To everyone who thinks ECM will remove skill from the game:

Do you use missiles expecting them to hit a manuvering fighter now?

If so i would love to hear how you acomplish this.

If no then what are you woried about if missiles don't hit now than they wouln't be made less usefull if they hit less often.

admitedly this is an oversimplification, but again the idea is for large ships to have ECM that would be usefull say 100m range detonating missels 50% of the time, whereas small manuverable ships would have near useless ECM, say 20m detonating the missel 5% of the time.

I think that even the AEGIS rag should only have a 90% chance of detonating missels.

if anything this would add more skill to Vendeta, after all good ecm would put an end to missel spaming, and good long-range missels would put an end to backroling. And with how much whining i've heard about those two things i wouldn't believe that no one thinks that would be a good idea.

Let me see if I can reduce this as far as it can go:

Observations: % chance to dodge => sometimes, no matter how good you are, you will be hit => skill doesn't matter as much as it does now.

Conclusion: Skill will be less a part of the game.

Clear enough?

Missles are NOT supposed to be primary weapons. They never have been, except for brief periods where they were so overpowered that it was easier to spam swarms than to actually fight. Everyone complained and now we have missles as support weapons again.

I never shoot missles and really expect them to hit. They do cause the other guy to turbo, or have to run off for a bit, or even just dodge more so that his own shots are less accurate. All three situations are advantageous for me.

Missles do hit some of the time, and if you watch your target and fire just as he finishes firing a burst of tachs or whatever, he's in a bad spot. Fight Space Hunter's Swarm/tach hog and tell me that they're worthless.

Starfisher, I agree with your logic, but I don't think your premise is correct.

The fact of the matter is, everything in this game has an element of chance.

When you're locked in a barrel roll waltz with another pilot spraying neut III's with autoaim turned off, you can't tell me that chance doesn't play at least some part in whether or not you score a hit.

Also, I'm not suggesting that ECM gives you a % chance to dodge. I'm suggesting that ECM gives a % chance to detonate the missile early. That's an important difference.

As a matter of fact, the % chance detonation thing is entirely tangential to my point, and I'm sorry I brought it up in the first place. For all I care, a successful jam could be based on the amount of time a warhead spends within the ECM's radius.

What I am saying is that for slow ships that *can't maneuver* there should be some kind of automated defense. You could make missiles as weak as you want or as powerful as you want, but as long as dodging missiles (and guns) is based purely on maneuverability, light ships will always have the advantage over heavy ships.

I don't think it's a bad thing that light fighters will kill heavies in a gunfight/dogfight... that's as it should be. I do think that heavies should have an answer to the light fighter's maneuverability and guns.

Make the missiles faster, improve their tracking AI, give them an arming delay so they are useless at close range, slow their turn rate so that maneuverable fighters have a chance to dodge them... and give heavies more powerful ECMs so that they don't have to.

Limiting PvP to one tactic doesn't mean more skill... opening the door to a variety of tactics is where true skill comes in.

"Observations: % chance to dodge => sometimes, no matter how good you are, you will be hit => skill doesn't matter as much as it does now."

Bwhah? I am blown away by this. The suggested ECM system would have a nonzero chance to negate a missile. Nowhere is it suggested that missiles have 100% accuracy unless deflected by ECM.

Then why do you need an ECM?

Hehe i still think my suggestion would make it more skillbased
and fun... compaired to a _chance_ to disable a missile with
ECM..

And in reality missiles are quite devastating, and if they are
not, then they have good tracking....
what do u say?

chaffs should also be in different prices, weights and
efficiencies...

Starfisher, I humbly recommend reading Phaserlight's posts on the subject. Honestly, it seems like you aren't reading them.

A % chance to detonate the missle early is essentially the same as a % chance to dodge, with a subset % chance that you'll take damage from a missle that you would have dodged but the ECM detonated within the splash radius.

