Missile Avoidance / Defense & Types

[Hole_in_Head]

I've been playing BTC, and decided to try starting with the Missile Interceptor.  It's great fun, I especially love the MIRVs.  However, I'm thinking that missiles are potentially a little OP, but think this is due to the AI behavior.  For example, I can launch a torpedo at a pirate in a smaller and faster ship, and be able to hit it fairly easily since they don't seem to make any attempts to avoid getting hit.  Sometimes they'll destroy it if they have energy weapons and they happen to be shooting at me, but that's about it. 

As far as things to do about it, it'd be cool to see the AI make use of the "warp" for general evasive maneuvers, especially to avoid getting hit by missiles.  They could also actively try to shoot down incoming missiles (on that topic, I feel that ballistic weapons should also be able to shoot down missiles, not just energy weapons).  Something else they could maybe do is if you've locked on to them, they could attempt to break the lock by retreating out of range and attempting hit and run type tactics. 

Additionally, perhaps a decoy system could also be implemented (for players too) that gives a limited number of decoys to assist in avoiding locked on missiles.  Different missiles could have different tracking types (Heat, Radar, Laser, etc.) that could affect how well the missile tracks, and which decoys work best.  For example, a flare type decoy would be most effective against heat seeking missiles.  Heat seekers would also get a tracking bonus if the rear of a ship is pointed towards the missile, but would be fairly short ranged.  Chaff would be good against Radar guided missiles, which are possibly better suited for longer ranges (tracking is less than heat seekers, and very poor at initial launch).  Chaff could also be effective against laser guided missiles, which have good tracking (not quite as good as on optimally fired heat seeker) but require your cursor to be close to your locked on target for tracking to be optimal. 

[Hecter94]

If you really want to build an OP ship, all weapon types are OP.

Ballistic, Laser and Missile can easily decimate any pirate ship out there.
The only real challenge is in PvP, and missiles against a skilled opponent are.....not very effective.

Though I wouldn't mind seeing the ability to upgrade your ship with additional defenses.
Armor plating for Ballistic, Shields for Lasers and Point Defense for missiles.

Anyways, eventually greater challenges will be added to the game, which will probably decrease the effectiveness of missiles greatly.

Imagine trying to do a mission deep in Alien space when your main weapons only carry twenty ammo each or something.
You'd be rendered defensless three systems in.

[Hammish]

What Hecter said, I think.  I actually tuned the missiles WAY down given the tracking nature on them and they'll get you killed fairly quickly in PVP matches unless you're utilizing the interceptor to the fullest (by which I mean a fair bit of radar research, then dashing in for a lock before using your speed to sit at max range).

In PVP you actually do have active defenses as well, in the form of beam weapons which can hit and destroy incoming projectiles.  Against MIRVs a player will (should?) attempt to close with you; if they're inside what is effectively your minimum and just tanking the starting missile to the hull they do very little DPS.  Outmaneuvering also works wonders, given that only missiles able to really keep up with good maneuvering are the LRM and the sub-shots off the MIRV, and the LRM has pretty low DPS overall as well.

As for armor types, I -think- I remember Lurler saying that there may be plans for it eventually but that as of current the damage type didn't actually do anything and was just in for the sake of future plans.  Might be wrong there, but once that was functional then resistance vs. damage type would be feasible (and would actually lead to some fun, and give me more paths for my planned defensive systems).

Not sure how you'd work a decoy, though, other than to just fool NPCs in general and give them a secondary target to beat on.  The tracking in the game is dependent on the current locked target, so you'd have to actively find a way in the code to break that.  Blowing up the projectiles in space, though... I think the code for that is already in.  Seeker_disruptor or something like that, targets all missiles in X radius and destroys them.