[JGZinv]

I am faced with a conundrum with our missiles from Tachyon, one one hand they are balanced
enough to be avoidable, but at the same time they are all but useless for the role missiles should play.

Let me describe these weps:

All missiles come with -

153.375 velocity (per second)
single or salvo fire
lock on of about 3-4 seconds
lock on range of about 1000 meters
guided if locked, dumb fire if not
can be shot out of the air if you're good or have a fast weapon
more variety - there's 3 missiles to 2 rocket types


Basically, unless you're a noob, the current usage is to get about a distance of 500 and drop a bunch of missiles before your target can react or wait until they are in a furball with someone else and drop them. Anything farther, and your target can drop countermeasures or if they have experience, do a little burn-lat-roll maneuver and dodge past most of the incoming group. Basically you play chicken then dodge to the side quicker than they can turn, then they lose lock on you and spin themselves to death in circles.

The other tactic is to quickly burn away faster than the missiles can travel, glide, turn around and shoot them as they line up on you. You can wait till they run out of fuel too.

Missiles are not as effective against bases as they could be, due to a lower damage yield compared to rockets. On the other hand they are more fire and forget, provided you can get a lock during your bomb run.


What would your suggestions be to try and make missiles be balanced, but add a little bit more usefulness or have a little more "teeth" to them?

[z64555]

I remember reading from an old journal of sorts that went over the turning limits of an aircraft vs. a missile. I don't know if I still have it around, but I'll see if I can find it.

Basically I'm thinking of the possibility of making the missile much  faster whenever it's within some range and the target craft is within a narrow cone. The missile will be at its normal tracking speed, and then when it sees the target is within its limits, it dumps all remaining rocket fuel down its engine to go for the kill.

The missile will have different dynamics during this "kill state":

• It will go for perhaps up to 2 to 3 seconds before self-detonating
• It's turn rate will be significantly less

Lastly, perhaps as a counter to counter measures, the missile will sometimes go into the kill state if it hits a counter measure burst. This means that the pilot will have to react fast as they're dumping out counter measures.

[JGZinv]

Well I don't know that multi stage missiles are do-able, though there's always the magic word of scripting.

A countermeasure proxy explosion doesn't sound bad. Perhaps I need to think about flak like things a bit more.

[Droid803]

You could definitely do it with child weapons.

[JGZinv]

I guess I feel that the existing implementation is just not effective at giving a veteran or moderately experienced person a run for their money.
The only thing they do now is make you run away, which removes the person from the battle zone, and is irritating/boring. On the other hand I
neither wish to make them overpowered, or unescapable. It is a difficult question indeed.

[bigchunk1]

I am not too crazy about missile design involving countermeasures, since I believe that countermeasures make dodging missiles far too easy.

One quick suggestion would be to significantly reduce the amount of countermeasures available to the player. Perhaps 5-10 cms

Another thing is what droid is hinting at, an aspect seeking missile that spawns children (see piranha or BP's slammer missile). The issue with this iirc is that child missiles spawn in random directions from their exploding parent. Perhaps there is a way to specify the direction in which they spawn.

In regards to missile turning, this formula might be of interest to you:
(($MaxVelocity) * ($RotationTime)) / ( 2*Pi)  = Radius Of Turning

derived from
2*Radius*Pi = Circumfrence
Distance = velocity*time

Think of a missile which is constantly turning towards an object. Let's say the missile can never actually hit the target and is just rotating around it as if in orbit. The missile keeps turning and moving along until it traces a complete circle. In this case, the distance the missile is from its center point of rotation is the radius of turning. $MaxVelocity is the speed of the missile and $RotationTime is the time it takes for a missile to make a complete 360 degree rotation; both are values specified in the tables. The Radius of Turning to me is the true measure of how accurate a missile is**.

In order for missiles to be accurate enough to be able to hit targets, the radius of turning must be less than the radius of the object it is trying to hit. Otherwise, the missile could very well orbit its target until it runs out of fuel and explodes.

What makes missile combat in freespace so well balanced is that the radius of turning for a fighter is very close to the radius of turning for the missiles, in fact here are some reference calculations:
 (fighters flying at full speed without AB)

Object                        Radius of Turning

Herc MkII                     35.03
Ulysses                         28.9
Perseus:                      42.0
Hornet                         34.7
Harpoon:                     39.8
Rockeye:                      25.7

**One last thing which is important to note about aspect seeking missiles is that they lead their target. Aspect seeking missiles aim for where the missile predicts their opponent will move to. In the case of aspect missiles, I believe velocity is of greater importance than radius of turning, while radius of turning still matters.

Heat seeking missiles actually aim for their targets, and would benefit from a slightly smaller radius of turning then their targets so that they can hit a turning target.
 
 So if you want missiles that are hard or next to impossible to dodge, give them a very small radius of turning. Perhaps a challenge of such missiles is to out run them. There are many options available to you; consider the weapons.tbl wiki for loads of features to play around with as well as sample tables from mods you happen to like.

[JGZinv]

Tach by default had countermeasures set to 30 I believe...   which usually when you're pounding on the C key, you drop about 5 to 10 of them.
Larger ships, bomber class, etc... simply don't accelerate fast enough to do anything, and their top speed is very close to the missile speed. So there
countermeasures make sense. Respawing though gives you another 30 countermeasures...  which I suppose is a acceptable offset when everyone else
respawns with more missiles.

The above technical info is helpful, I wasn't aware of the radius of turning equation.

Making them impossible to dodge isn't really my goal as honestly when you do manage to dodge them it's a "woooot I pulled it off!" moment...
I'm somewhat soliciting ideas on how to make them better because they just don't feel threatening.

I mean I don't run with countermeasures, but I also use a very small ship, good armor and shields, not great accl or speed - but I can out run missiles if I watch
my HUD for the warning lock. I can dodge em too if I pull that little trick I mentioned above.

If you increase speed, you're going to heavily impact the slow moving fighters.
If you increase damage, then missiles will become preferred over rockets, and more kills will be obtained per spawn reload. There you might have a unbalanced weapon that people will spam.

If you make them more accurate, then the same thing as damage may happen. few fired needed to kill. This would cut out the option of dodging, and make countermeasures necessary more often.

The last option seems to be the best of the three, but I'm thinking that a flak explosion might do the same thing with a chance to cause damage, encourage dodging, and generally make people
more afraid of messing with missiles.

[Qent]

Another thing is what droid is hinting at, an aspect seeking missile that spawns children (see piranha or BP's slammer missile). The issue with this iirc is that child missiles spawn in random directions from their exploding parent. Perhaps there is a way to specify the direction in which they spawn.

I'm not sure exactly what you have in mind, but Droid was pointing out that to do this:

Basically I'm thinking of the possibility of making the missile much  faster whenever it's within some range and the target craft is within a narrow cone. The missile will be at its normal tracking speed, and then when it sees the target is within its limits, it dumps all remaining rocket fuel down its engine to go for the kill.

you make the missile explode at a certain radius with no damage or explosion graphic, and spawn a single child version of itself that darts towards the target.

[Droid803]

You can also restrict spawn cone for the child so that it only ever spawns along the direction the original missile was headed.