Not anymore...

In the real world, would a guided missile or rocket really automatically detonate when it runs out of fuel? Unless if it was rigged to do so (like a hellhound or an EMP torpedo), no. It would simply cease to turn and would continue merrily along in the last direction it was headed. It's simple, actually, to duplicate that behavior in EVN. Give the guided missile an unguided submunition with the highest lifespan possible, which I understand is 32767. It may not be finite, but I doubt anyone will notice unless they decide to follow around the rocket for 32767 frames. You could avoid that possibility by having the unguided projectile recursively submunition into itself. If the weapon would loop back around when it gets to the edge of a system, like a ship does, and come back to possibly hit something, that would be cool.

You could also make a missile that never runs out of fuel by making one that recursively submunitions into a copy of itslef, also with a lifespan of 32767 frames. (I mean a copy of itself, except the copy has no sound. I know that is a submunition has a sound, it will play that sound when the weapon submunitions.)

Cool idea. You would just need to set the recursive submuntioning limit to 32767 also. I am not sure what recursive submunitions do unchecked, but I hear they bork the engine...

It's sort of logical that the missiles would be designed to explode when they run out of fuel. A missile that explodes after it runs out of fuel would be much more useful than one that continues going into infinity.

Mispeled, on Feb 24 2006, 07:17 PM, said:

It's sort of logical that the missiles would be designed to explode when they run out of fuel. A missile that explodes after it runs out of fuel would be much more useful than one that continues going into infinity.
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Something with a really big boom, like a hellhound or an EMP torpedo, yeah. But for small things like radar missiles, well, it's not like the blast from it's decay is going to take you out. If the missile it that close, then the submunition is probably going to hit, unless if you're a good pilot. Which might be a good thing. It teaches you to be a good pilot. :laugh:

It kind of clutters up the system.

Could be interesting, though. Launch a whole pod of Raven Rockets that just end up in a bunch a ways across the system... you could actually blow yourself up with Ravens!

That could make for some interesting gameplay, and could be fun...

it's a cool idea, but it wouldn't play very smoothly, there are just too many AI ships that are missile whores, one regular fed dessie could fill a system with 80 IR missiles in a few seconds, and there is almost never just one of them around, especially in aldeberan where you often have a fleet or two of fed ships.

good idea, but limited lifetimes are there for a reason.

Very good points. However, I could have the unguided submunitions just be guided missiles with a turn rate of zero. That way they would still be targeted by point-defence systems, meaning it might get a little less cluttered if they get close enough to a ship with a point-defence system. I could do the same with raven rocket. May help a little bit.

Mispeled, on Feb 24 2006, 10:17 PM, said:

It's sort of logical that the missiles would be designed to explode when they run out of fuel. A missile that explodes after it runs out of fuel would be much more useful than one that continues going into infinity.
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Unless it was being used against stationary targets (or, in Nova's case, and if the ships were to scale, very large ships). You give the missile just enough fuel so that it can set itself on a ballistic path to its target, and save the rest of the space for extra payload. Of course, heavily damaging missiles are cheap enough in Nova that it still wouldn't matter overly much, but here in the real world you can find multiple uses for such weapons.

GutlessWonder, on Feb 25 2006, 03:29 PM, said:

You give the missile just enough fuel so that it can set itself on a ballistic path to its target, and save the rest of the space for extra payload.
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dude, that just gave me a freaking awesome idea. Have you ever noticed that the radar missile looks like it should have multiple warheads? well, let's make it so. make a duplicate weapon that has excelent guidance (almost perfect, because, lets face it, if the AIM 9 X can have the capability to turn in it's own length, i'm sure missiles 5k years in the future will too) and almost immediately submunitions into five extremely fast-moving versions of the raven rocket, with the "subs fire at target" flag set.