[Suggestion] Missiles

[ZachZent]

Obviously missiles are planned and hopefully coming back sooner than later. Hopefully we can get some insights into what you plan. Here is two possible ideas on how missiles can be added.

1. Prefab (sort of)

In game version, besides looking good, could either be a UI drag and drop or a sort of click to place into the slot.

The first version is the less creative, but may be better in a gameplay sense. Rather than building the entire missile, you craft or buy a frame of various sizes. For simplicity sake lets say brick missile and block missile. The block missile can only be launched from the block launcher while the brick can be launched from both. Because the frames are prefab, they can be more easily stored, assuming Dwarf's shelf idea is the plan for storage, and moved to the launchers or however that works.

In the frame are are different slots: Warhead (detonation, red), reactor (range, green), engine (speed, orange), modules (upgrades, yellow.) You place bought or crafted parts inside to create the missile. For example a high explosive (warhead) missile with long range (reactor), but slow (engine.) A higher powered engine requires a better reactor. Modules such as tracking would require power reducing range. Lots of balancing options.

Now this version is less creative than building a missile. Honestly I don't believe creativity is as important here. For a handheld weapons, you will see it every time you use it. For a missile, you will only see how it looks when it is sitting waiting to be fired. Just have the missile glow like a photon torpedo and it will cover up any prefabbiness while being quite visible. And of course you can color the bloom effect because that is just awesome.

Bombs can have the same system with a different frame.

2. Build-a-missile

This version has the player building the missile. This would probably be done in the item stand similar to handheld weapons. Engines and reactor would be the same as it currently is in game. Warheads would have to be added and modules for modifications such as tracking. This does have the advantage of creativity and allowing players to completely design and build their own missile, but like the previous suggestion players won't really be seeing them except on the shelf. And custom missiles may be awkward for storage, launching, etc. Won't go further into detail as there isn't much detail to be had at the moment.

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There are just two ideas for missiles, I'm sure there are more. Any info on your plans for missiles will be nice. And if one or both of these ideas contribute, all the better.

[tsunamayo]

Yeah I had in mind 1), with some factory elements to build them. what kind of module you had in mind? Your missile looked cool though... When I add remote control there is no reason why such torpedo would not be possible if I add some kind of detonation block... Thanks

[ZachZent]

All the modules require power reducing the total pool available thus reducing the range and/or speed.

Tracking module which will track selected ships (hopefully in the sci-fi semi easy to avoid way.) Probably need to make this one use a lot of power to balance it

Guided module which makes the missile guided by the player, but since custom missile will be possible maybe this module will just track your mouse or something.

Piercing module which will break a few hull block before detonating. Not armor blocks though. Would be funny to see this fly right though a smaller ship

Large/small spread module. Former will do damage over a wider area, but less on a per block basis. Latter will do more damage, but only effect a smaller area.

I'm sure others will have other ideas for modules.

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Warheads can include

Standard (effective against hulls, less on armor) HE (effective against armor) "Ion" (effective against systems)

This part is less developed and I'm sure the more military types will have other options

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This is a parallel idea to bombs. Bombs building should use the same system as missile building where you craft the frame and place in modules. Well except an engine module. Bombs will be affected by gravity being an atmo specific weapon. However so it isn't completely useless in space, bombs can serve the purpose of being stationary mines.

Two module ideas

Proximity module where the bomb will explode if a ship gets near rather than contact.

Magnet module where bomb/mines will move to a nearby ship. Galaxy Quest gif for your enjoyment https://media.giphy.com/media/ehaWtx8J5pBaUMZua1/giphy.gif

[ProPeach]

I really like this method of putting together missiles that has been floating around for a while now!

Just a few changes I'd personally suggest - Rather than a Reactor Module that produces energy constantly on a per second basis, how about a more finite, fuel/battery based system? You can name it fuel or energy stored in a battery, the mechanics are the same. Say you store 100 units of fuel on your missile. The Upgrade module uses 1 unit per second, and the thruster uses 4 units per second. This means that your missile has a life of 20 seconds as it burns 5 units of fuel per second total until it runs out of fuel and explodes. Now, you have an additional statistic for the players to play around with - missile lifetime. More fuel means more mass which means a slower, long range missile; less fuel means a faster but shorter range missile. More advanced players could even tune their fuel amount to make a timed fuse missile explode at a certain range using the same system.

I also like Zachs idea of the Guided and Tracking/RC Module, but I think the functionality of the Piercing and Spread module should be reserved for the Warhead. A shaped charge warhead can do the job of the Piercing module which make more sense.

