IronDuke's I-War2 Remake/I-War3

Nice!
The corrected targeting system is a huge plus for me. I never realized the targeting system in the vanilla game was broken. What's the point of a targeting system if it can't target accurately? I suspect fighters will be much easier to hit, but might be the only ships with a chance of not being hit.

I understand your busy schedule, I am quite busy as well. Good luck in the future!

Actually, in EoC there is a minimum ship size, below which your weapons will have no dispersion/scatter whatsoever. I hated it and thought it was completely unrealistic and massively "gamey" so I ain't replicating it. So, even though your weapons will track more intelligently, the chance of a shot actually going directly center to the target is fairly low unless you upgrade the heck out of your weapon. You'll have to either spam shots with a rapid-fire weapon, get really close (hard to do to a fighter) OR do what I intend: use a missile. Even a simple harrower missile can wipe out a fighter, and the missiles in the game are getting serious buffs to flight capabilities and intelligence. Basically, you're not dodging. :V A fighter can potentially spoof missiles with flares, but it isn't guaranteed, and you can spam a whole swarm at them if you want them dead. Finally, a reason to pack missile launchers in the medium hardpoints!

Imagine the glory that will be deadshot missiles

Okay, cool.

But... dodging missiles is the most fun part of flying a fighter! You know, watching and hearing missiles streak by as you barrel roll and turn to dodge them.. Oh well.

It seems like fighters would become much less useful in a battle. If the enemy has missiles, then the fighters die. Maybe the fighters could equip "seeker ECMs" that track down and try to collide with the missile. The seeker ECMs would have to be equipped in a missile launcher and might have to be fired manually. The countermeasures would be effective enough that the fighter would be nearly immune to seeker missiles until the countermeasures ran out, allowing fighters to survive longer and remain effective in battle. The countermeasures would also have the side effect of taking up pylon space normally reserved for normal seeker missiles.

Just a thought. What do you think?

I was considering something along those lines for use against REM missiles.

You are also overlooking that you will be able to lock onto a missile and shoot at it with your main weapons. Fighters will carry normal flares as well, so they can spoof some missiles. Also, there's the logistics of it; fighters are going to be in abundance because of their very low cost. Fighters are most effective in swarms.

I'm sure you all are worried about the Storm Petrel :V this ship is unique, since it can carry more flares than a regular fighter and has two weapons rather than one, so it's better at shooting them down. Plus, missiles with lower payloads or that explode farther away will not completely destroy it because of the larger size. Oh, and it is faster than normal fighters, and actually I plan for it to be faster than the cheap Harrower missiles, which are your only real missile-opposition in act 0, unless you tick off the cops or something.

In real life, missiles are faster and more agile than any fighter, and the absence of an atmosphere does not change that. Say space fighters can pull 250 m/s^2 of acceleration. A missile can easily do 500 or more. It's not interested in conserving enough fuel to make long space trips; it's just gotta kamikaze into a target.

Oh, and fighters rarely operate alone; they're usually support for big ships or stations, and can fly near them for point-defense covering fire! When fighters are used in a scout role, they normally will not engage targets that potentially could be carrying lots of missiles. In act 0, the puffin and spider tugs you fight will only carry a few, and you can spoof them, shoot them, hide behind debris, or try to tank the hit. Tactics, boys. Tactics.

--IronDuke

Thanks for the additional info.

I remember watching an instant action video on YouTube where the pilot was targeting and shooting down missiles in I-War 2. I don't know how he did it, since I can't do it with my copy of the game. Anyways, since that was a feature in the original I-War, it would be a very good feature. Also, it would tax the piloting skills of the fighter pilot a bit more, which is a good thing. I agree, the "Seeker ECM" is not necessary.

The reason I brought the topic up is because in games like World of Tanks, World of Warships, and MechWarrior Online, even the small vehicles with low HP are useful and fun to play. I do not want EOC to be a game where the Heavy Corvette is the only fun ship to play, because all of the others die to easily. From the sounds of it, you have things covered. The ability for carriers to provide point-defense for fighters is especially cool. Not only does it make fighters able to survive, it increases the tactical side of things and makes capital ships and fighters dependent on each other. (Another reason for fighters to be able to survive is because each one carries a human pilot. This would discourage the owners from using them as expendable DPS machines.)

