i'd think the high payload of the rocket would balance with the missile's guidance system and electronics abundance, so weights would be about the same,
BUT you generally get a lot more missiles packed into that weight than rockets. and fire more missiles at the same time.

This i think is back to front

a missiles accuracy was nerfed, and i don't think it should have been in retrospect. Missiles should have had reduced quantities and less fired at once, but the increased accuracy.

Rocket quantities should be increased, more should be fired at one time, and maybe a firing formation pattern should be implimented to increase chances of impact.

I still consider myself new to the game, so give me some feedback and a kick up the backside if i'm totally wrong here... :)

Temp.

hmmm, not a bad idea, In general the developers have stated that they want to avoid a situation where the best weapon is a "fire and forget" missile. Such a situation makes dogfighting almost imposible, and takes a large element of the skill from the game. That is the main reason that the missiles were changed back.

As to the main idea in your post, the idea is logically sound, and bears looking at, one rason that rockets are the way they are is that ammo based weapons take no energy to fire, so the ability to fire large numbers of them at once causes a balance issue vs energy weapons, particularly when giving chase using turbo.

On the other hand if missiles were revamped to be more effective again, but their ammunition was much more limited (maybe 1/4 as many shots per launcher) that might work out. I also wouldnt mind seeing a multi-shot dumbfire weapon. Something like the swarm launchers we have now but firing a string of low damage, high speed unguided rockets. (maybe a pattern of 5 each doing 250 damage with a prox of 15 but a speed of 110?)

I agree there should be volleys of unguided rockets but only single shots of accurate, guided missiles. Missile launchers shouldn't be able to hold more than a few rounds. Four or six would be plenty, and let their accuracy be good. (I believe missile hardpoints would be ideal, really. That way you pay dearly weight-wise for each missile mounted.) Rockets should come in packs of 20 or more. Spamming dumb-fire rockets is no big deal. And there is no logical reason why rocket launcher take no energy to fire, nor is that a problem anyway because the spam can be controlled with cool-downs if that's an issue.

As for FaF being a problem in PvP, you really only need a gadget that actively jams guided missiles on a percentage basis, with the best jammer being about 75% effective.

I think missiles should have their improved AI back, but have their capacity reduced and have their turn rate drastically cut so its possible to dodge them.

"Spamming dumb-fire rockets is no big deal."

Speaks the newbie.

Seriously though, some things do need to be done, I just haven't decided what they are so I don't know who to be agreeing with.

"As for FaF being a problem in PvP, you really only need a gadget that actively jams guided missiles on a percentage basis, with the best jammer being about 75% effective."

That is a consideration the long run, but until the number of gadgets is large you can basically be assured that everyone will have the 'jammer'. Also, you aren't solving the problem with FaF with the suggestion you make, because having a jammer that provides you random protection still doesn't make FaF skill based.

thinking about it, i have a few more thoughts.

1. missiles are a defensive deterant. pretty useless for botting, and shouldn't be able to do serious damage to players, just knock the ship for a six, spin it around 180 degrees so you can get away, or if the pilate dodges, use that time to escape.

Thinking of about 2 loads of missiles, say 4 in a slot (downsized but accuracy back to normal) being able to kill a hog sized vessel.

This would make missiles a better deterrant, but skillful play would still enable attackers to do the job :)

2. Rockets in all ages of human existance were fired in abundance, if there was a 1% chance of hitting, you'd fire 100 times more than were required to do the job. To make up for that in this game, we have large proximity damage, well large in respect to missiles :/ I'm not sure that actually weighs up statistically.

I don't like the missile jamming ideas, a non skillful answer which just removes the use of missiles, better taking missiles out completely than making them redundant with countermeasures everyone will have.

Rockets are at least more skillful to use, although it seems, have little/no use anymore.

I'm wondering what was the original purpose of rockets and missiles, apart from to add some weapon content.

Temp.

