It occured to me while I was flying toward a few cargo containers that were left over after a queen battle, (firing rockets randomly towards them in accordance with the "break stuff to look tough" law...yes, I was goofing off) that it was odd that the cargo containers did not set off the proximimty on the rockets and make them explode.

This could be used for a number of things. It could be a countermeasure against rockets, as well as adding another consideration into combat, especially when people begin littering systems such as B8 with cargo, and the cargo NPCs leave in Ion storms.

It likely would be used by traders while fleeing, but it would come at the price of loosing some of their cargo, though sometimes you can't afford to lose cargo because of missions. However, it could be used by other people, and presumably if rockets went off close to cargo, the cargo would be destroyed, a useful way of getting rid of CtC cargo. It could also be used to get rid of CtC cargo before an enemy intercepts it, particularly if you have railguns.

Just my 2c.

It's a good idea, but rather than using cargo as countermeasures the ongoing debate burried somewhere in the forums has been about adding regular countermeasures to deter missiles and rockets. Hopefully something we can look forward to in the future.

Yes...this would be part of the "equipment" slot or whatever, but I imagine that it could be as simple as changing a few flags in the program to make this possible. I'm looking for simple solutions to problems that will have to be faced more in-depth in the future, and either way, I think that cargo should set off proximity.

Yeah, you've actually got a good point there.

I think this is pretty neat, rockets ought to be triggered by anything, including other rockets (considering how powerful they seem to be, light fighters don't really have a prayer against a good rocket user).

how cool would it be to fire a rocket just to trigger the proxcility on another rocket?

i definately like this idea. i'm all for adding litle things like this that make movie like tactice posable.

"R-4, open the spare parts compartment on my mark" -Obi Wan Kinobi

Haha...I had the same idea as Chimaera, posted in this thread:
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/9080?page=3#120149
Extracted:
I think that missiles should be *easy* to kill (hitpoint wise), but will be hard to hit due to their size. Perhaps rockets and missiles should be able to set of the proximity detonator on other missiles.

I would push for a very fast dumbfire rocket, something along the lines of:

500 damage
0 proximity, detonation on contact
No splash
ROF: 4 shots per second
250m/s speed
40 missiles per port
lifetime: 2.5s
delay: .1 s

This would allow people to shoot down missiles and rockets en route to Cap ships, as well as countering incoming missiles.

Maybe missiles should be able to actively shoot down rockets...

there we go. A new missile, small and uber fast, but doing very little damage, like 1 hit point, but enough damage to blow up a rocket.

Realistically, the military wouldn't design a missile to do nothing but blow up another missile. Giving it damage comprable to an early energy weapon, but with greater speed and slightly slower ROF would be an excellent addition to our arsenal.

If it can hit a missile, it can hit a ship too.
40x500 still is 20000, enough to blow up most ships, and with a .25 refire rate, you can shoot 'em all in 10 seconds.
So either the 40, or the 500 is too high.

Yes, you're right. However, if you changed the number of missiles to 30 (and managed to hit the enemy each shot...remember, this *is* a contact missile, totally dumbfire) then you could do the same amount of damage as a sunflare in the same amount of time, but you would run out faster.

A few changes and a comparison:

Dumbfire Stiletto missile:
40 missiles = 20000 damage
ROF: 0.4 s
16 s

Sunflare:
16 missiles = 24000 damage
ROF: 1 s
16 s

So, I think 30 missiles at least is fair, considering that it is an unguided, non autoaiming missile with no proximity detonator. Also, if you look at my stats above, the lifetime of the rocket only allows it to travel 625m (or farther depending on ship's starting speed, but it won't change things all that much), so this is not a long range weapon, unlike the sunflare which can be used as against cap ships and queens from far-off distances.

You'd have to be quite the shot with these missiles to be able to use them in actual offensive combat.

AWESOME!!!

/me imagines surrounding himself with 120 floating crates of Feric, and then firing out against a rocket-rag