Combat distances are ridiculous in Elite

AstralHawk Exo

A
I think Elite really missed the mark on combat, and it mostly has to do with sensor & weapon ranges.

A 1960's MiG-21 can pick up radar contacts at 40+ miles, scanning through dense atmosphere, but my futuristic spaceship from the year 3300 with A-rated sensors can only detect contacts inside 8 km in the void of space? That's just bizarre to me. I can visually detect contacts before my sensors can! And my weapons are only good for half that distance, while the 1960's MiG can launch missiles at 3 times that distance. My starship is outclassed by old soviet tech! All of these weapons should be able to travel infinite distances through the void, but they vanish at ~3 km.

Imagine if you will, a scenario set in the image below where you start picking up faint contacts at 100 km and you have to sneak up on them, using asteroids for cover and minimizing your own detection signature. Imagine launching surprise missile attack at faint dots 25 km out, while closing fast behind your missiles for the close-quarters kill. I just think Elite left so much on the table by making all fights happen within 3 km for weapon deployment. All fights feel the same, and I quickly got bored of combat in the game. Too arcade-like in my opinion. Not that there's anything wrong with a good close-quarters dogfight, it's just that all fights are this way. How cool would it be to drop your targets shields and start pounding away at their hull outside 8 km? Or to be able to stalk a target 20 km ahead stealthy in order to setup a proper ambush. Instead we have corvette-sized Condas turn-fighting like spitfires.

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CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
Imagine how exciting combat would be if all it involved was a target lock, beyond visual range, then spam them with missiles, until the target disappears off radar, and you can safely assume its dead or ran away.

But there's no pretty explosions to witness, or materials to gather because they've despawned by the time you find out where the explosion actually happened.
 

AstralHawk Exo

A
There would still be close engagements. Probably because of RoE. (i.e. need to scan your target, stuff like that). Also, you would rely on countermeasures at those longer distances. You could defeat missiles if you deployed chaff / ecm properly. Just like notching a MiG-21's missile with chaff / flare. Eventually the fight tightens into a smaller circle if one defends properly. This is how jet combat happens, and why they still carry cannons. Jet fighters tangle within visual range all the time, despite carrying long range missiles.

If this is how the game was envisioned, then I'll get off my soapbox. I guess I just think it would be more engaging. Like, in my example above, you would have to use your environment a bit more. Focus on your target... study it... as you approach it. There would be more of a hunt before the fight.

Imagine using the scanning tools we have for exploration to long-scan ships up to 100km out. To ID a target, or cargo on board, etc. To scan surface targets on approach to the bombardment.
 
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Old Duck

Old Duck
I think of ED as a Science Fiction Movie Simulator, with battles like you have in Star Wars, rather than something more realistic like what is portrayed in The Expanse. It's good for what it is, though I do agree that the lack of realistic inertia (big ships turning like a fighter jet) has caused me to grow bored with ED's combat as well.

Now combat in Space Engineers (with mods), that's something you might enjoy!
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
CMDR Cosmic Spacehead said:
Imagine how exciting combat would be if all it involved was a target lock, beyond visual range, then spam them with missiles, until the target disappears off radar, and you can safely assume its dead or ran away.
Click to expand...

Trouble with ED is that it (usually) allows us to take everything to extremes.

If combat ships were like real combat aircraft, you'd have a variety of different weapons for different jobs.
In ED, though, we can just fill up every slot with HRPs/MRPs/SBs/SCBs/MCs/PAs/whatever.

BVR combat wouldn't be terribly entertaining if somebody in a T10 could just fire 9 missiles at you from 20km away, and then another 9, and then another 9 etc.

Not least of the problems being that, presumably, it'd also be possible to detect incoming missiles too, which would mean that, from 20km away, you'd have time to simply jump back into SC to evade them.

Yay! Fun for all the family. \o/
 

Deleted member 38366

D
At least our heat-based Sensors can still easily pick up Targets against extremely adverse backgrounds.

So keeping an Eagle locked at 5km Range at a Nav Beacon directly against a nearby Star is no problem.
Try that with an ordinary IR-based Sensor or Seekerhead ;)

I'd agree though that limiting Combat to Dogfights and omitting the entire BVR battlefield is extremely unrealistic and effectively monotone.
It would be highly unrealistic in the 21th century already in Atmospheric fights - and even more so in Deep Space of the 34th century.
(in essence we only got WWII era aerial combat)
 
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Linnunrata

Linnunrata
Ratkatcher said:
This has been a bugbear for me also, the flight model is 'fun' but totally unrealistic for a 'space' scenario - but if it wasn't 'arcade' play then the combat scenario's would grow even more boring even quicker
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Yeah, pretty much. They'd have to totally rethink the combat balance when it comes to big ships if any changes were made.

Personally I'm okay with the WWII feeling of the dogfight. It'd be hard to combine visual close range dogfighting with "realistic" BVR combat that shouldn't obviously be about 20-30km but 200-300km distances, a bit like those modern naval combat sims like Harpoon.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Robert Maynard said:
Also, given the limitations regarding number of players in an instance, increasing the instance size from a c.8km sphere to a 25km sphere would reduce the possible player density per cubic kilometre to about 3.3% of what it is now.
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Instance sizing is already far larger than sensor range - you can be docked at a station and see other ships having a laser or rail duel 30km out already, or see distant mining beams at similar distances in a RES.

In practice given player densities across the galaxy it'll be a rare instance that comes anywhere near the limit without forward planning anyway.

I wouldn't want long-range combat - BVR missile combat is fairly uninteresting - but a longer sensor range wouldn't hurt. In supercruise your sensor window is 45 seconds ... in normal space (without engineering sensors for range) it's more like 15 seconds, which does feel too short.
 

VR SenseiMatty

VR SenseiMatty
This should be added to the existing list of:
  • the canopy is in the worst dangerous place
  • how can our bodies resist to all those Gs?
  • where is my GPS?
  • where's my autopilot?
  • why do we have sound in space?
  • why my ship can travel faster than light but it can't prepare a coffee for me?
  • why we can't have a universal limpet controller?
 

babelfisch

babelfisch
Your argument starts with 'it isn't realistic' (well I don't know how much sense that makes, since it invalidates 99% of the rest of the game as well). If you want realistic future space game combat you would need to remove proactive combat from game. You never see your enemies and a computer decides which weapon system gets used. We also wouldn't fly space ships, they would be drones.
 

VR SenseiMatty

VR SenseiMatty
Old Duck said:
...though I do agree that the lack of realistic inertia (big ships turning like a fighter jet) has caused me to grow bored with ED's combat as well...
Click to expand...
But it's all simulated though. That's why you have Flight Assist with all thrusters around the ship. If you want to feel the inertia you have to fly AF OFF.
 
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