Rockets are absolutely lethal in the hands of a skilled pilot in a agile ship, as I'm sure some of the more experienced players could show you. Rockets are by far the most 'accurate' weapons in the game. For more of Alpha, rockets of some sort were the dominate weapon in the game. To tone down the problem, all the various rockets currently available are nerfed to one extent or another. The most important of which was making the Sunflares extremely heavy so that pilots could not mount them in groups and still have an agile ship. We can argue about whether they were nerfed too much (I think that they were), but something certainly had to be done.

Until you've been blown up a few times by a tri-Flare Valk, you don't really have the full perspective on rockets.

Bit of a contradiction there, Rockets are lethal in an agile ship, but your can't now have an agile ship and rockets so their no longer lethal?

I haven't been killed by a triflare valk, i came into the game too late :( and i'd probably agree with you there, they would be lethal. Nowadays, only once i've come across someone using rockets against me, they weren't very effective, even though i was in a massive ship with cargo.

I see no use for them in the game at the moment i'm sorry to say, but theres a lot that they "could" be (were?)..

I'd love to actually have someone blast me with some rockets, show me how to use them to their full advantage etc... but i believe they are redundant at present.

Temp.

"Bit of a contradiction there, Rockets are lethal in an agile ship, but your can't now have an agile ship and rockets so their no longer lethal?"

That's about the size of it, and I don't see the contridiction.

Even now, a good pilot ought to be able to get enough performance out of a Valk to kill you with rockets. The problem is that a good pilot can no longer get enough performance out of a Valk to consistantly kill another good pilot with them. So, everyone is using NB3's, because Gauss, Rails, and other past tier 1 weapons are similarly nerfed.

Well, in any genuine space combat accurate, self-guided (or even AI-guided) missiles would be the only useful weapon, and all combat would take place at a distance of thousands of kilometers. So get rid of missiles entirely, as Temporalis suggests. Maybe they're just not fun in game terms. (Although I still think a very few missile hardpoints would work out just fine.)

Putting the "newbie" slander aside, spamming dumb-fire rockets is in fact not a big deal. It's an eminently controllable problem. Add some energy usage to rocket launchers. Problem solved.

in a space battle i'd think lasers would be the weapon of choice, instant hit, huge distances, not defocused by any atmosphere, missiles while carrying a large payload, would be defendable against, and slow.

anti-em conversion at range would be better though :)

back to the point at hand, been a lot changed ehh Celebrim, I'm still new to the game and don't see all the points.. my original points stand at least, although i'd have to shade my optimistic rocket de-nerf down a bit. they should be a little better, but not triflare valkyrie better :)
and missiles, well, i spit on missiles pff. the unskilled weapon of chioice. At the moment, this game can be unskillfully played and high levels/effective combat achieved with nothing but a bit of time. kind of a downer for a supposedly skill based game.

Later peeps :) and thanks for the discussion :) Hope something comes of it..

Temp.

I'm going to restate my missile balance ideas:

Put simply, low level missiles are fast and easy to employ, but suck at everything else. Mid level missiles are slow and difficult to employ, but have large warheads. and high level missiles are easy to use, but fall in the midrange in terms of speed, maneuverability, and warhead size.

Low tier small missiles:
Heat seeking missiles - high-speed, low maneuverability, light missiles don't have particularly good seekers and short range proximity heads (15m). Basically, it searches for hot objects within a 15 degree cone in front of the ship. If you're in a sector close to the sun, and your opponent is directly in line with that sun, most likely the seeker will ignore the opponent and head off into nowhere. Also, roids heated to over 1000K also present false targets. A target boosting away presents a large target, while a non-boosting target with its "heat sinks" pointed away from the missile presents a very small target. Small targets get painted with a green dot on the HUD, middle sized targets get a yellow dot, and large targets get red dots. An ideal shot would be a single red dot on your opponent and empty space behind him or her. You do not necessarily have to have your target targeted (ie, you can take snap shots at opponents while not targeting them), but your lock improves if you do have your opponent targeted (because your computer designates which heat source is genuine, or something). The heat seeking missile is the only missile that can do this. If the seeker head is blinded (ie. it points towards the sun) it will lose lock on its original target and fly dumb towards the sun.