For an example of a heavy ship that isn't completely at the mercy of swarms, please turn the page to every ship except the Ragnarok. People in CENTAURS can get away from swarms if they're good, unless of course the swarm user is particularly skilled at using them. Which is more or less the same case of a skilled tach, or gauss, or sunflare user. If the guy with the weapon is good, he can probably hit you. That's the price of a heavy port - which gives you the ability to annihlate light ships if they make the slightest mistake.

The point is that as things stand now, if you know what you're doing with swarms, gems, tachs, gauss, sunflares.. you can get kills, unless the other guy is really good at escaping them. If you know what you're doing AGAINST them you can get away, unless the other guy is really good at using them.

Unless you're in a Ragnarok. Which appears to be a "bomber" not designed for fighting "interceptors". I put those in quotes because I still don't know exactly how the devs mean to use the words, but it appears that the Rag is supposed to carry a huge amount of firepower to use on larger, slower targets, and leave its own defense to something lighter such as the Centurion or Vulture.

Really what you are saying is "Make missles a primary weapon." I'm saying, "Leave 'em as a secondary weapon." I want the game to stay in the realm of gunbattles, and you seem to want the game to move into the realm of missle duels. Having witnessed what happens when missles become primary weapons, I'd prefer not to have another two weeks to a month of missle spam and people complaining before the devs re-re-downgrade them.

Because that's what'll happen if you implement this suggestion. Adding an ECM that makes heavies immune to better missles isn't going to make the game anymore balanced, and it'll basically invalidate the past few years of weapons balancing that gave the devs the baseline for the recent balance patches.

I'd agree to something that made missles equivalent to energy and rockets as primary weapons if and only if the devs agreed to test it off the live server until it was perfect. The game is finally beginning to stabalize after the addition of weights, and I really don't want to go through another two months of turmoil just so people can avoid learning how to aim.

OK, now I appreciate what you are saying. And as far as light ships go, I totally agree. Guns should be better than missiles.

Bigger ships may be a different story -- not just the Ragnarok but future larger ships as well. We have a situation where a "missile barge" type of ship is 100% ineffective against light fighters (because they can dodge all missiles), and 100% vulnerable to incoming fire. The missile boat can't fight light fighters and it can't fight other missile boats. Those are both assured destruction scenarios.

Phaserlight's ECM suggestion is a way of making it possible to fly a missile boat, so that at least it's not 100% sure that you can bombard them with missiles from afar and blow them up.

If it's all about skill and the equipment has nothing to do with how the game plays, let's all just fly EQ-101's and chuck the rest. That sounds like such as Awesome Game, where do I sign up…

zzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

I'm with Phase on this one!!!

The Ragnorok is not at the mercy of swarms. It may get hit by them more often, but that's what the armor is for. My last 7 PKs have been in a Rag III fighting a missile spammer during CtC.

I agree. I can easily avoid multiple swarms in a rag if I can turbo for a short burst here and there. I'm not talking about running away, I'm talking about cruising, changing direction, turboing for 2 seconds, firing at my opponent, turboing a little more, and so on. SOmebody tested this with me and I was able to avoid swarms every time using turbo, and about 40% of the time without turbo.

wylfing: There won't BE missle boats, because they aren't primary weapons. Or if there are missles boats, they will be support ships only, guarded by light fighters.

The easy and probably very implementable solution to avoiding long range missle spam is to make missles only fire when the ship has a "yellow" lock on the aiming reticle. If you have escorts (as any large ship HAS to have), a Rag or something trying to spam missles at you is in for a tough time, because it can't both face your ship with a yellow lock and survive even a basic centurion neut-ing away at it for long.

Not to mention that I don't think large ships should be all that vulnerable to tach fire, which used to be the highest DPS weapon back when the frigate was a stationary easy to hit target. If it were moving and firing with turrets, and had even a rudimentary escort, killing it without getting killed yourself would be difficult.

