Hello all -

I would like to preface this by saying this is my first ever thread having started on these forums. Furthermore, this is a long post and if you are impatient or easily bored you may not want to continue much further. Now, to begin...

I am hoping that this could be a thread where ideas of anti missle and missle tweaks could be listed to further improve the game.

On a quick related side note: As far as I see energy weapons have had no complaints and are working great in game, good job! (I personally love em!)

Now on to the main show.

At the moment, missles are extremely powerful. Yes, in real life a missle is powerful, but I mean, DAMN these missles are beastly.

I propose a few changes to the actual missles first and foremost. (You may agree or disagree on these, these are personal opinions, feel free to disagree, and PLEASE post why! :D)

1. Make different kinds of ways missles can track.
a. heat seaking
b. radar seeking, track off of your radar
c. electronic seeking, seek based off of opponents radar and how big the "electric field" is. (IE: if he is bigger he has a bigger electric field. Also (see later) if radar enhancement or something else is installed in a "device" slot that would increase this field.

2. Make the missles seek more or less depending upon the amount fired. While theoretically firing 8 missles off at once they could all track the same if they are fired froma swarm weapon chances are, they won't. These swarm missles (I haven't personally used them, but I gather what they are) seem to be the biggest problem. Now, logically, if you're firing 8 missles they are NOT going to track as well as 1 missle. Simply because the tracking systems are going to be cheaper in the missles.

2a. Make different missle types for different launchers. These missle types could track better or worse and would have more or less flight time. The launcher would be responsible for the amount launched and the ROF. Also a launcher would have a set mass for missles inside. Missles would carry their own weight and mass. In this way swarms could be made more deadly BUT they would be more costly. A VERY good balance, in my view at least.

That's all I can think of for now.

Now, on to a couple more fundamentle changes.

1. I have read suggestions of device slots on ships. This is an excellent idea! With the use of device slots many things could be brought into play. With device slots a whole new multitude of items could put into the gameworld. Whether or not shown externally at first they could greatly balance the game.

Some (anti missle) devices.

a. ECM, this would lower your electronic field and also confuse radar guided missles. This would last permanately while the ECM was in the device slot.
b. Flare launcher, these flares could throw off heat seeking missles, but would last for a limited time.
c. Chaff launcher, this would highly lower your electronic field and confuse radar guided missles (more so then ECM) for a short period.
d. Shield generator, while not strictly JUST anti missle a shield generator could draw power from your battery and divert it toward a temporary shield that would act like armor on top of armor. This would be very helpful to traders who would have more interest in running then fighting. And would, hopefully, be trying to avoid conflict as much as possible.

Other devices could obviously be made that are not geared toward anti missles. Smaller more maneuverable ships would (theoretically) have less slots. In this way you could make your ship impervious to missles by filling your slots with anti missle devices, but you would give up, for example, the ability to have a longer ranged radar (if that were a device).

These are some ideas I have at the moment that would help to limit the insane killing rate and use of missles. I would like to make it clear though that I feel missles are important and still need to see use. I just feel that they haven't been thought out fully enough yet.

I personally don't know how hard these changes would be to implement, but I could see them making the game even more popular, at least to me!

PS:

(again) PLEASE feel free to point out any problems that you see with the above so that I may be able to change my ideas some and see if they could be improved. I would not want to suggest something and see it implemented only to TOTALLY screw the game up.

PPS:

Devs, thanks so much for being an active part of these forums!

Your idea's whilst good, don't really go along with the direction i personally think the game is going in.

Skill based combat.

Balancing out with devices, ecm systems, more complicated missiles, even the repair gun which has been implimented leads to more problems of balance, and more chances of abusing the system in ways it's not designed to work..

This is my personal opinion though :) take with a pinch of salt.

I agree with Tempo. I would much rather see a solution that demands dodging the swarms through skill rather than "click-missile is off your tail." It seems too easy.

I'd prefer a way to bring skill into actually firing the missile. Like having to get a missile lock, or having to keep your nose pointed at the target in order to make the missile track. (Turning around makes it go dumb.)

I know that the game is skill based, but that doesn't mean that it won't still be skill based.

It would take skill to outfit a ship well, and also to actually use the missles or counter measures where appropriate.