So for Warheads I'd suggest - Standard (HE) - High damage and AoE, but is easily defeated by significant armour Shaped - Less damage and AoE, but more penetrative power against armour Ion - Good for disabling systems, but has a low AoE (good for disabling turrets etc temporarily)

So now we have all these awesome modules, but we need a good degree of control over each of them to make the most of this system. I suggest a Light/Medium/Heavy variant of each Thruster/Fuel/Warhead variant with a slider to customise the exact values of Fuel in the Fuel Tank

What this would look like in practice is something like this- Light Fuel Tank - Max 50 units of fuel - 50kg dry mass Medium Fuel Tank - Max 100 units of fuel - 100kg dry mass Heavy Fuel Tank - Max 200 units of fuel - 200kg dry mass

The player places a Heavy Fuel Tank on their missile which adds 200kg to it, and they can then adjust the amount of fuel inside up to 200 units which further increases its mass. A heavier missile will of course be slower, and less manoeuvrable if the player installed a tracking module. Like when designing a ship, thrust/mass/fuel balance is a very important consideration.

This system is incredibly flexible, through it you can make any missile, bomb, torpedo or rocket imaginable with a healthy balance between all of them.

Edit for a random Upgrade module idea - Armour module, which makes the missile tougher to shoot down at the cost of a lot of mass. I think it's also important to allow the player to leave this module slot empty if they choose.

[Rexxios]

My main suggestion for missiles is ammo storage, I was thinking of two ways: --Building each missile in a dedicated area, then link that area module to each launcher. --Have 1 missile per item holder, then linking the item holders to each launcher.

[CaptainKronos]

Suggestion for a module: Maneuvering thrusters. Increases agility of a missile, but at a cost of a shorter missile lifespan as it uses more fuel, provided we go with the fuel option. If we don't go with the fuel option, then it uses more "power" or something

[Calvert4096]

I like how in space engineers both ships and player-built missiles are just different implementations of vehicles, the latter only lacking a cockpit and (usually) containing a warhead. That is to say, you could make an arbitrarily complicated "missile" if you wanted to. Need something short range and fast? Build that using the same elements available for ship-building. Need a long-range cruise missile? Add fuel tanks, but don't expect the result to be able to hit a fast-moving target. Want to build an ICBM with MIRVs? That's possible too, but the player needs to do more custom coding.

It would be cool if the range and targeting ability of the missile depended on the player's choice. As in real life, there could be options of passive, semi-active, and fully active (e.g. fire and forget) types of guidance.

[5URG3]

You guys know more about STEVO than me, so please do correct me if any of the following sounds daft. I'd appreciate any links to roadmaps or plans etc.

I like option 2. The idea of building custom missiles using the handheld weapon grid with scaled down versions of thrusters, power etc. A battery might be better than a reactor, given the short life of a missile.

A "Missile Computer" block could be added, similar to ships and turrets. You could then set it to dumbfire, remote guidance or fire and forget. Maybe balance the guidance with power use, so a fully guided missile can't have as good payload/acceleration as a dumbfire. The dimensions of the missile would determine the size of the lancher required.

As for fabrication and storage, I think we need to know more about the general "Cargo" situation. Are there going to be Cargo blocks for storage? For inventory movement, is there going to be pipes or a conveyor system like SE? Or simple a case of using the link tool to join inventories? Are there going to be fabrication blocks? Magazine blocks? Or just a general storage block?

Regarding fuel, I think that should be added as part of a wider expansion of a liquid system. For example: Missile Fuel, chemical thrusters, flamethrower, foods and drinks. Otherwise it feels a bit unecessary and power may be simpler.

[ProPeach]

To be clear, in my suggestion whether or not you actually need to fill up a missile with fuel is up for debate, I was mostly using it as a concept for balance. Personally I think filling up every missile with fuel is extremely tedious, so it could just be part of the crafting recipe when you manufacture the missile, or forgotten about as a resource all together. As I mentioned you could even just call it energy rather than fuel as the gameplay impact is identical. The important part is how it effects the range of the missile as well as its mass, which subsequently changes its speed/manoeuvrability.

[13rimstone]

Build-a-missile is all cool and everything, but one of the things that had me buying the game was the missile bank shot from the Kickstarter video where the bay opens and an off-axis salvo launches. Whatever else you do, please bring that back as well

I think there's room for both expensive custom built "shipkiller" missiles and more standard types

[WILDCATreactor]

Scalable Weapon Block - Rocket Pod: comes in small block single-tube and large block multi-tube versions, block length tiles out to 4x; micro-rocket addon increases number of tubes but reduces damage, range, and speed; warhead addon changes damage type; burst motor addon increases speed but reduces range

Modular Missile: missile is made of small blocks, small fuel cell blocks, small warhead blocks, a missile computer block, an optional targeting computer block, and (optionally) a small RCS cluster block - and loaded into a Scalable Missile Tube Block or a Scalable Missile Magazine Container

Modular Torpedo: as per the modular missile but scaled up to a Large-sized Scalable Torpedo Tube Block and Scalable Torpedo Magazine Container

Missile and Torpedo tube blocks can be scaled wide as well as long