Missile as physical objects.

[Atuday]

So I was talking to higby on twitter and asked him if a MCG max in lock down could make a wall of lead and stop missiles with bullets. Seems they did not even consider it as an option. Now I play vanu and always will but having lock down on the tr max weakens it(or at least I think it does) so with that in mind I think we should petition them to make missiles something that can be shot out of the air by a player who is skilled enough or just really dam lucky.

If you know a missile is going to come from a direction then fire away in hopes of stopping it. Of course missiles will be far too fast moving for most weapons to even have a snowflakes chance in hell of hitting so it all evens out.

[Sirisian]

Saw that on twitter and tweeted him actually. Definitely support this.
@mhigby Would be sweet to have rockets with armor then allow them to be upgraded with shields or something. Definitely a lot of ideas there.
This was brought up in the artillery thread in reference to AA locking on and destroying artillery, but shooting missiles out of the air with conventional weapons is similar.

If a rocket has a armor count then it would definitely be awesome. I don't think it should be one shot except with say a sniper rifle. It would be amazing on the level of my telekinesis implant (http://www.planetside-universe.com/forums/showthread.php?t=37211) concept to see a player launch a rocket at say a sniper and have them shoot it out of the air.

I think it should also apply to tank shells and aircraft rockets. I don't think AA should detonate though near rockets unless they directly hit the tank shells or rockets.

[Eighm]

The problem with something like this for tank shells is they move quite a bit faster than rockets do.

[Sirisian]

The problem with something like this for tank shells is they move quite a bit faster than rockets do.
Watch the gameplay video from the9 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2wifg7aitk#t=1m52s). They move fast, but over a far distance you could definitely shoot them down probably. Imagine 2 tank shells colliding? :lol:

[cellinaire]

Yeah I just saw that. He told us we can't shoot down missiles with bullets.


(will it be just bullets, or by whatever means there are. I don't have an idea, though)

[Khellendros]

This would be cool, but it is likely a ton of work to get it right, and I think they have other priorities atm.

[Evilmp]

Maybe an automatic laser to damage incoming rockets just enough to cause them to spiral off course every once in a while?

[Vash02]

What about VS weapons? Cant blow up a sphere of pure destructive energy with bullets.

[Sirisian]

This is an MMO calculating the position of 2000 people, their bullets, their stats and a ton of other behind the scene criteria.. Adding another equation into the mix would be nearly impossible if they plan to release beta any time soon.
Actually PhysX supports continuous collision detection. Meaning fast objects don't tunnel and things like bullets colliding against other bullets on the server-side would be rather cheap to calculate. I won't go into depth, but suffice to say the added calculation impact anyone is imagining in their head is greatly exaggerated.

[Eyeklops]

I think it should also apply to tank shells and aircraft rockets.

Do you really think small arms bullets should stop a tank slug? Rocket maybe, if you hit the propellant chamber and made it go boom, but not all tank shells are explosive.

[Sirisian]

Do you really think small arms bullets should stop a tank slug? Rocket maybe, if you hit the propellant chamber and made it go boom, but not all tank shells are explosive.
I said projectiles should have armor (aka health). So that health would balance whether a gun could detonate or stop a tank shell. It would need to be balanced based on the difficulty of doing it. Imagine a person seeing an NC Reaver diving at them and they open fire as the Reaver launches a barrage of rockets. The player could fire at the rockets and say 2 bullets collided with a rocket that might be enough to detonate one of them. That is to say the other rockets would probably hit the player. That kind of balance would need to be decided upon during actual playtesting.

One thing I was imagining, and maybe others were too, of a secondary gunner using say AI rounds and shooting a tank shell out of the air or a player's AV rocket. That is to say the combat would get much more complex at a distance and it would give players a lot of choices about where they fire. Do they defend their tank or shoot the infantry unit kind of stuff. (I'm biased toward complex gameplay and giving players hundreds of choices every second though).

[DviddLeff]

Hmm interesting, just last night I was shooting down rockets in Tribes... and its one of my favourite things to do in the X Wing games.

I would not mind to see the feature in PS; a lot of times in my Mag cowardly Phoenix rounds would be closing in and I would think about how awesome it would be to shoot them down.

[Sirisian]

I would not mind to see the feature in PS; a lot of times in my Mag cowardly Phoenix rounds would be closing in and I would think about how awesome it would be to shoot them down.
This brings up a point that someone else is going to say. "But the Magrider shoots a laser" and precisely why I've said numerous times that the Magrider needs a plasma tank shell and not a laser beam. Luckily it's not too late to change something as trivial as a projectile if this feature is deemed wanted by the developers.

[DviddLeff]

Could always be another advantage of playing VS? :P

But it doesn't matter; is not a laser (it has travel time) so its got to be something else so if a bullet hit it you could make something up.

