Forums » Suggestions
Point Defense System (PDS)
Jesus this has to be the longest 3 (now 4) post thread ever.
Someone is trying to replace me on the top of the list of 'most megabytes of harddrive space devoted to one player's message board posts'.
They still have a long ways to go.
They still have a long ways to go.
Well, it was great of Urza to post it all! And, Cerebrim I think that if you have managed to make your posts take up so much space that Urza's post barely scrathces the surface, you need to slow down man!
[SDF] Pyroman_Ace
s5 Officer, SDF
[SDF] Pyroman_Ace
s5 Officer, SDF
Pyroman_Ace, he could've just bumped one of the older threads. It would have been a lot more readable.
Yeah I know. A whole lot more readable. Not too bad though, at least we have access to the information. Oh well.
Yes, I know about those, this though is a thread to consolidate all the discussions about PDSs into one thread so that it's easier for all of the members to see them without having to access three or more threads!
2003-11-17 15:40:16 Kyphro
Just a suggestion, it would make the game soo much more fair to all those traders and rag users to be able to shoot missiles till they explode, it would prevent homing spammers and such, and increase the "realness" of the game.
~Tin Man~
2003-11-17 15:52:30 Sheean
Yeah, that would be nice... if you can fly and dodge very well... but are in a slow ship (like a rag) it would be nice if you could destroy all those homers with your gat... but if homers are also useless against rags... we're screwed... balancing would be necesary.
2003-11-17 16:05:36 Magus
I made a thread for this a looooong time ago. Yes, it is a good idea, but I say no to being able to target them. You have to shoot them out without autoaim and missiles in close proximity (like locust swarms) would have to take damage from each other's explosions.
2003-11-17 17:57:11 roguelazer
I also made a thread like this long ago. At first, the devs thought that they already had it. Then they realized that to have it they'd have to rewrite some part of the code, and then we didn't hear about it for a long time.
2003-11-17 18:05:43 Arolte
Targeting warheads would be cool, but I highly recommend that homers and seekers (except Yellow Jackets) not be nerfed in the future. Here's why.
Firstly, Geminis and anything except swarms are plenty easy to dodge at the moment. I've been able to dodge Geminis very easily in anything up to a Hornet. Yes, even if the person spams you. All it takes is a little timing and last minute maneuvering. I won't say how, because giving tactics away to the enemy is dumb. But I will say it's not impossible.
Secondly, I agree that anything above a Hornet (especially Ragnaroks and Centaurs) requires you to you use boosters to avoid missiles completely. Otherwise you're toast. Most of the fighting that's been occuring has been reduced to swarm and seeker spamming via Ragnaroks. What basically happen is Ragnarok A fires swarms at Ragnarok B. Ragnarok B fires swarms at Ragnarok A. Both die. Repeat times a thousand until someone gets bored and logs off. These heavy ships are flying targets when it comes to guided weapons.
However, I don't think that targeting warheads will be the solution to the problem. You've got a ship such as the Ragnarok that already has trouble turning to begin with. What makes you think you'll be able to turn in time to shoot those guided missiles if the assailant is BEHIND you shooting? You're screwed because you'll never turn in time. So shooting down warheads is pretty much a crapshoot, even though it may be a cool feature. However I think you'll be giving fighters more of an advantage to it than bombers, which IMO is problematic.
I'm not a big fan of ECM either. I don't like the idea of a device that arbitrarily decides whether you get hit or not. The games that do use ECM mostly end up that way, where everything is based on luck and chance. Chaff and flares are more reliable, but they tend to nerf missiles completely. And again, it's still a little luck based.
What I had in mind was an EMP shield for Ragnaroks and Centaurs. It only uses energy when it's in use. You don't have to turn it on or anything. You just equip your ship with it and that's it. What it does is it zaps any guided missiles within a certain radius of your ship, using the l-mine bolt effects. Anytime bolts shoot out of your ship, you lose energy according to how long it takes to detonate those missiles. In most cases it won't stop a missile from hitting you completely, but it'll be far enough to absorb maybe 50-60% of the damage.
That way there's no chance or luck involved. You know you have a shield system and you know it'll work all the time. And it will only be available on ships that are incapable of dodging swarms, meaning they're Ragnarok or Centaur exclusive devices.
I'm not sure whether EMP shields should work on enemy ships or not. Because the way it works is similar to l-mines, I'm thinking that l-mines might not even be necessary anymore, since your ship essentially has an l-mine attached to it that consumes energy when in use. So it may have the same type of protection. Heck, Ragnarok and Centaurs may end up becoming great blockade ships because of it! Proximity mines can remain, since they're really not as exploited as l-mines at the moment.
So how 'bout it? You hit two birds with one stone. You eliminate l-mines completely, but add even greater protection against fighters who tend to do circles around your Ragnarok and end up seeker spamming it to death. Booya!
2003-11-17 18:13:58 roguelazer
I like. But let it damage ships. That'll discourage enemy ships from nuzzling up to the blind spots of potentially larger ships equipped with this "ECM" shield, as many of us did with the frigate's wing.
2003-11-17 19:01:21 Kyphro
Mabey shields are a little much, but it is a good idea... or just homers that track other missiles or something, it would be easy to script, just give them a solid state, and a few other things, and bam!, u have exploding homers when i pull out my physics mode and adv. gatling turret... *Drool*
~Tin Man~
2003-11-17 20:48:17 Magus
EMP shield seems to powerful. It would render the heavies all but immune to seeker fire. Not cool. Maybe the only way to settle the problem is to institute a system for countermeasures. There is a thread up there somewhere about it.
2003-11-18 00:27:43 Arolte
/me slaps his forehead
2003-11-18 09:32:19 genka
I don't quite see any point to making missles shootable. If you make them easy to shoot down, they won't o much, if you make them hard to shoot down, then there is no point.
If homers are shootable, they shouldn't be targetable. At least I think so. :P
2003-11-18 09:42:33 Kyphro
Mag, ur right, as i said, shields are a bit much, countermeasure are a really good idea too, mabey taking up a large slot or something, using an auto-targeting system, that takes up a seprate energy meter, or mabey just get too hot, making it more fair in fights due to cool down time and such, getting rid or targeting and such, so then only ships that needed it could use it due to the large port factor and such on less agile ships.. justa thought
~Tin Man~
2003-11-18 14:23:03 Phaserlight
Guys, you already *can* target warheads! Just use the { and } keys to cycle through the targets until you see "rocket008" or whatever. I'm not sure what this means in terms of shooting them down, but it seems like the devs are moving in that direction.
2003-11-18 15:15:04 Urza
First i wanna say that i hate when people steal my tactics (the Swarm seeker Rag. i invented it)
Second the whole targetable/shoot down/ counter measure idea has been around sinse before most of you had characters.
If a1 hadn't trashed the archive, i could pull up a really good topic about this.
I think we decided that the best bet would be a varaity of anti-missle weapons. i'll try to list them.
Targetable war heads- shoot em down, they go boom.
EMP bombs: disables the missles.
Full 360° AI turret that shoots down missles- Gives the heavies a chance. Sell a variety of em based on accuracy and power.
Missle splash can destroy missles- This means that you cant rush up and unload because the trail of missles will blow up right back at you.
The one thing i didn't like was the full auto on turrets because it would drain your battery, so i figure that teh AI can aim and stuff, but we gotta hit fire.
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2003-11-18 15:30:12 genka
--"Guys, you already *can* target warheads! Just use the { and } keys to cycle through the targets until you see "rocket008" or whatever. I'm not sure what this means in terms of shooting them down, but it seems like the devs are moving in that direction."--
Well, if you target a gemini (I think, could be jackhammers), you'll notice that the thing says "HeatSeeker-001" or something along those lines
Heat seekers used to be the lower-damage-higher-mobility homing weapon, which were "removed" a rather long time ago(along with my lovable little blue ions). I think that the devs aren't moving much in either way with the whole targeting thing, just leaving it the way it is, because no-one minds it much the way it is.
2003-11-18 16:08:49 roguelazer
Back to the emp shield: It isn't useful now. But what about when ships are 700m long and move like roids?
2003-11-18 16:37:48 Celebrim
roguelazer: Well, that's pretty much why I designed ECM the way I did (see my thread on countermeasures).
Urza: The advantage of an invisible shield of some sort (either ECM or EMP) is that you don't necessarily need to create and track an object representing the thing that destroys the warhead. An ECM 'shield' causes alot less lag than a mini-gatling would.
2003-11-18 18:35:03 Arolte
Please don't call the EMP shield an ECM. It isn't! ECM (electronic countermeasures) is used to jam transmissions (usually radar). An EMP shield will physically destroy missiles, not jam their tracking system. You're just confusing the hell outta everyone by mixing the terms. Thank you.
2003-11-18 18:54:49 genka
An EMC just might trigger the missiles proximity fuse before the missile hits anything, so THERE! HAH!
/me dances
woo! WOO! I WIN! WOO!!!
/me falls over
2003-11-18 20:30:40 Arolte
EMC? Not only did you misspell it, but your information is inaccurate. ECMs don't trigger missiles prematurely. All it does is mess with the signal that's used to track a missile, be it from an airplane or from a SAM site. There is no magical electronic countermeasure as of now that has the capability of detonating missiles. You'd need something physical for that, since proximity detonators aren't trigger electronically.
But what you may be thinking about is the proposed "Star Wars" defense system that was meant to use a series of lasers via orbiting satelites to ignite ICBM warheads prematurely in space. My idea of an EMP shield is pretty much the same thing, except with a continuous electrical charge rather than a laser beam. Either way there are no ECMs involved.
Although... it's hard to tell whether you were being sarcastic or not.
/me strangles genka
2003-11-19 03:54:20 Phaserlight
I seem to recall us having this very conversation a couple months ago and Celebrim saying that there was a difference between "smart" jamming that actually hacked the missile's guidance systems and "dumb" jamming that created interference to deny the missile target acquisition.
If a missile/rocket has some onboard device that causes it to detonate when it gets within a certain range of the target, I see no reason why there couldn't be some sort of ECM that fooled the missile into thinking it was closer to the target than it actually was, thereby causing it to prematurely detonate.
2003-11-19 04:03:28 Phaserlight
...and the thread I was thinking of is just a few topics down! ;). Apparently we already have the technology to create an "ECM shield" to trigger shells and rockets prematurely, and it's known as SEPS, or "Short-stop Electronic Protection System"
2003-11-19 08:38:35 Arolte
>If a missile/rocket has some onboard device that causes it to detonate
>when it gets within a certain range of the target, I see no reason why
>there couldn't be some sort of ECM that fooled the missile into thinking
>it was closer to the target than it actually was, thereby causing it to
>prematurely detonate.
As I said before, the "E" in ECM stands for ELECTRONIC. It's an electronic device that messes with the transmission sent from the missile to the aircraft/SAM site. It has absolutely no physical bearing on the target missile whatsoever. You can't have an electronic device detonate something that needs to be physically tricked. Most proximity detonators work physically, not electronically. You literally have to do something physical to the missile, be it firing a projectile or cooking it with lasers.
And the argument here was the usage of the term ECM. SEPS is a whole different system that focuses on setting off electronically fuzed munitions. Meaning the projectile must have the capability of being detonated electronically, which is certainly not the case for all missiles. If you read up on some sources, you'll find that the main focus of SEPS is for ground units only, since mortar fire and artillery shells can be "tricked" with this system more easily than a fast-moving missile.
2003-11-19 14:28:42 Phaserlight
Aye, some missiles are proximity fuzed while others are contact fuzed, but the *majority* of air to air missiles are proximity fuzed which rely on *electronic* signals to tell the missile when to detonate.
A good website that explains all this clearly is: http://www.ordnance.org/missile_components.htm
Read the sections labeled "Fuzing" and "TDD" about 3/4 of the way down.
A few snippets:
"TDDs are electronic detecting devices similar to the detecting systems in VT fuzes. They detect the presence of a target and determine the moment of firing. When subjected to the proper target influence, both as to magnitude and change rate, the device sends an electrical impulse to trigger the firing systems. The firing systems then act to fire an associated S&A device to initiate detonation of the warhead. Air-to-air guided missiles are normally fuzed for a proximity burst by using a TDDwith an S&A device."
"In the contact fuze, the force of impact closes a firing switch within the fuze to complete the firing circuit, detonating the warhead. Where proximity fuzing is used, the firing action is very similar to the action of proximity fuzes used with bombs and rockets."
