Can you make all the pirates friendly?

[Alan Phipps]

Jumping the disliked ship away is sometimes enough to make the local authorities forget about your indiscretions, but it far from works reliably every time.

[Lelouch]

<playership> (flown personally by Player) jumping to the same sector = missiles become non-attributable but lose guidance and will not home on a moving target (ie become Dumbfire only).

???

We must be playing different games... My trusty typhoons are most definitely homing in on the future spacedust. (Shadow / Ghoul / Flail / Hammer won't re-acquire a new target after the first one has been destroyed though.).

To be sure i just tested and confirmed it with TC 3.2b and Poltergeist vs. Argon Discoverer.

[Bill Huntington]

Shadows definitely reacquire another target. I have watched them do it many times. That is one of the more interesting experiences in TC, to put a target up on the monitor and watch the Shadows come in. Then you can watch them look for the next target.

I believe that Flails do to, but they don't have a really long life, so they might or might not actually attack the next one.

[Snafu_X3]

I believe that Flails do to, but they don't have a really long life, so they might or might not actually attack the next one.

Flails definately reacquire. Lost an early Aran to firing Flails at assorted Xenon then making it hostile prior to boarding

[Lelouch]

Are you two guys still talking about "ownerless" missiles?

[Alan Phipps]

@ Lelouch: Perhaps reacquiring missiles will acquire the nearest enemy target (not always necessarily the original target?) but plain one-target homing missiles lose lock and just fly in a straight line on wherever they were heading when you do the jump. I tested that in vanilla X3TC 3.2b with Spectres and a hostile moving TS target they were homing in on. After the in-sector jump, the Spectres all just flew straight past (just behind) the hostile TS in a line, totally ignoring it as it moved away from them.

I think we may have uncovered a situation with more system/game variables/conditionals than at first meets the eye. Perhaps it varies with how long the jump takes in real/cpu time? Where is Gazz when you need him?

By the way, I am talking about missiles launched from the Player-piloted ship that jumps to the same sector while the missiles are in flight.

[Lelouch]

(Uhm. New Thread?) <May as well stay here for now as the OP topic is pretty much answered. I can split it if we get anywhere with it. Alan Phipps>

I tested the following scenario: 5km distance from a patrolling Argon Discoverer, my speed matched with his, but not directly following him. Engaged jump drive, and launched a PG at 90% jump-readiness. After re-entering the sector I F3'ed to my target and watched the missiles approach. They followed the target and when being very close they broke up their circling pattern and made a straight beeline for the poor Disco.

Maybe there's a difference between swarm- / non-swarm missiles since you tested (nearly typed testicled *chuckle*) with a Spectre and I vow for Typhoon/Poltergeist?

(This was in M148. I did not loose Argon License. No ships turned red afterwards.)

The order between shooting the missiles and engaging the jump drive does not matter. Normally I do it "shoot first, then jump" with the Typhoons, but the PG's range isn't that hot, so I simply switched it.

[DrBullwinkle]

@ Lelouch: Perhaps reacquiring missiles will acquire the nearest enemy target (not always necessarily the original target?)

Yes.

AFAIK, All Friend-or-Foe missiles should reacquire the next-nearest target; the game has no other way to distinguish behavior of missile types.

The trick probably will not work with a standard image-recognition missile (such as Spectre).

I am talking about missiles launched from the Player-piloted ship that jumps to the same sector while the missiles are in flight.

Yeah, the fire-then-jump technique is sometimes quoted as remote missile launch from a ship other than the playership. Typically using Hammers (a FoF missile). I don't know whether it matters who fires the missile, but the behaviors could be different.

Where is Gazz when you need him?

Indeed.

[Gazz]

I haven't played around with the missiles' auto target switching much.

I know that a missile that loses it's target will acquire the next hostile target... period. There are no other conditions.
The next hostile target can also be missile owned by a hostile race...
(AFAIK, this is the only way to find/target a missile by script when you don't know it's target)


Hostility is an issue of it's own in X3.
A missile has a race. It also "knows" which ship fired it (no collision detection with that ship!) but that value is not available at a scripting level.
Now we can go and assume several things...

- The missile checks sector conditions and notorieties (I figured this stuff out some time ago) and determines who is an enemy.
- The missile considers missiles incoming to it's launching ship hostile.
- The missile uses the launching ship's FF settings.

Which of these are true? You would have to test those cases...
My money is on the first only.


But for an in-system jump?
Missiles can not be OOS objects so it's probable that the engine never even considers re-creating them with their correct target.
It's never necessary when flying to another sector...
FF missiles don't care. If they have no target, they keep looking for one.

We used to have a loading screen on in-system jumps. Back then missiles were cleaned out, I think.

Yeah, the fire-then-jump technique is sometimes quoted as remote missile launch from a ship other than the playership. Typically using Hammers (a FoF missile). I don't know whether it matters who fires the missile, but the behaviors could be different.

The only thing that matters is that the firing ship is no longer in the sector at the time of impact.
If you launch from your ship, you can eject and order your ship to jump out.
Just more convenient if you have more than one ship present.

[kurush]

- The missile checks sector conditions and notorieties (I figured this stuff out some time ago) and determines who is an enemy.
- The missile considers missiles incoming to it's launching ship hostile.
- The missile uses the launching ship's FF settings.

I definitely remember exploiting #3 when I switched on and off Terrans as enemies during boarding operations to a) avoid hitting the target b) destroy any RRF and military ships that are trying to interfere.