One part of the game that's always been extremely bland:
Missiles
The only guidance system they have is... "seeker". Or not seeker.
No heat seekers, RADAR guided missiles, optically or IFF guided... there are many possibilities.
That's why all the ECM / missile defense systems (modded and otherwise) are boring.
You can script a missile destroyed... or not do it. That's the entire range of options.
Countermeasures don't work that way. They confuse and distract instead of simply scripting all missiles within 2 km dead.
An ECM should confuse a missile, making it fly in a straight line until it has "figured out" the ECM. Chaff / flares / decoys obstruct and / or offer fake targets.
Stealth properties of ships could make certain kinds of missiles ineffective against some ships, creating more interesting diversiy.
One shiptype might have a low RADAR signature, another a low IR one, the third have a visual cloaking device but be detectable with RADAR...
One missile type fits all targets is unbelieveably boring. =/
Missiles could be a lot more powerful but used more rarely, making them meaningful.
Meaningful missiles would in turn allow different ship roles like interceptor vs air superiority fighter, which currently, are meaningless terms. There are weak and there are powerful fighters. That's it.
Right now it's more like... hostile M3? Fire a dozen Wasps. You win.
An M3 can carry a hundred Wasps and launch 800 MJ of homing missile damage in no time flat.
That's probably not bad design but rather the
complete absence of any thought or design.
Someone wrote the code and noone complained. =P
That missiles are cargo and ships therefore have huuuuge missile bays is just one part of the problem.
The "ready" launch tubes should be allowed to reload from the cargo bay... but
very slowly. Like a minute or more.
Then launch tubes would start to play a
role and offer another way to balance ships.
This would avoid utterly ridiculous and completely unbalanceable classes like M7M. They are either godlike (vanilla) or utter crap (working turret script). No middle ground, no balance.
First you must limit missile use before they can be made worthwhile.
Then you can have a space game that's not all lazer pew pew but offers diverse tactics and ship types / roles that complement each other.
I'd like to see something like the torpedo runs from Wing Commander. Those were intense...
Torpedos
hurt like hell, which is a far cry from a 300k damage Hammer torpedo that will
hardly ever reach it's target if the missile defense turrets aren't comatose.
In X3, a competent missile defense script can take out hundreds of those. At once.
That is
not interesting gameplay.
Another possible angle:
Missile launch tubes have different size classes.
With missiles having a cargo class as they do now, this could
seriously spice up ship differentiation.
M4 in a role of interceptor might have 4 M and 2 S class tubes.
M3 in a role of space superiority fighter might have 1 M and 2 S class tubes.
As a real world analogy, the M4 could fire 4 AMRAAM and 2 Sidewinder while the M3 would have rather limited long-range capability.
A fighter bomber, having an L class torpedo tube would be another possibility, as would be the Wing Commander style Broadsword with 2 or 3 L class tubes...
Give the M7M 8 L class (torpedo) tubes and you have one badass missile frigate, which is able to launch a devastating volley... and then is out of the fight reloading the tubes for a few minutes.
Totally different M7M class... and balanceable!
Missile bays in short:- Missiles are not fired directly from the cargo bay.
Instead, every ship has a certain number of launch tubes.
- Missiles are installed into these tubes like lasers are into laser bays.
- After firing, a launch tube automatically reloads the missile it had just fired.
- Reloading a launch tube takes time.
A lot of time. 1-4 minutes, depending on the size of the missile.
This finally allows to balance missile use for ships, preventing the 100 Typhoon spam "tactic".
The missile's refire time simply has a different meaning now.
- Launch tubes come in different sizes, akin to the missile's cargo class.
A ship can have a variety of different-sized tubes, as described above.
- The current missile firing mechanic stays the same.
One key to browse through loaded missile types, one key to fire.
If you have a missile type loaded in more than one tube, you can simply launch the same missile more often in quick succession.
= Basically no change to the HUD UI. Maybe display how many of this type are ready to fire or how long til the next is ready.
Must. Have. Differences.
st0gey wrote:I'd like to see an end to jumpgates. Don't know why but i never really liked them. Maybe it's because as a former 'Elite' player, i know they're not necessary for this sort of game
The point of having jumpgates is strategy. To have a choke point in space that is
worth holding / defending.
ELITE / Frontier did not need this because in those games, nothing worth protecting existed.
So there was no gameplay feature required to make it possible to protect "it".
If you had to protect a station in infinite space and enemies would teleport in from every direction there would be nothing you could do to protect it.
Jumpgates let the enemy arrive from a small area in space. You can mine it. Deploy lasertowers, ODS, protecting ships.
The fight now has a focus instead of taking place in a vague area of 4000 cubic km.
And that's only for a 10 km radius sphere! Space is big. Really big. Without creating artificial choke points, many tactical considerations become moot, which would be a shame.
Cycrow wrote:it is a fairly expensive routine, but as your limiting it to in sector objects, and you can seperate it up, in shouldn't be a problem.
basically, u compute the straight line path from your current position to the destintation target, trace along the path until it intersects with the collision sphere of the station, then plot a way point on the edge of the sphere.
then starting from that way point, the process repeats until you reach the end.
then the ship simply fly between these way points avoiding all stationary objects in sector
Expensive is relative since only one WP at a time would
need to be computed. Then the ship would have a lot of time to compute the next WP while flying there.
Problematic would only be completely unrealistic "dense" asteroid fields like we have in X3.
That would be a bitch to compute because you have very little safe space to plot a path between some of them.
But in principle - yes. Could be done.
Having to script that would be somewhat... inefficient... to say the least. =P
Too much math to parse through a script language.
)
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