Expanding Missile Gameplay

[Tobie]

Missiles do a bunch of things really well, in StarMade, right now. They look super cool, especially when launched perpendicular to the ship. They have a good variety of different and interesting behaviors (Although the swarm missiles should really be changed to use IFF). Lock On missiles and the ability to shoot them down are nice too.

But missiles are pretty overpowered right now, and not just against other types of weapons, but against ship defenses as well. While there are some bugs that are going to be fixed and some species of HP system on the way, I would be super excited to see the depth of Missile combat expanded, rather than simply having missiles nerfed and/or ship health/shields buffed. To that end I offer up the following Ideas for expanding missile gameplay:

Active Countermeasures​

Flares:

A new type of Missile Behavior. When a Missile computer is hooked up to either a weapon effect system, or perhaps a jamming system, it will fire a swarm of “missiles”, in precisely the same way that swarm missiles do now. However these Missiles will do little to no damage, and once they reach a certain distance from the ship they will become stationary. How long the flares persist after stopping would be a function of the size of the weapon system firing them.

Once a missile triggers a flare it will have an x% chance to change targets to the flare. The method of determining when a flare triggers could be something “simple” like entering a certain range of a flare, or something more complex like comparing distance of the missile from the flare, and the distance to its original target.


Decoy Missiles:

Originally I had thought to suggest counter missiles here, but I think that working out how to get missiles to actually hit other missiles would be a bit impractical.

Decoy missiles would be built and behave in a very similar way to how I suggested that flares behave above. However, Decoy missiles would not stop at a certain distance from their ship and they would not have any extra missiles per emitter.

Instead they would be a single missile that, once fired, would target other incoming missiles. Rather than attempting to make direct contact with their target, they would just do their best to get within a certain range of it. Once they are in range, just like the flares, they would trigger and force the incoming missile to change targets (with a much better chance of success when compared to flares).

Whether or not a single decoy missile could affect multiple incoming missiles as well as their speed and maneuverability are things that would need to be balanced carefully though.


ECM Pulse:

A new weapon system that works off of the Damage pulse system the same way that Decoy Missiles and Flares work off of the Missile system. With a new configuration of computer linking, a new weapon behavior is enabled.

An ECM Pulse would, instead of doing damage; Destroy, Blind, or Reduce the damage of any missiles that it hits.

Passive Countermeasures​

Ship Decoy Systems:

A new ship system that comes in the form of a Jamming system that uses weapon effect links (maybe EMP). This new Decoy system will turn the ship that uses it into a missile magnet. The range of this effect would be determined by the size and effect efficiency of the Decoy system. They could be used by small disposable drones and perhaps even by bigger durable ships acting as a shield for their more vulnerable cohorts.


*ECM Array: *(Electronic Counter Measure)

A fairly simple system, once again based on the existing Jamming system. While it is enabled Missiles targeting that ship will have an x% Chance every n Meters to lose their lock. It should take a considerable amount of power to get the chance much higher than 5-10%, especially on larger ships.


Running Silent:

Whether this is something that should require an actual system to be built into ships, or just a hot-key that can be used by any ship, regardless of how it is fitted i'm not sure. But the idea is to disable a ships power generators and thrusters (perhaps some or all other systems as well). When this happens the accuracy of locked on missiles would drop significantly, and locking on with new missiles would take much longer (based on the size of the Silent ship).

This would create a number of interesting gameplay dynamics. Since missiles would be aiming for a ships core, running Silent with a large ship probably wouldn't help much, since “missing” something a few dozen or hundred blocks wide by a bit isn't a big deal. On smaller ships like fighter’s it would be a very effective option for avoiding missiles.

In larger fights it could still be used effectively by larger ships in conjunction with other ships using Decoy/ECM systems, to give them a synergistic buff (make yourself even less of a target, while your allies try to stand out).

It would also be interesting if running Silent had a chance to hide (or maybe significantly lower the transparency) of your ship’s HUD indicator for other players.



Since none of the Active Countermeasures should be used automatically, gameplay choices are not only expanded for the defenders but the attackers get some new options as well. For instance; if I know I am shooting at someone using an ECM Pulse, I could fire a big barrage of crappy Swarm missiles at him in the hopes of getting him to waste his pulse on my “Decoy missiles”, and then quickly follow up with some nukes before his cooldown is up.

Missile combat has a lot of potential to become a very interesting and strategic gameplay mechanic that can entertain players from ship building (designing the perfect missile defense) to ship fighting (taking apart said defense with careful feints and maneuvering) And I think it would be a lot of fun to have something like this in StarMade.

(Bonus points for using no new Block IDs with this suggestion?)

 

[Panpiper]

Thus far, virtually every ship I have built has relied almost exclusively on missile systems for it's offensive armament. My go to ship right now has a really nice, powerful and effective coring gun system and I have used it all of once on a pirate just to see it in action (pirates on my server are seriously beefed). I'd have killed that pirate almost as an afterthought with one more touch on my missile systems, largely because I seem to be completely inept at manual targeting.

So, speaking as someone who relies heavily on missile systems, I really like the ideas here. Anything that adds strategic depth to build decisions is a good thing to me.