You are basically saying that being a fighter pilot now requires no skill, while (of course) it does.

These suggestions where just to balance the game and hopefully make it more enjoyable and (if the term is fitting here) realistic. I could see one uping your opponent trying to beat him, with your missles vs his counter measures and vice versa come into skill play VERY much, especially as far as maneuvering is concerned. If you could close to a distance where counter measures wouldn't be able to actually throw the missles off because of how close the opponents ship is then you could kill your opponent much easier. If he manages to evade you however, then you have to work a lot at it.

Not to mention that energy weapons would still be in. If your opponent can out turn and out run you then he would have a very good chance of evading the missles (with counter measures) turning around and blowing you away.

I have another suggestion I have just thought of.

Make the time between missles firing longer for most of the missles. It seems right now that they're just so short that it's hard not to fire off a bunch of missles!

I also like the ideas of missle locks. That should have been part of my suggestion up top, as it very much goes with the idea.

(and in case you haven't noticed) I would like to see this games missle combat move towards real life for the way things work (as far as some of it is concerned at least).

Modern day air battles are boring. Lots of fire-and-forget weapons systems and planes that move too fast for most people to track. Why the hell would you want to mimic that? Real life is completely unexciting when you try to translate it into a game. And it will require no skill whatsoever. Most of the difficulty in flying a modern fighter involves actually controlling and chasing something that moves faster than the speed of sound. That sort of thing doesn't get translated well into a game since you're in your cozy gaming-chair with a control interface that's expected to respond predictably.

Outfitting a ship does not take skill. Neither does using missiles and countermeasures. It's just a matter of "click, and you have a weapon headed towards your target." "Click, and you get to forget about the weapon headed for you. "Click, fire seekers." "Click, fire chaff." Repeat. It's just a game of "who has more ammo?" at that point. (Which is basically what PvP is right now.)

<If you could close to a distance where counter measures wouldn't be able to actually throw the missles off because of how close the opponents ship is then you could kill your opponent much easier.>
-That's called rocket ramming. That's another trick that doesn't require a whole lot of skill. It's just run right into them and shoot all your missiles. No dodging involved. No tactile responses to the enemy. No difficulty of trying to aim and dodge at the same time.

<Not to mention that energy weapons would still be in. If your opponent can out turn and out run you then he would have a very good chance of evading the missles (with counter measures) turning around and blowing you away.>
-You're trying to think from the perspective of a combat system that works like a traditional WWII style dogfight. That's not how Vendetta's combat system works. It has never worked like that.

Sorry, not trying to be negative or anything, it's just my opinion. Missile locks seem good though, seen it mentioned numerous times, ten seconds which u can do nothing but keep the target in your sight would require a lot of skill, would also negate the possibility of say a rag fitted out with homers taking out pretty much anything unless he was lucky enough to blind side em. a smaller faster ship could easily dodge the lock.

Also like the idea of guided missiles, laser painted, keep the laser on the target or the missile will miss, also requires skillful flying in head to head combat.

I'd like to see fire and forget forgotten. so easy to kill, too difficult to dodge (numerous homers), i mean, what chance have you got sat high and mighty in your valkyrie u worked hard to get, when along comes someone in a rag chaos swarmed and gemini'd up to the teeth, and lets fly his whole arsenal at you. Pretty soon, it's going to get old.

Not to get you down, i think your suggestions have a lot of merit, but here's the way i see it..
If i can write a script/bot to do it, it's not worth playing myself.

devs put things in, see how things go, remove, modify or balance the situation. I don't like balance, cus it usually means something else is added, then something else, etc, until something unbalances where it wasn't supposed to, and removal or modifying just completely ****'s up everything... Ok i'm rambling now.. lol.... tired i should get some sleep :)

night peeps, keep the idea's up.

how about allowing beam weapons to detonate missles? i thnk it would take lots of skill to fly backwards in physics mode and take out a missle or two. not that i feel it would completely eliminate the problem, but it would be interesting. or how about making some of tho missles loose lock if you fly close enough to an asteroid of similar size... or even better, your enemy? :D

just some thoughts.

