[ZeroCooL]

I just had an idea
You can create a type of missile that can acquire muti-targets

I mean ...
a missile as the tornado but instead of devoting 4 missiles at a target


 4-wing aircraft are 4 cones and taken to 4 different ships
  1 missile for every member of the wing



we are talking about a highly evolved system of sensors
but .. is it possible?

sorry my poor english i use google traslator

[Colonol Dekker]

A multi target swarmer would be neat.

[SpardaSon21]

I think Wings of Dawn has already done multi-target swarmers.

[Shivan Hunter]

Heat seekers do this already but there isn't much of a way to control it.

[Swifty]

I'm currently working on it.

[Rodo]

I'm currently working on it.

Oh yesss, YESSSSS.

[Mongoose]

Woooo Itano Circus!

[TrashMan]

If it ends up anything like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dljDivTE9Vk&feature=related   (start at 6:50)

Then I'll be happy

[Ypoknons]

Oh in Frontier the scene looked like they were using eye movement to target the missiles. Shake the TrackIR to fire anyone

[Commander Zane]

Oh in Frontier the scene looked like they were using eye movement to target the missiles. Shake the TrackIR to fire anyone

Ozma does use his eyes for targeting.
Yes, targeting with TrackIR like that would be beyond awesome, would make a Macross mod much more needed.

[TrashMan]

eye targeting..like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXNa88lRh4E

[lostllama]

Or this?

[BlueFlames]

Or this?

For the record, I hate you.

Also, I couldn't find a video of it in practice, but the AH-64D (a real flying weapons platform) can identify 256 targets, prioritize the sixteen most threatening, and simultaneously engage that entire group.  Happy fun times.

It would be pretty cool, if you could use the group targeting function in FreeSpace to get aspect lock on entire wings of fighters and launch a volley of missiles to soften the whole lot of them up, prior to engaging with guns.  Might need some new control mappings to be convenient, such as 'target nearest hostile/friendly wing' or 'target nearest four/eight hostile/friendly fighters' or even 'target nearest four/eight turrets on targetted ship', but it's something to think about.

[lostllama]

For the record, I hate you.

...Sorry.

Also, I couldn't find a video of it in practice, but the AH-64D (a real flying weapons platform) can identify 256 targets, prioritize the sixteen most threatening, and simultaneously engage that entire group.  Happy fun times.

It would be pretty cool, if you could use the group targeting function in FreeSpace to get aspect lock on entire wings of fighters and launch a volley of missiles to soften the whole lot of them up, prior to engaging with guns.  Might need some new control mappings to be convenient, such as 'target nearest hostile/friendly wing' or 'target nearest four/eight hostile/friendly fighters' or even 'target nearest four/eight turrets on targetted ship', but it's something to think about.

From what I know of the AH-64D's targeting abilities from Enemy Engaged: Comanche vs Hokum (the modded upgraded version from EECH Central), "Priority Fire Zones" (I think that's what they're called) can be set up on the MFD by using a cursor to click and drag a box around detected targets. Then you can cycle through each one, launching a Hellfire missile at each in turn. I think that's what you might be referring to. Maybe if something like that could be implemented in FSO by drawing a box around targets on the screen, or on the radar display using the mouse in order to obtain a lock, and then having each missile in the volley head for a seperate target simultaneously.

I suppose that would be somewhat awkward, and it might not favour mouse users. It would need a way of disengaging the mouse from flight control, if it's already enabled by the user. Maybe holding down a secondary key (like Alt, or some other secondary button) to enable mouse targeting whilst flying the ship using keyboard or a joystick could make it work.

EDIT: Actually that probably would still be a bit awkward to use. It would probably work best for targeting groups at long range.

[Black Wolf]

We can already have group targetting in FRED by using the F5-F12 keys for pre-assigned hotkeys. Missions set up to use these weapons could presumably just use the Hotkeys, and tell the player what wing is what hotkey using the directives box (it may already do that automatically, come to think of it).

It's no a perfect system (limits multiple-firing to single, specific wings, only 8 per mission (possibly only 8 at a time?) but it's OK to start with, surely?

[TrashMan]

Or this?

Cannot unsee... The narm. the NARM!!!!!!

[TrashMan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/AWG-9

[torc]

yeah, that's cool, but i think it would be awesome to have multiple icons not only in the missiles target,but  in all the ships just like this

as you can see you can look all the targets in the screen all togheter

[Rodo]

Or like this as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpgkqPaEelM&feature=related

[lostllama]

Using the function keys as Black Wolf described allows target brackets for ships in an individual wing to appear all at once; I'm not sure if all hostile ships in a mission could be allocated to a single F-key though.

Another idea I have is to perhaps have a means of selective targeting using the reticle targeting control to build up a list of targets to fire a volley at, and once the limit is reached (corresponding to the maximum number of missiles available in a single swarm, say 4 or 8) just fire away.

Edit: Anyway, as Swifty says, he's working on it.