[FrikgFeek]

In multiple points in both retail campaigns and a ton of fan-made ones you are told to take heat seekers in missions where you can't reliably target your enemies. But heat seekers(at least the retail ones, I know a lot of modded missiles can track without having a target) simply do not work if you don't have  a target, they'll just fly in a straight line.
Is this a new thing or have they always behaved like that? Because it does seem a bit daft for the game to outright lie to you.

Sorry if this is a known issue already, but I'd really like some clarification.

[Colonol Dekker]

Clarifiaction about the definitions of aspect-lock and heatseeker?

[AdmiralRalwood]

In multiple points in both retail campaigns and a ton of fan-made ones you are told to take heat seekers in missions where you can't reliably target your enemies. But heat seekers(at least the retail ones, I know a lot of modded missiles can track without having a target) simply do not work if you don't have  a target, they'll just fly in a straight line.

If you're referring to missions like "As Lightning Fall", you're told to avoid aspect seekers because you won't be able to keep an enemy targeted long enough to obtain lock, not because heatseekers can home in without a target. As long as you're not actively suffering EMP effects, you can target an enemy and fire heat-seeking missiles at it.

[FrikgFeek]

Clarifiaction about the definitions of aspect-lock and heatseeker?

No, I know perfectly well what the difference is. It just seems odd that the game would recommend heatseekers when your targeting simply won't work. As Lighting Fall may not be a good example because you are technically able to target(though I still think there's way too much EMP to reliably use heat seekers), just not long enough to get an aspect lock, but something like "The Last Hurrah" from STR. I know STR is fanmade, but it made me think that at some point in time heat seekers did in fact work without a target. Did one of the biggest projects on HLP really overlook the fact that heat seekers don't work without a target?

[Colonol Dekker]

Heat seekers have always worked without a target in Freespace.

Mission one, guard the Orff. Mx-50 spam ftw.

edit-spelling

[FrikgFeek]

Huh. I did not know that, as I've only ever played The Port. Well, thanks for clearing that up for me.

[Colonol Dekker]

I berlieve the demo's freely available still. That may shed some light too.

Don't worry about it. Try it with Rockeyes on Surrender Bellisarius.

(That corvette always makes me think of quantumn leap)

[General Battuta]

I just loaded up a mission, disabled targeting, and spammed some Darts...they seem to track okay. They'll chase countermeasures happily, but they definitely seek.

[FrikgFeek]

I'm pretty sure darts fall under the category of modded missiles, and I already mentioned that some of them work without acquiring a target. The Wildfires in WoD work without a lock too. Now, If you can get heat seekers in FSport or FS2 to track without a target, then It's definitely a problem on my end.

[General Battuta]

It's the same seeking mechanism. Try a slightly off-angle attack on a target that won't launch countermeasures, like a cargo container.

[FrikgFeek]

Stationary targets are the only things you even get to shoot in the first 4 minutes of "The last Hurrah".

[niffiwan]

Hmm... there is an FSO only weapon flag called "untargeted heatseeker"; and I thought that flag allowed heat-seekers to home without an initial target.  So now I'm curious to know exactly what the difference is between this and normal heatseekers.

[Trivial Psychic]

I believe the default behavior was the track-without-lock one.  The flag was created to disable this behavior selectively.

[General Battuta]

I was sure that stock Rockeyes could track without a target but now I don't even know!

[AdmiralRalwood]

Untargeted Rockeyes definitely home in retail.

[FrikgFeek]

I've been playing around with it a bit more and they do home in without a target, though only when they feel like it. Most of the time they just fly straight like dumbfires, and sometimes they even home in some random target 1000m away from whatever is right in your reticle. Not sure if this is a personal or a global error though.

[Kolgena]

In Mystery of the Trinity, a neat bit of trivia is that the Rockeye tracking radius is actually larger than your ship radar radius. Firing rockeyes in all directions (with cheats, obviously) and seeing if they lock to anything will let you know the direction of the next incoming wing of dragons before they show up on radar.

Edit: ah ****, totally didn't read the date of last post :s