Add agility rating to engines

[jseah]

You cannot dodge purely the fact that a missile can turn 180 degrees on the spot, and maintain momentum, so there is no dodge have a think about it. You could not avoid a missile, if you plot it ever millisecond on a piece of a paper where you can turn at the same speed with no loss of momentum. You could not dodge.

Also the reaction time on a AI is far faster then a human.

Reaction time of humans never matter.  The ship is not "doding" the missile actively.  The ship is just changing directions in unpredictable ways as fast as possible. 

You just need to change directions faster than the missile to get it to miss.  The higher the missile's speed advantage, the faster you need to do it. 
The agility rating is how fast the missile processes changes in target speed and adjusting course to match. 

So you combine a sqwaker and a thermal together, think submarines not fighters and you will know what I mean.

A squawker is essentially an ECM emission made to look like a ships' return on the grav-radar. 

Which is a nice addition and definitely one I would like to see in. 

[ardem]

Again changing of directions without interia is instant. So it either reaction time that make it miss (which I am assume your getting at with processing information, in that respects we talking about AI response not speed of missile), or it cannot miss based on a interia-less environment.

Unless you are stating ships are interia-less and missile have interia.

[wilddog5]

I don't think missiles have inertia i think hits are not the missiles hitting the hull but the shaped warheads detonating in/out of range.

what happens is the the ship and the missiles all are moving  at high speed some missiles attack from above, some below, etc so if the ship moved down at the time of missile detonation it would move in the range for some of the explosions and out of range for others.

[jseah]

So it either reaction time that make it miss (which I am assume your getting at with processing information, in that respects we talking about AI response not speed of missile)

Sort of like this. 

And only the reaction of the missile matters.  The ship just needs to jink blindly faster than the missile can react. 
The reaction of the missile is a combination of sensing that the ship isn't where it was, AI making needed course changes and drive responding to AI commands.  All this takes time, and is harder than blindly changing to random new direction. 

[dalord0]

Again changing of directions without interia is instant. So it either reaction time that make it miss (which I am assume your getting at with processing information, in that respects we talking about AI response not speed of missile), or it cannot miss based on a interia-less environment.

Unless you are stating ships are interia-less and missile have interia.

I think what is happening is that the missiles are moving at very high speeds, and the ships are the same, the missiles detonate not when they hit the ship but when they get close enough, and as such sometimes the missiles miss because its like trying to hit ant from a kilometre away, if you are off by a fraction of a millisecond the ship is already kilometres away.

[Charlie Beeler]

Again changing of directions without interia is instant. So it either reaction time that make it miss (which I am assume your getting at with processing information, in that respects we talking about AI response not speed of missile), or it cannot miss based on a interia-less environment.

Unless you are stating ships are interia-less and missile have interia.

What's 'interia'?  I'll assume you meant inertia. 

If intercept was a purely movement mechanic then you'd be correct, but your not.  There are aspects that are abstracted and not modelled, one of them being detailed evasion maneuvering. 

[ardem]

Don't bother correcting my spelling it be a lifetime habit for you, and I still wouldn't care 

Whether the missile hits the ship directly or hits by explosion is a mute point it needs to hit an area that causes damage, that area may be dead space but it still classified as an effective target area. All we are saying here is the ship target size is increased for the effectiveness of the missile.

So we come back to my original point, now that we are talking about reaction times, and if we assume 'agility' is to do with AI processing, and that processing is fairly consistent across missile. We now talking about the random variable which is pilot skill, unless we assume that the piloted craft uses AI enhanced ship combat manoeuvres.

I suppose the assumption is present all AI processing is created equally, which it is not you can look at missile here that have different ratings.

In that case there is nothing stopping putting an agility score in either the engine or piloting.

QED.

It now be interesting which way you change the argument direction this time 

[jseah]

I did justify that. 

Only the agility of the missile matters in my argument.  The ship just needs to jink very very fast, it doesn't need to know where the missile is. 

Hence, agility is purely offensive.  It's the ability to track and compensate for very rapid changes in the target's speed. 
When jinking to avoid shots, that's not needed at all. 

[ardem]

Sorry but my imagination of thinking a craft is jinxing randomly whenever someone fires something at it, and moves at the same time in the direction of the course at maximum speed, made my head explode.
 
It was like me thinking about time travel and trying to alter history only to find out history never altered.

[Narmio]

Sorry but my imagination of thinking a craft is jinxing randomly whenever someone fires something at it, and moves at the same time in the direction of the course at maximum speed, made my head explode.

As evasive manoeuvres are abstracted into the object's speed, this is exactly what's happening in Aurora all the time. It is quite head-explodey, but it's true. Not necessarily "randomly" jinking (as in Brownian motion style movement), but certainly taking evasive action while maintaining a constant course and speed.  Don't try to understand it in terms of realism, it's a gameplay abstraction.

(Also, I'm not actually following this currently side-discussion, but I will say that knowing where a missile is makes even "random" jinking more effective - you only jink on the plane perpendicular to the missile, so you move your as far as you can relative to the missile)

[sloanjh]

Sorry but my imagination of thinking a craft is jinxing randomly whenever someone fires something at it, and moves at the same time in the direction of the course at maximum speed, made my head explode.
 
It was like me thinking about time travel and trying to alter history only to find out history never altered.

Something to remember is that Aurora is not a physics simulator - it's a game.  Certain things have been abstracted away in favor of playability.  One of these things is the player knowing about and/or deciding "how much of my speed am I going to devote to jinking, and how much to moving where I want to go".  Steve  considered putting this complexity in, and decided not to do it.  It is assumed that ships can be jinking around while they're moving without a movement penalty.

John

[ardem]

I understand it is a game  , my posts are a theoretical discussion on how the game works in reality, based on the physics principles provided.

If I wanted to post about the game design I would say this.
Beam fighters broken, missile are overpowered, fighter are just a way to provided longer range missiles. Balance is wrong. There is no rock paper scissor for missile design.

Above is a personal choice about my views, steve who designed this great game has 'rightfully so' other ideas, that why I was deliberately avoiding the 'remember is was a game not a physics simulator' aspect.

If we looked at the argument based on this being 'a game' there is no reason why not to add agility to fighters, no reason not to add ion cannons that knock out an enemies power temporarily or any other aspect. Because in a game you can make and choice or direction and match up the physics after to create the story why.

If Steve decided tommorrow he wanted to include small craft with agility, I am sure the same faces in this post would come up with a plausible reason how it was included, and do a 180 backflip.

I wanted to wrap my head around based on the current principles of physics 'in the game', why you could or could not have agility in engine included. And I now believe I understand it, based on this random jinking concept.

[Narmio]

The idea that you can either think about something as a game (in which case anything goes) or as a simulation (in which case realism (or at least verisimilitude) is paramount) is a false dichotomy. It's a continuum, and Aurora is quite far towards the "simulation" end of the scale.  There are, however, still points where abstractions made for game design or implementation purposes induce a disconnect in that verisimilitude. This is one of those points.

Claiming that "There are specific points in this game at which gameplay trumps simulation" equates to "you can make any choice or direction and match up the physics after to create the story why" is not sensible. The point people were making to you is not "It's a game, don't talk about reality at all" but "This is one point in the game at which you cannot use a realism-based argument as abstractions built into the system negate it".

[ardem]

OK OK I surrender

Attacking my intelligence with the obvious after another obvious stated is now becoming a gang bang

I am a programmer myself, I understand abstraction and compromises. What I wanted to understand was the blueprint which I got.

[Erik L]

I think this topic has run its course and the horse has been sufficiently beat. To prevent further bloodshed, I'm closing it.