Missiles: Do they ever miss???

jc173 · #1 May 2nd, 2001, 11:13 PM

quote:
Originally posted by dmm:
Also, you're assuming that the ECM merely makes the target "fuzzy," as opposed to making "bogeys." Maybe there ought to be different kinds of ECM. Normal kinds would be the fuzzy variety and would not affect missiles. The more advanced kinds would be the bogey variety and would affect everything.

Sounds sort of like the difference between a defenseive jammer and an offensive barrage jammer?

Aussie Gamer · #2 May 2nd, 2001, 11:22 PM

I got a reply from God, Arron, and he says that it would be unfair to have ECM effect missiles as they are slow and can be dodge by ships.

If you are like me and think that this is wrong please e-mail Arron and ask him to have missiles effected by ECM and combat sensors.

If the change is effected we could have smart missiles, as the data allows for attack modifiers to be changed, with say a +30% chance to hit at higher tech levels.

One thing that I also thought about was that the defence modifier for the size of the ship/ fighter makes absolutely no difference to a missile, that seems a bit unfair as well.

Suicide Junkie · #3 May 2nd, 2001, 11:48 PM

quote:
Good argument. But won't the ECM power also be higher by the same factor?7

That's only if the ECM works by "reaching out to touch someone"
If the ECM works by creating false bogeys, or masking the ship to look like background radiation, the effect would break down as you get close, and be better far away.

Cloaks can be detected during tactical, combat, when the ships are close.
So similarily, decoys could be seen through from close up.

The 10 billion times sensor boost of the missile more than makes up for the advanced sensors on any ship.

OTOH, if the ECM is reaching out to jam sensors with active interference, couldn't the missile be programmed to seek that source of interference?
Also, if the ship is sending out active ECM, there is a whole lotta garbage singnals coming in. There is also a very weak real signal from the ship. As your missile gets closer, the interference builds at the same rate as your sensor power, but so does the real ship's signal.
With the exact same software that is used to find the cloaked ship against the noisy background of space, you find the ship amidst the noisy background of interference.

Overall, consider the CSM. Unmodded, it claims to have a nuclear warhead. You don't need a direct hit with a nuke to hurt somebody

Marty Ward · #4 May 2nd, 2001, 11:53 PM

At least we know the reason behind the design idea.

Aussie Gamer · #5 May 2nd, 2001, 11:58 PM

Missiles brain would not be that powerful that they would be able to have several ways of detecting an enenmy ship.
If you look at missiles of today then the set and forget missiles lock on one thing such a the heat of the engines or even the radar signal being sent out by the enemy unit.
The Exocet missile worked in one war but now a ECM device has been devoloped to stop it from hitting the ship.
Chaff is used to stop radar using missiles.
Flares are used to stop Infra-red missiles.
A modern ECM pod senses to frequency of the incoming homing missile and sends a fake signal back to send it the wrong direction.

Missiles are very venerable to the ECM of the target.

Will · #6 May 3rd, 2001, 12:49 AM

Hmmm... It seems I forgot to mention that missiles are too easy to beat now anyway, no sense weakening them any further.

As for the comment that basically said "I can complain if I want to", well, yes, you can. Just don't expect the complaining to get Aaron to go through the code and change something trivial instead of fixing any new bugs or adding features that still haven't been put in yet (Drones, for one). Especially when the game can already easily be modded to do basically the same thing that you want hard-coded.

And what I meant by "... missile jammers (at least currently) don't work that well ..." was the so-called "Star Wars" project. It doesn't work in practice.

Suicide Junkie · #7 May 3rd, 2001, 12:57 AM

quote:
Missiles brain would not be that powerful that they would be able to have several ways of detecting an enenmy ship.
If you look at missiles of today then the set and forget missiles lock on one thing such a the heat of the engines or even the radar signal being sent out by the enemy unit.
The Exocet missile worked in one war but now a ECM device has been devoloped to stop it from hitting the ship.
Chaff is used to stop radar using missiles.
Flares are used to stop Infra-red missiles.
A modern ECM pod senses to frequency of the incoming homing missile and sends a fake signal back to send it the wrong direction.
Missiles are very venerable to the ECM of the target.

Chaff, Flares are countermeasures and not ECM. That's more PD than ECM.

Like I was saying, with the 10 billion times increase in sensor power, you can easily tell the difference between the real ship and the decoys.

These are not modern day dogfights. The distances involved change everything.
Try playing a FPS with 1000 lag, and you will see what ships at range 4 are dealing with while the missile is the guy with 5 ping, and deals with none of that.
Add in the fact that as the missile approaches, the image of the target literaly grows by 10 billion times! Even if the missile has only 1% of the ship's abilities, that leaves a hundred million times more detection power.