So a contact fuze is indeed physical circuit and couldn't be tricked with ECM, but note the part about proximity fuzes being an *electronic* system. Therefore your statement that "Most proximity detonators work physically, not electronically" is entirely incorrect. The proximity detonation fuze is linked to a "Target Detection Device" which is an *electronic* system and could concievably be fooled by *electronic* counter measures.
The only homers in vendetta that aren't proximity fuzed are the yellowjacket and the stingray, consequently any sort of "SEPS" system probably wouldn't work on these two missiles, but would be great for stopping swarms, geminis, sunflares, jackhammers, and screamers.
2003-11-19 18:37:25 Arolte
Note the usage of "most" in my sentence. In any case, I'm trying to correct the usage of the term "ECM", not argue about whether SEPS should be used or not. So at least we got that outta the way. Although I'm still having trouble finding SEPS for use on aircraft. It looks like an infantry exclusive defense system. There may be a reason for that, but I can't say because I don't know much about it.
Nevertheless the idea behind SEPS and my concept of an EMP shield is pretty much the same--early detonation. So arguing over the technical points of either or are pretty much moot at this point. Ultimately, however, I'd prefer to have some visual feedback (lightning bolts) as to how these missiles are magically blowing up right before they impact a heavy class ship. I think most people would too. It is after a game and not a tech demo for the US army.
2003-11-20 00:14:39 ctishman
What about a different explanation?
For example: That space junk we see flowing by our cockpit can blow holes in a large ship during transit unless there's a shield. Thus, the ships equip one whose purpose is to knock away the space junk. However, this process creates lots of static electricity from the metal and dust and stuff bouncing off the shield. Some of it is harnessed to power the ship's electronics, and some just hangs out on the ship's superstructure, creating a massive doorknob hazard for crewmen.
Between nations, this technology varies in that the Serco's shields create a positive charge, and Itani (and thus Neutral*) shields create a negative charge. The result is that when Serco and Itani/Neut capships battle, great Frankenstein-esque arcs of lightning leap between the combatants as the charges equalize, providing yet another flight hazard for fighters. Because the fighters use wormholes to travel from place to place instead of high-speed drives, they do not need the shields, nor do they have the capacitance to store such a charge. Rumors always fly of the Itani coming up with a way around this, but nothing is concrete yet.
*Because the Itani are the scientists, and the Serco sure as heck aren't giving their technology away.
2003-08-27 11:00:37 Celebrim
One solution to 'rocket ramming' that doesn't get mentioned much anymore is having 'gizmos' that can be installed on a ship that would reduce the chances of enemy missile weapons succesfully attacking your ship. Most of these gizmos would fit an 'equipment slot' where non-weapon systems could be mounted. Generally speaking, we've always discussed these things in conjuction with guided weapons, but some of the 'gizmos' that have been thought up are equally applicable to rockets.
So here I'm going to list some of the major anti-missile systems (my favorites at least) that various people have mentioned.
1) ECM: This is my personal favorite. Most people don't quite understand what I'm mean when I use this phrase because they are thinking of only 'jamming' technologies which cause guided weapons to lose thier guidance - which I might call 'dumb ECM'. Instead of 'dumb ECM', I'm thinking of 'smart ECM' that attempts to 'hack' the enemy munition's sensors or processors and fool it about its target. We already have this technology and I would assume that as time goes on it will only become more and more prevelent.
To give you the idea in detail, I'll quote from Jim Dunnigan's excellent website www.strategypage.com:
"A lot of little known, but very useful, equipment got its first real workout in Iraq. One of these was the fifty pound Shortstop Electronic Protection System (SEPS). This is a 50 pound, vehicle mounted system that detects the radar signals transmitted by proximity fuzes in artillery and mortar shells, and rockets. A proximity fuze enables a shell or rocket to detonate above the ground, thus showering troops with fragments. Without the proximity fuze, the shell hits the ground, and that's [where] a lot of the fragments end up right away. SEPS will broadcast a signal that will fool the enemy proximity fuze into going off prematurely, leaving nearly all the fragments to fall harmlessly to the ground. Because of the weak signal from proximity fuzes, SEPS can only protect an area about 250 meters out, and even then, only about half the enemy proximity fuzes will be detonated prematurely. Even with those limitations, the $250,000 SEPS units, which can set up and in action within 30 seconds, were popular with the troops. They could often see another unit getting hammered by enemy artillery, and the premature shell detonations were pretty obvious."
That's exactly the sort of ECM I have in mind when I mention ECM. Those of you familiar with the works of Ian M. Banks and Gordon R. Dickson are probably already familiar with this sort of ECM in a sci-fi context.
The system I envision would work something like the following ( although there are probably better implementations that could be thought up, which is why I'm reopening the discussion). Each ship with an active ECM gizmo would be surrounded by two intangible spheroids at roughly 30m and 60m for fighter grade ECM, and at 50m and 100m for capital ship grade ECM. A missile weapon crossing each sphere would have a base 50% chance of detonating (ideally depending on the weapon type and quality), causing reduced or no damage to the target (and potentially blowing up the weapon in the face of the firer). The ECM could be toggled on or off - since weapons would be easier to dodge with it off. While on it would consume a small ammount of continious power - say 5 energy/sec for fighter grade and 50 energy/sec for capital ship grade.
2) Jamming Beam: This is the 'dumb ECM' version. Essentially it works like the above, but only works on guided weapons. Guided weapons entering the invisible spheroid around the target lose thier target.
3) Counter-measure dispencer: Counter-measures is a general term, but I can't think of a better one for the kind of system I'm thinking of here. Basically when active, the counter measure dispencer automatically fires a small short range high velocity homing missile at any missile type munition that gets within a certain range (say 100m). In addition to chasing down its target, the munition tries to get guided missiles to chase it instead of thier target.
4) Chaff dispenser: One of the more frequently discussed types of counter measures, this doesn't necessarily have to be literal metal 'chaff' but rather a dropable counter measure of some sort that attempts to electromagnetically trick guided missiles into believing that it is thier target. How successful it is depends on how close the target and chaff are the missile. It's possible that the chaff dispencer only works on particular kinds of guided munitions. It's also possible that chaff might cause a confusing double image on radar. Because its of relatively limited use, it should be cheap and readily available.
5) Flares: The standard counterpart to chaff in most games of this type, flares is another missile countermeasure based on 1960's technology that is sort of anachronistic in a sci-fi game but still might have a place if only to keep n00bs for asking why we don't have flares. Basically, this is a very cheap and readily available countermeasure that only works on a very limited class of guided munitions - namely 'heat seeking' ones like the Gemini's, and tricks them into believing thier target is the flare and not the ship.
6) ECM rockets: A small weapon slot countermeasure that works like 'smart ECM' above but the 'ECM sphere' is tied to a relatively high speed rocket. Possibly, useful for defeating head on rocket attacks.
7) ECM mines: A small weapon slot countermeasure that works like 'smart ECM' above but the ECM sphere is tied to a relatively long duration stationary mine. Useful as terrain for dodging rockets, and for preventing overrun attacks with rockets - ei a so called 'rocket rammer' makes an attack pass, you dodge the rocket, and drop behind a mine which potentially catches the firer in his own barrage if he isn't careful.
8) 'Wild Weasel': A term borrowed from SFB which is in turn borrowed from the name a particular type of US electronic warfare plane, 'Wild Weasel' refers to using a powerful electronic signal to fool all of the guided munitions in the area (for our purposes lets say 600m) into thinking you are thier target. Basically, useful in a specialized electonic warfare ship, this would allow you to protect your allies from attack at presumably a reasonably high cost in continious energy. Of course, you better have a good means of protecting yourself as well. :)
9) Anti-missile system: General term for the various 'laser' or gatling type means of shooting down incoming missile munitions (similar I suppose to the US Phlanyx system) that have been suggested by a large number of people. I don't particularly favor this idea because in effect it does the same thing as the 'Smart ECM' system but appears to me to require alot more video processing, server calculations, and bandwidth usage. Therefore, I'd just as soon use the 'Smart ECM' implementation.
10) Radar Jammer: While not technically a missile countermeasure, if various classes of guided missiles are introduced which require 'locks' or point to point guidance, a radar jammer (whether dumb or smart, and in this case dumb) would be an effective countermeasure against them. Basically, this is a means of rendering all enemy radars 'blind' to all targets except those broadcasting jamming signals within a certain range at some cost in continious power. If a particular guided missile requires a radar lock to function, then obviously 'blinding' the firing weapons radar is an effective means of protecting all of your allies in range from those weapons. Also generally useful even if the opponents aren't using those types of weapons, because it means your friends are more likely to be able to blindside thier targets. Of course, with a 'dumb jammer' the jamming vessel shows up like a sore thumb, but a 'smart jammer' that 'gets in the head' of the radar and basically turns it off might prove to powerful (it has no real drawback compared to the enormous advantage it provides).
2003-08-27 13:33:27 genka
I like it!
/me puts "n00bs stamp of approval" on celebrim's post
2003-08-27 15:36:11 Urza
I love the ECM idea!! think about how easy it would be to use nukes on fighters and stuff!! just think!!! instead of a 10m prox radius, it would have 50m!
Sorry Cele, i just had to. I would think it would be better if it confused the missle's prox range, so it thought it was no where near hitting, unless got withing 1/2 the normal prox range
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2003-08-27 17:40:08 toshiro
if we have ECM, we need ECCM, else the guided weapons aren't any good at all.
make them take up more space (less missiles per rack) or fire less frequently (eccm has to warm up or something).
we can't just nerf the whole missile menu.
2003-08-27 18:41:08 Sage
I'm not even sure this is necessary. If Rockets were targetable and destructible the problem would be solved
2003-08-27 19:58:26 Celebrim
Urza: "Sorry Cele, i just had to."
What are you sorry for? Bring it on.
"I love the ECM idea!! think about how easy it would be to use nukes on fighters and stuff!! just think!!! instead of a 10m prox radius, it would have 50m!"
And in this case I don't even have to make up a responce. I can just quote myself:
"The ECM could be toggled on or off - since weapons would be easier to dodge with it off. While on it would consume a small ammount of continious power - say 5 energy/sec for fighter grade and 50 energy/sec for capital ship grade."
Hmmm, you think maybe I had thought of that? Hmmm, seeing how I'm all the time saying 'balance', 'balance', 'balance' like a broken record you think maybe that I might not suggest anything with a powerful effect if I didn't think it had a drawback?
"I would think it would be better if it confused the missle's prox range, so it thought it was no where near hitting..."
That might work OK for centurians and valkyries, but it probably wouldn't be so nice for larger and less manueverable ships. Besides which, if it worked the way you suggest it would be too good. It would be basically impossible to hit a Valk with a rocket, but the same could not be said of a Valks ability to hit something else with a rocket.
Sage: "If Rockets were targetable and destructible the problem would be solved."
I don't think targetable rockets would change a damn thing. I can't think of many if any fights I've been involved in where the ability to target the rocket would have been all that important.
toshiro: The guided weapons aren't that good already, which is fitting of a weapon that takes little or no skill to fire. Before you can have good guided weapons, you have to have things like 'radar locks' or active guidance or point to point guidance so that some skill is required to use the weapon (and players are given a chance to screw them up).
2003-08-27 20:20:44 Urza
i have seen people who have done many forgetful things (forget to set up weapons, forget to spot a nuke heading at the astroid near them, ect) SO what makes you so sure people would remember to turn it off? The odds are they wouldn't.
As for valks and rockets, well..
A) no equiptment slots in it
B) Dont forget that it's only a 50% chance or so that this might happen
C) there is no C for now.
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2003-08-27 20:43:50 Spellcast
ecm and jammers and chaff & flares are nice and all, but how about a weapon slot item "decoy missile"
decoy missile
size - small
ammo - 6 (1 shot fires 1 missile)
fuel - 20 seconds
effect - when launched, the missile immidiately begins a series of random doges, while emitting a false set of electronic signals that confuses enemy radar into thinking the missile is you. all ships and missiles locked onto you when the decoy is fired have a 50% chance of locking onto the decoy instead.
adv decoy missile
size - large
ammo - 5 (1 shot fires 1 missile)
fuel - 15 seconds
effect - same as basic decoy rockets, except that all missiles, and ships locked onto you when you fire have a 95% chance of locking onto the decoy instead of you.
obviously this would do nothing versus rockets as they are unguided, and visually the decoy image could still appear as a missile so it wouldnt do much good in an in your face dogfight. but against guided missiles or if you can get more than 350-400m from an opponent, it could be useful.
