[diamondgeezer]

At the mo, you need to have an enemy in your targeting box to have your Rockeyes (or whatever) chase it. Therefore, a hostile ship that's checked 'Hidden from sensors'  cannot be tracked by a heat seeking missile.

This blows somewhat, and I'm wondering if allowing heat seekers to automatically track the nearest target would be possible with some code tinkering - and, of course, whether one of you guys might oblige...

Standing by...

NB. Sorry if posting like this breaks the procedure for this kind of thing, but this is, like, the second time I've ever been in here

[Bobboau]

no they do do that already,
but they have presidence over what you have targeted,
but if they can't see that then they go after the nearest hostile they can see
so you just have to make sure there view cone is wide enough

[BlackDove]

If you're not looking at the enemy and shoot they just drift off and they shouldn't because they're heat seekers, right? That means they should SEEK HEAT not just drift off.

Unless you fixed that already

[an0n]

And this, kids, is why we load up with MX-50's and Fury's when escorting convoys in FS1.

Heat-seekers track whatever's in the reticle when you have nothing targetted.

[Bobboau]

if a hostile target is in there view cone they will track it,
they will go after you're target first if they can
I have turned targeting off and tested it, I have made heatseeking swarmers and fired at multable targets,
they do this already

[diamondgeezer]

Yet they're quite blatantly not doing that when I try it... I have a stationary target which is hidden from sensors, and I shoot me rockeyes to just miss the target by an inch, and the fly off in a straight line. Same with a capital ship - I have an un-targeted cruiser in my reticle, and I fire rockeyes, but instead of tracking to a turret or subsytem they just dumbfire...

How very odd...

[EDIT] OK, it seems we're working different ends of the same issue here... heat seekers can track untargeted enemies, like you lot are saying, but not if the enemy is hidden from sensors, which is where my problem lies. I have untargetable enemies and I want a weapon that is still effective against them - hence, I ask can the code be tweeked so that heat seekers track enemies regardless of the 'hidden from sensors' tick box?

[IceFire]

I'm pretty sure you can hit stealth fighters with Rockeyes as well.

[diamondgeezer]

Perhaps you can, but remember that true stealth fighters work differently from a normal fighter with 'hidden from sensors' ticked.

Although... that gives me an idea...

[an0n]

Originally posted by IceFire
I'm pretty sure you can hit stealth fighters with Rockeyes as well.

Yup. I once altered the table file to it fire 90 of them super-fast, gave them a 360 view cone, ramped their damaged to 40000, their turning to near 0 and their speed through the roof. I fired them, they flew all over the friggin place and blew the **** outta me, the stealth fighters and everything else within 30km.

[diamondgeezer]

God bless weapons of mass destruction

[Solatar]

We really need a nuke. Launched from a Hecate. Shockwave blows up everything in the 60 km cube.

[EdrickV]

A ship that is hidden from sensors, (aka stealthed) in theory, shouldn't have a big enough heat signature for the missiles to track. (Look at how present day stealth technology works, part of it is minimal radar signature and part of that is minimal heat signature.) If you want weapons that can track hidden ships, you'd need a new kind of weapon designed specifically to do that. (And they would make the hidden from sensors flag rather useless.)

[diamondgeezer]

Oh, suit yourselves. Forget the whole thing.

[an0n]

Originally posted by EdrickV
A ship that is hidden from sensors, (aka stealthed) in theory, shouldn't have a big enough heat signature for the missiles to track. (Look at how present day stealth technology works, part of it is minimal radar signature and part of that is minimal heat signature.) If you want weapons that can track hidden ships, you'd need a new kind of weapon designed specifically to do that. (And they would make the hidden from sensors flag rather useless.)

No-Lock flags. And Omni-Lock for one or two missiles that're REALLY friggin slow to lock on, more-so than a Helios and with the power of an MX-52. OOOOHH!!! Or TAG missiles! You get a piss-poor, slow-ass lock with the TAG's, light 'em up and watch everyone blast the stealth'd ships to pieces.