Chaff - Shouldnt it be flares?

Defect0r

Defect0r
It's already been established in canon that Radar had been made obsolete by jamming technology and heat signatures are there only way of establishing lock anymore.

Yet chaff is still employed as a countermeasure when it is only effective against radar.

I know because = game. But flares would have been just as easy to implement and would be a much more pleasing effect to watch as well?

Seems odd to me.
 

drholliday

D
Flares don't do much against lasers or unguided projectiles do they?

The entire concept is stuck in the mechanics of 1984. It would have been better to rethink the entire concept of counter measures. ECM and point defenses (which are both in the game) make much more sense.
 

evoelise

evoelise
If you look carefully next time you can see that the "chaff" does contain flares - red ones. Also the rest of the "chaff" is bright points of light that could be chaff as we think of it (strips of foil) but it seems to explode if it hits your shields so could be something like a small bright (magnesium) flare. Maybe the meaning of "chaff" has changed in the 34th century, who knows...
 
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dementia

dementia
Defect0r said:
It's already been established in canon that Radar had been made obsolete by jamming technology and heat signatures are there only way of establishing lock anymore.

Yet chaff is still employed as a countermeasure when it is only effective against radar.

I know because = game. But flares would have been just as easy to implement and would be a much more pleasing effect to watch as well?

Seems odd to me.
Click to expand...

They are called 'chaff' but they are rendered by the game as if they were flares. It can be quite pretty close up.
 

Vasious

Vasious
dementia said:
They are called 'chaff' but they are rendered by the game as if they were flares. It can be quite pretty close up.
Click to expand...

Looks like both combined , chaff in clouds of glitter and a series of red flares



The battle was behind a planet so hard to see the chaff but you can see both red flares and the "chaff" chaff

Screenshot_0751.png
 
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Defect0r

Defect0r
drholliday said:
Flares don't do much against lasers or unguided projectiles do they?

The entire concept is stuck in the mechanics of 1984. It would have been better to rethink the entire concept of counter measures. ECM and point defenses (which are both in the game) make much more sense.
Click to expand...

I haven't seen any evidence of laser guidance but perhaps I missed it. Nothing will combat 'dumb' weapons other than point defense, by default. Interesting about earlier games though and now you mention it, it does ring a bell from when I played FE2 as a boy.

dementia said:
They are called 'chaff' but they are rendered by the game as if they were flares. It can be quite pretty close up.
Click to expand...

That explains it then. I hadn't ever seen the flare elements, obviously distracted by the chaff.

Fair enough, discussion complete then! :)
 

drholliday

D
Defect0r said:
I haven't seen any evidence of laser guidance but perhaps I missed it.
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No. I meant LASERS. As in pulse laser. Flares don't work that well on them.

The problem is that both caffs and flares are counter measures that really don't work that well anymore TODAY against state of the art weapons. It's not 1980 anymore. Point defense systems will always work against projectiles. And with ECM it's a question what works better. The ECM or the weapon's systems to counter it. In 3300 I'm fairly certain spamming caffs, flares or any combination of them is rather futile to impress a weapon.

Dropping them and focusing on ECM and point defense allows for some extra pimping for both defense and offense. By removing the two dumbfire options you actually get more for less.
 

OnePercent

OnePercent
Quite interesting, Never considered chaff to be the incorrect word for infrared countermeasures.
 
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GunnerBill

GunnerBill
It's all a bit odd. A flare defense as we understand it today lures away a guided missile. It does not confuse the system used to find the target.
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What we have here works exactly like radar chaff but in the context of IR.
Previous descriptions of what it might be seem good but foil chaff scattered around the target could also confuse a ships IR sig. Perhaps ED chaff is a mixture of many things?
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I've also wondered if a deployed heat sink should have a more intersting effect on your scanner.. shouldn't it cause temporary blindness?
 

evoelise

evoelise
GunnerBill said:
I've also wondered if a deployed heat sink should have a more intersting effect on your scanner.. shouldn't it cause temporary blindness?
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I believe it does. It you target another player and they drop a heat sink your lock on them is lost & they need to be re-targetted.
 

Shadowdancer

Shadowdancer
Launching a heat sink reduces your heat signature a LOT for a short time which breaks lock. It's actually quite effective in CQC.
 
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