So I recently began fooling around around with heatseeking missiles again as an offshoot of developing a new fighter. My objective was to make a fast strike fighter that could stand up to a destroyer-class vessel, and to do this, it needed to kill the turrets ASAP. How better than to do it with HEATSEEKERS! Stripped out the clunky and rather inefficient beam missiles, strapped on the cluster pods, spawned a destroyer and went at it. Boom ba-boom BOOM kabeewwwmmm! All turrets offline on the second pass, hell yeah! That was awesome.
My ultimate goal was to make a light fighter that could be deployed en masse against an enemy, so it was time to see how well these ships fought in formation. Spawned an air wing, spawned some hostile destroyers 1.5 km out and then watched with growing excitement as the two forces went full throttle into the merge and HUNDREDS of missiles erupted from my fighters. My excitement turned to horror as the missiles armed, pulled a hard 180 and slammed into the friendly fighters immediately next to them, turning them into molten balls of 'oh god the pain.'
The destroyers emerged unscathed.
"... what the f**k!?"
All I could do was listen to the screams of my imaginary comrades as the destroyers hunted down those that survived and dealt a decisive defeat to my air wing. I left the area in a huff. Those fighters were designed for that mission, and in controlled test runs could take down a destroyer on their own if given enough time. They were incapable of fighting in a combined force because of the heatseeker mechanics.
So what went wrong? The missiles cannot identify friend or foe, and target indiscriminately. Of course, "these are heatseekers, they're after the hottest thing in the sky, no matter what it is." Okay, I'll give you that, but why are they able to target something immediately behind them? There's supposed to be a huge-ass cloud of superheated exhaust back there, how could they see through that? On top of that, how come the missiles sometimes think an object 5 km in the distance is warmer than something 50 m in front of their face? Also this far into the future, wouldn't missile tech have advanced far enough that heatseekers could still perform IFF checks? The problems I see are:
1. Missiles have no IFF
As I've already said, this just leads to total frustration when used in a fleet setting, and we're probably far enough along that completely dumb heatseeking missiles are no longer viable.
2. Missiles have 360 degree vision
The missiles can target anything, anywhere on the battlefield, making them unwieldy and difficult to use without damaging or destroying friendly vessels, and also horrendously immersion-breaking. A missile relying on IR guidance should not be able to see through its own exhaust plume.
3. Missiles have no concept of range
Not only can they target something directly behind them, they can target things vastly outside their range. You launch a swarm of heatseekers with several stations a few KM away, be prepared for some of the missiles to race to kill a target they have no hope of reaching. This also breaks immersion because there's no good reason that object should even have registered on the missiles' sensors.
How things could be fixed:
1. Give missiles IFF. Problem solved (if still unrealistic). This presents the issue that there is no downside to using heatseekers anymore, and they allow you to attack multiple targets indiscriminately, turning them into a skill-less weapon. So, all in all this is the simplest and least-effective solution.
2. Make missiles perform an FOV check upon target acquisition. This means that even without IFF, the missiles will target what you're aiming at and not go veering off to try and kill the guy behind you. If you're right up close to something, all of those missiles should hit that target. But say you're a bigger ship and fire a cluster of heatseekers into a dogfight from range and you can see all of the ships involved, there's a good chance you're going to hit every ship in the dogfight, regardless. This means the weapons will be more effective to use, but also present a downside in the indiscriminate nature of heatseeking weapons, forcing pilots to wield them with precision unless they want to hurt friendlies.
3. Make missiles prioritize closest targets first. This may seem unnecessary, but in the real world, objects that are nearer appear brighter through the inverse square law of power dispersion. Just another part of making the missiles more reliable to use while not sacrificing their inherent indifference to faction.
My ultimate goal was to make a light fighter that could be deployed en masse against an enemy, so it was time to see how well these ships fought in formation. Spawned an air wing, spawned some hostile destroyers 1.5 km out and then watched with growing excitement as the two forces went full throttle into the merge and HUNDREDS of missiles erupted from my fighters. My excitement turned to horror as the missiles armed, pulled a hard 180 and slammed into the friendly fighters immediately next to them, turning them into molten balls of 'oh god the pain.'
The destroyers emerged unscathed.
"... what the f**k!?"
All I could do was listen to the screams of my imaginary comrades as the destroyers hunted down those that survived and dealt a decisive defeat to my air wing. I left the area in a huff. Those fighters were designed for that mission, and in controlled test runs could take down a destroyer on their own if given enough time. They were incapable of fighting in a combined force because of the heatseeker mechanics.
So what went wrong? The missiles cannot identify friend or foe, and target indiscriminately. Of course, "these are heatseekers, they're after the hottest thing in the sky, no matter what it is." Okay, I'll give you that, but why are they able to target something immediately behind them? There's supposed to be a huge-ass cloud of superheated exhaust back there, how could they see through that? On top of that, how come the missiles sometimes think an object 5 km in the distance is warmer than something 50 m in front of their face? Also this far into the future, wouldn't missile tech have advanced far enough that heatseekers could still perform IFF checks? The problems I see are:
1. Missiles have no IFF
As I've already said, this just leads to total frustration when used in a fleet setting, and we're probably far enough along that completely dumb heatseeking missiles are no longer viable.
2. Missiles have 360 degree vision
The missiles can target anything, anywhere on the battlefield, making them unwieldy and difficult to use without damaging or destroying friendly vessels, and also horrendously immersion-breaking. A missile relying on IR guidance should not be able to see through its own exhaust plume.
3. Missiles have no concept of range
Not only can they target something directly behind them, they can target things vastly outside their range. You launch a swarm of heatseekers with several stations a few KM away, be prepared for some of the missiles to race to kill a target they have no hope of reaching. This also breaks immersion because there's no good reason that object should even have registered on the missiles' sensors.
How things could be fixed:
1. Give missiles IFF. Problem solved (if still unrealistic). This presents the issue that there is no downside to using heatseekers anymore, and they allow you to attack multiple targets indiscriminately, turning them into a skill-less weapon. So, all in all this is the simplest and least-effective solution.
2. Make missiles perform an FOV check upon target acquisition. This means that even without IFF, the missiles will target what you're aiming at and not go veering off to try and kill the guy behind you. If you're right up close to something, all of those missiles should hit that target. But say you're a bigger ship and fire a cluster of heatseekers into a dogfight from range and you can see all of the ships involved, there's a good chance you're going to hit every ship in the dogfight, regardless. This means the weapons will be more effective to use, but also present a downside in the indiscriminate nature of heatseeking weapons, forcing pilots to wield them with precision unless they want to hurt friendlies.
3. Make missiles prioritize closest targets first. This may seem unnecessary, but in the real world, objects that are nearer appear brighter through the inverse square law of power dispersion. Just another part of making the missiles more reliable to use while not sacrificing their inherent indifference to faction.
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