[Missile Weapon System} Khanid Energy Spikes

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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The general idea for this proposal is to create a missile system that requires capacitor and also a way to make use of laser crystals in different ways (not the least of which is a way to deal with damaged crystals.) If the weapon system goes to fruition, it might also encourage CCP to create a proper Khanid shipline as well (that aren’t just reskinned Amarr ships.)

Weapon Features:

The lore behind this weapon system is effectively a superheated ball of plasma that has a guidance system. As such, it wont make use of existing missile explosion velocity mechanics, but will make use of turret falloff to simulate the heated projectile cooling off and thus doing less damage after it expends it’s optimal range. It will retain the missile velocity / flight time mechanics.

It wont make use of tracking initially, though there is potential to add the tracking mechanic after the missile has expended it’s guided flight time. So if flight time = optimal + falloff, between max falloff and double falloff the weapon system could turn into an effective turret shot as it loses it’s guidance.

The capacitor draw would be similar to existing laser systems, depending on game balance.

Furthermore, since these missiles are effectively just guided turret projectiles, they wont be affected by defender missiles or smart bombs, so they wont cause the server the same headaches as existing missiles for tracking them.

Weapon Balance:

My initial thoughts for this weapon type was to go thermal kinetic. The damage type would depend on how close you are to your intended target. As the super heated projectile cools off, it would switch from thermal to kinetic. For every 1 point of thermal damage the missile loses through this process, it will gain 0.5 kinetic damage (or 2 and 1 if it needs to use whole numbers.)

That said, since this is a missile system, there’s probably some room to have the payload deliver em damage on impact as well. I don’t really see a way to make explosive damage work for it, but that’s ok, since lore wise that’s not a damage type the Khanid would care about anyway.

So I suppose these would be EM Thermal weapons within optimal, that slowly move the damage type to EM kinetic at max falloff.

For example. Lets say optimal is 20km, and falloff brings it out to 40km. For ease of math, we’ll say the weapon system delivers 10 em and 10 thermal damage. Out to 20km the missile would do 10 em and 10 thermal damage. At 22km the missile will do 10 em, 9 thermal, and 0.5 kinetic. At 30km it will do 10 em, 5 thermal, and 2.5 kinetic. At 40 km, the missile will do 10 em and 5 kinetic.

At double falloff, if CCP wanted to implement the tracking mechanic I mentioned earlier - since it’s an unguided projectile at this point, the missile would do 10 em 2.5 kinetic.

The Launcher:

This could either be a new launcher, or incorporate the new missile type into existing launchers. I think it would make more sense to create a new launcher, so the weapon system could be balanced more easily, but ultimately it doesn’t matter much.

The Missile:

The energy spikes will be created by refining laser crystals. Crystals will refine into a number of energy spikes based on the undamaged % of the laser crystal, out of a possible 100 units. So a t1 crystal that can’t be damaged, will refine into 100 energy spikes of that type, a faction crystal with 10% damage will refine into 90 spikes of that faction type, and a t2 crystal with 90% damage will refine into 10 spikes of that t2 crystal type.

The refining process will require a blueprint and make use of the industry window to process the crystals into energy spikes.

Other Possibilities:

Since these missiles are kind of like drone missiles, there might be some room for a highslot module that reduces drone bandwidth, but somehow transfers that effectiveness to the missile system. Lore wise this would fit right in too, since Khanid ships tend to favor missiles, drones, and cap warfare.

That’s all I have for now. Let me know what you think.

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Oooooo. Love the theorycrafting here.

So if it has flight time, thus it needs speed = max range what we now consider as optimal range?

And it follows the target that far. After that it could turn in to a projectile?
So would the tracking start from that moment? :thinking: If so. That would probably be a massive load for the server that you mentioned in the defender/smart bomb section.

How does it “aim” itself for the tracking? That would yet increase the load for servers. But it’s besides the point. It can basically “re-shoot” itself as a projectile? Thus changing course mid flight according to targets movement?

And it doesn’t have explosion radius because it’s basically a turret projectile?
I’m getting confused :laughing: Where exactly is the line between turret and a missile here?
There isn’t a line because it’s both at the same time?

I like the lore thingy!

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No worries, maybe I can help illuminate things for you. :slight_smile:

So current missiles use velocity + flight time to get max range, and also have explosion velocity / radius to determine how much of the total damage will be applied to the target.

Turrets use optimal and falloff for ranges, and tracking. Falloff actually refers to “accuracy falloff” which is designed to simulate the accuracy of hitting a target at range. As we know, projectiles don’t really have a range, they’ll keep going until they hit something, but space is big, so it’s hard to hit the intended target.

So what I’m doing is using the velocity + flight time stats from missiles, and combining it with optimal + falloff mechanics of turrets. Tracking would only come into play after the missile has expended it’s optimal + falloff, so it’s no longer guided at that point and thus acts more like a turret shot.

