So the antennas on the Eagle's and Krait's wings are just decorative? Wasn't there an antenna on the top only visible from inside the Krait-cockpit?
Sensor Sensitivity and Gimbal Weapons
So the antennas on the Eagle's and Krait's wings are just decorative? Wasn't there an antenna on the top only visible from inside the Krait-cockpit?
I'm sure there is some in-lore explanation for them, but they aren't associated with any module
Yes.
Achilles7
Banned
Try to control your passive-aggressive undertones; not everyone plays as often as you...or for that matter, takes the game as seriously...or on reflection, has the quality of hardware...or focuses primarily on combat & PvP...or (maybe you've got the point by now?! Hmmm, I won't hold my breath!). All this aside, I agree with you on the emissive issue...however, I am possibly slightly biased in that I mainly run a SR DBS exclusively with fixed weapons these days.[big grin]
In general - as a recreational activity - Elite should always funnel the player towards skill-based options; the previous proposal to create more complex mechanics regarding sensor quality was one of the best ideas since inception, introducing very interesting trade-off gameplay choices (for gimbal users specifically). Unfortunately, Frontier seem to spend a lot of their balancing efforts appeasing players who are challenge & change-averse, hence this idea was shamefully discarded...the very same reason we have inadequate NPCs & ludicrous hit-points etc etc etc
Oy vey! [blah]
As a recovering "gimbal scrub" I beg to differ. The simple counter to emissive (and gimbals) is chaff. It completely negates it, which is more than most other "counters" in this game.
And if you're a self-proclaimed fixed-weapons-ace, and you can't kill your gimbal-scrub opponent before your chaff runs out, then you can always engineer your chaff launchers to hold 50% more ammo. And if you STILL need more time to kill that gimbal scrub, then there's always double chaff. ;-)
TheMegaTurnip
Banned
I beleive FDev should have maintained thier position. However harsh.
You want easy mode targeting? Fine. you pay that price by having a slow and overweight ship.
TheMegaTurnip
Banned
Nope. You bring dispersal like a sensible pilot then get double HS.
Best way to kill a gimbal pilot: Dispersal/TLB/Forceshell/Thermal cascade.
**** it. That the best way to kill everybody!
On the tangent of missile lock and sensors, I realized just the other day that simply acquiring lock (no firing required) causes one to partially resolve to the target, becoming targetable themselves at any range.
And not all of those who do have the same opinions!
Emissive does act as a hard counter to some interesting play options.
If I had my way, it would be restricted to kinetic weapons, would have a duration based on damage done (with a cap at the upper end) and would only apply to hull strikes. How a laser hit is supposed to interact with shields to make the shield glow hotter stretches the bounds of credibility for me even in ED's fantasy world.
There are a couple other oddities with effects and how they are described as working that don't bear out in practice...a good example is reverberating cascade weapons, which will damage even a powered down shield generator, when striking no where near the shield gen, while the shield isn't targeted.
Chaff is a gimbal/turret counter, not an emissive counter. Emissive certainly helps gimbals, but that's not it's only use, and chaff won't help you break module targeting or missile lock after you've been tagged by an emissive shot. I have ships that don't have anything other than fixed hitscan weapons that still leverage emissive.
It wasn't harsh, it was entirely rational, and added some more depth to the process of sensor selection.
Thermal cascade and thermal shock have both been reduced in effectiveness so much through successive patches that they are borderline useless against ships that have any one of the following: a non-overcharged PP, more heatsinks than large SCB charges, almost any thermal vent weapon.
And not all of those who do have the same opinions!
Emissive does act as a hard counter to some interesting play options.
If I had my way, it would be restricted to kinetic weapons, would have a duration based on damage done (with a cap at the upper end) and would only apply to hull strikes. How a laser hit is supposed to interact with shields to make the shield glow hotter stretches the bounds of credibility for me even in ED's fantasy world.
