Capital Ship Missiles

[Spacewolf]

i think this is a good example of missle spamming even though im not involved in it it would make it impossible to shoot the ship since you would only be able to aim at the missles
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[Dab]

Yes, spamming the missiles can disrupt targeting quite alot. Though if you focus on range it will, if you get in close you can still hit. Its a good tactic, but abused with missile spamming, just as its abused to kill fighters.

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[McNeo]

... Space ships would have to survive being hit by micro-meteors traveling many times faster than a bullet could ever be accelerated to, even by a very very long rail gun. Shields and armor would both have to brush these everyday collisions off without so much as blinking - as it were. It's calculated that a small asteroid of a 10kg or so has the kinetic energy of a WWII atom bomb. Luckily the earth's atmosphere absorbs this quite easily.

About that. Imagine a nice square blob of depleted urainium about the size of a small sized football (English or American, makes no difference) surrounded by a shell of concentrated magnetic substance. Than fire it at half the speed of your average asteroid into a hull. I think you will find a pretty clean hole through the whole structure of the ship that was hit. Lo and behold all the rooms on that deck decompress.

And anyway, energy weapons would break the bonds in the metals and substances that they hit, because the release of energy would:

1. melt the bit you hit

or

2. Convince the bonds to break and stay in their respective elements instead of the compound they were in.

And once again, thank you, Microsoft.

For making sheild busters but not hull busters available, i will refuse to buy any microsoft game, apart from freelancer 2 if they decide to recommence development, which they wont.

@Wobbly: I like fighters, they are fun to have dogfights in, though they require a huge amount of concentration to fly against a skilled opponent. I mean, fighting for 2 hours against nightfall takes its toll:lol:

[Kane]

All right, step by step...

First off, 7 days for a singular flame seems harsh to me. Multiple, and continued, yes. But not one. Vlad has been warned, and if he does it again I will deal with him. Despite my intense dislike for your person, you have a point; it -is- my job to be fair and even-handed in my Moderation duties.

Secondly, I was being truthful in what I was reading from your posts. You didn't say it out loud, but that's what I imply and infer from your posting. If you want a different impression, you're going to have to work at it.

And thirdly, Wobbly, at what point in time did I ever say a single fighter against a battleship should be fair? A single fighter should die a horrible death against a battleship! Not instantly, a well piloted and agile fighter could dodge most lasers and missiles, but a single fighter should never carry enough firepower to take down, or even threaten, a battleship.

Bombers, on the other hand, are a different story. They have powerful shields and thick armor, because they have to survive the onslaught of a battleship and still be able to deliver a payload. One on one, a bomber should be a moderate threat. Where the bomber really comes in is durring fleet actions where the battleships are worried about other battleships and not the little gnats flying about. Untill said gnat drops two nuclear warheads into its lap. Again, one on one is not advisable. Two is a good number for taking on a battleship and having a good shot at victory, while three is fairly assured.

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This is the real true story of rock and roll; it was not about anything more then, how to live your life, as a gangster, in sartorial splendor, and turning the world into a place where normality would never return again...- Malcolm McLaren

[Igiss]

I removed 4 pages of flame from this thread that contain no new information. Wobbly already got my... apologies for that.

I've enabled pre-moderation for all Wobbly's posts. I'd like to ask moderators to extract the useful part of the post, if it's at all possible, and approve this part.

The mod will see at least 3 beta versions since now. There's enough time to make missile turrets what they should be. If my changes for next version won't work, I'll try something new.

Many FL communities ban people for just critisizing admins or the mod (read more of TLR if you wish examples), in-game or on forums. No matter if it's reasonable or not; no game or mod is ideal, and the suggestion to improve should look like a suggestion, not an insult.

I hope this discussion can be continued as normal, without locking.

[Nadir]

launchers ammo-hungry even to prevent spamming

I assume you mean energy hungry. (I thought I better say that before someone has a go at you for not reading the bit about ammo being impossible in cap ships, which you did read... )

The only problem I can see in extending range significantly is that there are more things for a player's computer and the server to track at any one time thus increasing server CPU and network load (if nothing else NPC traffic detectable to a ship would increased) thus making lag worse. Don't know if it would be a major problem though.

EDIT: The topic at that time had moved to extending the range of missiles and other weapons....

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ex

[Kane]

And -that- was the Mighty War-Hammer of Justice... *WHAM!*

Ok, back to the topic;

Simple Laymans terms time!

Single fighter = Good against other fighters, even chance of besting a GB, little to no change against cruisers or battleships.
Fighter WING (3 or 4 fighters) = Excilent against opposing single fighters, good against wings, good against GBs, possible to take on cruisers and battleships
Gunboat = Excell at anti-fighter operations. Support for cruisers and battleships.
Cruiser = Mini-battleship. Not as powerful, but small and able to project power into areas where battleships cannot go.
Battleship = Stand-alone terror. Able to deal out death to any who attack, threatened only by other battleships, well-flown cruisers, and bomber wings.
Bomber = Useless against fighters, but deadly to GBs one-on-one and highly dangerous to cruisers or battleship in pairs or trios.

