Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [GZG] Revised Salvo Missiles Update

Oerjan said:
>In space there's (usually) no horizon to block your line of sight, so
if your missiles carry enough on-board fuel you'll be able to guide them
to the *general* area of the target. ('Course, that "if" might not be
entirely trivial...) However, instead of the horizon you start to get
significant time lags in the communication between the launching ship
and the missile, so the missile still needs good enough target seekers -
and enough autonomy - to find the target on its own.
>Trouble is, as soon as the missile has *any autonomy at all* wrt target
selection it also runs a risk of attacking some other target than its
parent ship intended...

I rarely hear anyone suggesting that a mu is more than 1000km (although
there are many who feel it should be less), so assuming you're on a
100mu table, you have less than a second of speed-of-light delay. And
you don't generally don't have a horizon. I don't mind a banzai jammer
having a chance to seduce a missile away from its main target; what I
object to is launching a missile and finding out that the target zigged
and the missile stupidly kept running to where the target *used to be*.
I f the target sees the missile coming, jinks away, and the missile runs
out of fuel trying to catch it, that's okay--although I'd allow the
missile to re-target if there was something in range, or perhaps to cut
thrust and drift a while, ready to reactivate if its parent ship calls
it again.
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