2003-08-27 21:21:04 Celebrim
Urza: "i have seen people who have done many forgetful things (forget to set up weapons, forget to spot a nuke heading at the astroid near them, ect) SO what makes you so sure people would remember to turn it off? The odds are they wouldn't."
I guess that's one of the ways we'd separate the skillful, awake experienced pilots, from the unskillful, inattentive, rookie pilots, right?
Gee, you think making the pilot show some skill is a bad idea?
Spellcast: Nice idea, but basically that's what the 'counter measure dispencer' does, only the counter measure dispencer also has a back up plan in the event that it can't fool the incoming munitions or they are unguided.
Still, weapon slot counter measures wouldn't be bad. I think the advanced decoy is too good though. It's all the advantages of a 'Wild Weasel' and none of the drawbacks.
2003-08-29 15:15:32 Urza
so we're supposed to keep a watch on our target, watch the radar for missles (which we have pretty much no idea how close they are on the radar anyway, we can only tell by sound, and nukes and rockets make no sound), fire, dodge, aim, and pick the perfect time to turn our other gizmos on and off.
A bit much, i think.
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2003-08-29 15:30:51 Pyro
Here's the thing: it affects ALL rockets. Including your own... Since this gives it another drawback, it's not quite an uber-outfit... /me likes... :D
2003-08-29 15:56:23 Celebrim
Urza: "A bit much, i think."
No more complicated than the average space flight sim, and certainly no more complicated than Star Fleet Command.
Pyro: It wasn't my intention to imply that it detonated your own rockets. It's 'smart' ECM. Even without blowing up your own or your allies rockets, its still got enough disadvantages to balance it IMO. Put too many more disadvantages on it, and you nerf it.
2003-08-29 18:00:19 Urza
still, do you want a game people can just pick up, or a game that has a big learning curve?
Also, i just dont think it's right that a player should be forced to guestimate when the missle will be hit, then rely on guesswork for when to turn his gadget off. So in responce...
The APG missle detection unit: It detects the nearest enemy missle and tells you how close it is under your crosshairs
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2003-08-29 19:07:47 HumpyThePenguin
hey, why dont we have an extra spot where it lists the 5 closest homers and display them in meters away from your ship, like mabye add it to the left thingy, and make it toggle-able
2003-08-30 17:50:53 Nighty
Humpy: not a bad idea. There's lots of info one readily needs that's not displayed on most game huds, IMHO. Fitting them all in would require a complete HUD redesign though, and they would need to get rid of the ugly unreadable font and change it to a font that remains readable even at smaller sizes.
Some of Celebrims ideas I like, some I don't. It's worth thinking about though. But Celebrim... Wouldn't all these countermeasures create more network traffic and server calculations? I thought those were precisely your arguments against rebalancing the rockets as proposed by SirCamps in the "the [sunflare/fighter/bomber] fix" thread... Besides, countermeasures require creating specific code for particular (new) objects: "equipment slots" and the various pieces of equipment that go in it... Not so very different from creating specific code for particular objects such as ammo based/non ammo based weapons, as proposed by SirCamps, is it? So there's another reason why following your own reasoning this is a bad idea.
And let's not forget; a wise man (yup, you) once told me that the game is the way it is because the devs have decided it should be so, and it's rather rude to try to impose my own way of thinking onto the whole community, like I did regarding the engines/maneuverability. Then why, oh master, have you yourself fallen prey to this negative attitude towards the Dev's work, and why are you, once so humble, now imposing your views (there should be countermeasures, and here's my proposal on how they should work) onto the community? Let it go, master... Let it go before it consumes you. It would be a disaster for the entire school of Celebrim, and for me personaly to loose such a valuable mentor to the dark forces he himself so often warned us for.
2003-08-31 01:30:17 Celebrim
Nighty: I'm not sure you aren't misunderstanding me.
"Wouldn't all these countermeasures create more network traffic and server calculations? I thought those were precisely your arguments against rebalancing the rockets as proposed by SirCamps in the "the [sunflare/fighter/bomber] fix" thread.."
First, the specific complaint against SirCamps was increasing the cycle rate of an ammunition consuming weapon. We already have statements from the devs indicating that this creates to much network traffic and that for now such ideas cannot be implemented.
In theory, everything is going to create additional burden on the server, the client, and/or the connection. In my suggestion regarding countermeasures, I try to balance the burden created by the feature with the advantage it gives to gameplay and throwout any idea that can be achieved by doing something similar. For instance, AMS is a cool idea, but since the net effect is the same as ECM, then ECM would be better. Of course, if ECM as described creates too much burden, that too will have to go.
"Besides, countermeasures require creating specific code for particular (new) objects: "equipment slots" and the various pieces of equipment that go in it... Not so very different from creating specific code for particular objects such as ammo based/non ammo based weapons, as proposed by SirCamps, is it? So there's another reason why following your own reasoning this is a bad idea."
Actually it is different. It's different because ammo based weapons already exist and can probably be balanced without creating alot of new code. On the other hand, none of the above gizmos exist. The ideal solution is to make use of existing code as much as possible (at least that's how I'd feel about it if I were writing), but in order for any new thing to exist you have to create some new stuff. The trick is deciding what is worth working on and what is not (which isn't for us to do, but maybe by discussing the merits of the various ideas we can help the devs make the best decision). Maybe ideally all of the above could be created, but probably you would have to choose what would be the best to implement from all the ideas you have. That's why I make such extensive lists; not because I'm demanding everything, but because I don't want something to be overlooked in favor of something that might not add as much to gameplay.
"a wise man (yup, you) once told me that the game is the way it is because the devs have decided it should be so, and it's rather rude to try to impose my own way of thinking onto the whole community"
Did I say that? Hmm, I like being right. Thanks. Try not to compliment me too often, or my head might explode.
Again, the difference is that nothing I'm suggesting exists. I think there is a difference between trying to rally people for a change in an existing feature, and trying to solicite input on a feature that hasn't yet been (and maybe never will be) implemented. I think that there is an even bigger difference in doing that and writing a post in which you demand an abrupt change in a feature that the devs have said is part of thier final design or which is so intrinsic to the game that one can't help but suspect it is close to the final design.
"Then why, oh master, have you yourself fallen prey to this negative attitude towards the Dev's work"
Look again, Grasshopper. ;) Where in my original post do you see negative attitude toward the Dev's work?
"now imposing your views (there should be countermeasures, and here's my proposal on how they should work)"
Padawan, read my opening statements again. ;) Did I actually say what you have accused me of? And remember, I'm not suggesting changing anything, and I think I do try to suggest things which seem to be in line with the devs philosophy as best as I understand it. If it turns out otherwise, then the old ideas get dropped and I try to talk about things in terms of what the devs have revealed. And by all means, if this is hard and doesn't fit with the feature list, the devs don't need my permission not to add it. The game can work fine without countermeasures. They are being mentioned because they are a typical feature of these sort of games and might possibly add something to gameplay.
2003-08-31 08:58:21 Arolte
I like the idea of the "smart" ECM with the premature proximity detonator, but I'd much rather NOT see anything like the "dumb" ECM that confuses the tracking of missiles. The reason being that Geminis and any other guided missile right now is already easy as hell to dodge. By adding ECM, chaff and flares, you're practically making them even more useless. And remember, Vendetta's dogfighting style reflects that of WWI and WWII. BVR missiles (let alone missiles altogether, but let's put that aside) didn't exist back then, and so the need for chaff and flares didn't either. Why would you want to dump countermeasures on visual range missiles that can already be dodged? Isn't that a bit of overkill? I'd say so.
That being said, do you remember the post I made about the "new" missiles? Every missile would be contact-only, but would have quicker and better target tracking. However, the player would be hinted in one way or another as to what type of missile (radar-guided, laser-guided, heat-seeking, etc.) that was being fired, and in that respect the player would use their skills and experience to know what to do (turn off radar, shut off engines, hide behind obstacles, etc.) in order to dodge 'em... if they choose not to simply boost away that is.
Dodging missiles should be a skill, not a matter of flipping a switch or dropping chaff and flare in hopes that it'll stray off target. Why? Because it's more fun that way, and it makes guided missiles actually useful for a change. If everyone and their dog bought ECM, even if only for bombers and frigates, nobody would bother mounting guided missiles on to their fighters. I'd much rather see the WWII style of combat be preserved than to see lots of gadgets that basically take away the skill of dodging altogether.
2003-08-31 17:26:41 Nighty
Arolte: I kinda agree with Celebrim here; both of you have some good points though. Combat should indeed require skill, but technology to help a little is not something I'd rule out immediately either.
But I'm kinda worried when I read stuff like this. It's as if you all want to keep vendetta down to some giant massive multiplayer fragfest; I disagree there. Battle should not be encouraged to the point where all you ever do is fight and fight and fight. Fighting is part of the game, but there should be other things to do as well. The game is not some UT clone in space, but a MMORPG. That means it will have to take months and months to develop your char, you should be sucked into the game to the point where you will actualy be worrying about your cargo and life, instead of just some silly fragfest. If you want to play a shoot 'em up, play UT. If you wanna play a shoot 'em up in space, play X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, Freespace 2 online or whatever. There are plenty of games that cater to the fast action packed shoot 'em up genre, but little to no games that cater to the character development kind of game the devs want Vendetta to be.
My vision of the game will be one where I can choose a carreer as a fighter for the military, bounty hunter, pirate, trader, smuggler or whatever and spend months acquiring some wealth and better ships, honing my skills in non lethal combat. The penalty for death should be greater. This would make people be more cautious when they travel dangerous regions of space, but this would also demotivate pirates etc... from just attacking everyone they see, since they could die in the process, and even if the target is a noob, he might know some veterans who're willing to seek the offender out and hunt him down.
So instead of focusing so much on the combat aspects of the game, let's not forget the direction the game is going to. Battle will have its place, but it won't be the only element in the game. For those of you that are triggerhappy, some form of non-lethal combat could be put in place, like some sort of competition in arenas with nerfed weapons: they don't do actual damage, so you won't die, but just do "simulated damage". If you "die" in the arena you're just disabled and towed back to the station for simulated repair and reload.
Of course this doesn't rule out the possibility of "illegal arenas" where people fight with real weapons to the death, but the penalty for dying in the game is so great that only the most skilled warriors will take the risk of dying by entering such an underground competition.
It's a bit offtopic, but I just felt the need to remind you guys that in the final game combat will probably not be the only thing you can do to amuse yourselves, and I hope actual combat will be greatly discouraged by raising the penalty of death, and by making it illegal in government controlled regions of space. You don't see people in real life going out and fighting everyone they see either, for the very same reasons. Yes, I know, this is a game and not real life, but if you want to turn it into a fragfest, what distinguishes it from other similar games? Nothing. There's already enough fragfests; it would be nice to see some company putting out a game that tries to be different from the other "thirteen in a dozen" multiplayer space combat games.
Just my two (euro)cents.
2003-08-31 17:58:11 Demonen
Ultimate countermeasure: If you sit still next to a roid your radar signature blends with the roid. You are invisible to radar unless the person trying to target you is within 300m.
<Zathras> UH OH! Pirate! *hides in the roids* HELP in sector 10 please!
If they cannot see you, they cannot fire missiles at you.
USELESS in a dogfight tho'. Who slows down and hides next to a roid with missiles allready incoming?
2003-08-31 23:04:09 Celebrim
Arolte: Although we are approaching this from two different directions, we seem to basically be in agreement on this.
Nighty:
http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=2298
I usually spend less time focusing on suggestions for the RPG aspects of the game because I have so little information about what the devs want for that part of the game. I don't want to get the community too hyped up for something that may not even happen, but the above post was prompted to a large extent because I thought people were forgetting about the fact that this is supposed to eventually become a RPG in thier posts.
2003-09-02 07:53:38 Arolte
Yes, Demonen, exactly. See, that's one example of skill right there. Using your environment as a tactical advantage is what it's all about. Although radar masking hasn't been implemented, you can still use asteroids to your advantage. But anyway, that's exactly the type of thing I'm talking about.. Rather than flipping a switch and watching the missiles explode prematurely or whatever, you'll need to use your brains to figure out what type of projectile is being fired at you, and react accordingly.
Nighty, while you raise a few good points, I'll still have to stick with what I've said. You'll always run the risk of running into pirates in the Vendetta universe, regardless of whether you want to fight or not. It's something that everyone will have to accept. You'll always have to find ways to either defend yourself or avoid fighting altogether.
