Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Actually since missiles have a drawback at longer ranges (increased shot time to target) which turrets don't have, it could perhaps make sense for them to increase damage at longer range. Or perhaps them not losing damage at longer range is enough bonus.

I was thinking more of a small damage increase, with the initial damage being the most important. Like, a cruise missile might make 3-6% more damage by the end of its flight, or 9-12% on a sniper battleship with range bonuses to cruises. Barghest would pretty much just get the base damage because its missiles would spend so little time in flight.

Then it does not make any sense if the barghest get's the lowest bonus since it has the fastest missile with more than likely the strongest acceleration.

12% increase is probably close to torpedo damage with extra range and application.

Space doesn't have wind or water resistance, so wouldn't missiles hit their max velocity very shortly after being launched? An engine only outputs so much power, and minus resistance that peak would be hit quickly. Infinite acceleration is not mechanically sound.

Agreed. Eve-space is not a vacuum, it is not empty, rather ships behave more as if they were in an atmosphere or some other fluid that resists motion. This is also why ships roll and turn, like a ship at sea or a plane, instead of simply pivoting around an axis. A rocket engine on a missile would, as stated above, propel it at a constant (or near enough) acceleration until it exhausted all of its fuel, the result being a missile that would be traveling extremely fast. David Weber's Honor Harrington series features much more "realistic" missile combat across millions of kilometers at many orders of magnitude greater speed. Regardless, we are stuck with fluid physics so it would make more "sense" to increase the max V instead of acceleration.

Okay. Admittedly I'm not superbly well versed on Vacuum Mechanics. But if the rocket were to expend all it's fuel accelerating, it then wouldn't be able to turn/adjust course to continue tracking it's target, would it?

If we lore it up, the answer is "magical space drag" caused as a side effect of having a warp drive on ships. Having a warp drive = space drag. No warp drive = No space drag. So missiles could accelerate continuously from a lore standpoint.

That being said, missiles having continuous acceleration is bad on a number of levels people have already discussed.

Torpedoes have 37.75% more raw DPS than cruise missiles.

The Barghest would only deal a bit less damage which isn't really a disadvantage because it doesn't have to wait all that time for the missiles to reach the target, but I have decided I don't like the idea of increased damage by flight time anyway.




When a missile is accelerating in vacuum, the lack of resistance actually makes it not ever hit a max velocity. In air, a balance is soon reached between the thrust of a cruise missile and the air resistance holding it back. Cruise missiles fly as high as possible to reduce air resistance, so they can fly faster. A torpedo in water very quickly reaches terminal velocity, this is why many of them are shot across the surface of the water.

Spaceships in real life would not have top speeds.

I was thinking about the weird naming system for missiles. Compare with other main weapons:
-Hybrid Turrets - You got Rail Guns for long range, and you got Blasters for short range. They come in small, medium, large, and XL.
-Lasers - You got Beams for long range, and you got Pulses for short range. They come in small, medium, large, and XL.
-Projectile Weapons - You got Autocannons for short range, and you got Artillery for long range. They come in small, medium, large, and XL.

.... and then you have missiles. Light Missiles are small and for long(ish) range. And there are heavy missiles. "Oh, 'heavy' is the opposite of 'light'. So these must be the big ones. What about the medium ones?" Nope, "heavy" is the medium size; and they're for long range. The short range medium size is called "heavy assault". "Okay. So then 'light assault' missiles are the small, start range--" Nope. those are "rockets". There is no "light assault". And for the large missiles we have some totally new names, "cruse missiles" and "torpedoes." "Okay.. so.." There is no size adjective; they just are. Except for "citadel" versions. Those are the extra large versions. They go on capital ships even though a citadel is a kind of stationary fortress. Got it?

They really should make the naming of missiles consistent. I don't care what two names they go with. Missile/Rocket, Cruse/Torpedo, regular/Assault. Whatever, it doesn't matter. They other ugly bit about missiles is that you need two different kinds for each size. Hybrid, projectile, and laser weapons use the same ammo for both short and long range versions (except T2 ammo). But missiles can't work this way because the range is, in theory, set by the characteristics of the little solid-fuel rocket motor that propels the warhead to its target, rather than by the launcher.

But there's a way around that: Constant Acceleration. (I always get on-topic eventually )

You may remember this equation from high-school physics,

Distance = InitialVelocity x Time + 0.5 x Acceleration x Time^2

The way to cause the same missile, with the same burn-time and the same constant acceleration, to fly a different distance is by giving it a different InitialVelocity! Have the short range launcher plop the missile out with low velocity and let it accelerate mostly on its own. And have the long range launcher fling the missile out at much higher velocity so that it can go farther with the same burn-time. The DPS for the two can be trivially adjusted by setting difference rates of fire.

And consider the effect your ships velocity would have if it was added to the initial missile velocity. if you fire the missile in the direction your ships is travelling than the missiles range would effectively be extended. Here's your explanation for how stealth bombers can launch torpedoes so far. Conversely, if you were moving away from your target then your range would be effectively reduced. Travelling perpendicular to the line to your target would have no effect on range. This effect would be most pronounced for fast ships which are launching relatively slow missiles (such as bombers). Drakes wouldn't care much. Max-range missile sniping using this mechanic would have it's DPS balanced (reduced) by the practical matter that moving towards the target for a time will require moving away from the target for a similar amount of time in order to maintain range (DPS will be effectively halved).

So here we have a mechanic that connects pilot skill with missile performance. A bomber pilot would have to consider the trade-off between launching from greater range, but with the danger of having to fly directly towards the battleship and its huge turrets, or going in closer to where they can hit the target while still maintaining high transverse velocity.

Missiles are currently seen as the lazy weapon system suitable mostly for half-AFK PvE players. They're kinda boring. Real pilots Guns. This would be one way to make missiles more interesting and missile boats more fun to fly. It would also be possible to change bombs to have zero acceleration and little (if any) initial velocity so that they'd have to be launched and aimed entirely via the trajectory of the parent ship. Think "dive bomber" frigates. Bowling for Ishtars, anyone? (EDIT: Can you tell I've never flown a bomber in combat?)

This is just rambling brainstorming. Not a serious suggestion (yet). There are a lot of knobs that would need to be tweaked in order to approximate the behaviour of the current missile system. Here as a very rough spreadsheet to monkey around with the acceleration and initial-velocity values (ODF file. Graph may or may not show up in Excel).