Missiles: Do they ever miss???

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

---

1) A missile seeker doesn't have the same power reserves as an entire ship with an huge power grid to draw off. A ship has a lot more energy availiable to jam incoming seekers with. Your resolsution may increase as you say, but the intensity of the jaming can still be more, and getting closer to this powerful jamming makes it worse. Just imagine trying to grab a fiends hat off his head in a dark room. Your eyes get adjusted then bam, your buddy shines a flashlight in your face from across the room in an attempt to jam you. Are you trying to tell me that as you walk closer to the light it will be easier to see your friend's hat behind it??

---

You don't need to see the hat anymore. You look left, dark. You look right, dark. You look ahead, bright. Run forward and slam the 'friend'. Now throw a nuclear CSM punch and blow a big hole in the evil alien hat and it's mind-controlled host.

I'm no military physisist, and that example didn't work for me. Why can't you track a big ECM source anyways?

BTW: MM's ECM stands for "Electromagnetic coutermeasures," according to the description, which may be different from what you were thinking "ECM" stands for (electronic CM, I believe).


Heres how I accept the 100% missile hitrate in SE4:
In tactical a ship can find even a cloaked ship.
In tactical a fighter can find even a cloaked ship.
So a missile (similar to a fighter in size) can find even a cloaked ship.

So, any vehicle/missile can locate any other to within 1 square at tactical combat distances. Your beams cut through that square, but are thin and sometimes miss. The CSM fills the entire square with a nuclear fireball and thus hits. The plasma missle spreads fiery plasma & antimatter throughout the square and thus hits.

An example of this is trying to shoot DU bullets at camoed people in a valley VS napalming the valley.

To change this example into SE4,
replace DU bullets with DUC
replace camo with ECM
replace napalm with nuclear CSM
replace valley with combat square.

quote:

---

2) For an active seeker, the radiation must travel both ways, so the energy disapates at something like 2 times the distance while while point jamming only travels one leg, from the ship back to the missile.

---

Which provides a constant 4x bonus for ECM. Of, course, if the seeker is using passive sensors, then there's no bonus.


I am all for more moddability in SE, but I feel missiles are fine the way they are.


[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 03 May 2001).]