Matrix Games Forums

The seem to deflect incoming fire (both beams and torpedos). Does 10% effectiveness mean that 10% of the shots are less likely to hit? Do you use this things in your ship designs? The AI does.

Yes. They're small, and if they're even a tenth as good as their description suggests, it's better than nothing.

ORIGINAL: Gertjan
Does 10% effectiveness mean that 10% of the shots are less likely to hit?

Not quite, it should minus 10% onto each weapons chance to hit when targeting the ship that has the countermeasure
Whether it will make a weapon chance to hit go from 80% to 70%, or 80% to 72%, that is down to the calculations being used

Do countermeasures work for space stations / mining stations as well?

Yeah, with relatively minimal cost and size requirements (assuming it's always true), better than nada.

Countermeasures should work on everything you can place them on

TBH, they are pretty overpowered. I don't see anytime you wouldn't want to use 1. Same with the ones that boost accuracy.

Should probably be changed so that you need more with larger ship size to get same effect or something.

You would think countermeasures would have little useful effect on a sitting-duck target like a space station, since you could just lob things in its general direction without any guidance at all, and hit it. Using current real-life technolergy. And when you're dealing with targets seemingly larger that planets ("That's no moon..."), the object's own gravitational field would ensure that anything you lob even remotely in its general direction would hit it.

Well, since there are no separate point defense countermeasures, I'm ok with it working on big bases for now.  If they ever separate that out, then I'd tend to agree with you.

If you go a "Space Empires" route, bases on that game started with a negative effectiveness (-40% on large bases IIRC)
Meaning even with an ECM, everything was pretty much hitting anyway, so more shields and armour was more important

Of course, bases aren't really stationary while in orbit, they are still orbiting around the planet, otherwise they would just crash into it [:'(]

ORIGINAL: Fishman

You would think countermeasures would have little useful effect on a sitting-duck target like a space station, since you could just lob things in its general direction without any guidance at all, and hit it. Using current real-life technolergy. And when you're dealing with targets seemingly larger that planets ("That's no moon..."), the object's own gravitational field would ensure that anything you lob even remotely in its general direction would hit it.

Well considering that space ships are probably relying on sensors for targeting, without a Mk I Eyeball back up, you could see how the ECM might help.

You're gunners are probably sitting deep inside the ship in the CIC, looking at a monitor...when the ECM is working, maybe that monitor looks more like an old B&W TV set with a broken pair of rabbit ears for tuning...you can still see some, but the picture is really fuzzy and has diagonal lines running vertically along the screen.

As far as guided missile type weapons...current countermeasures 'spoof' the missile and make it chase a ghost that isn't there. This is exactly how chaff and flares work. You 'trick' the missiles into following something that isn't what its shooting at. Same would apply in space. You do realize that even modern warships have ECM and chaff/flares to try and spoof missiles to make them go off course. Submarines have 'noisemakers' to try and get wake following torpedoes to alter course. Sometimes the ECM is less about electronics and more about mechanically fooling the seeker.

So weapon designers build better seekers, and in turn ECM designers make better ways to spoof the new seekers...in a never ending game of 'oneupmanship'.

Does help everyone see how ECM could effect aiming at a Station?

Question: What does ECM do in the real world? 

Answer:
1) blinds the opponents targeting ability
2) spoofs the signal the opponent uses to acquire a targeting fix
3) reduces signature of the potential target.

Can this be applied to fix installations?  You bet.