Okay, answer me this; when is the last time you've seen someone use an envelope in a real combat situation for anything other than a tiny bit of amusement?

...right. Never.(very rarely?)

So, here's a really simple idea; make envelopes something like 100x more expensive, and make it so they're not used up when they're activated. Essentially, you can make an envelope once every 30 seconds or whatever, for only a slightly increased energy cost from what we have currently.

Thoughts, suggestions, ideas?

Your right something needs to be done about envolopes but even if your suggestion was added... I still wouldn't use them XP

Well, the idea is that rather than being some useless thing you see in a station but never use, it's some thing you buy sometime and put on your ship, and then you're fighting some enemy you cant kill, and suddenly you remember, "Hey! I've got this envelope generator on my ship!"

And you block his first salvo with it and unleash yours with the power of a thousand suns.

And then promptly forget about it until the next time you're in the same situation.

If it stayed with the ship, it would be too powerful. It would essentially be a +1000 or 5000 or 20000 shield tweak. By not having it follow your ship it requires a bit more strategy, planning and/or timing.

Will you at least agree that you would be more likely to use it if you didn't have to buy them every time?

...well, that's a bit bigger of a problem than what we're dealing with here.

I guess I just want them to be a bit more acessable than they are currently. Right now, NOBODY uses them. If they were a re-usable item, at least SOMEONE might use them sometimes.

I was pulling for the DS to get an envelopment generator like this to continue the Wingship line. Would be interesting for both SD and Seer.

Other than the engineer forcefield generator, which is really good in some situations, they don't see much use nowadays. Maybe make some new ones that have extremely high durability, disappear after a fairly short duration, and actually surround your ship no matter how you move, but that have a long cooldown and high build cost to prevent abuse. They could also prevent you from firing while they are active or some such.

So...an adv. blocker?

I want them to retain their current stuff, just be more accessible. That's it.

I have mixed feelings on them. I think it's a pretty unique and somewhat interesting idea that the Mighty Adum had to make them *not* stick to your ship. It certainly limits their usefulness. All their stats are pretty much still balanced around the first few tech levels, though.

Making the envelopments stick to your ship would certainly make them a lot more useful. Increasing their size could also make them useful as well. Making them not get used up could also be a lot more useful, but would totally destroy any use of them as a credit sink, not that anyone uses them, anyway. Another idea I just had was maybe we could attach tweaks to them that they bestow to any ships within them. Lot's of possibilities... but god, they are so ugly in c2, it seems impossible to get motivated to make them useful unless they were also made to look decent first.

Does anyone find the super items on the wingships that generate envelopes at all useful?

What if the envelopes had a tractored feeling too them? It follows you around but takes a bit longer to turn and when your thrusting falls behind you a bit. It'd still leave room for tactics n stuff.

I haven't used a wingship in over a year, so it's a bit hard to tell you that. But from what I remember, the fact that they tended to move off your ship, or that bullets tended to desync right through and hit you anyways about a fourth of the time, made them slightly less than optimal.

That just about anything could kill them with one shot was also a bit of a downer, though that they were invincible to torps made them absurdly broken in certain situations.

However, the super device on the bulk trader is rather impressive due to it's combination tank and rape abilities. So maybe if you just made them all a bit larger...?

But yes, the reason I think they should be made more expensive and not be used up is to make them mildly useful. At least then people would buy them sometimes.

Oh, and don't make them follow your ship(Except maybe some capital ship only exceptions? Could be cool.) Or it will be not much different from an adv blocker, and that would be boring. No skill involved at all.

Well, just occurred to me that a very good reason to not make them follow your ship is that ships are the least well synced things in the game, since each client has the authority over its own players ship location. Better would be to stick them onto a mobile drone, but best is probably to leave them as they are, but beef them in other ways.