And finally, as the previous two posts indicate, the heavy ships are not currently in any dire straits. Everything is falling into balance; let's not upset that for another three months.

missiles will become more important as larger ships are added. This is inevitable because even unguided missiles can hit a cap. ship. That coupled with the superior engagment range of missels will make cap. ships prime targets for missels. Thus they will need some sort of countermeasure to hept defend (but not make them invunerable) agains missels. to a lesser extent the same will be true of the smaller corvets and cutter type ships (larger than a Rag but not a cap. ship).

As for the arguments against missels as a primary weapon. they would only be a primary weapon against ships that can't simply dodge them (or if ECM is implemented they will also be secondary when used against ships with good ECM).

Small fighters should not get any signifigant added countermeasurs because they can already evaid. In my opinion the only ships curently implemented that would need ECM are the Centaur and the Rag. maybee the Wraith but only a small amount. If missels were inpruved than some of the smaller ships should get a minor boost just to keep missels requiring skill to use efectively.

Starfisher, I actually agree with you that missiles should be balanced along with guns and rockets... I sure as heck remember the days of the uber missiles and believe me I don't want to go back to that. I don't think missiles should supplant guns, I just think they should be a useful weapon in a given scenario.

I don't like how missiles can currently be spammed at close range, so i think giving missiles an arming delay would be a good idea, provided their speed was bumped up so that they could tag someone at a distance who simply turned tail and ran instead of actually trying to avoid the missile (does anyone else find it a little strange that ships can travel twice as fast as missiles?).

Right now the game doesn't have any real long range weapons, and I think missiles could easily fill this role provided they are carefully balanced. CP Nails it on the head with this sentence: "Missiles are intended to be the opening shots of the battle, after which lighter fighters will probably close their range as quickly as possible so as to make further missile deployments impossible."

Remember, this game is never finished; there's never going to be some perfect equilibrium where all ship variants and weapons are set in stone and perfectly balanced, so it doesn't hurt to experiment with things like this.

Also, LordQ brings up a very good point that missiles will become far more important weapons when large cap ships are introduced. Cap ships obviously can't dodge incoming fire like a fighter, so should they be expected to take lots of missile hits and rely on their armor to stay alive? Or should they have some kind of device to help them avoid taking hits, with less armor? These are things worth thinking about.

Phaser, I consider the missiles as a destractonary secundary weapon.

Not a prime fire and forgot weapon that you just use by hopping in a sector firing your entire load and as soon as either your missiles hit or you are getting waylaid you jump out to an empty sector to reload.

Missiles have always and will always be weapons that you employ during a dogfight or any other moment in a war to confuse a person and forget that you either have tachs raining down on him or that the other blip is not a gem but a sunflare .

Or you use it as a counter to the come into my nose approach. Since swarms or any homingweapon practically has a zero chance of missing if you come to a <75m distance and shoot it (with some detail taken on timing). This and this alone was the reason why it was very great as the former anti-rocketboat.

So to come back to the point, in my eyes missiles are tactical weapons, meaning you use them if you think that within your tactic they will make sure that either your next hits will score or that you can get out of the opponents way. And that is what I liked about them.

If I want lay the hurt on people then I will either use guns or rockets. Although you probably all remember me to be unable to take out anybody if they didn't stick untill the end of the fight.

And to come back to fms point. You can so easilly avoid any swarm/gem by just running circles by using precise boost patterns. Any remote vet knows this, and uses that in his advantage. Not to mention that every missile has a certain flightpattern that you can use to your own advantage and while they are flying to you, as long as you are either fast enough or have enough hps to absorb 1 partly hit, they form no problem whatsoever. But all this happens only when you expect the weapon, reason why I call it a strategical weapon, and why I like(d) it.

