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"Spoofing" of missiles

Posted: 26 Jul 2005, 02:23
by Felix the Cat
I had an idea whilst looking at some of the WD pictures. Would it add anything to allow missiles to be "spoofed" with chaff/flares? Here's what I'm thinking:
-Each missile-type weapon (one that is guided to target and 100% accurate) would have a tag defining its miss probability. (For TA, this would be 0%).
-Each unit would have the option of having a tag defining the probability to "spoof" a missile-type weapon. This would be a percentage that would be added to the miss probability of missile weapon targeting that unit.
-There is a function that, once every oh so often (half second? full second?) generates a random number from 1 to 100 and if that number is equal to or less than the modified miss probability, the missile continues to fly straight without hitting its target (goes under it), and explodes at its maximum range.
-If the unit creator desires, a custom animation-ish thing (decal?) would be created just behind the unit's current position - perhaps a smoke puff for chaff and a glowy-looking thing for a flare - this is pure cosmetics though.

What would this add? Well, for one, as air units become increasingly advanced they can evade less advanced missile. It also allows for Stealth (note capitals), where missiles have a tough time targeting a Stealth target (is this already in for stealth fighters etc?)... the drawback is that it may be too "micro" for a game of such scale.

This doesn't seem like it would be too tough to do: something that a programmer of my caliber (i.e. a terrible one) might be able to implement, given a point in the right direction as to a free C++ compiler that will handle the Spring code and where to find the relevant sections of code.

Posted: 26 Jul 2005, 03:30
by Gnomre
You can already do that by playing with the existing tags... basically, combine a missile and the anti aircraft guns, and make it only fire one at a time. Bam, exactly what you want, no new code required.

Posted: 26 Jul 2005, 06:45
by GrOuNd_ZeRo
I ran tests before in TA:WD in the OTA engine and every air unit would have a counter weapon fired when a missile was fired at them, apparently counter weapons weren't supported on aircraft as far as I could tell and gave up on the idea, it wasn't nice that a counter weapon couldn't be weapon3 for example...

A randomized armored state is possible too so whenever an aircraft is hit, it could either take damage or very little damage, but this would probably not create the desired effect.

I'd personally like extra coding for counter measures like the following:

[MissileY]
IsIRmissile=1;
[MissileZ[
IsRadarmissile=1;

so the game can deterime what to use, IR spoofing flares or radar spoofing chaff.

Posted: 26 Jul 2005, 06:50
by Zoombie
That would be really cool and make dogfights last longer... and look better! If we could make it so that the plane 'drops' another unit witch the missles have a chance to lock onto, insted of the plane. Then the missles sweave off and hit the object. Is that possible?

Posted: 26 Jul 2005, 15:31
by AF
Missiles should, explode on impact with anything be it another missile ground or wreckage.

Missiles should be slightly faster than aircraft.

Missiles should have good pathfinding but not good enough to stop the odd clumsy collision or to avoid random objects such as other weapons fire.

If the above are true then I see not why that shouldnt be possible.

Posted: 29 Jul 2005, 17:18
by Gabba
How does the new "flare" option for planes work in the new 0.60b1 version? Does it look realistic? I haven't had time to test it yet!