[redsniper]

Because you're cycling through hostiles. That key doesn't immediately give you the closest hostile exclusively. You could already be in the middle of the list of enemy targets cycled. What's wrong with a fallback behavior that emulates the original retail functionality?

Wait what? Pressing H cycles through targets by distance right? Giving you the closest hostile is exactly what it does. That said, I wouldn't mind having R do the same thing when there's no attacker.

[Dragon]

Another thing is that "R" is much closer to your fingers than "H" on a standard keyboard. Pressing it is a lot faster than "H", and it matters a lot in tense dogfights, especially if you're escorting something. I don't play multi, but I guess it matters even more against a human.

[jr2]

1) You can hit H with your left pointer finger if you want, really.  Try it a few times and see.

2) So, since the key that cycles through Escort ships doesn't do anything with not ships in escort list, have it cycle through all friendly capships, right?  I mean, the fact that your escort list is empty should tell you that there are no escortable ships... And since the target next turret key doesn't do anything after the turrets are destroyed, it should target the next nearest hostile capship and begin cycling those turrets, right?  The targetted ship  changing should tell you that there's no turrets left....



3) Now, imagine a mission where you are  not to attack a hostile unless it's attacking you.  Now this key gets all jacked up, cause it looks like they are all attacking you unless you notice the threat indicator missing.

[Kobrar44]

U no get this? Retail behaviour is changed now. It is a big deal. If something is changed, it should be kept as close tor retail as possible. While having R cycle through attackers it should also cycle through hostiles as it did in retail. So that some noobs don't happily press R and discover that this function works completely different now.

[jr2]

Yeah.  Well... personally, I think there's a difference in keeping compatibility with retail and treating it as some sort of holy grail to be cloned.  Yes I know that's heresy, but anyways.

One could  argue that supporting higher resolutions than retail allows users to see ships further out and affects balance. 

[Kobrar44]

One could  argue that supporting higher resolutions than retail allows users to see ships further out and affects balance. 

That would be FoV.
Higher resolutions are feature. This is a replacement for old function which is something we should be really careful about.

[Dragon]

2) So, since the key that cycles through Escort ships doesn't do anything with not ships in escort list, have it cycle through all friendly capships, right?  I mean, the fact that your escort list is empty should tell you that there are no escortable ships... And since the target next turret key doesn't do anything after the turrets are destroyed, it should target the next nearest hostile capship and begin cycling those turrets, right?  The targetted ship  changing should tell you that there's no turrets left....

You're thinking in a bit wrong direction here, but the general idea is good. Turret cycling key should switch to regular subsystems when no turrets are left, that'd be more logical. For the escort, cycling through friendly capships might be a good suggestion, but I'd rather go with something more like "nearest capship". It'd be good for quick orientation. Or, it could cycle through hotkeyed formations. Overall, this might become a rarely used, but convenient feature.

[Goober5000]

U no get this? Retail behaviour is changed now. It is a big deal. If something is changed, it should be kept as close tor retail as possible. While having R cycle through attackers it should also cycle through hostiles as it did in retail. So that some noobs don't happily press R and discover that this function works completely different now.

Kobrar44 has a good point, and my first inclination was to agree with him, but on the other hand, this new behavior could be considered the expected behavior.  Suppose that if you pressed the E key to select something on the escort list, and the escort list was empty.  It wouldn't make sense to target a friendly capital ship just because you might be escorting it.

So, following that line of thinking, wouldn't it make more sense to just play the "invalid keypress" error buzz, instead of targeting a hostile ship?  Because if no ship is actually attacking you, then you should know about it so that you can reprioritize your gameplay.

[SypheDMar]

That's what I'd like to have happened. It makes a lot of sense, especially when I can't tell if I'm being chased.

[Mongoose]

Yeah, I'm not sure why that command would have targeted the nearest hostile in the first place.

[Swifty]

U no get this? Retail behaviour is changed now. It is a big deal. If something is changed, it should be kept as close tor retail as possible. While having R cycle through attackers it should also cycle through hostiles as it did in retail. So that some noobs don't happily press R and discover that this function works completely different now.

Kobrar44 has a good point, and my first inclination was to agree with him, but on the other hand, this new behavior could be considered the expected behavior.  Suppose that if you pressed the E key to select something on the escort list, and the escort list was empty.  It wouldn't make sense to target a friendly capital ship just because you might be escorting it.

So, following that line of thinking, wouldn't it make more sense to just play the "invalid keypress" error buzz, instead of targeting a hostile ship?  Because if no ship is actually attacking you, then you should know about it so that you can reprioritize your gameplay.

All right, so be it then. I guess I'm just going to add a new command that targets the closest hostile so we can get that original functionality back without interfering with the correct functionality.

[mjn.mixael]

Wait, I must be misunderstanding. We can already target the closest hostile with 'H'... what's this new command?

[jr2]

Wait, I must be misunderstanding. We can already target the closest hostile with 'H'... what's this new command?

That's why I was not so happy about combining other keys into something multifunction.  Unless you're making hit so that you can play with an XBOX360 controller, then it would make sense.

[Swifty]

Wait, I must be misunderstanding. We can already target the closest hostile with 'H'... what's this new command?

H cycles through hostiles sorted by distance. It won't give you the closest hostile unless you're already not targetting another hostile. Pressing H will just get you a closer target, but not necessarily the closest if you're already targetting a farther hostile. Semantically the H key is "Target Closer Hostile". There is no "Target Closest Hostile" at the moment.

[MatthTheGeek]

Unless I'm wrong, H circles through enemies only if you repeatedly hit it. If you wait a couple of seconds H will target the closest hostile even if you had another hostile target targeted.

[chief1983]

Pretty sure MatthTheGeek is right, the cycling resets to the closest hostile after a few seconds.

[jr2]

What exactly is the timeout?  Or is that difficult to check?

[Commander Zane]

One, two seconds?

[niffiwan]

I think this is the reset value, so 1.5 secs...

Code: (code/hud/hudtarget.cpp) [Select]

#define TL_RESET            1500


[Swifty]

That seems rather arcane. How would any new player know that you'd have to wait 1.5 seconds to get the closest enemy target when the command itself just says "Target Next Closest Hostile Ship"? That's about as "Xbox 360 context sensitive" as my previous suggestion.

In light of this, I still feel that "Target Closest Hostile" needs to be it's own key command for clarity. The 1.5 second wait seems even more hokey than having Target Closest Attacker falling back Target Closest Hostile when no attackers are present.