If you choose the peaceful path of trading or mining asteroids, then by all means you're free to boost away and avoid confrontation altogether. My feeling is that Vendetta's universe will eventually be big enough that you'll hardly run into as many battles as you do right now. So you may get your wish whether or not the deathmatch aspects of the game remain.
While I can understand the need for "cheap" countermeasures for those who don't like to fight (or even for newbies), I also see it as an exploit for those who choose combat... and that's my greatest fear--that the skill of dogfighting will eventually be taken away to some insanely boring technology. IMO the easiest way to solve this problem is to simply provide fast trade/mining ships (but at a VERY HIGH cost) to players as a way of avoiding combat, rather than resorting to ECM systems and whatnot.
The best defense is often to avoid combat altogether, and having a fast ship will allow those people who don't like to fight to carry on with their own business... but of course at a high price. Anyone fortunate enough to catch these fast trade/mining ships should also be rewarded for their efforts, of course. So I think the solution to the problem you present, Nighty, is in the ships and balance of ships themselves.
2003-09-02 08:52:25 Kuvagh
Keeping the RPG element in mind this might be fun. It could be classified as special or advanced equipment, similiar to special or advanced ships. Players would only be rewarded with such a device after jumping through a great deal of hoops and would only be able to own one, two or three of them at a time.
I think a good thing for the ECM to do would be to simply decrease the proximity of incoming weapons. A 30m rocket could have its prox cut down to 20 or 15 or something.
ECCM (electronic counter counter measures) would also have to be available as special equipment and should be more easily obtained than the ECM.
Or it could all just be left out. Personally I'd like to be able to target incoming rockets and shoot them down myself.with the g key and shoot them down with tachyons. Perhaps there could also be a chaff-flak gun that makes shooting down rockets easier but isn't useful as an offensive weapon.
Asp
2003-09-02 09:29:59 Celebrim
"I think a good thing for the ECM to do would be to simply decrease the proximity of incoming weapons. A 30m rocket could have its prox cut down to 20 or 15 or something."
That would work fine for a fighter class craft, but it works less well for a 50m long freighter. For a craft capable of dodging rockets, ECM is often a suboptimal choice and a skilled fighter pilot using ECM would definately have to pay attention and toggle the ECM off when necessary. You'd probably be better off with a countermeasure dispencer, and you'd probably be even better off than that with some sort of engine enhancement to improve your thrust or speed. But for a Freighter that can't dodge and more or less would be hit by every rocket coming its way, ECM is essential for avoiding the maximum damage of each of those rockets. Just because we don't have bigger ships doesn't mean we shouldn't plan for them.
"Personally I'd like to be able to target incoming rockets and shoot them down myself.with the g key and shoot them down with tachyons."
Good as you may be Asp, I don't think you'd be able to shoot down 6 or 12 rockets fired at you. Quite the contrary I think pausing to try to shoot down any of them would distract you from dodging and make it more likely that you would be hit by some of them. I just don't see making rockets targetable as any kind of solution, and just as a personal preference it reminds me too much of some of the worst features of the X-Wing series.
2003-09-02 10:49:08 Arolte
ECCM? Now this is getting ridiculous. Before you know it we'll also have ECCCMs... and then ECCCCMs. Jesus, people, what's wrong with a little skill? ECMs are primarily used today for BVR missiles, which Vendetta doesn't have.
I mean it's nice and all to have all kinds of wacky gadgets, but this is something that would potentially ruin dogfighting altogether, making your weapon selection more like guesswork and luck--Oops, I accidentally brought homing missiles against an ECM fighter, now I'm screwed! Grrrrr...
2003-09-02 11:33:55 roguelazer
I agree with asp. I have for a long time. Let us at least try to shoot rockets. Now, with unguided rockets, it wouldn't be that useful. But if you could destroy one swarmer with a railgun shot, the whole batch would probably explode. And that would be a nice feature. :D
2003-09-02 11:36:42 Celebrim
Arolte: Be careful about calling things ridiculous.
"I mean it's nice and all to have all kinds of wacky gadgets, but this is something that would potentially ruin dogfighting altogether, making your weapon selection more like guesswork and luck--Oops, I accidentally brought homing missiles against an ECM fighter, now I'm screwed! Grrrrr..."
ECCM would ruin dogfighting altogether? I haven't spend alot of time talking about ECCM because I'm not entirely sure if it would work or if it would work, whether its worth the server load it creates. But, lets just assume for a moment its easy to implement and address your claims.
ECM would only have an effect on you if you were using a non-energy weapon. Yes, ECM is only going to hurt you if you are what people incorrectly call a 'rocket rammer'. But does ECM as I described it really kill rockets 100% of the time? No, a quick look at it shows that 25% of the time it has no effect, and 25% of the time vs. a jackhammer or sunflare it has almost the same effect as getting hit by a rocket. And for that the ECM ship has to be expending power continiously, reducing his ability to turbo away from the threat.
But lets suppose that not needing to dodge 50% of the rockets is enough to totally nerf rockets. Well, why are you only armed with rockets anyway? Why didn't you consider that you might come up against a ship equipped with ECM, a counter measure dispencer, and force disapating armor which was relatively immune to rockets and homing missiles and LOAD MORE THAN ONE TYPE OF WEAPON ON YOUR SHIP.(!!!) You think maybe having a gauss or a tachyon as a secondary weapon might be a good idea? Gee, what an original thought. Or, if you were so in love with rockets that you didn't want to load anything but rockets, why didn't you equip ECCM to nullify the advantages of any ECM ships you might encounter? There is no luck involved here. If you are depending entirely on your skill with rockets (or your skill with homing missiles whatever that means), then you ought to be screwed against someone that thought 'Gee, everyone is using nothing but rockets, maybe I should equip my fighter to defend against that'.
Besides, rock-paper-sissors is not entirely a bad thing.
PS: roguelazer: If swarms are fired far enough away from you that you have a clear view of them, they probably aren't that dangerous anyway.
2003-09-02 12:50:44 roguelazer
Swarms hurt if you're carrying a flag. It is pretty hard to dodge 10 swarms whilst trying to dodge other types of weapons too. But think- one railgun shot could take out 5 swarms if the launcher had fired them while accelerating.
2003-09-02 14:23:03 Arolte
Celebrim, judging by your use of percentages what you're saying is that these weapons work arbitrarily. So 25% of the time they work or 75% of the time they don't work. What's the point? There should be some solid logic behind how the ECM works, and not just some random value tossed in to reflect how effective it is.
To me this seems like a lot of work has to be put into programming something that will only work randomly. It'll turn into a game of dice-rolling and chances, rather than something with logic and skill behind it. My concern is that everyone's going to equip ECM gadgets and missiles will be totally ineffective. Yeah that's great, you can equip more weapons other than missiles, which is what I do 99% of the time anyway. But that'll also give an unfair advantage to people only use gauss and tachyons/gravitons, and will make Geminis even MORE ineffective (as if they weren't enough).
Why is ECM important to Vendetta's gameplay? CTF will be taken out, meaning no more players who are cruising across sectors. You can also boost away from a homing/swarm missile VERY easily without taking damage. So why is ECM needed exactly? It just seems like an idea that was tossed out to say, "HEY!! Look what I found! Why don't we add this into the game?" Do ECMs really have any practical use if the simple action of boosting can get you to avoid rockets/missiles completely? That's what I'm trying to question here.
2003-09-02 14:41:51 roguelazer
Maybe boosting SHOULDN'T be able to avoid rockets/missiles. Plus you have larger ships that A) Won't be able to maneuver very well and B) Might not have boost at all. Take that into consideration and make ECM cap-ship only.
2003-09-02 18:21:38 Arolte
Perhaps. If they were capital ship exclusive i'd understand. But even then it already takes like twenty avalons to bring one down... and that's for a stationary target! So I'd still feel weary of ECM usage on capital ships. But maybe on something as crappy as the current Ragnarok, I can see why they'd be used.
If we're going to see faster and better tracking missiles, I would rather not see missiles where it's not possible to outrun 'em while boosting. There has to be some breaking point, perhaps 140m/s, where boosting will get you to safely get you away from a missile. Right now that breaking point is way too early in the boosting period, which is why most missiles right now are useless.
Anyway, I think I should restate three of my many previous proposals for these "new and improved" missiles, which may get you thinking about why ECMs may not be necessary after all:
1. The proximity detonator could be reduced so that they're impact-only weapons, since the missiles actually tend to hit their target more (no more 2% damage BS). The size of your ship will finally be a real factor in your safety, which may get more people to use the Centurion despite it's single S-port.
2. The ammunition of each missile pod should be GREATLY reduced. Because these missiles will be more powerful, quicker, and smarter, the need for ammo reduction is necessary to retain balance. I'd say no more than 4-6 missiles per pod. They should be used sparingly to cripple the target, (at least 50% damage per missile) not as the spamming tool that they are now.
3. Missiles can be dodged by their types. I had a list of missile types where you can easily scramble their tracking computers by the action you take for YOUR (the target) ship. For example you can come to a complete stop and shut down your engines to fake a heat-seeking missile out. You can turn your radar off (or drop cargo) for a radar-seeking missile to get it confused also. It's those little things that will require you to learn from experience, and therefore allow you to dodge missiles effectively without ECM usage.
PS: I also like the idea of being able to target warheads. An advanced gatling turret or two could probably blow a lot of missiles up prematurely, which may be the advantage for heavier ships.
PPS: If the devs are in fact planning ECMs, I'd like to request that they be L-port only. I can understand the argument why they'd be necessary for something as slow for the Ragnarok, but not something for fighters and smaller ships. Maybe a change like that will give the Warthog a new reputation as a stealth fighter.
2003-09-03 10:10:02 Celebrim
"But even then it already takes like twenty avalons to bring one down... and that's for a stationary target!"
I read a statement like that and my thought is 'only twenty'?
"I would rather not see missiles where it's not possible to outrun 'em while boosting."
Agreed.
With regards to your point #3, I do agree that something like the X-Wing model of superfast and agile homers and a simple button you can peck to avoid them makes for boring gameplay. But I don't see your particular suggestions as necessarily practical, and I don't see how that takes more or less skill and awareness than the proper use of something like ECM.
"If the devs are in fact planning ECMs, I'd like to request that they be L-port only."
I never intended to suggest that most countermeasures should occupy weapons ports. Rather, countermeasures should occupy some sort of 'equipment port' for non-weapons. The larger the ship the more of these ports they should have. Centurians, Valks, Vultures, and Warthogs might have three, while Wraiths and Hornets might have four, and big ships like Centaurs, Proms, and Ragnaroks might have five. This would greatly increase the configurability of ships, as well as give more reason for flying a big ship. You could put ECM on a Warthog or Centurian, but personally I think that would be a sub-optimal build. In a light fighter, I think you'd be better off relying on your agility to dodge rocket type weapons, as the ECM would cause you to 'catch' alot more rockets than you otherwise would. If you must use a counter-measure in the light fighter, the counter-measure dispencer is probably better, but really counter-measures are basically designed with big unmanueverable ships in mind because they otherwise would basically automatically be hit by every incoming rocket, homing weapon, etc. fired at them.
2003-11-17 03:19:10 toshiro
*bump* so that roguelazer is content
2003-11-17 20:03:42 Skyfox
Coutnermeasures is nessisary if we want to keep guided missiles in the game. Being wiped out by somthing you simply can't avoid no matter how good you are is no fun at all. I think that there should be two types of ECM.
Much like modern day aircraft, (Falcon 4 is awsome game, practicly all thats used is missiles, yet for the most part awsome for the skill required to fight right.) we have flares/chaff, which is held in a certian quantity in a small hold to be released upon pushing a button. The chaff/flare creats a massive signature which the missile will immidiatly home into. This is a sort of "last resort" if the main ECM - jamming, fails. The jamming uses multiple frequency waves to distrupt the missiles tracking system, now this isn't always the fixer, a lot of times a missile will find its way around the system, and if you turn on the system too late, then it will do no good. Basicly, if you leave it on too long, it fails, if you put it on too late, it fails. Proper usage of the jamming system will result in your getting away safely. Lazy, and unskilled use will do you practicly nothing.
Also, whenever we get enough sectors, to make special outfits/toys specific to far, out of reach, high tech systems where it costs a lot of money- you can get a very good jammer, then you have your crap jammers back in normal space.
I want there to be MORE seeker missiles and stuff. Although, with those seekers, there need to be an effective anti missile system so that fighting remians interesting.
2003-11-17 22:08:37 Celebrim
Skyfox: Some would say now that the guided missiles in the game are so easy to avoid that we don't need countermeasures, but I agree with you that before we make any better guided missiles (see the toys thread for some examples) we need countermeasures for just the reason you state.
