Oolite Bulletins

I just thought I'd start a fight outside a station for some combat practice. I saw a viper fairly far away, maybe 8km and targeted an ECM hardened missil at him and fired. The missile reached it's target quickly and then just circled him and never hit him until finally is expoloded on its own. I launched a second one from about a click away to see if it would work and it did.

Is there supposed to be a failure rate on these things? Ususally I'm too busy killing people to notice if my missiles are tracking but I've sometimes suspected they weren't doing their job properly.

The poor turning circle of Faulcon de Lacy HM3 Homing Missiles is a bane to those who rely on them and a boon to those trying to evade them. Despite recent improvements, FdL have yet to release any improved system.

aegidian wrote:

The poor turning circle of Faulcon de Lacy HM3 Homing Missiles is a bane to those who rely on them and a boon to those trying to evade them. Despite recent improvements, FdL have yet to release any improved system.

How do i evade the missile? NPCs seem to do that quite easy but i cannot figure out how

Practice...

Seriously, when NPC's shoot ECM-hardened missiles at me (from a way off, not the ones they shoot at you point blank..) I just almost ignore them, just keep manoevring a lot, occassionally fuel-inject a little way, when they come too close, then back to normal speed...

Rxke wrote:

Practice...

Seriously, when NPC's shoot ECM-hardened missiles at me (from a way off, not the ones they shoot at you point blank..) I just almost ignore them, just keep manoevring a lot, occassionally fuel-inject a little way, when they come too close, then back to normal speed...

Well, but they seem to successfully evade w/o injecting..

Rxke wrote:

Practice...

Seriously, when NPC's shoot ECM-hardened missiles at me (from a way off, not the ones they shoot at you point blank..) I just almost ignore them, just keep manoevring a lot, occassionally fuel-inject a little way, when they come too close, then back to normal speed...

I've tried dodging before to no avail. I usually just turn tail and scarper, try and remember wich direction my presecutor/persecutee was in and then go back for another go.

Sometimes a missile keeps running circles around a quarry, as Giles stated, it's due to the turningcircle of the missiles, they are just too fast to get a bearing on the target.
One way to minimise the frequency of this phenomenon is firing missiles ahead ot the target's projected flightpath
The missile exploded because it ran out of fuel. It's a safety feature.

I have promised to do an OXP with all manner of stupid missile variants, for those that like to gamble and for the megadeath addicted in equal measure.
I can feel a rash of Oodiction coming on, so probably I'll start working on that in the near future.
Be there time or not! Coffee will be my succour and saviour!

Great, A_H back in full force!

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

Sometimes a missile keeps running circles around a quarry, as Giles stated, it's due to the turningcircle of the missiles, they are just too fast to get a bearing on the target.
One way to minimise the frequency of this phenomenon is firing missiles ahead ot the target's projected flightpath
The missile exploded because it ran out of fuel. It's a safety feature.

Aaah, now I see. So sometime I look in my rear view and the missile is circling but gaining gorund. I wonder if it'll miss me if I just slow down. I shall go and provoke a python or something into firing at me and see if it works.

I must admit I think the missiles are bit, well, 'moot'.

With fuel injected ships they are obsolete. I make mention of this observation in my next chapter.

You'd have thought that someone somewhere would have hot wired a fuel injector onto one of those things...

Uber missiles. Scary.

Cheers,

Drew.

They're not useless though. If you're being swarmed by pirates, firing a missile at one of the smaller ships, which usually don't carry ECM, is an effective way of reducing enemy fire. Even if the missile doesn't get them, they won't be shooting at you for a while.

Aye, even if the missile never hits, most still run away from them, gives you a perfect line to blast the engines off.

Injected Missiles? Problem there is that they would be out of fuel in no time flat. MAybe for unguided Torpedoes... OXP for Torps anyone?

I usually feel too tight to waste 30 credits on a replacement missile when I can shoot em up with a laser. Must be the Scottish blood in me

Davemak wrote:

I usually feel too tight to waste 30 credits on a replacement missile when I can shoot em up with a laser. Must be the Scottish blood in me

I prefer to call it pragmatism. I also rarely use missiles, except when I'm in serious trouble... that's when a well placed hardened missile comes in handy.

Oooerr! I said "hardened missile"...

So, who's good at missile dodging? What's your technique. Using thrusters is not allowed for the purpose of this discussion cause that's too easy.

I've tried flying straight then turning to make it miss me, doing a continuous barrel roll, and doing a barrel roll one way then switching.

While the alternating barrel roll works for a bit, the missile still gets me in the end. I've never managed to dodge a missile without the use of thrusters.

In contrast, it seems that about 1/2 to 1/3 of the missiles I fire are successfully dodged by their targets.

there must be a knack that I'm just not getting