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I was considering something along those lines for use against REM missiles.
You are also overlooking that you will be able to lock onto a missile and shoot at it with your main weapons. 😛 Fighters will carry normal flares as well, so they can spoof some missiles. Also, there’s the logistics of it; fighters are going to be in abundance because of their very low cost. Fighters are most effective in swarms.
I’m sure you all are worried about the Storm Petrel :V this ship is unique, since it can carry more flares than a regular fighter and has two weapons rather than one, so it’s better at shooting them down. Plus, missiles with lower payloads or that explode farther away will not completely destroy it because of the larger size. Oh, and it is faster than normal fighters, and actually I plan for it to be faster than the cheap Harrower missiles, which are your only real missile-opposition in act 0, unless you tick off the cops or something.
In real life, missiles are faster and more agile than any fighter, and the absence of an atmosphere does not change that. Say space fighters can pull 250 m/s^2 of acceleration. A missile can easily do 500 or more. It’s not interested in conserving enough fuel to make long space trips; it’s just gotta kamikaze into a target.
Oh, and fighters rarely operate alone; they’re usually support for big ships or stations, and can fly near them for point-defense covering fire! 😀 When fighters are used in a scout role, they normally will not engage targets that potentially could be carrying lots of missiles. In act 0, the puffin and spider tugs you fight will only carry a few, and you can spoof them, shoot them, hide behind debris, or try to tank the hit. Tactics, boys. Tactics. 😉
–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂Thanks for the additional info.
I remember watching an instant action video on YouTube where the pilot was targeting and shooting down missiles in I-War 2. I don’t know how he did it, since I can’t do it with my copy of the game. Anyways, since that was a feature in the original I-War, it would be a very good feature. Also, it would tax the piloting skills of the fighter pilot a bit more, which is a good thing. I agree, the “Seeker ECM” is not necessary.
The reason I brought the topic up is because in games like World of Tanks, World of Warships, and MechWarrior Online, even the small vehicles with low HP are useful and fun to play. I do not want EOC to be a game where the Heavy Corvette is the only fun ship to play, because all of the others die to easily. 😉 From the sounds of it, you have things covered. The ability for carriers to provide point-defense for fighters is especially cool. Not only does it make fighters able to survive, it increases the tactical side of things and makes capital ships and fighters dependent on each other. (Another reason for fighters to be able to survive is because each one carries a human pilot. This would discourage the owners from using them as expendable DPS machines.)
One other suggestion I would like to make is for each fighter to have a disposable coolant pod. So, if the enemy team tries to pick of individual weaker ships by launching a flurry of missiles at a single fighter, (more missiles than the fighter could shoot down,) the fighter can not only launch flares but also eject its coolant pod. The fighter would suddenly be emitting less heat, and the coolant pod would have all of the heat and attract the missiles. The result: the enemy wasted a bunch of missiles, and the fighter, while alive, cannot pull the same stunt again.
Next, to elaborate on your comment about a countermeasure for REM missiles. In games mentioned above, there are certain weapons that are really good against small vehicles. We want fighters to be able to survive, but still be afraid. This is the same rule I was using when discussing seeking missiles. While seeker missiles are effective against fighters, I think REM missiles should be even more feared. At the same time, there should be a way to survive them. We just need to find the right balance between them. Below are three options to nerf REM missiles if necessary:
1. As you mentioned above, special countermeasures could target REM missiles causing them to prematurely explode.
2. Point defense from capital ships could target REM missiles and cause them to explode prematurely.
3. REM missiles could take more missile cargo space, making them less cost effective.The first option would make a fighter more capable of defending itself. Pilots would be less afraid of the REM and the REM would be less effective.
The second option would make fighters more afraid of REMs and strengthen the ties between capital ships and fighters, while increasing the strategic scene.
The final option would make fighters less afraid of REMs since fewer are deployed. However, whether a player is killed by a REM becomes more dependent on chance.Anyways, there are some more ideas for you to consider. And personally, I think the more strategy, the better.
This is one tough navy, boy. They don’t give you time off, even for being dead. -Clay
Storm Petrel
Ugh. Thought I’d replied to this. :/
I believe he ran a mod. 🙂 Likely, if he didn’t code it himself, it’s long been lost, but would be really easy to make your own. Just script a loop that checks every quarter second for missiles in sensor range that aren’t on the sensors, and put them on the sensors. Bingo.
