and maybe have a different leveling up method (idk battle medals?? just brainstorming here) They could be available for every ship, or some just to yellows or shooters etc. This would also add something new to the gameplay, and imo would be great for the game style that BB represents.

 

Something like this would be awesome as well! But instead of abilities, how about support items? And I don't mean like the yellow debuff items. They'd have to be items that give small advantages to the whole team and have decently long cooldowns. Besides the sonar, I could easily think up a few other items that'd fall into the same category (points to slot):

• (1) Sonar - read original post
• (1) Alert Buoy - Another item to spot enemies. It deploys like a mine. When an enemy draws near it, it makes a sound and pings all friends' minimaps. It is visible to friends on the minimap, and it is destroy-able by unfriends.
• (1) Signal Flare - Not to be confused with the flare gun. Fires like a regular flare gun with longer range and a faster projectile. Causes its target to become visible for its duration. Great against speeders and fixers running to cover. Maybe to reduce confusion we could change the flare gun's name to the incendiary cannon or something like that.
• (2) Capture Marker - Fires like a mortar. Deals no damage, but has a huge "splash" that removes 50% capture progress (about the radius of a frost launcher's).
• (2) Smoke Screen - All players (including unfriends) have a smaller detectability range when inside (edit: or behind) the smoke (edit: all vision items, and maybe even the "burning" debuff, should counter this). Stacking more smokes on top of each other further decreases detectability range. Should last about 10 seconds.
• (2) EMP - Globally disables all unfriends' communications (minimap + commands + all ships only visible in direct line of sight) for a few seconds. Should give resistance on repeated use like with the tesla bolt.
  • The 2 point items should have excessively long cooldowns, roughly a minute.

There's 6. That's how many yellow or blue items we have, so it's enough for a start. I'm thinking purple items, and each ship gets 1 purple slot off to the side. Ever since the somewhat recent update buffing lower level ships (mk1-mk2), the jump to mk3 is now somewhat unsatisfying, so every ship should unlock the purple slot with 1 point at mk3, and then 2 points at mk4. Maybe this could create a window for a 6th boat? I'm thinking something like this for its upgrade stages:

• Mk1 - 22 1 2 - 0 (defense)
• Mk2 - 22 22 2 - 0
• Mk3 - 33 22 33 - 0
• Mk4 - 444 22 44 - 5
• Mk5 - 555 22 555 - 5
• Mk6 - 555 333 555 - 10
• Mk7 - 555 333 555 - 15

It's like a support shooter! We'll call it the Spotter or the Marker. Total 9 items at mk6-7, as with the addition of a single purple slot on every other ship they also have 9 items. I balanced the points to be 13 total (average between all boats with 2 purple points included).

Man, when you said "bigger new concept" I couldn't help but come up with a much, much bigger new concept LOL. Went from "sonar" to "new ship that specializes in vision".

 

It has limited range. It won't be nearly as long as the sniper's. It's mostly for spotting enemies behind terrain at mid-range. Technically a speeder could rush behind the enemy and provide vision for snipers from there, but it would pose a huge risk for the speeder, so it's a fair trade-off.

 

Lol
But this is something new, and maybe exactly what this game needs. A new ship and item class, many new tactics and new exiting gameplay

 

I'm constantly thinking up new ship ideas. Many other games like this always have new content coming and coming (new characters, classes, weapons, etc.), and I think what this game needs to stay alive after all this time is a new ship with some new items. These items in particular would definitely add a new flavour to the combat system without drastically changing it, and they're simple enough that every boat gets at least one of them, kind of like blue and red slots. The ship to utilize them only makes sense, as every type of item has at least one ship to specialize in them.

 

If it were a 2 slot yellow item, fixers wouldn't be able to use it, and speeders would likely never want to (especially mk5 and below).

 

imo 1 slot would be op. Also... fixers wouldn't try it because it is too passive: no speed boost and no stun so?

 

You're probably right about the fixer part, but it's not so op for 1 point. It's just a single pulse, so you only see them for a couple seconds. And the range is short. A common would start out with the range of a grenade launcher, just enough to peek around corners. A lv50 legendary should have the range of a cannon. It's just a quick check to see behind terrain briefly. You're giving up a stun or nitro for a way to check before you rush. This could reduce suicide speeders and improve scouting.