Weapons Update: Manual targeting and target lead indicators

Auhrii shared this feedback ago

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Combat is in a strange place right now - manually controlling turrets is nigh useless unless you're directly on top of the target, and fixed weapons aren't that far ahead owing to having to eyeball distance and relative acceleration when leading shots.

I propose remedying this by allowing us to manually target ships - put your crosshair over the target, press a magic button and voilà! A reticle now appears on the screen that tells you where you should aim in order to land your shots. Manually targeting a ship should prioritise it as a target for your turrets if it meets the criteria.

Better still would be the ability to target specific blocks when a ship has been targeted. Elite: Dangerous allows this with ship modules, and in a game where everything is a module and can be destroyed, this feature would really shine. Exposing the ship's (or each turret's) current target to a programmable block API could also allow for a lot of inventive new scripts - gimballed weapon mounts, anyone?

Better gun reticles are also a must - the red dot currently in the game is too faint, if it even appears at all.

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Replies (1)

Doomed Person ●

Why have that kind of independent system when you could have a block do it? For example, a targeting radar block could lock onto a grid within line of sight and create a motion prediction for a set amount of time in the future.

I do agree on the reticle, but it's worth noting that the current red dots seem more like something for developers to see where the weapon's pointing than something for use in PvP.

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Auhrii ●

It wouldn't make all that much sense to have a block specifically for giving you targeting solutions - this functionality is already built into standalone blocks in the flavour of every turret in the game. Surely a cockpit with many, many more computers would be able to perform the exact same function. Maybe depend on an antenna for fancier targeting, like identifying, singling out and targeting specific blocks.

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Doomed Person ●

On the other hand, separating the functions would give more nuance to ships' exteriors and give *a* reason to manually control weapons. If targeting blocks have large costs in some set of power, mass, volume, and components, lighter craft might just go without them and have manual firing.

I do like the idea of better targeting, especially in identifying ships' internals, and it's not mutually exclusive with separating weapons from their targeting.

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