It would just follow the path it was last traveling, which is something the server would already know since it’s calculating the path for the missile already. If the ship intercepts that path it would be a hit.

The easiest way to think about it, is just to think of a rocket’s engine turning off, but it still goes in a straight line until it hits something. So there’s no reshooting, It’s just a continuation of what it’s already doing (imo kinetic missiles should probably use the mechanics I’m proposing here as well - including the removal of explosion velocity / radius.)

The simple answer is, it doesn’t have explosion velocity because it doesn’t explode. No more than a turret shot would anyway. (Which is why I said kinetic missiles shouldn’t have that stat either, since they’re pretty much just slugs of metal.)

As I understand it, the main reason why missiles are an issue for the servers, is because they have to track an actual physical projectile in space, that can be destroyed by defender missiles and smart bombs. It’s less of an issue when it’s just a math issue of where the target is going to be with delayed flight time. It’ll be more of a drain than turret shots for sure, but it should be less of an issue than current missiles.

One further note I thought of while responding to you, tracking disruptors wouldn’t really do anything, because guidance is provided by the missile. And since it doesn’t have explosion velocity / radius either, the missile damp wouldn’t work either. So that’s something to take into account while doing balance.

Thanks. I try to make my suggestions fit into established lore, because I hate it when things break the immersion of our chosen escapism.

Anyway, that’s kind of a long reply, but I hope I answered your question for you.

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I should mention too, the turret shot mechanic (between falloff and double falloff) is mostly an afterthought, so if it were too complicated to implement or took too much server resources, it could be dropped. I mostly added it for the purposes of simulating what would really happen in that situation.

So regardless, it’s best not to get too hung up on that facet of the proposal if people find they take issues with that part of the concept.

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Gotchu! I think i understand. The tracking is tricky though.
Game mechanically the part of the ammunition to lose guidance is funky!

To simplify it’s ammunition with:
Explosion radius: 0 (because it’s projectile)
Explosion velocity 0 (because it’s projectile)
Flight time + speed X that when exceeds turns to,
Flight time + speed ∞
Tracking 0 (because it doesn’t re-aim itself after max flight time ends)

The turret part of the ammunition on paper:
This weapon only hits stationary targets or targets that are moving in a straight line with the missile.
(because if it doesn’t change course aka re-aim itself when the flight time exceeds it won’t be able to hit anything that’s moving)

Thus there would not be optimal or falloff neither for the projectile part of this weapon.
If i understood correctly the optimal & falloff ranges are implemented and combined with the flight time + velocity part of the missile part of the weapon, representing the ball of plasma cooling off and changing damage types but not affecting accuracy since this weapon system doesn’t have accuracy. (?)

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+1 - love the ideas! I’m not sure if EVE could handle different types of damage over range/time, but otherwise I like everything about it. Instead of thermal/kinetic, what about something really radical? Like EM/Explosive or Kinetic/Explosive?

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Yeah, it is a bit weird. I think it adds some nice flavor to the weapon system though, which makes it interesting to think about.

That seems mostly correct, as long as the tracking stat doesn’t interfere with how they’ve coded missile tracking. The second flight time + speed should just be optimal + falloff though, as those figures are how the damage dispersal happens. It would also need a mechanic to add back to kinetic damage.

It should be able to hit targets moving in a straight line. If I recall correctly, missiles track where a target is going to be based on it’s velocity, not where it is currently. So, if the target changes course after the missile loses guidance, it will miss the target.

That said, turret shots in falloff + falloff already often miss their targets. So it might not even be worth investing dev time into since the amount of times it would pay off would be minimal. There might be a few times where it’s critical to a player though.

Right, you’re operating in the fall off to double fall off zone. That part should be easy enough to code by taking the existing code and placing the optimal + falloff in the guided flight envelope. The game already has code for double falloff calculations.

That said, it would probably be best to build the weapon system up from the ground, not relying on older code.

Yup, that’s the crux of the proposal.

I’m pretty sure the game can, the players though, who knows. :stuck_out_tongue:

I suppose the payload could be anything, not just EM, now that I’m thinking about it. Projectile ammo doesn’t have explosion radius, (lore wise likely utilizing shape charges,) so other ammo types could do similarly.

The thermal cooling off to kinetic is a core part of the lore of the idea though, so I don’t see how you’d change that while having it make sense. It’s also the reason why the weapon needs capacitor.

If anything, you could maybe just go with omni damage. Weapon starting out em thermal at close ranges and cooling off to the kinetic explosive at longer ranges. And doing all damage types in between.

Thanks :slight_smile:. The concept has been buzzing around my head for about a year and finally came to the point last night where I had to write it down since it was distracting me from other things.

I think it’s something that could actually be implemented since it fits with the lore so well and there’s existing code that could be used to for implementation if they wanted to go the quick and dirty route.

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