Improve the Longreach Autocannon

[JimB]

I found one of these, then swiftly remembered why I never used to use them. They do more damage than an ICX, but's that's not really the point of an anti-missile gun. The projectile type is slower and smaller, and it's generally worse than the ICX as it has the same rate of fire and it misses a lot. If it was changed to a laser with a higher rate of fire than the ICX it would actually be useful as it would shoot down more incoming missiles.

[Song]

The main problem with the longreach is that Autodefensedevice systems (like ICX and longreach) are bugged, resulting in really poor accuracy, a complete inability to handle more than one missile at a time, and a major problem with annoying friendlies (and killing them, in the case of the longreach). Until that is fixed, no change to the gun will make it able to handle multiple missiles: the "phantom fragment" bug will result in it engaging the first missile, then freaking out and keeping trying to hit it after it's dead.....then being overwhelmed and going even crazier.

That being said, once it is fixed, I think Longreach should stay as-is. It's not really designed for taking on a lot of missiles: it's designed to crack missiles with relatively high hitpoints that a regular ICX wouldn't be able to kill. On the other hand, the idea of a swarm-buster auto-defense system that uses a rapid-fire weapon to take on a lot of small missiles well, but failing at high-hitpoint low ROF missiles would be pretty cool. I think once it's possible to have ICX work as intended, rebalancing the autodefense systems to specific roles (basic ICX, "crack the heavy missiles" longreach, and that swarm-stopper intermediary) would be pretty awesome.

[PM]

That being said, once it is fixed, I think Longreach should stay as-is. It's not really designed for taking on a lot of missiles: it's designed to crack missiles with relatively high hitpoints that a regular ICX wouldn't be able to kill.

This includes pteravores. ICX is too weak to stop 'vores reliably, but Longreach is strong enough to do the job.

The main weaknesses of missile defense include:
* Aims and fires at dead/phantom missiles.
* Detection range is too short (range 10 is not enough)
* Does not check for friendly fire, and will always shoot even if friendlies are in the way.

[Song]

That being said, once it is fixed, I think Longreach should stay as-is. It's not really designed for taking on a lot of missiles: it's designed to crack missiles with relatively high hitpoints that a regular ICX wouldn't be able to kill.

This includes pteravores. ICX is too weak to stop 'vores reliably, but Longreach is strong enough to do the job.

The main weaknesses of missile defense include:
* Aims and fires at dead/phantom missiles.
* Detection range is too short (range 10 is not enough)
* Does not check for friendly fire, and will always shoot even if friendlies are in the way.

Those last two at least are fairly easy: detection range can be specified in the XML and friendly-fire code exists in the form of the extremely excellent PDmod by TVR (that anti-FF code should really be integrated into vanilla). The phantom missile bug may be more problematic, since that's an engine issue.