I agree there should be some determent to rocket ramming, im not a heavy rocket user, although I do sometimes use them...

But who in hell would design a rocket that has a higher blast radius backwards? Makes no sense in any way, not even for gameplay sakes.

Rockets blast *forwards* or *round*...

Maybe a better suggestion would be a saftey range, ie if the rocket is -50m from lauching platform it wont boom unless a direct hit?

I've given a lot of thought to this myself... I think one of the possible problems with having an timed arming delay or a radius arming delay is that this could actually lead to rockets occasionally doing *massive* damage.

If the damage a rocket does is inversely proportional to its distance from the target when it detonates, then what happens when a rocket that normally does 800 damage at 30 meters suddenly arms itself when its less than 5 meters from its target?

the devs have already made rocket ramming pointless why are we still debating it?

you get couble damage from your own rockets, ramming is suicide.

I think that's yodaofborg's point, DP. It doesn't make sense why a rocket (or missile for that matter) does double damage to your own ship.

I agree that ramming is bad... but I think that it might be worth discussing a few different options of how to solve the problem.

Having an arming delay would prevent spamming at close range... I would prefer a time based arming delay rather than a proximity based arming delay since it would still be possible to spam while backpedaling.

that one works for me, the only way that hurts you is if you rammed? so unless your a rammer you wouldn't even know except the devs mentioned it? there are a whoel bunch of "inaccurate" things in the game, like the physics, and the sounds, and the warping, and the lasers (because lasers will never be a real weapon, people would just have shiny ships)but it makes the game playable. blasting backwards keep people from ramming at no cost to those who don't ram, thus IMHO, problem solved case closed.

Ramming isn't a bad tactic ... flying 10m from a ship with more armour than you and rockets is a bad tactic.

Implemented in 1.2.0:
- Ships get double damaged by own missiles.

In our last meeting, we actually talked about having two different types of rockets for sale: powerful ones that can blow up in your face doing double damage, and less-powerful ones that don't blow up until they're out of your own ship's damage radius. The latter would obviously be safer, and still make suicide tactics less viable.

Phaserlight's point about a fixed delay vs. fixed radius is important - a fixed delay would make the rocket a "dud" if you tried to boost towards someone, fire, and then slam on the brakes. That's how I'm thinking it should be implemented, but I'm not sure.

The double damage thing was a bug from long ago, and when we fixed the bug people complained about the sudden viability of ramming. Funny how bizarre bugs like this can have dramatic gameplay effects.

Yay! More diversity in weapons!
I don't really think ramming is too bad of a problem. Who would ever fly 10m next to three warheads ready for launch?

I think these rockets are too strong for them being able to fit on these "small" ships. (Yes, SCP is small). I'd rather have massively stronger rockets that can only go on Medium and Big ships. Don't missiles and rockets usually kill little fighters in almost one hit?
I'd much rather have our current ships to have pod fire rockets. Like those on Apache heli's. More like flak like rockets. Let the truly heavy ships have the heavy weapons.
I guess we have to make do with what ships exist, so the rockets can stay for now.

still though, in my opinion it is actually reasonable to consider rockets to blow up in your face if you use them in to short distance from your own ship. Not because of them blowing up but because of hitting your weaponports and therefore taking along the rockets still left in your hold.

Still though it would be even better if in stead of giving double damage it actually just rigged your rocketports or rigged them and damaged yourselve for the normal damage meaning that you would be totally defenseless(maybe for a couple secs like 30 - 60s ) if you only packed rockets. But maybe enough for the other guy to use his rockets and pamper you down or use his neuts/gausses to do the same.

cheers

But renegade: It seems too difficult to explain why you can damage your own launchers when rockets that explode much closer to the enemy don't damage THEIR launchers. Selective damage like that is distasteful IMHO. If you're going to damage your components, then you have to have the ability to damage their components as well or else it isn't fair.

I much prefer an arming distance for rockets. Instead of being "distance from launcher" it should probably be "distance travelled." The small missiles travel pretty slowly, so unless you stopped or reversed direction, you'd run into lots of trouble getting the rocket to arm before getting to the target. Arming distance or even arming time would mean that there'd be a higher percentage of missiles that would arm before getting to the target, given the same launch distance.

i have to agree that an arming time would be the most realistic and probably the best way to aproach this problem.

also i personaly don't see a problem with a missile arming extreemly close to it's target and thus doing more damage. As far as i'm concerned if you are good enough to take that kind of advantage of the arming time on your rockets than go for it.

"a fixed delay would make the rocket a "dud" if you tried to boost towards someone, fire, and then slam on the brakes"

Thats my (and anyone who is any good with rockets) main combat method for using flares! Killing that will be the death of rockets entirely as they move too slowly to be effective any other way... or perhaps we are now encouraged to spam as many rockets in as many directions as possible, in which case i'd like ammo of 200 per launcher please...

The reasons people (including myself) resort to raming are either;

1) Rockets are too slow - You have to get close to the target to score a hit because they travel so DAMN SLOW... I used to pride myself on not having to ram with rockets, yet now there leaves me no choice!

2) Calculated risk - You have more armour than they have remaining, so get in their and make the kill (is this really a bad thing?)

3) You suck - Don't know what you are doing so just get in there and blow yourself up...

I really don't see why ramming in fighters is such an issue... it is always a risk, and in previous version you could always tell a rocket rammer by the number of deaths they had taken...

crippled:

The reason why you damage your own ports in components is because unlike on a regular hit your ports are still open (compare with torpedos of a submarine) and therefore don't shield the highly sensitive equipment to the force exerted by the rockets. Which in effect knocks out communications( so in effect the workingmechanism) between the bridge and the rocketports. That seemed to me as a logical reason. Since it ties into both characteristics of the weapon, namely the exerted force and the damage.

Icarus:

Ok then lets give rockets a higher speed but when you ram there should be a consequence. And this consequence should be enormous. Like 2 rams on an undamaged fightership with 2equipped rocketports --> dead ship.

I don't like ramming just like you don't like ramming because it involves no skill and is cheap. However when you don't have a choice then that means that you have to make sure that these rockets work better outside of rammingdistance. And I only see you propose one thing, and that is upping speed. Might you have any other proposals, if so then please let us hear them. But also factor in that cheapusage of any weapon should be deterred in a way. Which we all agree ramming is.

I'm convinced the problem is caused by the low speed (and maybe the large mass to some extent too) of the rockets. If your opponent is back strafing then you have 0 chance of hitting them as the rockets speed is nullified. Ships have got alot faster recently, and the rockets have been neglected...

I'm convinced Icarus is right.

A sunflare does a whopping 55m/s, and most fighters can easily dodge a rocket at that speed. Hell I used to dodge flares in a Tunguska Centaur.

I think rockets should be around about 100 - 120m/s. that may be a bit fast but it's hard to judge these things. Small changes would be the best way.

I agree that rockets are too slow, or ships are too fast, or both. I mentioned re-assessing the weapons here:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/9438

rockets will be part of that.

You really should try them out again Icarus. Ive had buckets of fun over the last few days with my dual flare Valk. Perfect for poppin Rev C's ;)

I would like to see some of the high-end rockets given a slight speed boost. Maybe we could get another set of rockets: high speed, small damage and proximity range, high rate of fire, large capacity lunch tube. A bit like the Hydra (have I got this right?) rockets on an attack helicopter compared to the Hellfires.