New missiles system and contermesures on the way???

[Cugino83]

Just stumble upon this leak from the Evocati patch 3.11d

Please note the following:

"Missile and Countermeasure QOL improvements
We have made some changes to missiles and countermeasures aimed to improve and stabilize their use.
Missiles will react to all countermeasures again. Missiles will lose the lock during the locking process if the pilot does not keep the target in the locking cone. Missiles do not have perfect target knowledge anymore. Fixed missile selection keybinds. Added missile selection HUD widget. Players can select which missiles they launch by cycling, which is shown on the HUD (currently unbound, but bindable in keybinds menu). Players can only simultaneously lock missiles of the same type if equipped to multiple racks, with 4 max.

For countermeasures, player now either launch decoys or deploys noise fields. A decoy is a projectile that emits a very strong signal to spoof missiles (works on all seekers). A noise field is a limited jamming space which affects all kinds of sensor readouts (including the launching ship if contained in the field). Removed seeker specific countermeasure handling. Replaced countermeasure keybinds. Updated VFX for countermeasures to the new effects system. Added countermeasure ammo counter to HUD. Extended missile warning HUD widgets with shortest time to impact display for each incoming seeker type. Slightly rebalanced all countermeasures so big ships, like the Carrack, have less ammo per launcher but heavier countermeasure projectiles with longer effects."

I think this is a really interesting feature that change the missiled use a LOT and make them both more usefull (being able to equip multiple missile for different situation a viable option) and less one.button win.
It whould not be the final solution but I feel this will rebalance the combat situation a bit...

 

[maynard]

... I think this is a really interesting feature that change the missiled use a LOT and make them both more usefull (being able to equip multiple missile for different situation a viable option) and less one.button win.
It whould not be the final solution but I feel this will rebalance the combat situation a bit...

this makes me happy

I've always wanted to load one rack of my Freelancer MIS with missiles to take down shields, and the other with armor piercers

 

[Gotin]

Garbage update

I cannot stand "weapon balancing" for just this kind of reason. People bitch that missiles are op well guess what, missiles ARE OP duh, because they're fucking missiles. Pvp weenies wanking on about missile boats.....while flying around ships with a dozen projectile cannons....bruh...brah...bruuuuu...douche

You want missiles to be better or harder to use? Ok fine....look at the real godamned world. Missiles should lock on instantly or almost instantly but be able to drop their lock if the vehicle moves inside the turn rate of the missile. They don't keep lock and whip around to fucking orbit the vehicle like an electron.

The countermeasure system was perfect, no reason to use this new vomitus method...just such hogwash. Hope all the limp wristers are happy now, got your wish. You want a better countermeasure system? Try some automatic AMS turrets! Then you can have another ship part to swap out and upgrade etc. And it takes out the apparently super complex game mechanic of seeing a missile lock of type x and toggling the correct countermeasure which seems to give people nose bleeds it's so hard.

oooorrrrr.....you could simply provide us a keybind to DIRECTLY blow each countermeasure. So you get a button for flares and chaff and can pop them off at the same time.

And just a handful of countermeasures? Bitch please! Ships should have dozens and dozens and big ships should have hundreds if not thousands.

Sorry but this is a pet peeve for me. Ya ok "realism in your space game dur" but fuck's sake if you're going to get to the point of using a countermeasure system and detailing missile warheads to the point of using different systems for tracking and detonation (impact vs prox etc), then take the fucking time to make it simply mimic real life....presto, problem solved. If it's too tough for people to finger out then sorry but learn the system, it's not hard....and it isn't this hot garbage crap of face rolling troll missiles mean nothing to me BS.

 

[GPcustoms]

Im with Gotin here In my tour our missile systems made a primary lock almost as soon as you made a selection. On top of that deployment was just as instantaneously. I have a Retaliator and Eclipse and the lock and release is sometimes,...Well hard to swallow for an advanced space fairing civilization
However with that said I have found uses for them both but hope for refinement rather than hinderments on future applications,....Just saying,......With a second drink almost done with,...Okay,...its empty and I have to leave the thread and get another

 

[Ayeteeone]

The problem here, as I see it, is that this is an Evocati patch. The -e or -f or -x patch could change it all dramatically again, and there WILL BE iteration on this before it goes anywhere near public release.

Even if this gets thru 3.11, if it doesn't work then it could go away, or morph into something else. It's not worth wasting steam on until it's on live.. unless you are an Evo, in which case catch me in our test chat.

 

[Lorddarthvik]

TO be honest, I can't see the need for these changes. Missiles were kinda OP, then didn't work at all, then were OP again. It just needs some balancing. Missiles should be a bit OP and have a cost accordingly. Shooting off missiles should matter. The player should think about "wasting" one on a target that might not be worth it. The current method would fit SQ42 and the PU much better imo.

As for countermeasures, this change to generic-one-type is dumb. The current one had gameplay behind it and made sense. It could have added more customization in the form of equipping different types of CM launchers, and filling em up with different quantities of CM/type.
The new one won't. You just push a button and hope for the rng to be in your favour. This is dumb.
I don'r know what I should be more pissed off about. The fact hat they want to dumb down the game yet again, or that someone who could do meaningful work spends time developing this instead.

My guess is that they want to dumb the game down to "casual space shooter" so they can release SQ42 to the highest number of players possible. Maybe even on the new consoles. This includes dumbing down the CM system.