Decoy Suggestion |

| Project: | Space Empires V |
| Version: | 1.08 |
| Component: | Miscellaneous |
| Category: | feature |
| Priority: | normal |
| Assigned: | Unassigned |
| Status: | active |
Description
I would like to see anew ship component, Decoy, added the Tech Tree.
Here is how it would work in my thinking:
1. Decoys are normally small so for ships they would take up 5k space and for Units only 1k space.
2. Decoys are not recoverable after combat.
3. Decoys should use 1, 2 and 3 supply for small, medium and large decoys and zero ordnance. You want to keep them cheap to encourage their use.
4. Decoys in RL mimic a target. For example the simplest decoy is the flare. The flare mimics the heat exhaust of a jet engine. Here is the types of decoys I see becoming available as you research.
a. Small – Fighter Decoy – The Fighter Decoy will look just like a fighter to the enemy and will move toward an enemy ship as if it was going to attack it. Once the fighter decoy reaches the target, it will circle it and attempt to draw fire.
b. Small – Drone/Missile Decoy - The Drone/Missile Decoy will look just like a drone or a missile to the enemy and will move toward an enemy ship as if it was going to attack it. Once the drone reaches the target, it is expended and removed from the map.
c. Small/Medium/Large – Troop Decoy – The Troop Decoy will like just like a Small Troop to the enemy. The Troop Decoy will move towards the enemy as if it is going to attack and will continue to do so until the end of combat or it is destroyed.
d. Medium – Ship Decoy – The Medium Ship Decoy mimics frigate, destroyer, and light cruiser size ships. The Medium Ship Decoy will approach enemy ships as if they are going to attack form optimum range. Now things get tricky because if they come into visual range, the enemy would know they are not real ships. I would put some type of self-destruct trigger that is activated if an enemy ship gets within so many hexes of the decoy.
e. Large – Ship Decoy – The Large Ship Decoy mimics cruisers, battleships, and light dreadnaught size ships. The Large Ship Decoy will approach enemy ships as if they are going to attack form optimum range. I would put some type of self-destruct trigger that is activated if an enemy ship gets within so many hexes of the decoy to simulate the discovery of the decoy.
Notes:
1. The Small decoys should draw PD defensive fire and the Medium and Large decoys should draw heavy fire.
2. Sure the human player should be able to easily see the decoys and can take direct control of the fleet in order to avoid wasting fire, but I see this as realistic, the experienced officers manually overriding the computers onboard the ship.
3. You could have some kind of discovery level based on level of Decoy component compared to the level of the enemy’s ECM component. For example, if they are the same level there is a50% change of discovery. Once a decoy is “discovered”, it is removed from the map.
4. You could use drones to build decoys. So al you have to do is add one more type of drone to the list….Decoy.




Or a drone componant
Or it could be a drone componant that mimics a ship. It could look like and be represented as what it's pretending to be.
Only if the enemy scans it with scanners, or has better sensors than the drone's ECM, it would be seen as the drone it is.