Tactical Mod

[Vuzz]

:wacko: The frenchy has missunderstood the question again 

[NeuralKernel]

Je suis Canadien...

[Vuzz]

Ha d'accord ^^ , mais ca ne change rien au fait que je suis une buse en anglais

[NeuralKernel]

I souped up the naval missile... it's not useless anymore ;)I just doubled it's main engine output... 8e5 newtons I think...

[fluffyfreak]

Interesting, does it actually hit it's target now?It might make sense to de-nerf the other missiles since the difference isn't meant to be speed but that rockets don't turn, smart missiles do but can be ECM'd and Naval missiles are ECM shielded.Feel free to modify them or suggest new ones and behaviours!

[shadmar]

We did some tests in paragon aswell using 15e5 for main/back and 1e5 for steer, and they go fast and hit their targets. However we used AIFlyTo() without the 15km restriction in these tests instead of the AIKamikaaze() (which seemed to do some wierd intercept cource), however it was just for tests, nothing was merged in (yet)

[NeuralKernel]

I did find that to get proper accuracy (the missiles would usually hit on the second pass even if they missed at first, I tweaked the angular thrust a bit, too) I needed to fire the missiles a bit ahead of the target, just like with cannon fire. Where is the AI code? I doubt I'll understand much but you never know, I might see something :)How about a proper launcher? I could see scaling the missile thrust values back down if you could give an initial kick to them on launch. Instead of just dropping out and starting to accelerate, it would make sense to give it some initial velocity. I actually stopped using missiles for a while a few versions ago because I kept ramming the missiles right after launch unless I consciously remembered to stop moving around so much right when I launched... not a problem if they always go out at 1 kps...

[robn]

AIKamikaze is known to be broken. It's one of the last pieces of the autopilot waiting on a rewrite. It a healthy source of floating point errors for a start

[fluffyfreak]

Ah floating point errors, they grow up so fast... *bdum-tsssh* thanks I'm here... er, a lot

[fluffyfreak]

I'm not so interested in what FE2/FFE did, if I fire a missile I expect it to hit it's target unless there's a reason for it not too.

[NeuralKernel]

I like the idea of a kind of defensive missile, something that's more about keeping your enemy off balance than directly killing him. Like a minefield...It would be nice if there was a way to recover unexploded missiles after combat, the fast missiles usually hit or just disappear into the distance but I can easily catch up with a slow one.I also still like the idea of a Very Dangerous Array...[url]http://schlockmercenary.wikia.com/wiki/Very_Dangerous_Array[/url]

[fluffyfreak]

That's incorrect though, missiles do need to go faster than ship (or planes in real life) and they only need to turn slightly.It's not because they need to go far, it's because they need to accelerate very quickly, cover the distance between the ship(/plane) launching them, and then explode near/at their target. They don't got faster to cover more distance, they accelerate faster so that their target can't evade them. It might be that Frontier had useless missiles only good for keeping ships away, I know that I manage to hit & destroy some ships with missiles so not that useless, but Pioneer can have fast missiles.

[NeuralKernel]

High Thrust Missiles for close range and High Delta-V Torpedoes for long range...Without AI work I don't think it's worth getting too detailed with the experimentation. I'm still looking through scripts and source... where IS the AI code?

[shadmar]

Look under AIKamikaze() in ship-ai-cmd.cpp.

[NeuralKernel]

Hah, yeah... way more math than I know what to do with, still interesting to check out...Looks like Missile AI doesn't take target lead into account like the AI gunners do, I noticed that much more with the faster missiles.Is there any thought about moving the AI to lua at some point?

[fluffyfreak]

It'd be nice if we had a plugin system where developers could use either, I'm much happier in C++ despite being able to code in either. A lot of this stuff is maths intensive so it really needs some stuff implementing in C++ anyway, especially where it's going to be gathering a lot of information from the engine side or doing a lot of calculations.

[shadmar]

Yeah cpp is much faster. Lua should be used to call heavy cpp functions.However LuaJIT could be used to significantly speed up lua processing.

[TheBob]

 the missile is always dificult to hit the target, combat in space is diferent than combat in planet "atmosphere" (or Other Space Sims) where the missiles almost always hit the target. (like Freelancer or X3) Since bullets are free and missiles cost good money, I can sure expect them to have a better kill-ratio. Otherwise they're not economical, and therefore wouldn't be bought, and as a consequence not produced, in the gameworld. I wouldn't mind making missiles somewhat more expensive, but also somewhat more effective (for example, a 100% chance of the ECM to get rid of certain missiles is somewhat unfortunate. There should always be a slight chance of failure for the ECM). Alternatively keep them cheap and ineffective, but change the system to enable a Macross-Missile-Massacre, that can be quite effective too (and oh so satisfying).

[NeuralKernel]

I don't like the current ECM mechanic... I think Electronic Warfare is such a large part of Space Combat that it deserves more than just a token presence as an anti-missile system. Personally I think that Electronic Warfare is a natural fit for any future implementation of Beam Weaponry... target the incoming missile and then pulse the sensor beam as a MASER or LASER to literally cook it, a directed energy CIWS.[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIWS[/url] It could work against ships, too... I think raising the hull temperature makes sense as an effect but it could easily do other things like dazzle cameras, disrupt target locks... even hack ship systems or seize control of missiles in flight... I also don't think bullets should be free... I think that if the game is going to use projectiles for the main weapons (something I'm strongly in favour of) then they should use ammunition of some kind. Not only would it encourage more thoughtful shooting but it would open up the option of specialized ammunition types.

[NeuralKernel]

The missiles are already Newtonian as far as I know, its more an issue of thinking about different types of missile types and behaviour... then finding some kind of mutant genius to write the actual code