High tier small missiles:
Low-Level Radar Guided missiles: mid-speed, high maneuverability, medium missiles with contact heads. You get a 20 degree radar "cone" that your designated target must stay within to get a target lock. Once the missile is fired, the pilot must keep the target within the cone to guide the missile until it reaches a distance of 100m, at which point it enters terminal maneuvers and guides itself to the target. If the target leaves the 20 degree cone, target lock is lost and the missile flies dumb until its proximity sensor sets it off or it runs out of fuel. Obviously this is good for loading on light fighters. If the missile can reach terminal maneuvers, it stands a high chance of hitting the target.

Low tier large missiles:
Similar to the high-tier small missiles just slower with larger warheads. The targeting cone is larger (25 degrees), so slower fighters have an easier time using them, but they're still difficult to employ successfully against smaller, faster targets.

High tier large missiles:
High-level radar guided missiles: Mid stat speed, maneuverability, and warhead size, but are the closest to "fire and forget" that we can get without actually making them "fire and forget." The target must be within a 20 degree cone to get a good target lock to fire, but after that, the pilot does not need to continue to track the target. These missiles are far more accurate than the other missiles, but only because the seeker is good and they don't need to be "led" to the target. A low-level radar guided missile actually stands a better chance of hitting once it enters terminal maneuvers than the high-level missile, but the high-level missile does not lose lock like the low-level missile, which increases its accuracy.

I've planned all of these, so that they all require some degree of skill to use, and they can't be simply lobbed backwards over a player's shoulder at a target pursuing them. They all have to be pointed at the target for the missile to seek, otherwise they're fired dumb. Heat-seekers are semi-easy to use, but they're weak and the hit percentage isn't terrific. Low-level radar guided missiles are the hardest to use, but they do a lot of damage, and have very high hit percentages if the target can be kept within the cone until terminal maneuvers. High-level radar guided missiles are the easiest to use because there is no point in its flight where it can lose its target lock (that doesn't mean it can't miss, though), but its larger, more sophisticated seeker heads take up space that could be used for more explosives. Swarms fall under this category, but there should also be an advanced single missile launcher with this seeker.

I haven't heard any practical reasons (in terms of programming) why this can't be done, so I'll keep suggesting it (although I usually come up with a refinement between postings). I feel that such a system would be a pretty fair balance of useability, accuracy, and damage.

I do have ideas for countermeasures against these missiles: flares, chaff, jamming, but they're not totally necessary for game balance, I feel.

Temporalis: lasers are terrible space weapons, mainly because surfaces can be mirrored to reflect most EM frequencies. Mirrors can also be used to reflect the beam back at the firer.

CrippledPigeon: I like the simplicity of having only a few different kinds of missiles, and those mechanics seem easy to understand. (I'd still advocate very limited payloads.) For game accessibility, it might be necessary to simplify the naming so that new players immediately grok the differences in functionality.

Those are just basic seeker and basic balance suggestions. You can have many other kinds of missiles that use similar seekers but with different attributes.

Temporalis: Wylfing is correct. Lasers are terrible space weapons. And, reflective surfaces are one of these reasons. But there are two reasons which are more important that he misses.

1) Photons are a horribly inefficient way of transfering energy: Producing a coherent beam of photons which is powerful enough to cut and melt something takes an enormous ammount of energy. Transfering the same ammount of energy with a kinetic weapon is relatively trivial. Beam weapons will never completely replace more conventional sorts of artillery, and will probably never be practical as small arms.

As wylfling points out, if your opponent hardens the target by making it reflective, then your job just gets harder and harder and the ammount of time you have to hold the beam on the target gets longer and longer.

