[AdmiralRalwood]

Yeah as Dragon said, unless someone changed that recently, homing primaries have never ever worked.

Ironically, it looks like the biggest thing stopping this from working is the same PF_CONST_VEL flag that was stopping acceleration time from working with dumbfire secondaries... but there are too many places in the code that check WP_LASER as shorthand for "shot that travels in a straight line" to make changing that by itself worthwhile.

[Dragon]

As usual, something that should be simple is made not so simple by lousy coding in the FS2 engine. Of course, it's not like ever needed homing primaries, and I bet that particular thing isn't something FSO added.

Mods like WoD would greatly benefit from homing primaries, that's for sure. Also, acceleration time on primaries could be an interesting feature (for Gyrojet-like guns, for example). I can see it messing with many things, though, starting from lead indicator and ending in collision detection code.

[The E]

As usual, something that should be simple is made not so simple by lousy coding in the FS2 engine. Of course, it's not like ever needed homing primaries, and I bet that particular thing isn't something FSO added.

That's not lousy coding, FYI.

[Dragon]

Well, I suppose it's not all that bad of a practice, now that I think of it. It's certainly a reasonable assumption given nobody tries to tamper with WP_LASER. Still, shouldn't the check that tests whether a shot something is only moving in straight line look for PF_CONST_VEL flag instead? Unless it's a matter of performance, this seems like a more bulletproof way of doing such checks.

[Bryan See]

I think acceleration time should be varied according to weapon type.

[niffiwan]

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Weapons.tbl#.24Acceleration_Time::

[Goober5000]

Well, I suppose it's not all that bad of a practice, now that I think of it. It's certainly a reasonable assumption given nobody tries to tamper with WP_LASER. Still, shouldn't the check that tests whether a shot something is only moving in straight line look for PF_CONST_VEL flag instead? Unless it's a matter of performance, this seems like a more bulletproof way of doing such checks.

No.  There are numerous places where "travels in only a straight line" has different implications for different modules.  For physics, it's "use this calculation to predict future positions".  For graphics, it's "check whether something is on the screen".  For the AI, it's "avoid flying into this path".  Etc.

The physics code makes extensive use of PF_ flags, as it should.  But (for example) the AI code has no business looking at the gory details of the physics code.  Separation of concerns (physics doesn't care about AI, AI doesn't care about physics) is good programming practice.