Just a suggestion, it would make the game soo much more fair to all those traders and rag users to be able to shoot missiles till they explode, it would prevent homing spammers and such, and increase the "realness" of the game.
~Tin Man~
2003-11-17 15:52:30 Sheean
Yeah, that would be nice... if you can fly and dodge very well... but are in a slow ship (like a rag) it would be nice if you could destroy all those homers with your gat... but if homers are also useless against rags... we're screwed... balancing would be necesary.
2003-11-17 16:05:36 Magus
I made a thread for this a looooong time ago. Yes, it is a good idea, but I say no to being able to target them. You have to shoot them out without autoaim and missiles in close proximity (like locust swarms) would have to take damage from each other's explosions.
2003-11-17 17:57:11 roguelazer
I also made a thread like this long ago. At first, the devs thought that they already had it. Then they realized that to have it they'd have to rewrite some part of the code, and then we didn't hear about it for a long time.
2003-11-17 18:05:43 Arolte
Targeting warheads would be cool, but I highly recommend that homers and seekers (except Yellow Jackets) not be nerfed in the future. Here's why.
Firstly, Geminis and anything except swarms are plenty easy to dodge at the moment. I've been able to dodge Geminis very easily in anything up to a Hornet. Yes, even if the person spams you. All it takes is a little timing and last minute maneuvering. I won't say how, because giving tactics away to the enemy is dumb. But I will say it's not impossible.
Secondly, I agree that anything above a Hornet (especially Ragnaroks and Centaurs) requires you to you use boosters to avoid missiles completely. Otherwise you're toast. Most of the fighting that's been occuring has been reduced to swarm and seeker spamming via Ragnaroks. What basically happen is Ragnarok A fires swarms at Ragnarok B. Ragnarok B fires swarms at Ragnarok A. Both die. Repeat times a thousand until someone gets bored and logs off. These heavy ships are flying targets when it comes to guided weapons.
However, I don't think that targeting warheads will be the solution to the problem. You've got a ship such as the Ragnarok that already has trouble turning to begin with. What makes you think you'll be able to turn in time to shoot those guided missiles if the assailant is BEHIND you shooting? You're screwed because you'll never turn in time. So shooting down warheads is pretty much a crapshoot, even though it may be a cool feature. However I think you'll be giving fighters more of an advantage to it than bombers, which IMO is problematic.
I'm not a big fan of ECM either. I don't like the idea of a device that arbitrarily decides whether you get hit or not. The games that do use ECM mostly end up that way, where everything is based on luck and chance. Chaff and flares are more reliable, but they tend to nerf missiles completely. And again, it's still a little luck based.
What I had in mind was an EMP shield for Ragnaroks and Centaurs. It only uses energy when it's in use. You don't have to turn it on or anything. You just equip your ship with it and that's it. What it does is it zaps any guided missiles within a certain radius of your ship, using the l-mine bolt effects. Anytime bolts shoot out of your ship, you lose energy according to how long it takes to detonate those missiles. In most cases it won't stop a missile from hitting you completely, but it'll be far enough to absorb maybe 50-60% of the damage.
That way there's no chance or luck involved. You know you have a shield system and you know it'll work all the time. And it will only be available on ships that are incapable of dodging swarms, meaning they're Ragnarok or Centaur exclusive devices.
I'm not sure whether EMP shields should work on enemy ships or not. Because the way it works is similar to l-mines, I'm thinking that l-mines might not even be necessary anymore, since your ship essentially has an l-mine attached to it that consumes energy when in use. So it may have the same type of protection. Heck, Ragnarok and Centaurs may end up becoming great blockade ships because of it! Proximity mines can remain, since they're really not as exploited as l-mines at the moment.
So how 'bout it? You hit two birds with one stone. You eliminate l-mines completely, but add even greater protection against fighters who tend to do circles around your Ragnarok and end up seeker spamming it to death. Booya!
2003-11-17 18:13:58 roguelazer
I like. But let it damage ships. That'll discourage enemy ships from nuzzling up to the blind spots of potentially larger ships equipped with this "ECM" shield, as many of us did with the frigate's wing.
2003-11-17 19:01:21 Kyphro
Mabey shields are a little much, but it is a good idea... or just homers that track other missiles or something, it would be easy to script, just give them a solid state, and a few other things, and bam!, u have exploding homers when i pull out my physics mode and adv. gatling turret... *Drool*
~Tin Man~
2003-11-17 20:48:17 Magus
EMP shield seems to powerful. It would render the heavies all but immune to seeker fire. Not cool. Maybe the only way to settle the problem is to institute a system for countermeasures. There is a thread up there somewhere about it.
2003-11-18 00:27:43 Arolte
/me slaps his forehead
2003-11-18 09:32:19 genka
I don't quite see any point to making missles shootable. If you make them easy to shoot down, they won't o much, if you make them hard to shoot down, then there is no point.
If homers are shootable, they shouldn't be targetable. At least I think so. :P
2003-11-18 09:42:33 Kyphro
Mag, ur right, as i said, shields are a bit much, countermeasure are a really good idea too, mabey taking up a large slot or something, using an auto-targeting system, that takes up a seprate energy meter, or mabey just get too hot, making it more fair in fights due to cool down time and such, getting rid or targeting and such, so then only ships that needed it could use it due to the large port factor and such on less agile ships.. justa thought
~Tin Man~
2003-11-18 14:23:03 Phaserlight
Guys, you already *can* target warheads! Just use the { and } keys to cycle through the targets until you see "rocket008" or whatever. I'm not sure what this means in terms of shooting them down, but it seems like the devs are moving in that direction.
2003-11-18 15:15:04 Urza
First i wanna say that i hate when people steal my tactics (the Swarm seeker Rag. i invented it)
Second the whole targetable/shoot down/ counter measure idea has been around sinse before most of you had characters.
If a1 hadn't trashed the archive, i could pull up a really good topic about this.
I think we decided that the best bet would be a varaity of anti-missle weapons. i'll try to list them.
Targetable war heads- shoot em down, they go boom.
EMP bombs: disables the missles.
Full 360° AI turret that shoots down missles- Gives the heavies a chance. Sell a variety of em based on accuracy and power.
Missle splash can destroy missles- This means that you cant rush up and unload because the trail of missles will blow up right back at you.
The one thing i didn't like was the full auto on turrets because it would drain your battery, so i figure that teh AI can aim and stuff, but we gotta hit fire.
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2003-11-18 15:30:12 genka
--"Guys, you already *can* target warheads! Just use the { and } keys to cycle through the targets until you see "rocket008" or whatever. I'm not sure what this means in terms of shooting them down, but it seems like the devs are moving in that direction."--
Well, if you target a gemini (I think, could be jackhammers), you'll notice that the thing says "HeatSeeker-001" or something along those lines
Heat seekers used to be the lower-damage-higher-mobility homing weapon, which were "removed" a rather long time ago(along with my lovable little blue ions). I think that the devs aren't moving much in either way with the whole targeting thing, just leaving it the way it is, because no-one minds it much the way it is.
2003-11-18 16:08:49 roguelazer
Back to the emp shield: It isn't useful now. But what about when ships are 700m long and move like roids?
2003-11-18 16:37:48 Celebrim
roguelazer: Well, that's pretty much why I designed ECM the way I did (see my thread on countermeasures).
Urza: The advantage of an invisible shield of some sort (either ECM or EMP) is that you don't necessarily need to create and track an object representing the thing that destroys the warhead. An ECM 'shield' causes alot less lag than a mini-gatling would.
2003-11-18 18:35:03 Arolte
Please don't call the EMP shield an ECM. It isn't! ECM (electronic countermeasures) is used to jam transmissions (usually radar). An EMP shield will physically destroy missiles, not jam their tracking system. You're just confusing the hell outta everyone by mixing the terms. Thank you.
2003-11-18 18:54:49 genka
An EMC just might trigger the missiles proximity fuse before the missile hits anything, so THERE! HAH!
/me dances
woo! WOO! I WIN! WOO!!!
/me falls over
2003-11-18 20:30:40 Arolte
EMC? Not only did you misspell it, but your information is inaccurate. ECMs don't trigger missiles prematurely. All it does is mess with the signal that's used to track a missile, be it from an airplane or from a SAM site. There is no magical electronic countermeasure as of now that has the capability of detonating missiles. You'd need something physical for that, since proximity detonators aren't trigger electronically.
But what you may be thinking about is the proposed "Star Wars" defense system that was meant to use a series of lasers via orbiting satelites to ignite ICBM warheads prematurely in space. My idea of an EMP shield is pretty much the same thing, except with a continuous electrical charge rather than a laser beam. Either way there are no ECMs involved.
Although... it's hard to tell whether you were being sarcastic or not.
/me strangles genka
2003-11-19 03:54:20 Phaserlight
I seem to recall us having this very conversation a couple months ago and Celebrim saying that there was a difference between "smart" jamming that actually hacked the missile's guidance systems and "dumb" jamming that created interference to deny the missile target acquisition.
If a missile/rocket has some onboard device that causes it to detonate when it gets within a certain range of the target, I see no reason why there couldn't be some sort of ECM that fooled the missile into thinking it was closer to the target than it actually was, thereby causing it to prematurely detonate.
2003-11-19 04:03:28 Phaserlight
...and the thread I was thinking of is just a few topics down! ;). Apparently we already have the technology to create an "ECM shield" to trigger shells and rockets prematurely, and it's known as SEPS, or "Short-stop Electronic Protection System"
2003-11-19 08:38:35 Arolte
>If a missile/rocket has some onboard device that causes it to detonate
>when it gets within a certain range of the target, I see no reason why
>there couldn't be some sort of ECM that fooled the missile into thinking
>it was closer to the target than it actually was, thereby causing it to
>prematurely detonate.
As I said before, the "E" in ECM stands for ELECTRONIC. It's an electronic device that messes with the transmission sent from the missile to the aircraft/SAM site. It has absolutely no physical bearing on the target missile whatsoever. You can't have an electronic device detonate something that needs to be physically tricked. Most proximity detonators work physically, not electronically. You literally have to do something physical to the missile, be it firing a projectile or cooking it with lasers.
And the argument here was the usage of the term ECM. SEPS is a whole different system that focuses on setting off electronically fuzed munitions. Meaning the projectile must have the capability of being detonated electronically, which is certainly not the case for all missiles. If you read up on some sources, you'll find that the main focus of SEPS is for ground units only, since mortar fire and artillery shells can be "tricked" with this system more easily than a fast-moving missile.
2003-11-19 14:28:42 Phaserlight
Aye, some missiles are proximity fuzed while others are contact fuzed, but the *majority* of air to air missiles are proximity fuzed which rely on *electronic* signals to tell the missile when to detonate.
A good website that explains all this clearly is: http://www.ordnance.org/missile_components.htm
Read the sections labeled "Fuzing" and "TDD" about 3/4 of the way down.
A few snippets:
"TDDs are electronic detecting devices similar to the detecting systems in VT fuzes. They detect the presence of a target and determine the moment of firing. When subjected to the proper target influence, both as to magnitude and change rate, the device sends an electrical impulse to trigger the firing systems. The firing systems then act to fire an associated S&A device to initiate detonation of the warhead. Air-to-air guided missiles are normally fuzed for a proximity burst by using a TDDwith an S&A device."
"In the contact fuze, the force of impact closes a firing switch within the fuze to complete the firing circuit, detonating the warhead. Where proximity fuzing is used, the firing action is very similar to the action of proximity fuzes used with bombs and rockets."
So a contact fuze is indeed physical circuit and couldn't be tricked with ECM, but note the part about proximity fuzes being an *electronic* system. Therefore your statement that "Most proximity detonators work physically, not electronically" is entirely incorrect. The proximity detonation fuze is linked to a "Target Detection Device" which is an *electronic* system and could concievably be fooled by *electronic* counter measures.
The only homers in vendetta that aren't proximity fuzed are the yellowjacket and the stingray, consequently any sort of "SEPS" system probably wouldn't work on these two missiles, but would be great for stopping swarms, geminis, sunflares, jackhammers, and screamers.
2003-11-19 18:37:25 Arolte
Note the usage of "most" in my sentence. In any case, I'm trying to correct the usage of the term "ECM", not argue about whether SEPS should be used or not. So at least we got that outta the way. Although I'm still having trouble finding SEPS for use on aircraft. It looks like an infantry exclusive defense system. There may be a reason for that, but I can't say because I don't know much about it.