One other suggestion I would like to make is for each fighter to have a disposable coolant pod. So, if the enemy team tries to pick of individual weaker ships by launching a flurry of missiles at a single fighter, (more missiles than the fighter could shoot down,) the fighter can not only launch flares but also eject its coolant pod. The fighter would suddenly be emitting less heat, and the coolant pod would have all of the heat and attract the missiles. The result: the enemy wasted a bunch of missiles, and the fighter, while alive, cannot pull the same stunt again.

Next, to elaborate on your comment about a countermeasure for REM missiles. In games mentioned above, there are certain weapons that are really good against small vehicles. We want fighters to be able to survive, but still be afraid. This is the same rule I was using when discussing seeking missiles. While seeker missiles are effective against fighters, I think REM missiles should be even more feared. At the same time, there should be a way to survive them. We just need to find the right balance between them. Below are three options to nerf REM missiles if necessary:

1. As you mentioned above, special countermeasures could target REM missiles causing them to prematurely explode.
2. Point defense from capital ships could target REM missiles and cause them to explode prematurely.
3. REM missiles could take more missile cargo space, making them less cost effective.

The first option would make a fighter more capable of defending itself. Pilots would be less afraid of the REM and the REM would be less effective.
The second option would make fighters more afraid of REMs and strengthen the ties between capital ships and fighters, while increasing the strategic scene.
The final option would make fighters less afraid of REMs since fewer are deployed. However, whether a player is killed by a REM becomes more dependent on chance.

Anyways, there are some more ideas for you to consider. And personally, I think the more strategy, the better.

Ugh. Thought I'd replied to this.

I believe he ran a mod. Likely, if he didn't code it himself, it's long been lost, but would be really easy to make your own. Just script a loop that checks every quarter second for missiles in sensor range that aren't on the sensors, and put them on the sensors. Bingo.

Ah yes, I play World of Warships very heavily, and know of the other two games you mention. I definitely want the small vessels to have a point to their existence. Basically, they're glass cannons, like in the original I-War. Fast as heck, agile as heck, tiny, carrying a firepower-to-mass ratio ten times that of a medium ship. Certainly, though, most people won't consider them completely expendable; they're cheaper than medium vessels for obvious reasons but they're not free, and they're all manned. Remote fighters are rare due to the ease of disruption by cranking up your active sensors, and AI fighters for the same reason. Even ruthless commanders know better than to sacrifice every fighter pilot they have.

Actually, coolant pods are already in the game! They're poorly implemented though. The encyclopedia says that it does nothing until you're inches from overheating, then it vents the coolant across your radiators. In reality, the thing simply gives a small passive buff to cooling rates. My revised version was gonna have it operate as the encyclopedia says, but shut off once the heat drops below the safety threshold to conserve coolant so you can use it more than once. However, there is in the game a "sealed heat sink" which operates just like the heat sinks in Elite Dangerous. It will quietly absorb heat rather than radiate it until it reaches its maximum, at which point it must be jettisoned. The idea behind these is that by minimal thruster movement, you can operate under sealed cooling for quite a long time and practically eliminate your heat signature from your ship (though the drive plume would still show unless you use cold-gas thrusters). However, just like the coolant pod, all it actually does ingame is give you a cooling rate buff. I think an optional version for fighters could be used in conjunction with the regular heat sink, and be given the ability to radiate the stored heat once it is ejected. Honestly though, a flare can actively transmit IR signatures much more effectively than a radiating heat sink, so there might not be much point.

And now we come to a sore spot for me in the game: REM missiles. WHY DON'T ANY NPC SHIPS GET THEM?! I understand the logic of "they'd instakill the player" but that's kinda the point. There should be occasions where the player has to either employ all their skill just to not die, or maybe he shouldn't have gotten into that fight in the first place But in terms of balance against fighters, well... no fighter will well survive a blast from an REM, even at the edges of the blast. However, REM missiles are a little slower than regular ones to compensate for the human pilot's slower reactions, and the same point applies here as to remote fighters: the link to the missile can be disrupted. Also, they're much bigger and easier to shoot. Using them is gonna take a TON of skill. That's my main method of balance. The more powerful something is, the harder it is to use. Nonetheless, REM missiles should cause a sweet sting of cold fear to thrill through your veins when you hear the launch alarm for them Be afraid of them.
But yeah, they'll be able to be countered directly by anti-missile missiles (or heck, maybe even the regular missiles for giggles) and their larger size will mean more hits from PD and regular weaponry, though it'll also take more to kill them as they're obviously tougher. And definitely you can't carry many; in regular EoC, they come 1 to a pack, compared to the 5 seekers in a pack. I'll figure out a good method to balance quantity. Might just leave it that way.

--IronDuke