[Mastachief]

Leave it alone please. A tank shell is a tank shell, it moves very very fast (some currently day shells 1,740 m/s). For a system to pick up the shell being aimed at it calculated the required trajectory then fire what ever armament to take it out of the sky would be impossible in the <1km distances that planetside2 will deal with also most of the time to tank is likely to be <100m away. Also auto defence systems for people that are in vulnerable positions? no thanks too much rpg for my tastes.

We have shields i think this will be plenty.

Just leave them to get the game out.

[Redshift]

What about VS weapons? Cant blow up a sphere of pure destructive energy with bullets.

No but you probably could just stick large electromagnets around the base and render the whole VS arsenal inert :rolleyes:

[Graywolves]

Could be interesting.

[Whalenator]

Uhm. MAYBE missiles.
Maybe. But tanks shells? What the hell. That's not possible. At all. If you want to block a tank shell find cover.

[Eyeklops]

Uhm. MAYBE missiles.
Maybe. But tanks shells? What the hell. That's not possible. At all. If you want to block a tank shell find cover.

Agree, no way even a 50 cal would slow down a tank round any significant amount.

[Sirisian]

Bumping this since I feel it's an important concept that would really make Planetside 2 stand out. (Maybe it could be moved to the idea forum).

A tank shell is a tank shell, it moves very very fast (some currently day shells 1,740 m/s).
Actually in Planetside 2 the tank shells move very slow allowing you to dodge them among other things. They're not implementing realistic speeds for them which I think is great for allowing things like people have mentioned in this thread.

[Senyu]

The only reason I see tank shells having armor is if it somehow incorporated its effects agaisn't objects and their armor. In regards of improving your shell to have more armor thus be stronger agaisn't other armor. But should be left alone.


Now missles having armor and destructable would be awesome. You can go into a whole range of missle upgrades and modifications to. I also want a flare type system in that messes with lock on missle weapons.

[EVILPIG]

Given that Higby plays Tribes Ascend, I'm surprised that this wasn't already planned. I'm sure it will make it in now.

[EVILPIG]

Bumping this since I feel it's an important concept that would really make Planetside 2 stand out. (Maybe it could be moved to the idea forum).


Actually in Planetside 2 the tank shells move very slow allowing you to dodge them among other things. They're not implementing realistic speeds for them which I think is great for allowing things like people have mentioned in this thread.

Surely you speak of Planetside 1, not 2? You haven't even played it and in the footage we have seen, shells seem much faster.

[Saieno]

Surely you speak of Planetside 1, not 2? You haven't even played it and in the footage we have seen, shells seem much faster.

For quoting something it doesn't seem like you read it very well. He's definitely speaking of Planetside 2, since in reality rounds move at blindly fast speeds. They move slower in games to make it easier to dodge and for balance reasons. For example a sabot round, used against main battle tanks, travels close to 4,000 feet per second (or 2,700MPH). For a HEAT round, it's closer to 2000 fps (1,400MPH). During the War Between the States, a typical field artillery piece was ~1500 fps or (1,000MPH). Try dodging that.

[Hypevosa]

I would love it - my friends and I in halo 3 had fun dicking around by shooting rockets and grenades out of the air with a sniper rifle.... it was awesome.

[Hooah]

To shoot down arty with small arms would be in my opinion stupidly unrealistic... Would be as realistic as sinking the USS Nimitz with a canoe armed with a bow and arrow.

[Kran De Loy]

I'm all for being able to shoot down missles, but that's all.

Tank shells are much more durable and their very nature is to penetrate heavy armor before bursting so the idea of anything other than another tank shell being able to take one out is ludicrous. Since the only thing really capable of stopping a tank shell in midair is either a very hard surface or another shell then I see no point at all in burdening the servers with hit detections in that regard.

Same thing with Artillery shells. Neither of these things are usually designed to have self propulsion systems because they don't need to be light enough to fly as far as possible.

Missiles and rockets however, could be penetrated with heavy caliber ammunition like a .50 cal and while it's not realistic to be able to shoot one down normally it would be pretty bad ass and awesome. It's just they should need to take a severe beating before they blow. NC could get one or two lucky shots off and take it down with their high powered weaponry. TR would need to spam crap, but they would likely be the most reliable at taking down missiles locks. VS would be the mix between the two for obvious reasons.

As for taking down a VS Fission projectile, it's a mass of plasma with tracking systems somehow built in, right? Just say the plasma can only absorb so much additional mass before it drastically begins to lose it's integrity, which to me makes more sense than having a fast traveling ball of plasma that can track targets in the first place. :doh:

[Toppopia]

Isn't the point of games having slow travelling projectiles is so that you can see the tracer fly through the air and see where its going/coming from? I don't think shooting down tank shells would be good because as someone mentioned earlier they move at blindingly fast speeds and unless the shell is really far away a defense system wouldn't have time to track and shoot it down, i could imagine base defenses sometimes shooting down missiles with a nice fireworks display but realistically a player wouldn't beable to do it.

