Planned Missile Lock Alert

[MaartenAll]

Any reason why we should have a missile early warning system other than "it would be a good idea"?

Your proposition will cause an end to Stealth and Ambush Combat, you would seek to completely nerf the ability to conduct any form of hit and run sneak attacks, Missiles are the best alpha damage and the longest range, so they are frequently used for alpha strike hit and attacks, giving people a warning that they are being locked onto with a missile completely kills the point of even using stealth to get into an optimal position for taking out a vessel with missiles. Cannons, beams and damage pulse cannot preform this role.

Missiles to not need to be nerfed, they already have considerable drawbacks that steers lots of players away from using them

They take extreme amounts of power and power capacity, a small ship can use cannons without the need to place any power capacitors, and yet any small ship in order for a missile to be effective would REQUIRE a large amount of capacitors, removing space for other system components.

They have TERRIBLE sustained DPS, they have good alpha damage but they cannot sustain a constant damage stream unlike other weapons.

The missile projectiles are extremely slow, the amount of time from when you fire a missile to when it actually takes down a target at typical engagement ranges is about 15 seconds, assuming that said missile is not shot down by point defense systems.



Overall, a lock on warning has very little benefits and kills 2 forms of combat in StarMade, the only other form on combat in StarMade is big ship vs big ship slugfest, and we all know the problems with that.

I like the idea, but I also respect your point of view... So how about this: a new type of block, like 'lock warning computer' or something like it, that can be turned on for a surtain amount of time and consumes energie based on the mass of the ship. As long as it's active it warns you when being locked on, but since it drains an enormous amount of power on large ships, they can only be used for a while. After being turned off, the timer running out or the power being completely drained, it goes into a short reload time (like the radar jammer). You can still take the risk to perform a stealth attack, just hope your target isn't ussing this computer at the time.

 

[kiddan]

A sound of death to freeze the blood of young survivors blue? *gives 22nd 'agree' rating*

 

[taisong]

Hmm.
What will you do if a missile tries to lock onto you? You just need to press the radar jammer. It will nerf missiles.

So, maybe it is better to alert players when a missile is about 500m (configure?) away from you, instead of a lockon alert. Gives more counter-counterplay.

 

[Ithirahad]

They have TERRIBLE sustained DPS, they have good alpha damage but they cannot sustain a constant damage stream unlike other weapons.

Lies! There are at least two ways to make lockons fire a consistent stream, and I thought they were both common knowledge...

1) Power and math,
2) A lot of computers

 

[pesce rocks]

I think it would be good to add an alert that would let a pilot know when someone has acquired missile lock on them.

Could we turn the sound off if it is to annoying?

 

[KiloZulu]

I see someone beat me to the punch - you can create a turret specifically to detect incoming missiles using the sensor logic block. Tie the sensor to a power reactor on the turret, and whenever the turret fires at a missile you'll get a signal that can be sent to the cockpit to alert the crew. This seems like a great compromise for what the OP suggested, you get an early warning system, but it's not going off every time someone looks at you sideways. Anything more would be burdensome, imho - both for the dev's to create and on server resources. You're asking the server to do real-time checks of one player's ship and pass that information onto a specific player. I think the server has better things to worry about.

 

[Comradecolonel]

I really just wanna know when a missile is tracking me. Lock-on would be nice as well but not necessary. Having to build a large contraption on my fighter just to tell when a missile is locked on to me isn't worth it. Considering the limited space on smaller ships the system would provide little benefit for a large cost in space. For bigger ships the system can be practical.

As far as the warning goes, I think it should show up just like passives do. No sound is really necessary. Just give me a little blip so that I know missiles are actively tracking me and that enough is fine. I feel some people imagine its going to be like this .

 

[KiloZulu]

I really just wanna know when a missile is tracking me. Lock-on would be nice as well but not necessary. Having to build a large contraption on my fighter just to tell when a missile is locked on to me isn't worth it. Considering the limited space on smaller ships the system would provide little benefit for a large cost in space. For bigger ships the system can be practical.

As far as the warning goes, I think it should show up just like passives do. No sound is really necessary. Just give me a little blip so that I know missiles are actively tracking me and that enough is fine. I feel some people imagine its going to be like this .

I don't know that such a system would be "large." The whole thing could be as small as 7 blocks for the detector, 3 blocks for the turret base - the same minimum requirements as a point defense turret. Turns out the source I based that estimate on doesn't work. Sorry for any confusion.

 

[Spartan-228]

I know this thread was marked planned, but we are still waiting.
Could we possibly get this in the weapon update?

 

[Nosajimiki]

I really just wanna know when a missile is tracking me. Lock-on would be nice as well but not necessary. Having to build a large contraption on my fighter just to tell when a missile is locked on to me isn't worth it. Considering the limited space on smaller ships the system would provide little benefit for a large cost in space. For bigger ships the system can be practical.

As far as the warning goes, I think it should show up just like passives do. No sound is really necessary. Just give me a little blip so that I know missiles are actively tracking me and that enough is fine. I feel some people imagine its going to be like this .

Big? This can be made by adding less than 1 mass to your ship! This is an advantageous technology, so there is no reason it should not cost you a couple of blocks.

 

[Comradecolonel]

Is it really worth it on a small ship? Not too convinced.

 

[Nosajimiki]

Any ship too small to fit 1 extra mass is more than expendable enough to lose to an ambush. As for all the complaints about this not being a major nerf do not understand waffle AMS. An AMS waffle can reliable destroy 80-100% of inbound missiles, but you need to know you are under attack to use it. Even against large salvos of over 100 missiles. This feature would often make the difference between an ambush resulting in massive damage and next to nothing; so, yes, I do feel like expecting people to need some level of skill to make a detector turret (or at least a chamber cost) is reasonable.

 

[OfficialCoding]

Any ship too small to fit 1 extra mass is more than expendable enough to lose to an ambush. As for all the complaints about this not being a major nerf do not understand waffle AMS. An AMS waffle can reliable destroy 80-100% of inbound missiles, but you need to know you are under attack to use it. Even against large salvos of over 100 missiles. This feature would often make the difference between an ambush resulting in massive damage and next to nothing; so, yes, I do feel like expecting people to need some level of skill to make a detector turret (or at least a chamber cost) is reasonable.

no because chambers take a tonne of power. it should be a computer that detects it

 

[Nosajimiki]

They don't take power unless you make them take power. Mass, RP, and resources, yes, but on small craft that are most worried about scuttling around threats, that is only a few extra blocks anyway. On bigger warships, missile detection would become a calculated investment against other military features.

Another option (now that we know more about stealth/recon chambers) would be to make it so that you can only detect inbound missiles from ships you are currently beating with your scanner power. So if a stealth ship fires missiles at you, you only get the the alert if your scanners are good enough to see the ship firing at you.
[doublepost=1522689564,1522689512][/doublepost]This way, a stealth missile ship has the same advantages as a stealth cannon or beam ship when ambushing someone.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

I'm strongly in favor of a missile lock alert, BUT only when the missile is launched (can't be done any other way since heatseekers don't require manual lock) and not the moment it starts locking on.

As for the requirements for that, there are 2 options.
- A passive effect of the scanner base chamber (easy requirement) or
- Only active when the scanner is active, so you'd need a permanent duration scanner that's turned on, to detect incoming missiles (hard requirement)