Ah yes, I play World of Warships very heavily, and know of the other two games you mention. I definitely want the small vessels to have a point to their existence. Basically, they’re glass cannons, like in the original I-War. Fast as heck, agile as heck, tiny, carrying a firepower-to-mass ratio ten times that of a medium ship. Certainly, though, most people won’t consider them completely expendable; they’re cheaper than medium vessels for obvious reasons but they’re not free, and they’re all manned. Remote fighters are rare due to the ease of disruption by cranking up your active sensors, and AI fighters for the same reason. Even ruthless commanders know better than to sacrifice every fighter pilot they have. 😛
Actually, coolant pods are already in the game! 🙂 They’re poorly implemented though. The encyclopedia says that it does nothing until you’re inches from overheating, then it vents the coolant across your radiators. In reality, the thing simply gives a small passive buff to cooling rates. 😛 My revised version was gonna have it operate as the encyclopedia says, but shut off once the heat drops below the safety threshold to conserve coolant so you can use it more than once. However, there is in the game a “sealed heat sink” which operates just like the heat sinks in Elite Dangerous. It will quietly absorb heat rather than radiate it until it reaches its maximum, at which point it must be jettisoned. The idea behind these is that by minimal thruster movement, you can operate under sealed cooling for quite a long time and practically eliminate your heat signature from your ship (though the drive plume would still show unless you use cold-gas thrusters). However, just like the coolant pod, all it actually does ingame is give you a cooling rate buff. 😛 I think an optional version for fighters could be used in conjunction with the regular heat sink, and be given the ability to radiate the stored heat once it is ejected. Honestly though, a flare can actively transmit IR signatures much more effectively than a radiating heat sink, so there might not be much point.
And now we come to a sore spot for me in the game: REM missiles. WHY DON’T ANY NPC SHIPS GET THEM?! XD I understand the logic of “they’d instakill the player” but that’s kinda the point. There should be occasions where the player has to either employ all their skill just to not die, or maybe he shouldn’t have gotten into that fight in the first place 😛 But in terms of balance against fighters, well… no fighter will well survive a blast from an REM, even at the edges of the blast. However, REM missiles are a little slower than regular ones to compensate for the human pilot’s slower reactions, and the same point applies here as to remote fighters: the link to the missile can be disrupted. Also, they’re much bigger and easier to shoot. Using them is gonna take a TON of skill. That’s my main method of balance. The more powerful something is, the harder it is to use. Nonetheless, REM missiles should cause a sweet sting of cold fear to thrill through your veins when you hear the launch alarm for them :3 Be afraid of them.
But yeah, they’ll be able to be countered directly by anti-missile missiles (or heck, maybe even the regular missiles for giggles) and their larger size will mean more hits from PD and regular weaponry, though it’ll also take more to kill them as they’re obviously tougher. And definitely you can’t carry many; in regular EoC, they come 1 to a pack, compared to the 5 seekers in a pack. I’ll figure out a good method to balance quantity. 🙂 Might just leave it that way.–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂I think I meant the sealed heat sink when I was talking about coolant pods. It has been a while since I played the game, so sorry for that mistake. Basically, what I picture is that the fighter has a pod of extra coolant that is not used. When an emergency arrives, all of the coolant being used is enclosed in a pod and jettisoned from the vessel, immediately decreasing the amount of heat picked up by active sensors and seeker missiles. Then the unused coolant is allowed into the system so the fighter functions as normal. The advantage of this is that, as you said previously, ECM’s will sometimes fail to deceive the seeker missiles. The sudden decrease of temperature in the ship and the addition of a new heat signature would increase the chances of dodging the missile. (Perhaps to 100% for balancing purposes.)
It sounds like you have the REM issue roped and hogtied. 😉
This is one tough navy, boy. They don’t give you time off, even for being dead. -Clay
Storm Petrel
It’s an idea. 🙂 I will try it out and see how it fits balance-wise. An ejectable coolant container such as this would take up space, and fighters have little to spare. Plus, a whole rack of regular ECM flares would probably be more useful in the long run. But, I’ll try it and see how it works, once fighters have been added to the remake 🙂
–IronDuke
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂I haven’t been posting here much, as I’ve been talking about my progress and such on the Discord server instead. So, I figured it about time I made a post here. XD
I’ve updated the fancypantsy color-coded outline on page 1 of the thread. The big changes are to the flyability of the Corvette, and to the contacts list.
I also have implemented a simple docking system and the ability for the command section to detach/reattach itself with the parent vessel. I just realized as I typed that that this is not listed in the outline, so time to make another edit!
Progress is slowly speeding back up, ladies, gents, and helicopters! Now that school’s out and I’ve managed to catch up on my other things, I have time to do my favorite thing in the world. :3 The future is bright on the Edge of Chaos!
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂I have been mainly posting updates only to the discord and forgot to make the announcement here. I’m in training as an Air Traffic Controller and put the remake project on hold until that is complete; this may be anytime from the end of the year, to many more months down the line. It’s an extremely intense job with an accelerated training process that demands my fullest attention, with scant spare time. Full announcement is in the discord server
I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. 🙂
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