Smoke missile

Hi all,

TLDR; Smoke bomb missile, prevents targeting.

I've been wondering how to increase the depth of Air vs AA play.

Currently AA tends to effectively cut-off Air from attacking anything except the frontline.
And, mobile AA can become so dense on the frontline that even likhos can't do much.

I of course do think that AA should beat Air. Otherwise it would be pointless.

Would it be possible to add a new missile (shot from silo) that produces a smoke cloud?

Units inside the cloud would be treated as invisible, but preferably still kinda visible to the players.
If the smoke cloud is of decent size, this would allow flying planes thru the cloud safely.

Actual size, duration, range and cost of this missile would be tricky to balance though..

Previous topic, old: http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/29660

Smoke would be an interesting cloak-but-not feature, perhaps not just for this air/AA situation you mention.

Also the inverse shield. How about making a special boat that does that. (Why a boat? Because they are boring. I mean, look at a Jug, those are 100% personality.)

quote: Here is another idea. When you mentioned smoke and AA I was reminded of the Corsair from Broodwar. So how about a missile that shoots a backwards shields. Enemy units inside can't shoot out until they break the shield.

Hmm, Dark Swarm (sporadically cause missiles to explode prematurely inside a given volume)

quote: Hmm, Dark Swarm (sporadically cause missiles to explode prematurely inside a given volume)

I am partial to weapon type counters, ie. missiles shot down by point-defence. But, I think it has been discussed and rejected already.

quote: So how about a missile that shoots a backwards shields. Enemy units inside can't shoot out until they break the shield.

To work as a "no combat zone" the way I intended, the shield would actually have to be two-way.
I could imagine the effect being a circular shield wall that extends "all the way up and down" (for some value of all the way).

quote: highly distorted radar at area of missle hit if engine has that option of local radar target precision

Some of the other spring games have buildings that increase radar accuracy (decreases the wobble). However, I couldn't find any attribute to set on a per unit basis. I might not have delved deep enough tho.

quote: smoke could temporarly block line of sight. as if there was a wall.

I think the gameplay effect would be similar to a full cloaking effect. Perhaps an additional effect to the cloaking could be to reduce unit sight to 10 elmos. Units would still decloak each other like normal though.