Nevertheless the idea behind SEPS and my concept of an EMP shield is pretty much the same--early detonation. So arguing over the technical points of either or are pretty much moot at this point. Ultimately, however, I'd prefer to have some visual feedback (lightning bolts) as to how these missiles are magically blowing up right before they impact a heavy class ship. I think most people would too. It is after a game and not a tech demo for the US army.
2003-11-20 00:14:39 ctishman
What about a different explanation?
For example: That space junk we see flowing by our cockpit can blow holes in a large ship during transit unless there's a shield. Thus, the ships equip one whose purpose is to knock away the space junk. However, this process creates lots of static electricity from the metal and dust and stuff bouncing off the shield. Some of it is harnessed to power the ship's electronics, and some just hangs out on the ship's superstructure, creating a massive doorknob hazard for crewmen.
Between nations, this technology varies in that the Serco's shields create a positive charge, and Itani (and thus Neutral*) shields create a negative charge. The result is that when Serco and Itani/Neut capships battle, great Frankenstein-esque arcs of lightning leap between the combatants as the charges equalize, providing yet another flight hazard for fighters. Because the fighters use wormholes to travel from place to place instead of high-speed drives, they do not need the shields, nor do they have the capacitance to store such a charge. Rumors always fly of the Itani coming up with a way around this, but nothing is concrete yet.
*Because the Itani are the scientists, and the Serco sure as heck aren't giving their technology away.
2003-08-27 11:00:37 Celebrim
One solution to 'rocket ramming' that doesn't get mentioned much anymore is having 'gizmos' that can be installed on a ship that would reduce the chances of enemy missile weapons succesfully attacking your ship. Most of these gizmos would fit an 'equipment slot' where non-weapon systems could be mounted. Generally speaking, we've always discussed these things in conjuction with guided weapons, but some of the 'gizmos' that have been thought up are equally applicable to rockets.
So here I'm going to list some of the major anti-missile systems (my favorites at least) that various people have mentioned.
1) ECM: This is my personal favorite. Most people don't quite understand what I'm mean when I use this phrase because they are thinking of only 'jamming' technologies which cause guided weapons to lose thier guidance - which I might call 'dumb ECM'. Instead of 'dumb ECM', I'm thinking of 'smart ECM' that attempts to 'hack' the enemy munition's sensors or processors and fool it about its target. We already have this technology and I would assume that as time goes on it will only become more and more prevelent.
To give you the idea in detail, I'll quote from Jim Dunnigan's excellent website www.strategypage.com:
"A lot of little known, but very useful, equipment got its first real workout in Iraq. One of these was the fifty pound Shortstop Electronic Protection System (SEPS). This is a 50 pound, vehicle mounted system that detects the radar signals transmitted by proximity fuzes in artillery and mortar shells, and rockets. A proximity fuze enables a shell or rocket to detonate above the ground, thus showering troops with fragments. Without the proximity fuze, the shell hits the ground, and that's [where] a lot of the fragments end up right away. SEPS will broadcast a signal that will fool the enemy proximity fuze into going off prematurely, leaving nearly all the fragments to fall harmlessly to the ground. Because of the weak signal from proximity fuzes, SEPS can only protect an area about 250 meters out, and even then, only about half the enemy proximity fuzes will be detonated prematurely. Even with those limitations, the $250,000 SEPS units, which can set up and in action within 30 seconds, were popular with the troops. They could often see another unit getting hammered by enemy artillery, and the premature shell detonations were pretty obvious."
That's exactly the sort of ECM I have in mind when I mention ECM. Those of you familiar with the works of Ian M. Banks and Gordon R. Dickson are probably already familiar with this sort of ECM in a sci-fi context.
The system I envision would work something like the following ( although there are probably better implementations that could be thought up, which is why I'm reopening the discussion). Each ship with an active ECM gizmo would be surrounded by two intangible spheroids at roughly 30m and 60m for fighter grade ECM, and at 50m and 100m for capital ship grade ECM. A missile weapon crossing each sphere would have a base 50% chance of detonating (ideally depending on the weapon type and quality), causing reduced or no damage to the target (and potentially blowing up the weapon in the face of the firer). The ECM could be toggled on or off - since weapons would be easier to dodge with it off. While on it would consume a small ammount of continious power - say 5 energy/sec for fighter grade and 50 energy/sec for capital ship grade.
2) Jamming Beam: This is the 'dumb ECM' version. Essentially it works like the above, but only works on guided weapons. Guided weapons entering the invisible spheroid around the target lose thier target.
3) Counter-measure dispencer: Counter-measures is a general term, but I can't think of a better one for the kind of system I'm thinking of here. Basically when active, the counter measure dispencer automatically fires a small short range high velocity homing missile at any missile type munition that gets within a certain range (say 100m). In addition to chasing down its target, the munition tries to get guided missiles to chase it instead of thier target.
4) Chaff dispenser: One of the more frequently discussed types of counter measures, this doesn't necessarily have to be literal metal 'chaff' but rather a dropable counter measure of some sort that attempts to electromagnetically trick guided missiles into believing that it is thier target. How successful it is depends on how close the target and chaff are the missile. It's possible that the chaff dispencer only works on particular kinds of guided munitions. It's also possible that chaff might cause a confusing double image on radar. Because its of relatively limited use, it should be cheap and readily available.
5) Flares: The standard counterpart to chaff in most games of this type, flares is another missile countermeasure based on 1960's technology that is sort of anachronistic in a sci-fi game but still might have a place if only to keep n00bs for asking why we don't have flares. Basically, this is a very cheap and readily available countermeasure that only works on a very limited class of guided munitions - namely 'heat seeking' ones like the Gemini's, and tricks them into believing thier target is the flare and not the ship.
6) ECM rockets: A small weapon slot countermeasure that works like 'smart ECM' above but the 'ECM sphere' is tied to a relatively high speed rocket. Possibly, useful for defeating head on rocket attacks.
7) ECM mines: A small weapon slot countermeasure that works like 'smart ECM' above but the ECM sphere is tied to a relatively long duration stationary mine. Useful as terrain for dodging rockets, and for preventing overrun attacks with rockets - ei a so called 'rocket rammer' makes an attack pass, you dodge the rocket, and drop behind a mine which potentially catches the firer in his own barrage if he isn't careful.
8) 'Wild Weasel': A term borrowed from SFB which is in turn borrowed from the name a particular type of US electronic warfare plane, 'Wild Weasel' refers to using a powerful electronic signal to fool all of the guided munitions in the area (for our purposes lets say 600m) into thinking you are thier target. Basically, useful in a specialized electonic warfare ship, this would allow you to protect your allies from attack at presumably a reasonably high cost in continious energy. Of course, you better have a good means of protecting yourself as well. :)
9) Anti-missile system: General term for the various 'laser' or gatling type means of shooting down incoming missile munitions (similar I suppose to the US Phlanyx system) that have been suggested by a large number of people. I don't particularly favor this idea because in effect it does the same thing as the 'Smart ECM' system but appears to me to require alot more video processing, server calculations, and bandwidth usage. Therefore, I'd just as soon use the 'Smart ECM' implementation.
10) Radar Jammer: While not technically a missile countermeasure, if various classes of guided missiles are introduced which require 'locks' or point to point guidance, a radar jammer (whether dumb or smart, and in this case dumb) would be an effective countermeasure against them. Basically, this is a means of rendering all enemy radars 'blind' to all targets except those broadcasting jamming signals within a certain range at some cost in continious power. If a particular guided missile requires a radar lock to function, then obviously 'blinding' the firing weapons radar is an effective means of protecting all of your allies in range from those weapons. Also generally useful even if the opponents aren't using those types of weapons, because it means your friends are more likely to be able to blindside thier targets. Of course, with a 'dumb jammer' the jamming vessel shows up like a sore thumb, but a 'smart jammer' that 'gets in the head' of the radar and basically turns it off might prove to powerful (it has no real drawback compared to the enormous advantage it provides).
2003-08-27 13:33:27 genka
I like it!
/me puts "n00bs stamp of approval" on celebrim's post
2003-08-27 15:36:11 Urza
I love the ECM idea!! think about how easy it would be to use nukes on fighters and stuff!! just think!!! instead of a 10m prox radius, it would have 50m!
Sorry Cele, i just had to. I would think it would be better if it confused the missle's prox range, so it thought it was no where near hitting, unless got withing 1/2 the normal prox range
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2003-08-27 17:40:08 toshiro
if we have ECM, we need ECCM, else the guided weapons aren't any good at all.
make them take up more space (less missiles per rack) or fire less frequently (eccm has to warm up or something).
we can't just nerf the whole missile menu.
2003-08-27 18:41:08 Sage
I'm not even sure this is necessary. If Rockets were targetable and destructible the problem would be solved
2003-08-27 19:58:26 Celebrim
Urza: "Sorry Cele, i just had to."
What are you sorry for? Bring it on.
"I love the ECM idea!! think about how easy it would be to use nukes on fighters and stuff!! just think!!! instead of a 10m prox radius, it would have 50m!"
And in this case I don't even have to make up a responce. I can just quote myself:
"The ECM could be toggled on or off - since weapons would be easier to dodge with it off. While on it would consume a small ammount of continious power - say 5 energy/sec for fighter grade and 50 energy/sec for capital ship grade."
Hmmm, you think maybe I had thought of that? Hmmm, seeing how I'm all the time saying 'balance', 'balance', 'balance' like a broken record you think maybe that I might not suggest anything with a powerful effect if I didn't think it had a drawback?
"I would think it would be better if it confused the missle's prox range, so it thought it was no where near hitting..."
That might work OK for centurians and valkyries, but it probably wouldn't be so nice for larger and less manueverable ships. Besides which, if it worked the way you suggest it would be too good. It would be basically impossible to hit a Valk with a rocket, but the same could not be said of a Valks ability to hit something else with a rocket.
Sage: "If Rockets were targetable and destructible the problem would be solved."
I don't think targetable rockets would change a damn thing. I can't think of many if any fights I've been involved in where the ability to target the rocket would have been all that important.
toshiro: The guided weapons aren't that good already, which is fitting of a weapon that takes little or no skill to fire. Before you can have good guided weapons, you have to have things like 'radar locks' or active guidance or point to point guidance so that some skill is required to use the weapon (and players are given a chance to screw them up).
2003-08-27 20:20:44 Urza
i have seen people who have done many forgetful things (forget to set up weapons, forget to spot a nuke heading at the astroid near them, ect) SO what makes you so sure people would remember to turn it off? The odds are they wouldn't.
As for valks and rockets, well..
A) no equiptment slots in it
B) Dont forget that it's only a 50% chance or so that this might happen
C) there is no C for now.
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2003-08-27 20:43:50 Spellcast
ecm and jammers and chaff & flares are nice and all, but how about a weapon slot item "decoy missile"
decoy missile
size - small
ammo - 6 (1 shot fires 1 missile)
fuel - 20 seconds
effect - when launched, the missile immidiately begins a series of random doges, while emitting a false set of electronic signals that confuses enemy radar into thinking the missile is you. all ships and missiles locked onto you when the decoy is fired have a 50% chance of locking onto the decoy instead.
adv decoy missile
size - large
ammo - 5 (1 shot fires 1 missile)
fuel - 15 seconds
effect - same as basic decoy rockets, except that all missiles, and ships locked onto you when you fire have a 95% chance of locking onto the decoy instead of you.
obviously this would do nothing versus rockets as they are unguided, and visually the decoy image could still appear as a missile so it wouldnt do much good in an in your face dogfight. but against guided missiles or if you can get more than 350-400m from an opponent, it could be useful.
2003-08-27 21:21:04 Celebrim
Urza: "i have seen people who have done many forgetful things (forget to set up weapons, forget to spot a nuke heading at the astroid near them, ect) SO what makes you so sure people would remember to turn it off? The odds are they wouldn't."
I guess that's one of the ways we'd separate the skillful, awake experienced pilots, from the unskillful, inattentive, rookie pilots, right?
Gee, you think making the pilot show some skill is a bad idea?
Spellcast: Nice idea, but basically that's what the 'counter measure dispencer' does, only the counter measure dispencer also has a back up plan in the event that it can't fool the incoming munitions or they are unguided.
Still, weapon slot counter measures wouldn't be bad. I think the advanced decoy is too good though. It's all the advantages of a 'Wild Weasel' and none of the drawbacks.