There are a couple other oddities with effects and how they are described as working that don't bear out in practice...a good example is reverberating cascade weapons, which will damage even a powered down shield generator, when striking no where near the shield gen, while the shield isn't targeted.
Chaff is a gimbal/turret counter, not an emissive counter. Emissive certainly helps gimbals, but that's not it's only use, and chaff won't help you break module targeting or missile lock after you've been tagged by an emissive shot. I have ships that don't have anything other than fixed hitscan weapons that still leverage emissive.
It wasn't harsh, it was entirely rational, and added some more depth to the process of sensor selection.
Thermal cascade and thermal shock have both been reduced in effectiveness so much through successive patches that they are borderline useless against ships that have any one of the following: a non-overcharged PP, more heatsinks than large SCB charges, almost any thermal vent weapon.
Okay, emissive having significant uses beyond helping turrets and gimbals track a little better is something I'd not experienced, nor considered. ...but I could use more education. Is there a use other than preventing silent running by those flying shieldless that makes a difference to those using fixed weapons? What other benefit do you get by putting them onto one of your fixed weapons, other than slightly extending the range at which you're able to maintain target lock? Inquiring n00bs want to know!
I apologize for posting this question within this thread, but it parallels the emissive topic.
I recently employed a build with a turreted long range thermal vent beam laser to counteract the heat gain from shock cannons. It worked like a charm, and frequently my cockpit would ice up as my heat dropped near zero.
I may be imagining this, but the NPCs seemed to have a harder time maintaining gimbal or target lock while I was juking about at low heat. Is this a thing, or am I imagining it?
I recently employed a build with a turreted long range thermal vent beam laser to counteract the heat gain from shock cannons. It worked like a charm, and frequently my cockpit would ice up as my heat dropped near zero.
I may be imagining this, but the NPCs seemed to have a harder time maintaining gimbal or target lock while I was juking about at low heat. Is this a thing, or am I imagining it?
Yes, it's a counter to using silent running to break sensor lock, but it's also a counter to heatsinks or pre-cooling via thermal vent for the same purposes, and to the dazzle effect used by allies.
At longer ranges the microgimbal/snap-to-target effect on fixed weapons is quite significant...often several times the angle of the actual ship profile, and allows hits that would other wise be misses, even to specific subsystems. Dropping a heatsink or two when disengaging so that your drives or PP cannot be easily shot out at 5-6km is fairly standard practice...and negated by emissive.
It does all come down to maintaining target lock (either for yourself or others), but target lock itself is quite powerful, even with hitscan weapons, and has become even more so as weapon ranges have increased.
Reducing your ship's thermal signature does reduce gimbal tracking arc.
It also reduces the range at which your sensor contact resolves to targets you aren't firing at.
In addition to what Morbad said, I'd add that a very cold ship definitely throws off NPCs. In fact (and this is kind of sad), the only smuggler "trick" I ever needed when smuggling goods or running illegal passengers was to exit SC lined up with the mail slot and pop a heat sink when about 4K out. I've heard that when your ship's temperature is below about 18-20% you're effectively invisible to NPCs (as long as you're not firing). I don't know what their detection threshold is, but I can't think of a time I've ever been scanned by station security (or any other time) when my heat was below about 15% or so.
I'm pretty sure they lose lock just like we do when a ship gets very cold (as when popping a heat sink).
Both sensors and, especially, ECM, need to be completely overhauled. Sensors could still be used in the arcade-like way they presently are, but even old games like Microprose's 'F-19 Stealth Fighter' created a relatively simplistic, yet far more realistic, method of measuring and displaying signature tracking variables. Something which, interestingly, is now actually used in real F-35s, so that the pilot can know at which angles their stealth profile is most vulnerable and use to plan ahead to 'thread' their plane around detected sensor nodes.
I honestly find it bizarre that this far ahead in the future, spacecraft rely on nothing but thermal emissions to detect other ships in space. There's potentially a lot of potentially interesting customisation to be made out of dedicated, legitimate, stealth ships.
