Dodging missiles in space

[Jester238]

I recently started my first campaign, however I seem to be having severe issues when dogfighting. The issue being, I can seem to do anything against missiles fired from other fighters! I launch a drone then Turn and Burn but it doesnt seem to do anything and I still get peppered with missiles! So whats the best way of avoiding them?

[JT]

The "Burn" part of "Turn and Burn" is the problem.  Decoys/flares work by simulating the drive flare from your boat.  But they're only powerful to a certain degree -- a reactor that can emit ions to accelerate you by 10+ G is considerably more powerful than a little self-contained pod that fakes it with a little battery inside, so if you're hitting your burner, the missile won't be fooled; "Hmm.  I see a great big huge drive plume here, and a little teensy weensy drive plume there.  [wryly] I think I'll go for the big one."

The basic strategy is to face the missile (if you have time), cut the main engine, launch decoy, then use your dorsal/ventral thrusters to thrust upwards (as the decoy is fired downward).  The missile will be fooled most of the time.  You'll want to thrust upwards because of the splash effect of the missile (this doesn't happen in space in real life, but it's a staple of the space sim genre).  If you find yourself having to launch a decoy after the very last missile impacted the last one, you're probably in too big of a furball for your fighter to handle and should probably bug out if you can.

[Jester238]

thanks for the tip! That makes sense now, I had no idea the sim was quite that detailed so without that explanation I would never have figured it out!

[Voyager]

Actually, I've found you just need to disengage the afterburner, and you should be fine.

On a side note, it is quite possible to make a proximity kill missile for space use, just the way you do for AtA missiles.  The only difference is space tends to have much more volume for a given target to be in.  At the speeds and ranges these craft operate, though, the volume doesn't tend to get that large.

[JT]

Yeah, I meant "cut the main engine" as "cut the burner"... but since I play at maximum realism, cutting the main engine for me means I still drift at normal rate.

I tend to face the missiles so I can actually see them incoming and know whether I stand a chance of GTFO.  If the bastard is on top of me, launching another decoy after this one won't help, so I save the decoy and hope my drift will carry me out of range.

The reason that splash-effect missiles don't work in space in the real world is that there's no atmosphere to produce a shockwave (same reason there's no sound in space).  The only way to do a proximity kill in space is by shrapnel.  Air-to-air missiles in the modern world don't shoot flak -- they just explode and use the shockwave to rend enemy assets apart, and any incidental shrapnel from the explosion would probably miss due to gravity anyway.  Likewise, torpedos under water usually detonate before impact so the shockwave can sunder the ship (there's no point in relying on shrapnel under water because it has at most an effective range of a couple of metres).