Matthew
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Posted - 2005.04.05 14:31:00 -
[1]
 Originally by: Darax Thulain
What I liked best in the past was when torps had blast radius(500m) and every missile could hit random objects in space. It was loads more fun and the sheer danger of shooting torps around Yulai X DED Assembly plant put anyone off the idea of trying to kill off an army of frigs at close range. Also, drones worked as a missile shield back then, that was fun too. This would not balance the missiles itself, but it would make people think twice before shooting cruise at random small ships.
Did I mention it was more fun?
No, it wasn't more fun. Unless you call not being able to use torps effectively in empire because everyone in a war would make/hire a newbcorp alt to orbit them within blast range and get all the torp-users taken out by concord.
Originally by: Arte
I thought that they way missiles used to follow a target till they caught up was a workable balance, was that a 'lag-generating' effect thus bringing about the change where they intercept. Surely intercepting requires cpu work on behalf of the servers as well as it has to predict the ships movement.
I believe the change to the "intercepting" behaviour was an unintended effect of a fix to make the missiles actually explode somewhere near their target - previously, even if the missile "hit" and did damage, the explosion of the missile would appear a fair way away from a fast-moving ship. Intercepting would need a few more calculations than following, but it would only be one multiplication, one division and one addition (division to estimate time to target from range and current speed, multiplication to multiply target speed with time to close, and addition to add this to the targets current position to get an estimated interception point...not 100% accurate, and a bit crude, but surprisingly effective if it updates often).
The difficulty in applying "proper" missile agility probably stems from them having given missiles a very cut-down physics engine tie-in. Missiles as they are now really don't need most of the complications that the full ship physics engine does. Hence why having several volleys of torps flying around generates significantly less lag than having an equivalent number of ships flying around. If you wanted full missile agility, you'd have to make the missiles equivalent to, at the very least drones, if not ships. I'm sure those who have been in any sort of significant battle can appreciate what effect that would have.
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