ECM, particularly, makes no sense. Real ECM isn't the same as an EMP device and I've never been able to figure out why Frontier decided to implement it as that.
I honestly find it bizarre that this far ahead in the future, spacecraft rely on nothing but thermal emissions to detect other ships in space. There's potentially a lot of potentially interesting customisation to be made out of dedicated, legitimate, stealth ships.
ECM, particularly, makes no sense. Real ECM isn't the same as an EMP device and I've never been able to figure out why Frontier decided to implement it as that.
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Actually their changes were very reasonable. You barely lost tracking range with D-graded sensors and were able to gain well with B-graded and A-graded ones. But just like in some other betas, a lot of people who never even tested anything just found that change is bad and they would dislike it. So they started wailing and crying till FD undid the changes. It's a common pattern in this games community.
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Hm.. has someone found a fissured ice asteroid near one of those asteroid-ring stations?
Because that's what would fit in within 32KB back in 1983. A lot of "why did they do it this strange way?" questions can be answered by looking at the old Elite games. It made sense back then, usually for technical reasons (or because Braben and Bell were 17 year old kids at the time and they thought it would be cool), and they just grandfathered it into ED.
Real electronic countermeasures covers an enormous spectrum of devices and uses. The in game ECM falls into that spectrum nicely and doesn't bear much resemblance to an EMP device, it's just omnidirectional.
Microprose managed to implement ECM which wasn't an EMP, back in its old 'F-19' game and memory space certainly isn't an excuse for not doing so, all these decades later. It doesn't have to be ultra-realistic, but done right, it would have long ago given ships like the T-9 a highly useful support role, if greater module capacity allowed for increasingly powerful ECM and ECCM capabilities. Active and passive ECM would be the true counter to turrets/gimballed weapons and guided missiles.
Higher level ECM modules could also be expanded into hacking tools, allowing us to potentially do things like send false sensor readings, shut down weapons, disable weapons and so on - means of engaging targets without firing a shot). Fantasy? That's what the F-35 can do, right now! It's an absolute game-changer for warfare and this technology is going to see a lot of use, because of how it allows for plausible deniability. This has huge benefits for things like 'Powerplay', where different factions would need to task ships with politically sensitive missions.
Equivalent ECCM gets used to counter it, in turn. More powerful ECM then counters the ECCM, etcetera. Better ship reactors would also allow for additional reserve power which can then be used to electronically 'burn through' ECM/ECCM, which also then gives us more reasons to learn creative energy management ('systems' no longer applying purely to shields, but also ECM and ECCM). It's then not just a case of getting the biggest ECM and ECCM modules, for the most optimal results, but making sure you use them right.
There would also be specialised missiles which can be purchased, exclusively used to home in on active ECM (which makes sure such a ship needs at least one escort if it's going somewhere properly dangerous).
Also has obvious benefits for pirates and smugglers against any security forces (especially screwing around with sensors to keep a low profile).
And if Frontier ever expand on 'multi-crew', ECM and ECCM gadgets could hugely expand into extremely useful and fun tools. Optional, sure, but available.
Ultimately, this is what should be used to counter turrets/gimbal weapons. Those who feel contempt for them should be championing proper implementation of ECM and ECCM. It would make fixed weapons skills a more useful and relevant discipline.
How? It's literally an electromagnetic pulse. It's not something which can creatively disable or feed enemy sensors false data. How it should function is being able to do all of that, below a certain class, constantly, once a ship enters into an area. Right now, it's a gimmick you have to time when to trigger. It's nonsense and doesn't lend itself to nearly the same kind of fun creativity legitimate ECM or ECCM abilities could do. Abilities which could be used to enhance just about every profession in the game, which the present version just does not do.
I bet the why-bother module somehow related to horizons DLC, non-horizons players can't land planets. Just because the ship has no such module.