I will point out my two-missile idea once more. No, I won't post the stats again (unless you ask) because I have said it so many times I think some people are starting to know it by heart.

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This is the real true story of rock and roll; it was not about anything more then, how to live your life, as a gangster, in sartorial splendor, and turning the world into a place where normality would never return again...- Malcolm McLaren

[Nadir]

And -that- was the Mighty War-Hammer of Justice... *WHAM!*

Enough of that. *in asbestos underwear*

Ok, back to the topic;

Simple Laymans terms time!

Single fighter = Good against other fighters, even chance of besting a GB, little to no change against cruisers or battleships.

I want to start a new topic for this. Why shouldn't a fighter be able to take on a gunboat or a cruiser. A battleship is a bit much but still... remember Starwars? Remember the game X-Wing? Countless other games which pit a pilot against a huge enemy vessel. Note how a torpedo from a single WWII fighter can could critically damage a destroyer (smallish warship). There are bigger issues at stake. I'll start a new topic under Balance Issues to air these.

Fighter WING (3 or 4 fighters) = Excilent against opposing single fighters, good against wings, good against GBs, possible to take on cruisers and battleships
Gunboat = Excell at anti-fighter operations. Support for cruisers and battleships.
Cruiser = Mini-battleship. Not as powerful, but small and able to project power into areas where battleships cannot go.
Battleship = Stand-alone terror. Able to deal out death to any who attack, threatened only by other battleships, well-flown cruisers, and bomber wings.
Bomber = Useless against fighters, but deadly to GBs one-on-one and highly dangerous to cruisers or battleship in pairs or trios.

I will point out my two-missile idea once more. No, I won't post the stats again (unless you ask) because I have said it so many times I think some people are starting to know it by heart.

Anti cap ship missiles are very similar in concept to Flack canons as they stand. Perhaps Flack should be relegated to short range anti-missile/anti-fighter/anti-mine (very high turn rates, very short range) - we don't have an anti-missile/anti-mine specific weapon. Requirements: very short range, very very accurate, minimal damage. How many hull points does a missile have anyway? Move Flack to anti-missile, and cap ship missiles to anti-fighter-but-not-very-good-at-close-range (medium turn rates)... It could also mean you can pump up the slow moving torpedoes with reasonable expectation the enemy can repel them (hang on, are torpedoes targetable??) with a weapon tuned to do so (flack or missile or whatever).

More cents worth into the mix....
Hona sionara sensei

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ex

[Panzer]

In the series battlestars used a heavy barrage of flak to cover a sector of its surrounding with an unpenetrable barrrier of fire. No matter if it were missles or cylon raiders incoming. (btw, my mistake, those guns were KEWs - electro-magnetic launcers or simply railguns)

Well, if it's possible I would really love to see a sort of an anti-missle defence system on bigger ships. Small, damn manouverable rockets with a not very impressive payload.

Anti-ship missles...They'd be as agile as modern ballistic missles and have tremendeous range, firepower and blast radius.

As for flak...I was wondering, if making their shots explode at a set distance/ time after being shot would be possible. Regardless if they do or don't hit anything directly.

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[Nadir]

In the series battlestars used a heavy barrage of flak to cover a sector of its surrounding with an unpenetrable barrrier of fire. No matter if it were missles or cylon raiders incoming. (btw, my mistake, those guns were KEWs - electro-magnetic launcers or simply railguns)

Well, if it's possible I would really love to see a sort of an anti-missle defence system on bigger ships. Small, damn manouverable rockets with a not very impressive payload.

Anti-ship missles...They'd be as agile as modern ballistic missles and have tremendeous range, firepower and blast radius.

As for flak...I was wondering, if making their shots explode at a set distance/ time after being shot would be possible. Regardless if they do or don't hit anything directly.

Most commonly flack means 'fragments'. A it seems you already know, flack guns have ammunition designed to burst and scatter to do damage to airplanes (while landing at about the same speed as rain so as not to kill people, which it occasionally did in WWII but mostly by complete bad luck on behalf of the person suck in the open in an air raid) and flack jackets are designed to absorb pieces of metal and debris (and small arms fire) in a war zone. If a modern anti-aircraft gun was placed in the FL universe, people would complain it was spamming!... even though that's the idea... Perhaps the turret has stolen some of the fame from missiles but it's a good weapon and well balanced (perhaps it needs renaming to Short Range Missiles ala Mechwarrior).

I believe one factor to successful missiles turrets is they should be slightly harder to dodge at extreme range than energy weapons but slightly easier at short range...

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ex