Later on, when the capships are coming, then im sure we will either have some sort of weapon that one person can command just for shooting down the missiles. Just as another person will be busy with manouvring and another person is busy with using another of the weaponports. Since I do not expect the frigate to be completely one man usuable, but more like a 3 - 6 man team. Reason why I figure that guilds will become more important, since the frigate will probably be a guildconstruction item. Meaning that in one way or another some of your guildmates need a certain level in mining and engineering to be able to build parts of the ship. Just as some parts of the ship need combat and heavy weapon experience. As well as some parts need trading for cargoports and interceptorcarryabilities not to mention weaponports to counter small ships etc... And the level and amount of people working on the same frigate will mean an increased effectivity (in stead of the mk1 anti-fightershield you get the mk2 if you are level 11 light weapon in stead of level 9, the advantage of numbers will be that that part of your ship will be easier to build, meaning put one person on it and it takes him like 80 missions to pull it off, put 5 man on it and it takes them 10 missions each)

But we will see, these are all speculations and depend a lot from the devs ability to make missions tied into a questdriven story and fun to do. Like not kill 100 bots of x and then we got to kill another 200 of y and then maybe if we are lucky its only another 500 of z, then we have to shufttle like 10000 xithricite wedgets to the frigates constructionbase...

And then you keep your skill in the game in stead of adding some nonsense like a percent chance detonation. We may still call it an ecm, but at least then the ecm is the same as a normal weapon but in stead of targetting normal ships you can only target missiles and rockets in stead of ships. Or like its a weapon that once you use it on a ship it blows up all the rockets/missiles within a certain ship, although this may be a bit hard since it wouldn't be an exception to see 1000 gunboats getten blown up just by this weapon, while the smaller ships(with energyweapons) get blown up by the other teammates conventional weapons. It will however be fitting to the power/investment of the ship, so in that regard it might be ok, but im sure not many will like it to see their prom getting blown up attempt after attempt by just 1 hit of the mighty ecm gun :D

Renegade++RIP++, good post... there are a few points I'l like to make tho:

"Or you use it as a counter to the come into my nose approach. Since swarms or any homingweapon practically has a zero chance of missing if you come to a <75m distance and shoot it (with some detail taken on timing)"

Great... so we have yet another weapon that is very effective when spammed at close range. I think this is a bad thing. Giving missiles an arming delay would help fix this problem, but their speed should also be bumped up and their turn rate decreased.

"Although you probably all remember me to be unable to take out anybody if they didn't stick untill the end of the fight."

This is exactly where I see missiles coming in... you duel an opponent down to his last few % hull, and then the coward turns and runs. If he just boosts away, showing you his tail without bothering to maneuver, a missile should be able to reach out and tag him. For this to be possible, missiles need to be faster(and have better tracking AI). Their turn rate would be slow enough that a light fighter could easily outmaneuver them, but there would be no more outrunning missiles.

Which brings me back to my original point that heavies need some kind of automatic defense against said missiles. I like Rene's proposed cap ship ECM (but I don't think the ability to blow missiles up inside the hold of an enemy ship is a good idea... now *that* would be a cheap weapon.)

And for those of you who are still hung up on this "% detonation" thingy, ecm could also work by gradually degrading incoming missile's hp, one at a time at a steady rate. Then you don't have any imaginary dice rolling.

Missles arent the most accurate but I do usually manage to hit with missles... Different strategies for different missles.

My Gemini missles are simply a hit or miss chance (they just dont have the fuel to anuever back around) so lining the enemy up is needed but it doesnt take much effort with the Gemini since they are highly maneuverable. Now these missles arent meant for killing but rather for disrupting my foe so that I can hit them with a bigger (less maneuverable) missle or a big gun.

The less manueverable missles seem to require a bit more tactics.

1) is to use the gemine missles to disrrupt them.
2) This method requires the player to turn off flight assist. Basically fly past your opponent and rotate back around then fire ... This method isnt a sure fire tactic but it works a good percentage of the time. Also if you learn to position the enemy (this is for bots) by directing your shooting then usually you can position them properly.

I dont really care for the ECM but it would be effective against homing missles but it lowers skill in combat. So it should at least require a hefty energy amount to use it so that it isnt simply abused and make missles worthless.

I would rather use the flak/decoy method since it requires a bit more skill and conservation is needed to make the most of it.

Also if missles were affected by cargo then that could be a relatively useful counter measure at times (but we cant... yet).

/me notes reference to his engineering skill tree in rene's post

/me grins