[Sirisian]

Tank shells are much more durable and their very nature is to penetrate heavy armor before bursting so the idea of anything other than another tank shell being able to take one out is ludicrous. Since the only thing really capable of stopping a tank shell in midair is either a very hard surface or another shell then I see no point at all in burdening the servers with hit detections in that regard.
PhysX uses a rather nice spatial partitioning system. It wouldn't be that big of a deal for it especially with how it works. It might not be intuitive if you're not a programmer how certain operations can be trivial like sphere vs sphere collision compared to say a tank polygon object hitting a tree polygon object. I guess it's easy to explain it like that. A sphere is a really simple primitive for collision that PhysX is really good at handling. Especially for it's continuous collision detection stuff since a sphere is a special case. (It should also be mentioned the spatial partitioning culls most of the collisions down to a few pairs).

I think it would be cool to see if it can be done in a fair way where one projectile isn't collectively better at trumping another projectile in a fight. *cough* prowler rate of fire *cough* I'm more curious about random stuff like tank shell vs aircraft rocket or AI gun vs a player's AV. That kind of stuff sounds fun and really adds to the complexity of battle if you can have a gunner not just defending you by killing, but also taking down threats if he sees the person doing it.

I don't think shooting down tank shells would be good because as someone mentioned earlier they move at blindingly fast speeds and unless the shell is really far away a defense system wouldn't have time to track and shoot it down, i could imagine base defenses sometimes shooting down missiles with a nice fireworks display but realistically a player wouldn't beable to do it.
It didn't look like the rockets moved that fast. What with say a lightning aiming at a plane already with its AA and letting off rounds it's not really about reaction time. If you're in a lightning and see a target and predict "hey this guy is going to try to use rockets" then you can just light him up with flak or whatever and if he launches his rockets a few might get hit by flak which is a reward for good precision and prediction. Obviously a pilot that dives from above wouldn't have such a problem. (Looks like the turret can't look up far). Opens up some more complexity that wouldn't exist otherwise.

[Kran De Loy]

PhysX uses a rather nice spatial partitioning system. It wouldn't be that big of a deal for it especially with how it works. It might not be intuitive if you're not a programmer how certain operations can be trivial like sphere vs sphere collision compared to say a tank polygon object hitting a tree polygon object. I guess it's easy to explain it like that. A sphere is a really simple primitive for collision that PhysX is really good at handling. Especially for it's continuous collision detection stuff since a sphere is a special case. (It should also be mentioned the spatial partitioning culls most of the collisions down to a few pairs).

I think it would be cool to see if it can be done in a fair way where one projectile isn't collectively better at trumping another projectile in a fight. *cough* prowler rate of fire *cough* I'm more curious about random stuff like tank shell vs aircraft rocket or AI gun vs a player's AV. That kind of stuff sounds fun and really adds to the complexity of battle if you can have a gunner not just defending you by killing, but also taking down threats if he sees the person doing it.


It didn't look like the rockets moved that fast. What with say a lightning aiming at a plane already with its AA and letting off rounds it's not really about reaction time. If you're in a lightning and see a target and predict "hey this guy is going to try to use rockets" then you can just light him up with flak or whatever and if he launches his rockets a few might get hit by flak which is a reward for good precision and prediction. Obviously a pilot that dives from above wouldn't have such a problem. (Looks like the turret can't look up far). Opens up some more complexity that wouldn't exist otherwise.
Cool about that programming stuff, I hope they use it.

As for the Lightning, it's said to have an 80 degree fireing arc (the standard AA/AV weapon I think) so a pilot coming at a Lightning from an greater than 80 degree intercept would be pretty much using their engines to fly strait at the ground. And the lightning is a fast vehicle, too so it could logically move enough to get it's AA into use quickly enough should it somehow spot the enemy aircraft.

Personally I would rather try coming in from between tree cover or low hills/structures.

[KTNApollo]

Wouldn't be fair across the empires. The TR and NC use conventional weaponry, while the VS use lasers and energy projectiles. You can't destroy an energy projectile, and you can't destroy a rocket with a bullet/slug, but you can destroy a rocket with a laser. That's the problem.

[Kran De Loy]

Wouldn't be fair across the empires. The TR and NC use conventional weaponry, while the VS use lasers and energy projectiles. You can't destroy an energy projectile, and you can't destroy a rocket with a bullet/slug, but you can destroy a rocket with a laser. That's the problem.

