Detecting missiles

[alex_brunius (OP)]

My Active sensors can detect enemy missiles from 1000kkm away, and the enemy missiles travel at ~30kkm/s, so they need about 33 seconds to cover the distance (6x minimal time increment).

I advance time say 5min or 20min with subpulse specifically set to 5 seconds, yet the enemy missiles are not detected, but time advances until several salvos hit my ships at the same time with none of my AMMs or PD guns fired, even though they fire perfectly fine when time is advanced in 5 sec increments.

Why is this happening?

Is there some setting or bug I am not aware of or do I really have to manually advance time 5 seconds at a time for hours as soon as I suspect there may be enemy missiles incoming?

[MarcAFK]

Perhaps a change to the way subpulses operate in regards to missile detection is needed. Saying that I do recall seeing auto turns break after a missile is detected. Usually I detect them with thermals first.

[sloanjh]

Why is this happening?

Last I recall (from many years ago, but I don't think Steve has changed it), Steve looks at the course of each missile salvo and/or ship and tries to find other ships whose detection range it will enter during its move.  If it finds one, it tries to predict how much to shorten the impulse so that the mover just barely enters detection range.

My recollection is that this didn't always work.  I work around this by saving the game when I think a hostile encounter is possible (e.g. when probing a new system).  If I land ridiculously close to something that I should have detected, then I roll back to the save and do the same thing with shorter time steps (starting out long to get in the neighborhood, then shortening as appropriate).

John

[alex_brunius (OP)]

It would be better if the game overshot in the other direction and sometimes output "interrupt due to imminent missile detection" instead, and stopped time before you actually detect the missiles, rather then after 10 salvoes crushed your 10+ armor layer 60000 ton flagships