Lasers will almost certainly have some role, but EM slug throwers are more deadly in terms of potential energy, and large guided missiles likely to be the decisive weapon because of the extreme ranges at which they can engage the target. (You can imagine for instance a rocket with a chemical boost stage and an ion propulsion state engaging targets days of travel time away from the firing platform.)

2) Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principal: Oddly enough, at some level, its alot harder to aim a laser than it is to aim a bullet. On a planet's surface, the fact that lasers are relatively immune to gravitational effects and relatively immune to atmospheric distortion makes them them more accurate than bullets, and things we can see on a planets surface are never more than a few score kilometers away so the real problem doesn't present itself UNTIL you start thinking about aiming lasers at things in orbit several hundred kilometers away.

At that distance, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principal starts kicking in. Photons are quantum particles. They hense exhibit properties as particles that large masses of particles don't. Suppose you are trying to aim a laser at a target. To do so you must carefully focus your beam so that it passes through some point. Imagine that focal point as being a on a small line. At the time those particles pass through the focal point, we know their position on the line with a very high degree of accuracy. Unfortunately, do to the uncertainty principal, whenever we know the position of a partical with a high degree of accuracy, we know its direction of motion with an inversely low degree of accuracy. What that means is that when the laser crosses perpendicularly through that line which we are aiming on, the more precisely we aim the laser the less we know about the motion of the particles in the direction along that line. So paradoxically, the better we aim the particle the less certain we can be of its deflection. If we try to fix that by aiming more precisely the beam deflects ever more wildly. There is a fundamental limit therefore to the accuracy of lasers. I don't exactly remember the numbers right now, but the professor I took Quantum Physics from in college worked on SDI and asked the class to work out the limit as a class problem and I remember it being surprisingly harsh. Hense, you won't be shooting at small objects 10's of thousands of km away with a laser and expect to be hitting them consistantly.

If you want an accurate and well-thought of description of modern space combat go read the Honor Harrington space opera series. It has high-acceleration (hundreds of g-factors) maneuverable tracking missiles with nuclear warheads that detonate by emitting cones of X-rays and other ultra-high energy EM radiations. "Contact" weapons are ray weapons that use the same EM frequencies.

One can consider VO's space simulation as accurate if you imagine that the scale of everything in the game has been multiplied by a few thousands. Say, 1 "m" = 1400 km or 900 miles, and ships / stations / roids only appear way bigger than they are on your screen for targeting / navigational purposes. And this way the ships can go up to near c speed ;)

Strange, I thought the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal stated that you can measure either a particles exact position OR its exact energy, and everything else kinda fits between. Of course we can call photons "particles" in QM so the same applies. Besides, laser beams would make sucky weapons, as a simple reflective coating would disperse much of the energy, and if the target had some sort of corner-cube reflective surface, the beam would come right back at you...

Rockets: Once the most deadly weapon in the game, now *nerfed*...

Celebrim, lasers are besides the point, was just making an observation. as for reflection, you've done a good job not making many energy based weapons, then again, your plasma based weapons don't need ammo whereas they should, and also ionized plasma bolts could be defelected with an EM field enough to dodge, or push the ship out of harms way...

Anyway, i don't wish to get embroiled in a new thread, Plenty ideas about missiles and rockets; the problems are there, but it's a lot tougher balancing now, and with the implimentation of other things to come (devices) i forsee lots of nerf's and un nerfs as previously crap weapons are suddenly used in ways they weren't meant to... I don't envy you people.

Temp.

PS nice ideas Crip :)

I sort of didn't understand your bit on focusing and defraction, a laser by definition emits all photons along the same line, do not get focused, they travel in one direction only, and in space there is nothing to defract (of course there is gas and dust, but at the distances we're talking about...) In the atmosphere, yes.

A reflective coating on your entire ship would render you blind, therefore you'll always be vulnerable somewhere, at some frequency...