Missile detonation on loss of target

Possible?

I was just thinking of how, when playing Polycon, if you have a ship with a cloaking device, you can dodge any and all missile fire with ease. With the near-invulnerability granted by ship cloaking devices, it would be interesting to create a homing weapon that could combat ships that went into cloak.

Basically, I'm asking if it's possible for a weapon to detonate/sub-munition on the loss of a target. Is it possible to make a homing projectile that, as soon as its target cloaks, sub-munitions into an unguided shrapnel charge? It would be a very interesting weapon against cloaks that deactivate when hit.

there is one. I don't remember what it was called though.

Not possible. You can make weapons that "track" cloaked ships though...

If a weapon submunits constantly into a weapon that submunits towards closest target, the weapon will behave as if it is a homing weapon of infinite turning that can track cloaked ships. I also dont think it ever switches targets.

Weapons do not know when they lose lock.

Does prox fuse work against cloaked targets?

If prox works, you can make a weapon that bursts into fragments, that hopefully hit the target.

Also, if cloaked ships can be hit by blast radius you can make area-effect weapons to de-cloak ships

Out of curiosity, does a missile fired from a ship that can see cloaked ships home in on a "seen" cloaked target?

Oh, yes, you can make a missile that detonates into flak at the end of its lifetime, but you can't make it detonate into flak the moment the target ship cloaks, since the missile inherently doesn't know when its target is cloaked, other than to lose lock.

No, no, does a cloaked ship still trigger the proximity function on a missile?
(Ship triggered as opposed to end of life triggered)

Yes, a cloaked ship will still trigger the proximity fuse on a weapon.

Hmm... I had an idea: You have a weapon simultaneously fire a tiny, low-damage cloak-tracking missile, and a larger, high-damage non-cloak-tracking missile, so that the sprites are on top of one another, and their speed/turning radii are the same. That way, if the ship cloaks, the missile will appear to 'release' a little cloak-seeking drone, that will veer off the missile and hit the ship, un-cloaking it, so the bigger missile can swing around and hit it.

Is this feasible?

EDIT:

And if so...

This post has been edited by Hamster : 04 October 2006 - 07:57 PM

The trick would be to get the two different weapons to fire simultaneously. For this to work for a player's ship, they would have to both be primary weapons.

While cool sounding, it would be cheaper, both story wise, and resource wise, to simply put the cloak-tracking ability on the larger missile, and discard the smaller one from the equation; or else to keep both missiles, but call the smaller one a 'Denial-of-stealth' attack / recon drone, something players would have to activate on their own.

This post has been edited by Eugene Chin : 04 October 2006 - 10:41 PM

If a weapon with no damage hits a cloaked ship will it still decloak it? You could have the "Denial-of-stealth" just be a weapon that detonates instantly with huge blast radius but no damage. It would be like a temporary cloak scanner.

@eugene-chin, on Oct 5 2006, 03:33 AM, said in Missile detonation on loss of target:

The trick would be to get the two different weapons to fire simultaneously. For this to work for a player's ship, they would have to both be primary weapons.

Couldn't you have the weapon sub-munition in two as soon as it left the ship?

@hamster, on Oct 5 2006, 03:08 PM, said in Missile detonation on loss of target:

Couldn't you have the weapon sub-munition in two as soon as it left the ship?

Not if you want the weapons to be different.

But how about just making a seperate weapon the player can fire? Maybe a weapon with a large blast radius or a shotgun like weapon that you fire where you think the cloaked ship is, and it has rounds that burst if they get close.

Alternately, if you don't mind eating up a lot of weap resources...
You might try a missile that tracks for a couple seconds, then subs to a shot that almost instantly explodes with a large low-damage blast (de-cloaking ships), when this shot expires it subs back into the original missile, which gets another chance to track the cloaked target. (not sure if a missile that loses lock due to cloak can re-aquire if the target de-cloakes) Then a couple seconds later is subs into the burst again.. etc.

The downside is that you can't sub to a previously used weap - Nova will crash. So you need a seperate resource for each stage. So, if you wanted 3 de-cloak bursts along the missile's life, you'd need 7 weap resources.

My favorite "cloak finder" weapon I ever saw described works as follows:

Fire out a missile with a range approx equal to the edge of the screen or so.
This missile submunits into 3~6 flak bits,
Each flak bit submunits into 3~4 mines.

In this way, one missile will randomly spread mines across a very large area of space. Damage and blast radius can be tweaked to make this a very effective anti-fighter weapon.

Yes, the minefield is very fun. Only problem is MaxShotsOnScreen.

@nebuchadnezzar, on Oct 3 2006, 07:19 PM, said in Missile detonation on loss of target:

If a weapon submunits constantly into a weapon that submunits towards closest target, the weapon will behave as if it is a homing weapon of infinite turning that can track cloaked ships. I also dont think it ever switches targets.

Weapons do not know when they lose lock.

Just to be clear on this, for a weapon to track a cloaked ship it must have homing as its guidance type. Try making a projectile that recursively submunitions toward the closest target. It's best with a sprite large enough that you can easily tell what direction it's facing, a 50-pixel arrow should work fine. Go go brownian motion!