Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hello everybody and welcome to my first edition of "Idea's for" where I intend to share my thoughts on how to make EVE even more awesome with you guys.


Alright. Missiles. After all the guns in EVE had been redesigned I was pretty disappointed that missiles didn't get their fair share of love, having bought a Tengu for Missionrunning 4 weeks before that I was now grieving at my Hyperion that I lost in PvP. Fun story. CCP already announced that they were gonna redesign Missiles and I‘m looking forward to the day they do. However I had some thoughts on this myself and wanted to share them, just to see what the community thinks ;)

So basically missiles spawn in the middle of your ship and explode in the middle of your target‘s ship. That could be a frigate, a Battleship or a Titan. (I've never actually fired a missile at a Titan…so I don‘t know that for a fact. I‘m just assuming here)
It is basically the same way it was with turrets a few weeks ago. So what should be done in my opinion? Several things.

1. Add Missile-launcher positions on ships and launcher models based on size. Maybe even different designs for different races. Nobody wants a shiny golden Amarr launcher on a rusty Minmatar ship. Or even a Caldari Launcher Model on a Gallentean ship. *shrudders*
2. Sequence the launch of missiles. Even if you have all your guns on one hotkey, they will never fire at the same time. Makes it look more realistic and cool. Missiles should „pop“ out of the silo, drift a little away from the ship and then fire their rocket and fly towards their target.
3. There they should explode on the Shields/ Armour of that ship (Regarding shields…see my following „Ideas for…“ for more details…when it comes out, I‘ll ad clicky link here).

That's about it for the basics...really. A good example on how missiles could be launched is the Vaygr Battlecruiser from Homeworld II. (LINK)

Now another thing to missile dynamics. Right now it looks like a missile gets yanked out of a ships middle, then flies casually to it‘s target as a little light ball and then when getting close to it activates some sort of hyper motivation and death wish and clashes into it. IMO a rocket shouldn't change speed during it‘s pursuit. Actually missiles should try to follow their targets as best they can. And this brings me to another point: With guns, you can miss! With missiles you can miss too but in a different way. If the explosion velocity of a warhead is smaller than the movement speed of a ship, not the full damage is being dealt. Although I don‘t want to change the maths behind that system because it‘s pretty cool I‘d definitely change the effects that come along with it. Larger missiles have more mass and more rocket power, making them less agile than a small Anti Frigate Rocket. While with guns this is pretty easy as you just let the animation literally „miss“ the ship, with missiles it's a little more tricky. Three situations can occur:


1. A missile tracks it‘s target right and lands a full hit. Attacker happy, Defender extremely unhappy.

2. A missile sort of tracks it‘s target right, however miscalculates flight path by a little bit. It explodes prematurely behind/ in front of the ship, dealing some damage to the ship. Attacker sort of happy, Defender too busy eating his sandwich.

3. A missile really screws up because it never went to college, misses a ship completely and goes of into deep space, hitting a spaceship that will be there in a million years in the future. Attacker really pissed, Defender trolling the Attacker.

If a missile lands a perfect hit the target ship shouldn't be swamped by the explosion effect but the pilot should really feel the „heat“ that‘s happening around him/ her. The warhead detonates at the shields/ armour, creating an explosion into the direction it hit. The larger the warhead however, the bigger secondary explosions will be. If a torpedo hits a still standing frigate the ship will be surrounded by flames and death and probably die (Again...didn‘t try this yet. Next time I see a Dread, I‘ll be sure to ask). If a rocket hits a battleship there will only be a small explosion on the shields/ armour.

Alright. This is the end of my first „Ideas for…“ in the series. More is to come. Please comment on the ideas and reply any suggestions you might have. If you feel the urge to flame *grabs fire extinguisher* please do so.

Fly safe and talk to you another time,
Black Apok

+1

@CCP, please, do it.


Don't change damage of missiles just yet, because missiles are primary weapon of Caldari and such miscalculation could make serious impact in the traditional fight style of whole faction.

Although dynamics, persuasion, trails of missiles that stays at the same place after launch while ship still moving away and,
of course, graphics of launchers should be implemented A.S.A.P.

I think each type of missile should have a different effect depending on the damage type,

EM - Bit of a no brainer, some sort of lightning explosion.

Heat - I would go for some sort of fuel air bomb type effect, puff of gas followed by a flame rushing threw the gas.

Kinetic - At a distance from the target the missile explodes firing darts at the target.

Explosive - Pretty much what we have now.

Here are some links to show you what I mean,

Fuel air bomb - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9xCgNdZPKk

Kinetic missile - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starstreak_%28missile%29

I don't think torpedoes should be the same though, maybe have a more omni directional look to the effect?

Playability > 'looks cool'

Creating multiple entities and effects causes exponentially greater server load (and missiles already tax the server much more than turret weapon systems do). I would rather have a playable game than one that lags out horribly but looks really cool while it does it, lol.

The reason games like Homeworld and such can afford to use fancy graphical tweaks like that is because they have to worry about a very limited number of ships at any given time. The Eve servers have to keep track of tens of thousands of player ships at any given time, much less all the other entities that exist in the game.

Nearly all the above suggestions can be implemented client side. I see no reason why this would change the base calculations required.

I don't understand how any graphical change would increase lag?

yes this is nice idea

mybe more color :D

Ya I think missiles should launch separately from their respective hard points just like gun turrets do. Maybe put a missile hatch of some sort on the hard point. Have them spread out some so they don't all follow the same path like a laser beam.

It also looks really weird that my missiles make a sudden left hook as they approach the target. It is kinda comical really.

Have a look at how missiles work in any Macross episode and you should be on the right track.

I definitely think they are due for a revision.

+1

Good Job mate.

+1 from me ( wanted to add many +1 but i cant )

hope they can implement some of ur features. *Thumbs up*

pushing thread back on Site 1