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Missile Lock woes: bugged or working as intended?


BobBudJones

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The more frustrating thing that relates to this is the instance I often have of enemy seemingly outrunning my missiles.

 

As was pointed out, what they are actually doing is pressing the missile break button (disto or engine) while the missile is in flight. The missile animation will still play, but not damage will occur.

 

However, you CAN outrun a missile- but only for a few seconds. Eventually, it WILL hit you. But these few seconds can be long enough for a break to come off cooldown and used.

 

For this reason, launching point blank almost guarantees a hit, and the "extra speed' upgrades are greatly rewarded for this reason.

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Learning to boost in toward the target without losing lock is also a good trick to learn with missile based strikes. There's a huge difference in effectiveness if you cut the available time for evasion on a slow missile in half or so.

 

I try to lock proton torpedoes at 9-10 km and release at 5-6 km. When I pull it off it works quite nicely.

 

Another trick, if you're really good, is using retro thrusters to give yourself extra space when launching from a distance that would normally be too close. If you can learn to reliably launch proton torps from a range of 2-3 km you become pretty fearsome. I'm not there yet, but having been on the receiving end a few times I can tell you that heavy missiles launched so that you have about as much time as a cluster missile gives for evasion after launch, well it hurts. A lot.

 

I'll add an I concur to the missile lock problems. When my connection is stable at 27 ms of server lag it really shouldn't be a consistent problem the way it is. Honestly, when it comes to lock and launch the GSF missiles are slower and more primitive than the very first generation of guided air-to-air missiles from the 1950's!

 

Fusion generators? Check.

Faster than light space travel? Check.

Forcefields and laser cannons? Check.

Fully sentient artificial inteligences? Check.

Missile guidance as advanced as a primitive culture that hasn't even invented the integrated circuit yet? Uncheck. W T F?

 

I can see the considerations for not making missile combat be completely dominant the way it is in modern air combat. But if you're tuning the missiles to be about as effective as blasters and then making them the most important weapons systems on some ships, it really sucks to find out that the weapon that you should rely on most only functions well -sometimes-. It sucks even further to discover that the ship you are flying is balanced on the assumption that the weapon that only works sometimes should work all of the time.

 

If the interface is telling the pilot that they have launch authorization then the missiles should bloody well launch if given the command to fire.

 

It's one thing if you get the =blatt= noise telling you that the lock was just lost as you're firing, but the mysterious, "Oh, we're locked alright, we just don't feel like firing right now," behavior from the missiles is really annoying.

 

At the very least you should always get a reliable warning if lock has been lost. If SWTOR's audio system can't handle that then add an obvious visual indicator on the hud. Making something turn green or blue on lock, and orange, yellow or red when not locked is popular among many HUD designers. If you're considerate toward color blind pilots you also make the indicator change shape.

 

For instance, having a diamond pop up over the target ship when it's locked by the missile system.

Edited by Ramalina
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Like most of you, this is extremely frustrating when you lock a photon torpedo and release it...only to find the lock is gone but the target never moved.

 

I think of it has to do with the defensive maneuver registering late. It was technically executed before you had lock on.

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As was pointed out, what they are actually doing is pressing the missile break button (disto or engine) while the missile is in flight. The missile animation will still play, but not damage will occur.

 

However, you CAN outrun a missile- but only for a few seconds. Eventually, it WILL hit you. But these few seconds can be long enough for a break to come off cooldown and used.

 

For this reason, launching point blank almost guarantees a hit, and the "extra speed' upgrades are greatly rewarded for this reason.

 

I'm not going to come out and point blank say you are wrong, as I have no footage to back up my assertion.

 

But i'm not convinced. There have been many a time where in which I have had a lock broken by a defensive maneuver and only to have the following lock and released missile outrun.

 

I know the difference in the on screen animation between the normal engine boost and barrel roll, for eg.

 

Anyway, I just wanted to pitch in my voice in case this turns out to be a thing, I am not too phased. I get enough kills a match. Just frustrating at times.

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Fusion generators? Check.

Faster than light space travel? Check.

Forcefields and laser cannons? Check.

Fully sentient artificial inteligences? Check.

Missile guidance as advanced as a primitive culture that hasn't even invented the integrated circuit yet? Uncheck. W T F?

 

 

I LOL'ed at this. +1

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