One problem may be the proximity of detonation. With a decent proximity, even unguided rockets can be extremely hard to dodge. But your basic contact-detonated seeker usually has a hard time hitting bots on the first or second pass, and a decent player should be at least as nimble as a bot, right? I don't know how many seekers are proximity, but the more powerful ones should be contact instead.

(Echoing Magus) Skill is hardly ever an issue with missiles - shoot them in the general direction of your target and watch - so why should it necessarily take raw skill to defeat them? If perhaps they only seeked effectively if fired at the right trajectory, then skill would be a big part, and maybe they could be more avoidable by defensive maneuvering.

Unless more skill is introduced into the art of firing missiles, give us some basic countermeasures (a low-damage or non-damaging S-slot mine that sets off proximity sensors at a slightly greater range, for example..) or make the seeking more fallible. Thwarting missiles with a chaff mine could still be a very difficult thing, but at least it would balance the missile game a bit.

Also, there were many complaints before about the stupidity of the missile tracking, so obviously an over-correction was made.. maybe it will be fixed soon. Like the joke about 3 statisticians playing golf.... (one hooks, the next slices, the third shouts "perfect!")

Well, perhaps my point of view wasn't explained as well as it should have been.

I've always seen missles as something of a fire and forget weapon, in all games I've played. True, there should be some skill involved, and that would be getting a lock on.

I also think that a problem with missles is how easy it is to get a lock on with them, essentially you DON'T need to lock on. I think that if a lock on was needed the problem would die down substantially. However I still think that we need counter-measures so missles.

The way I see it really is this.

Missles SHOULD be toned down, but not to a point of non use. I think that missles should still remain a (relatively) fire and forget weapon, one that would see use on transports, larger capital ships and that would be used as a supplementary weapon on smaller ships.

Projectile weapons, however, should be more powerful then missles and a real killing weapon. To compare it to real life, in vietnam the US phantoms relied on missles in the begining, while the Vietnamese Migs did use missles that had a machine gun on the front that the phantoms lacked in the early part of the war. Phantom pilots realized they needed machineguns to compete, they were taking loses because of the Migs getting too close and having no way to compete. I would like to see a situation like that.

Something where if you can close with someone who is using missles while you have energy (or other projectile) weapons you can kill them easily if you keep them in your sites. There should still be longer ranged projectile weapons (for capital ships mainly) but these short ranged weapons should be able to bring a lot of punishment in a short time.

That would be a great balancer (in my opinion).

Just to clarify, I do NOT want this game to become a realistic simulator, I just find that bringing up real life comparisions is easy and something that can verify the thoughts. I'm sure that in the year (forget the year, whatever it is) they have missles that can track without following the target, it would just be really unbelievable if they didn't.

<I just find that bringing up real life comparisions is easy and something that can verify the thoughts.>
Real life is wholly irrelevant when it comes to game balance. Sorry, but it just is. Sure it brings about a bunch of "hey, wouldn't this be cool?" suggestions, but overall, it just undermines the tried and true methods that have been tested for 2 or 3 years already.

<I've always seen missles as something of a fire and forget weapon>
Fire and forget, sure. But not "fire and get a guaranteed hit." A talented player should be able to dodge it. What I do not want to see is a contest of missile spam vs. chaff and whoever has the most ammo wins.

<Something where if you can close with someone who is using missles while you have energy (or other projectile) weapons you can kill them easily if you keep them in your sites. There should still be longer ranged projectile weapons (for capital ships mainly) but these short ranged weapons should be able to bring a lot of punishment in a short time.>
That's how it used to work. Seekers would be a great distraction tool. If you got lazy or stopped paying attention you'd pay for it, but if you remembered to dodge them you could avoid it. Back then, dodging them was too easy because there were little cheats you could use. Now, it's almost impossible to both dodge the missile and maintain the attack on the target. Especially if they're running away and spamming as they go.

We definitely need some kind of countermeasures system. Missiles are just too powerful. Maybe add some countermeasures to some of the stronger AI bots too. I personally think the temporary shield is a great idea. Flares or chaff might be good also

Erm. The Missiles aren't too powerful anymore. Infact they are quite nicely balanced, and almost anything can dodge it. Especially if it drops its cargo while trying.