2003-08-29 15:15:32 Urza
so we're supposed to keep a watch on our target, watch the radar for missles (which we have pretty much no idea how close they are on the radar anyway, we can only tell by sound, and nukes and rockets make no sound), fire, dodge, aim, and pick the perfect time to turn our other gizmos on and off.
A bit much, i think.
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2003-08-29 15:30:51 Pyro
Here's the thing: it affects ALL rockets. Including your own... Since this gives it another drawback, it's not quite an uber-outfit... /me likes... :D
2003-08-29 15:56:23 Celebrim
Urza: "A bit much, i think."
No more complicated than the average space flight sim, and certainly no more complicated than Star Fleet Command.
Pyro: It wasn't my intention to imply that it detonated your own rockets. It's 'smart' ECM. Even without blowing up your own or your allies rockets, its still got enough disadvantages to balance it IMO. Put too many more disadvantages on it, and you nerf it.
2003-08-29 18:00:19 Urza
still, do you want a game people can just pick up, or a game that has a big learning curve?
Also, i just dont think it's right that a player should be forced to guestimate when the missle will be hit, then rely on guesswork for when to turn his gadget off. So in responce...
The APG missle detection unit: It detects the nearest enemy missle and tells you how close it is under your crosshairs
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2003-08-29 19:07:47 HumpyThePenguin
hey, why dont we have an extra spot where it lists the 5 closest homers and display them in meters away from your ship, like mabye add it to the left thingy, and make it toggle-able
2003-08-30 17:50:53 Nighty
Humpy: not a bad idea. There's lots of info one readily needs that's not displayed on most game huds, IMHO. Fitting them all in would require a complete HUD redesign though, and they would need to get rid of the ugly unreadable font and change it to a font that remains readable even at smaller sizes.
Some of Celebrims ideas I like, some I don't. It's worth thinking about though. But Celebrim... Wouldn't all these countermeasures create more network traffic and server calculations? I thought those were precisely your arguments against rebalancing the rockets as proposed by SirCamps in the "the [sunflare/fighter/bomber] fix" thread... Besides, countermeasures require creating specific code for particular (new) objects: "equipment slots" and the various pieces of equipment that go in it... Not so very different from creating specific code for particular objects such as ammo based/non ammo based weapons, as proposed by SirCamps, is it? So there's another reason why following your own reasoning this is a bad idea.
And let's not forget; a wise man (yup, you) once told me that the game is the way it is because the devs have decided it should be so, and it's rather rude to try to impose my own way of thinking onto the whole community, like I did regarding the engines/maneuverability. Then why, oh master, have you yourself fallen prey to this negative attitude towards the Dev's work, and why are you, once so humble, now imposing your views (there should be countermeasures, and here's my proposal on how they should work) onto the community? Let it go, master... Let it go before it consumes you. It would be a disaster for the entire school of Celebrim, and for me personaly to loose such a valuable mentor to the dark forces he himself so often warned us for.
2003-08-31 01:30:17 Celebrim
Nighty: I'm not sure you aren't misunderstanding me.
"Wouldn't all these countermeasures create more network traffic and server calculations? I thought those were precisely your arguments against rebalancing the rockets as proposed by SirCamps in the "the [sunflare/fighter/bomber] fix" thread.."
First, the specific complaint against SirCamps was increasing the cycle rate of an ammunition consuming weapon. We already have statements from the devs indicating that this creates to much network traffic and that for now such ideas cannot be implemented.
In theory, everything is going to create additional burden on the server, the client, and/or the connection. In my suggestion regarding countermeasures, I try to balance the burden created by the feature with the advantage it gives to gameplay and throwout any idea that can be achieved by doing something similar. For instance, AMS is a cool idea, but since the net effect is the same as ECM, then ECM would be better. Of course, if ECM as described creates too much burden, that too will have to go.
"Besides, countermeasures require creating specific code for particular (new) objects: "equipment slots" and the various pieces of equipment that go in it... Not so very different from creating specific code for particular objects such as ammo based/non ammo based weapons, as proposed by SirCamps, is it? So there's another reason why following your own reasoning this is a bad idea."
Actually it is different. It's different because ammo based weapons already exist and can probably be balanced without creating alot of new code. On the other hand, none of the above gizmos exist. The ideal solution is to make use of existing code as much as possible (at least that's how I'd feel about it if I were writing), but in order for any new thing to exist you have to create some new stuff. The trick is deciding what is worth working on and what is not (which isn't for us to do, but maybe by discussing the merits of the various ideas we can help the devs make the best decision). Maybe ideally all of the above could be created, but probably you would have to choose what would be the best to implement from all the ideas you have. That's why I make such extensive lists; not because I'm demanding everything, but because I don't want something to be overlooked in favor of something that might not add as much to gameplay.
"a wise man (yup, you) once told me that the game is the way it is because the devs have decided it should be so, and it's rather rude to try to impose my own way of thinking onto the whole community"
Did I say that? Hmm, I like being right. Thanks. Try not to compliment me too often, or my head might explode.
Again, the difference is that nothing I'm suggesting exists. I think there is a difference between trying to rally people for a change in an existing feature, and trying to solicite input on a feature that hasn't yet been (and maybe never will be) implemented. I think that there is an even bigger difference in doing that and writing a post in which you demand an abrupt change in a feature that the devs have said is part of thier final design or which is so intrinsic to the game that one can't help but suspect it is close to the final design.
"Then why, oh master, have you yourself fallen prey to this negative attitude towards the Dev's work"
Look again, Grasshopper. ;) Where in my original post do you see negative attitude toward the Dev's work?
"now imposing your views (there should be countermeasures, and here's my proposal on how they should work)"
Padawan, read my opening statements again. ;) Did I actually say what you have accused me of? And remember, I'm not suggesting changing anything, and I think I do try to suggest things which seem to be in line with the devs philosophy as best as I understand it. If it turns out otherwise, then the old ideas get dropped and I try to talk about things in terms of what the devs have revealed. And by all means, if this is hard and doesn't fit with the feature list, the devs don't need my permission not to add it. The game can work fine without countermeasures. They are being mentioned because they are a typical feature of these sort of games and might possibly add something to gameplay.
2003-08-31 08:58:21 Arolte
I like the idea of the "smart" ECM with the premature proximity detonator, but I'd much rather NOT see anything like the "dumb" ECM that confuses the tracking of missiles. The reason being that Geminis and any other guided missile right now is already easy as hell to dodge. By adding ECM, chaff and flares, you're practically making them even more useless. And remember, Vendetta's dogfighting style reflects that of WWI and WWII. BVR missiles (let alone missiles altogether, but let's put that aside) didn't exist back then, and so the need for chaff and flares didn't either. Why would you want to dump countermeasures on visual range missiles that can already be dodged? Isn't that a bit of overkill? I'd say so.
That being said, do you remember the post I made about the "new" missiles? Every missile would be contact-only, but would have quicker and better target tracking. However, the player would be hinted in one way or another as to what type of missile (radar-guided, laser-guided, heat-seeking, etc.) that was being fired, and in that respect the player would use their skills and experience to know what to do (turn off radar, shut off engines, hide behind obstacles, etc.) in order to dodge 'em... if they choose not to simply boost away that is.
Dodging missiles should be a skill, not a matter of flipping a switch or dropping chaff and flare in hopes that it'll stray off target. Why? Because it's more fun that way, and it makes guided missiles actually useful for a change. If everyone and their dog bought ECM, even if only for bombers and frigates, nobody would bother mounting guided missiles on to their fighters. I'd much rather see the WWII style of combat be preserved than to see lots of gadgets that basically take away the skill of dodging altogether.
2003-08-31 17:26:41 Nighty
Arolte: I kinda agree with Celebrim here; both of you have some good points though. Combat should indeed require skill, but technology to help a little is not something I'd rule out immediately either.
But I'm kinda worried when I read stuff like this. It's as if you all want to keep vendetta down to some giant massive multiplayer fragfest; I disagree there. Battle should not be encouraged to the point where all you ever do is fight and fight and fight. Fighting is part of the game, but there should be other things to do as well. The game is not some UT clone in space, but a MMORPG. That means it will have to take months and months to develop your char, you should be sucked into the game to the point where you will actualy be worrying about your cargo and life, instead of just some silly fragfest. If you want to play a shoot 'em up, play UT. If you wanna play a shoot 'em up in space, play X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, Freespace 2 online or whatever. There are plenty of games that cater to the fast action packed shoot 'em up genre, but little to no games that cater to the character development kind of game the devs want Vendetta to be.
My vision of the game will be one where I can choose a carreer as a fighter for the military, bounty hunter, pirate, trader, smuggler or whatever and spend months acquiring some wealth and better ships, honing my skills in non lethal combat. The penalty for death should be greater. This would make people be more cautious when they travel dangerous regions of space, but this would also demotivate pirates etc... from just attacking everyone they see, since they could die in the process, and even if the target is a noob, he might know some veterans who're willing to seek the offender out and hunt him down.
So instead of focusing so much on the combat aspects of the game, let's not forget the direction the game is going to. Battle will have its place, but it won't be the only element in the game. For those of you that are triggerhappy, some form of non-lethal combat could be put in place, like some sort of competition in arenas with nerfed weapons: they don't do actual damage, so you won't die, but just do "simulated damage". If you "die" in the arena you're just disabled and towed back to the station for simulated repair and reload.
Of course this doesn't rule out the possibility of "illegal arenas" where people fight with real weapons to the death, but the penalty for dying in the game is so great that only the most skilled warriors will take the risk of dying by entering such an underground competition.
It's a bit offtopic, but I just felt the need to remind you guys that in the final game combat will probably not be the only thing you can do to amuse yourselves, and I hope actual combat will be greatly discouraged by raising the penalty of death, and by making it illegal in government controlled regions of space. You don't see people in real life going out and fighting everyone they see either, for the very same reasons. Yes, I know, this is a game and not real life, but if you want to turn it into a fragfest, what distinguishes it from other similar games? Nothing. There's already enough fragfests; it would be nice to see some company putting out a game that tries to be different from the other "thirteen in a dozen" multiplayer space combat games.
Just my two (euro)cents.
2003-08-31 17:58:11 Demonen
Ultimate countermeasure: If you sit still next to a roid your radar signature blends with the roid. You are invisible to radar unless the person trying to target you is within 300m.
<Zathras> UH OH! Pirate! *hides in the roids* HELP in sector 10 please!
If they cannot see you, they cannot fire missiles at you.
USELESS in a dogfight tho'. Who slows down and hides next to a roid with missiles allready incoming?
2003-08-31 23:04:09 Celebrim
Arolte: Although we are approaching this from two different directions, we seem to basically be in agreement on this.
Nighty:
http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=2298
I usually spend less time focusing on suggestions for the RPG aspects of the game because I have so little information about what the devs want for that part of the game. I don't want to get the community too hyped up for something that may not even happen, but the above post was prompted to a large extent because I thought people were forgetting about the fact that this is supposed to eventually become a RPG in thier posts.
2003-09-02 07:53:38 Arolte
Yes, Demonen, exactly. See, that's one example of skill right there. Using your environment as a tactical advantage is what it's all about. Although radar masking hasn't been implemented, you can still use asteroids to your advantage. But anyway, that's exactly the type of thing I'm talking about.. Rather than flipping a switch and watching the missiles explode prematurely or whatever, you'll need to use your brains to figure out what type of projectile is being fired at you, and react accordingly.
Nighty, while you raise a few good points, I'll still have to stick with what I've said. You'll always run the risk of running into pirates in the Vendetta universe, regardless of whether you want to fight or not. It's something that everyone will have to accept. You'll always have to find ways to either defend yourself or avoid fighting altogether.
If you choose the peaceful path of trading or mining asteroids, then by all means you're free to boost away and avoid confrontation altogether. My feeling is that Vendetta's universe will eventually be big enough that you'll hardly run into as many battles as you do right now. So you may get your wish whether or not the deathmatch aspects of the game remain.
While I can understand the need for "cheap" countermeasures for those who don't like to fight (or even for newbies), I also see it as an exploit for those who choose combat... and that's my greatest fear--that the skill of dogfighting will eventually be taken away to some insanely boring technology. IMO the easiest way to solve this problem is to simply provide fast trade/mining ships (but at a VERY HIGH cost) to players as a way of avoiding combat, rather than resorting to ECM systems and whatnot.
The best defense is often to avoid combat altogether, and having a fast ship will allow those people who don't like to fight to carry on with their own business... but of course at a high price. Anyone fortunate enough to catch these fast trade/mining ships should also be rewarded for their efforts, of course. So I think the solution to the problem you present, Nighty, is in the ships and balance of ships themselves.