True, but that's just part of the faction specific stuff, there would likely be other trade offs to offset that. Besides VS no longer have (I don't think anyway) a pure laser AV/AA infantry weapon. It uses giant balls of plasma for a lot of stuff now and that CAN be shot down by adding enough extra mass to the plasma that either the method of containing the plasma would fail or the plasma itself would cool too much by trying to absorb the extra mass that it would become relatively inert or at least no longer hot enough to damage vehicle armor.

[Toppopia]

Unless we say that shooting a plasma ball causes its molecular structure to weaken or something like that to the point that it dissipates. But i don't think that can happen so it would be unfair.

Edit: I typed this before the above comment appeared so his description is better.

[Sledgecrushr]

The US Navy has a system called the Aegis missile defense shield, its comprised of a bunch of parts what I like about it is the radar guided minigun that can shoot air to ground missiles down. Now if an engineer could deploy something like this....

[Sirisian]

You can't destroy an energy projectile, and you can't destroy a rocket with a bullet/slug, but you can destroy a rocket with a laser.
Unless we say that shooting a plasma ball causes its molecular structure to weaken or something like that to the point that it dissipates. But i don't think that can happen so it would be unfair.
http://sirisian.com/pictures/dafuq.png

Did you just make up physics to say this isn't possible? This is a science fiction game. Anything is possible. :lol:

[Hypevosa]

I think bullets should have a chance of affecting missiles - mainly they can either cause a malfunction that means no explosion, knock it off course (from the right angle) or set it off if they hit the right spots. Obviously it would depend on the damage done as well.

[Kran De Loy]

I think bullets should have a chance of affecting missiles - mainly they can either cause a malfunction that means no explosion, knock it off course (from the right angle) or set it off if they hit the right spots. Obviously it would depend on the damage done as well.

Too complex. Just simplify it by saying x amount of damage to the missile means it dets prematurely.

[Toppopia]

I have to admit it would be pretty cool if you have like a area of effect weapon and you happen to hit near a missile and seeing it spiral all over the place until it hit something, kind of like Halo 3 when you could gravity hammer a rocket and it would fly in a random direction.

[Kran De Loy]

Heh, I just remembered someone's idea on MAX abilities, where each factions gets one sustained ability dependent on an supply bar, like TR's Lockdown and overcharge ability and a second long cooldown ability.

If I recall correctly that person's proposition would give TR the Overcharge and something else. NC over charged shields and a melee range sonic pulse. VS had quick dash and Megaman charged shot.

One person's gripe was that the NC were the only ones without a long range ability built in. It would be pretty sweet to see an NC max sacrifice a bit of his shields to do a sort of sonic burst that if timed just right would repulse missiles, rockets and maybe tank shells. I'm gonna be VS, but damn that would be fucking awesome.


HAH! to mix fanstsy worlds a bit, have a NC MAX on a bridge with Gandolf's face while yelling, YOU SHALL NOT PASS!

[Hypevosa]

It's not that complicated - if we're going to bother to give the thing hitboxes, we might as well. Most of the time if you shot a piece of tech like a missile you'd just damage the internals to where it wouldn't detonate at all - if you hit it in the right spots, you'd cause an explosion, and not penetrating the shell (lower caliber weapons) means you would just affect it's flight path a bit.

In halo if you shot one dead on it set it off, if you hit it elsewhere you had a chance to deflect it instead. I think adding the malfunction chance so that the missile just doesn't explode on impact (but still does physical impact damage) it would make things more interesting.

[Kran De Loy]

It's not that complicated - if we're going to bother to give the thing hitboxes, we might as well. Most of the time if you shot a piece of tech like a missile you'd just damage the internals to where it wouldn't detonate at all - if you hit it in the right spots, you'd cause an explosion, and not penetrating the shell (lower caliber weapons) means you would just affect it's flight path a bit.

In halo if you shot one dead on it set it off, if you hit it elsewhere you had a chance to deflect it instead. I think adding the malfunction chance so that the missile just doesn't explode on impact (but still does physical impact damage) it would make things more interesting.
But it wont have hit boxes if they do it the way that Sirisian described. It'll be just one hitbox that's only definition is how large of a sphere it is. Having multiple hitboxes would only complicate it too much. Keep in mind this is not hypothetically just one missile, but many many many missiles the server would have to keep track of. Also the only difference between a rocket and a missile is that one has an onboard guidance system and the other usually doesn't. So that's two weapons types that would either need a method for players to tell the difference between the two or have both of them treated the same with multiple hit boxes.

Now for the idea that a missile could be shot down, but not have it detonate prematurely and not have it detonate at all could just be a variable of how much damage the missile takes. Missile takes X damage threshold and it has a chance to not blow, if it takes even more damage it dets in the air prior to reaching the target.

That would still be too complex, but that would be more my opinion speaking than just trying to be practical.