 

[Snk]

Good ideas, man. +1

 

[psteiner]

I particularly like the EMP system, but I don't know how much it would unbalance game play...

 

[ltmauve]

Hmmm...
So, thinking about it: Flares versus decoy missiles.
Flares use less power, and can snag a missile in any direction. However, a decoy missile won't snag your own missiles and has a greater chance of catching a missile. Also for both of them, the missile should become a dumbfire once the missile expires
AMS pulse: hmm... I'd recommend redirection or switching to dumbfire because destroying the missile seems very OP.

ECM emitter, jamming, decoys, and running silent:
I do like what could be done with this. Though maybe decoys should jam nearby allied ships for players, and force AIs to target them instead of the nearby ships.

 

[zigyzigy]

I agree that missiles are OPed and that nerfing them is not the best solution to the problem but maybe not in the exact way you have described here, it is maybe a little too complicated - mainly because once you add in even 1 more weapon (or counter weapon) it has so many different uses depending on how it is joined with other systems, especially when logic systems come into play.

 

[Tobie]

I agree that missiles are OPed and that nerfing them is not the best solution to the problem but maybe not in the exact way you have described here, it is maybe a little too complicated - mainly because once you add in even 1 more weapon (or counter weapon) it has so many different uses depending on how it is joined with other systems, especially when logic systems come into play.

I'm not sure how this is a bad thing? Having lots of uses is the whole idea.
Are you maybe talking about how having lots of uses would make for a steeper learning curve for new players?

 

[Snk]

There are a lot of ways to do the things in the OP right now. For example:

You could use externally docked shuttles with AI modules as decoys. It would disrupt the lock on for a few seconds.

There are more things you could do, but I am too lazy to think of them.

 

[Spartan-228]

I like the running silent idea, but in space it should be running dark, or running cold.
Now we can already do this to some extent by using radar jamming and using black hull armor.
However heat seekers will still lock on to you.

 

[Snk]

I like the running silent idea, but in space it should be running dark, or running cold.

Does it matter?

 

[Spartan-228]

Does it matter?

There is no sound in space. So you can't run silent, you already are.

 

[Snk]

There is no sound in space. So you can't run silent, you already are.

It still doesn't matter. I suggest you stay away from semantics.

 

[ltmauve]

One of the things I was thinking of for balancing missiles is having the evasiveness of missiles be inversely propotional to the damage. So a large missile will travel in a very straight line, while small missiles get a larger chance to randomly move. Combined with an increase in AMS AI effectiveness, this should make missile defense better.

 

[jayman38]

That would look great and would definitely encourage smaller missile arrays. I loved in Heavy Gear 2 when a multi-launch missile system would spread out and converge on the target. Very dynamic and exciting.

 

[Mike the Reaper 86]

I would be super excited to see the depth of Missile combat expanded, rather than simply having missiles nerfed and/or ship health/shields buffed. To that end I offer up the following Ideas for expanding missile gameplay:

Flares
Decoy Missiles
ECM Pulse
Ship Decoy Systems
*ECM Array *(Electronic Counter Measure)
Running Silent Dark

And what interesting ideas these are. But I can't help but feel that something rather fundamental is missing. Thus, I would like to propose the following simple addition:
All ships have the innate ability to detect when a missile computer is locking on to them and when said missile is actually fired.

In nearly every air combat game (even multiplayer matches of Starfox 64) you can immediately tell when an opponent is locking on to you. Often the whole HUD changes color and is accompanied by an audible alarm.

Prevention is the best medicine, especially when the disease is a cluster of homing missiles. If you were made aware that an enemy is locking on to you (a process that takes some time in Starmade) you would have a chance to take evasive action and perhaps turn hard enough that the enemy would have to reacquire the lock. Should this primary countermeasure fail, you should be notified that a missile is inbound. Then the countermeasures Tobie suggests would come in very handy.

I would like to see ideas like Tobie's in Starmade, but we certainly need missile lock warnings too.

Also, can't damage pulse systems work as a missile countermeasure of sorts?

 

[Tobie]

Also, can't damage pulse systems work as a missile countermeasure of sorts?

If they can be used in that way, I dont believe they would be effective. The duration and the size of the pulse are not really tuned in way that would make it easy, or even practical, to try to use them to "shoot" down missiles. Getting the timing right against Beam Missiles would be pretty hard on default server speed limits, and completely out of the realm of reliability on servers with higher speed limits.

 

[EtherEel]

I was thinking a counter-measure something like a Flak-Cannon -- throwing a bunch of junk debris out there so the missiles hit that and detonate prematurely. Of course, they would have to be AI controlled and all that jazz....

 

[Mike the Reaper 86]

I don't believe they would be effective. The duration and the size of the pulse are not really tuned in a way that would make it easy, or even practical, to try to use them to "shoot" down missiles.

I wouldn't know, I haven't done much experimenting with them. Perhaps the developers should consider re-purposing them for this task. If the range and duration is really so short, I don't see why anyone would ever use them as standalone weapons in combat either.

Regardless, I think we can both agree that the usefulness of any countermeasure, even pulse systems, would benefit from missile lock and missile launch warnings.