2003-09-02 08:52:25 Kuvagh
Keeping the RPG element in mind this might be fun. It could be classified as special or advanced equipment, similiar to special or advanced ships. Players would only be rewarded with such a device after jumping through a great deal of hoops and would only be able to own one, two or three of them at a time.
I think a good thing for the ECM to do would be to simply decrease the proximity of incoming weapons. A 30m rocket could have its prox cut down to 20 or 15 or something.
ECCM (electronic counter counter measures) would also have to be available as special equipment and should be more easily obtained than the ECM.
Or it could all just be left out. Personally I'd like to be able to target incoming rockets and shoot them down myself.with the g key and shoot them down with tachyons. Perhaps there could also be a chaff-flak gun that makes shooting down rockets easier but isn't useful as an offensive weapon.
Asp
2003-09-02 09:29:59 Celebrim
"I think a good thing for the ECM to do would be to simply decrease the proximity of incoming weapons. A 30m rocket could have its prox cut down to 20 or 15 or something."
That would work fine for a fighter class craft, but it works less well for a 50m long freighter. For a craft capable of dodging rockets, ECM is often a suboptimal choice and a skilled fighter pilot using ECM would definately have to pay attention and toggle the ECM off when necessary. You'd probably be better off with a countermeasure dispencer, and you'd probably be even better off than that with some sort of engine enhancement to improve your thrust or speed. But for a Freighter that can't dodge and more or less would be hit by every rocket coming its way, ECM is essential for avoiding the maximum damage of each of those rockets. Just because we don't have bigger ships doesn't mean we shouldn't plan for them.
"Personally I'd like to be able to target incoming rockets and shoot them down myself.with the g key and shoot them down with tachyons."
Good as you may be Asp, I don't think you'd be able to shoot down 6 or 12 rockets fired at you. Quite the contrary I think pausing to try to shoot down any of them would distract you from dodging and make it more likely that you would be hit by some of them. I just don't see making rockets targetable as any kind of solution, and just as a personal preference it reminds me too much of some of the worst features of the X-Wing series.
2003-09-02 10:49:08 Arolte
ECCM? Now this is getting ridiculous. Before you know it we'll also have ECCCMs... and then ECCCCMs. Jesus, people, what's wrong with a little skill? ECMs are primarily used today for BVR missiles, which Vendetta doesn't have.
I mean it's nice and all to have all kinds of wacky gadgets, but this is something that would potentially ruin dogfighting altogether, making your weapon selection more like guesswork and luck--Oops, I accidentally brought homing missiles against an ECM fighter, now I'm screwed! Grrrrr...
2003-09-02 11:33:55 roguelazer
I agree with asp. I have for a long time. Let us at least try to shoot rockets. Now, with unguided rockets, it wouldn't be that useful. But if you could destroy one swarmer with a railgun shot, the whole batch would probably explode. And that would be a nice feature. :D
2003-09-02 11:36:42 Celebrim
Arolte: Be careful about calling things ridiculous.
"I mean it's nice and all to have all kinds of wacky gadgets, but this is something that would potentially ruin dogfighting altogether, making your weapon selection more like guesswork and luck--Oops, I accidentally brought homing missiles against an ECM fighter, now I'm screwed! Grrrrr..."
ECCM would ruin dogfighting altogether? I haven't spend alot of time talking about ECCM because I'm not entirely sure if it would work or if it would work, whether its worth the server load it creates. But, lets just assume for a moment its easy to implement and address your claims.
ECM would only have an effect on you if you were using a non-energy weapon. Yes, ECM is only going to hurt you if you are what people incorrectly call a 'rocket rammer'. But does ECM as I described it really kill rockets 100% of the time? No, a quick look at it shows that 25% of the time it has no effect, and 25% of the time vs. a jackhammer or sunflare it has almost the same effect as getting hit by a rocket. And for that the ECM ship has to be expending power continiously, reducing his ability to turbo away from the threat.
But lets suppose that not needing to dodge 50% of the rockets is enough to totally nerf rockets. Well, why are you only armed with rockets anyway? Why didn't you consider that you might come up against a ship equipped with ECM, a counter measure dispencer, and force disapating armor which was relatively immune to rockets and homing missiles and LOAD MORE THAN ONE TYPE OF WEAPON ON YOUR SHIP.(!!!) You think maybe having a gauss or a tachyon as a secondary weapon might be a good idea? Gee, what an original thought. Or, if you were so in love with rockets that you didn't want to load anything but rockets, why didn't you equip ECCM to nullify the advantages of any ECM ships you might encounter? There is no luck involved here. If you are depending entirely on your skill with rockets (or your skill with homing missiles whatever that means), then you ought to be screwed against someone that thought 'Gee, everyone is using nothing but rockets, maybe I should equip my fighter to defend against that'.
Besides, rock-paper-sissors is not entirely a bad thing.
PS: roguelazer: If swarms are fired far enough away from you that you have a clear view of them, they probably aren't that dangerous anyway.
2003-09-02 12:50:44 roguelazer
Swarms hurt if you're carrying a flag. It is pretty hard to dodge 10 swarms whilst trying to dodge other types of weapons too. But think- one railgun shot could take out 5 swarms if the launcher had fired them while accelerating.
2003-09-02 14:23:03 Arolte
Celebrim, judging by your use of percentages what you're saying is that these weapons work arbitrarily. So 25% of the time they work or 75% of the time they don't work. What's the point? There should be some solid logic behind how the ECM works, and not just some random value tossed in to reflect how effective it is.
To me this seems like a lot of work has to be put into programming something that will only work randomly. It'll turn into a game of dice-rolling and chances, rather than something with logic and skill behind it. My concern is that everyone's going to equip ECM gadgets and missiles will be totally ineffective. Yeah that's great, you can equip more weapons other than missiles, which is what I do 99% of the time anyway. But that'll also give an unfair advantage to people only use gauss and tachyons/gravitons, and will make Geminis even MORE ineffective (as if they weren't enough).
Why is ECM important to Vendetta's gameplay? CTF will be taken out, meaning no more players who are cruising across sectors. You can also boost away from a homing/swarm missile VERY easily without taking damage. So why is ECM needed exactly? It just seems like an idea that was tossed out to say, "HEY!! Look what I found! Why don't we add this into the game?" Do ECMs really have any practical use if the simple action of boosting can get you to avoid rockets/missiles completely? That's what I'm trying to question here.
2003-09-02 14:41:51 roguelazer
Maybe boosting SHOULDN'T be able to avoid rockets/missiles. Plus you have larger ships that A) Won't be able to maneuver very well and B) Might not have boost at all. Take that into consideration and make ECM cap-ship only.
2003-09-02 18:21:38 Arolte
Perhaps. If they were capital ship exclusive i'd understand. But even then it already takes like twenty avalons to bring one down... and that's for a stationary target! So I'd still feel weary of ECM usage on capital ships. But maybe on something as crappy as the current Ragnarok, I can see why they'd be used.
If we're going to see faster and better tracking missiles, I would rather not see missiles where it's not possible to outrun 'em while boosting. There has to be some breaking point, perhaps 140m/s, where boosting will get you to safely get you away from a missile. Right now that breaking point is way too early in the boosting period, which is why most missiles right now are useless.
Anyway, I think I should restate three of my many previous proposals for these "new and improved" missiles, which may get you thinking about why ECMs may not be necessary after all:
1. The proximity detonator could be reduced so that they're impact-only weapons, since the missiles actually tend to hit their target more (no more 2% damage BS). The size of your ship will finally be a real factor in your safety, which may get more people to use the Centurion despite it's single S-port.
2. The ammunition of each missile pod should be GREATLY reduced. Because these missiles will be more powerful, quicker, and smarter, the need for ammo reduction is necessary to retain balance. I'd say no more than 4-6 missiles per pod. They should be used sparingly to cripple the target, (at least 50% damage per missile) not as the spamming tool that they are now.
3. Missiles can be dodged by their types. I had a list of missile types where you can easily scramble their tracking computers by the action you take for YOUR (the target) ship. For example you can come to a complete stop and shut down your engines to fake a heat-seeking missile out. You can turn your radar off (or drop cargo) for a radar-seeking missile to get it confused also. It's those little things that will require you to learn from experience, and therefore allow you to dodge missiles effectively without ECM usage.
PS: I also like the idea of being able to target warheads. An advanced gatling turret or two could probably blow a lot of missiles up prematurely, which may be the advantage for heavier ships.
PPS: If the devs are in fact planning ECMs, I'd like to request that they be L-port only. I can understand the argument why they'd be necessary for something as slow for the Ragnarok, but not something for fighters and smaller ships. Maybe a change like that will give the Warthog a new reputation as a stealth fighter.
2003-09-03 10:10:02 Celebrim
"But even then it already takes like twenty avalons to bring one down... and that's for a stationary target!"
I read a statement like that and my thought is 'only twenty'?
"I would rather not see missiles where it's not possible to outrun 'em while boosting."
Agreed.
With regards to your point #3, I do agree that something like the X-Wing model of superfast and agile homers and a simple button you can peck to avoid them makes for boring gameplay. But I don't see your particular suggestions as necessarily practical, and I don't see how that takes more or less skill and awareness than the proper use of something like ECM.
"If the devs are in fact planning ECMs, I'd like to request that they be L-port only."
I never intended to suggest that most countermeasures should occupy weapons ports. Rather, countermeasures should occupy some sort of 'equipment port' for non-weapons. The larger the ship the more of these ports they should have. Centurians, Valks, Vultures, and Warthogs might have three, while Wraiths and Hornets might have four, and big ships like Centaurs, Proms, and Ragnaroks might have five. This would greatly increase the configurability of ships, as well as give more reason for flying a big ship. You could put ECM on a Warthog or Centurian, but personally I think that would be a sub-optimal build. In a light fighter, I think you'd be better off relying on your agility to dodge rocket type weapons, as the ECM would cause you to 'catch' alot more rockets than you otherwise would. If you must use a counter-measure in the light fighter, the counter-measure dispencer is probably better, but really counter-measures are basically designed with big unmanueverable ships in mind because they otherwise would basically automatically be hit by every incoming rocket, homing weapon, etc. fired at them.
2003-11-17 03:19:10 toshiro
*bump* so that roguelazer is content
2003-11-17 20:03:42 Skyfox
Coutnermeasures is nessisary if we want to keep guided missiles in the game. Being wiped out by somthing you simply can't avoid no matter how good you are is no fun at all. I think that there should be two types of ECM.
Much like modern day aircraft, (Falcon 4 is awsome game, practicly all thats used is missiles, yet for the most part awsome for the skill required to fight right.) we have flares/chaff, which is held in a certian quantity in a small hold to be released upon pushing a button. The chaff/flare creats a massive signature which the missile will immidiatly home into. This is a sort of "last resort" if the main ECM - jamming, fails. The jamming uses multiple frequency waves to distrupt the missiles tracking system, now this isn't always the fixer, a lot of times a missile will find its way around the system, and if you turn on the system too late, then it will do no good. Basicly, if you leave it on too long, it fails, if you put it on too late, it fails. Proper usage of the jamming system will result in your getting away safely. Lazy, and unskilled use will do you practicly nothing.
Also, whenever we get enough sectors, to make special outfits/toys specific to far, out of reach, high tech systems where it costs a lot of money- you can get a very good jammer, then you have your crap jammers back in normal space.
I want there to be MORE seeker missiles and stuff. Although, with those seekers, there need to be an effective anti missile system so that fighting remians interesting.
2003-11-17 22:08:37 Celebrim
Skyfox: Some would say now that the guided missiles in the game are so easy to avoid that we don't need countermeasures, but I agree with you that before we make any better guided missiles (see the toys thread for some examples) we need countermeasures for just the reason you state.
Very recently, there have been talks about the Development of a PDS that would be able to lock-on and shoot down incoming homing weapons.
The idea is that a PDS system would better protect large slow moving captiol ships (like Ragnoroks and Centuars) stop incoming missiles, but not nessecarily all of them.
The PDS could also fire automatically on hostile ships under a certain distance and could also operate as a Turret like the AGTs.
Lets hear your ideas.
The idea is that a PDS system would better protect large slow moving captiol ships (like Ragnoroks and Centuars) stop incoming missiles, but not nessecarily all of them.
The PDS could also fire automatically on hostile ships under a certain distance and could also operate as a Turret like the AGTs.
Lets hear your ideas.
Look a few threads down, and also about eight threads down, and also about twelve threads down.