[Snail]

Ever notice that when a group of enemy fighters fire a spread of Hornet missiles at your escort, they spread out at the target? Yet, when you yourself try to use Hornet missiles against an enemy, they all hit a single point?

What causes this to happen, and is there a way to enable this missile spreading thing for the player? I'm trying to create an anti-capship swarm weapon for the player, but thus far I have been unable to recreate this effect.

[haloboy100]

yeah, i notice this even when they fire at fighters and the player; the missiles fly out in a small spread in front of the craft, before homing in together on a target.

[Dilmah G]

That looks like the "float" time for the hornet in the tables, it should be the same for the player.

[Wanderer]

It is possible to enable that firing method also for player weapons if desired - but it requires a bit of coding to enable it also for the player (Probably via weapon flags).

[Dilmah G]

Player and AI weapons were different?

[Wanderer]

Well.. not that much different.. AI homing weapons just pick a mostly random, visible spot from the enemy ship to lock on to... Same should be possible to do with player weapons as well.

[haloboy100]

My question is: why do they do that? To just look cool?

[colecampbell666]

Probably.

[karajorma]

My question is: why do they do that? To just look cool?

It's the other way around. Your missiles are targeted at a specific subsystem because you have a subsystem selected when you targeted the enemy ship. The AI doesn't do that so they pick points at random. Having the player do that would rapidly become annoying if you were trying to destroy a cruiser's engines with hornets for instance.

[Angelus]

My question is: why do they do that? To just look cool?

It's the other way around. Your missiles are targeted at a specific subsystem because you have a subsystem selected when you targeted the enemy ship. The AI doesn't do that so they pick points at random. Having the player do that would rapidly become annoying if you were trying to destroy a cruiser's engines with hornets for instance.

Would it be possible to make changes to the code to have both behaviours?
The default behaviour should stay default, but the AI type behaviour enabled via flag in the weapons.tbl?

[Aardwolf]

Actually, I always wanted to be able to shoot swarm missiles at a ship and have them not all lock onto the same point (like when the AI does it).

[Trivial Psychic]

That would be more useful for a swarming bomb, like that EA one from Inferno.  An added bonus, would be if say you locked the target onto a turret, and one of a swarm of 3 (or whatever number the swarm launches) would go after that target, and the other two would go after other turrets... perhaps even turrets of the same type.  Say, if you lock onto a beam turret, the rest would see out other beam turrets, failing that... any turret, failing that... any subsystem, failing that... the originally targeted subsystem.

[haloboy100]

Actually, I always wanted to be able to shoot swarm missiles at a ship and have them not all lock onto the same point (like when the AI does it).

Yeah. Am I the only one that spread-fires Hornets without a lock just to have the same looking affect?

[blackhole]

What would be even cooler is a multilock system similar to the one in metroid prime. Hold down the key to target subsystem in a reticle and if you have a swarm missile it'll just lock on to all the subsystems that your view sweeps over. Or just lock on to all nearby ones. Either way any kind of multilock would be seriously kickass

[redsniper]

Lock swarm Trebs on ALL fighters. WHOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[Commander Zane]

What would be even cooler is a multilock system similar to the one in metroid prime. Hold down the key to target subsystem in a reticle and if you have a swarm missile it'll just lock on to all the subsystems that your view sweeps over. Or just lock on to all nearby ones. Either way any kind of multilock would be seriously kickass

Or use TrackIR to aquire target locks ala Macross.