Lock On Launchers on Testserver

Discussion in 'Test Server: Discussion' started by Aesir, Apr 16, 2013.

  1. Aesir

    Currently on the Liveservers if you lock on and maintain the lock for about 0,5 sec, you can still fire the locked missile, but it goes directly for the Target, ignoring where you actually aim.

    Well, on the Testservers this has changed ... You now can maintain lock for about 0,5 sec, look to the side and fire the missile. It will fly about 70m out in a strait path of the location were you aimed and than it start's tracking and turn for the target.

    Which in my opinion is cool and allows to shoot around cover, what is not cool is the fact that the missile acts completely different from anything else when it comes to directional damage on Tanks.

    To demonstrate what I mean, here a little Video I made...



    You can now deal rear damage, while actually not standing to the rear of the Tank. This causes a huge problem for Tanks, since you can lock, shoot the missiles past the Tank and hit the rear or hit the rear by aiming at the sides.

    I have no issue if this works to do top down attacks on Tanks to ignore frontal Armor for top/side Armor, but this should not work for the rear weakspot!

    It could be done in form of a top down attack launcher(you could rework the Annihilator in this way), kinda like a JAVELIN.

    It works with every Lock On launcher, not only the Striker, it works on Air and Ground targets.

    But if this goes live in the current form, it will severely hurt Armor Players once everybody figures out how to do this properly.
    • Up x 8
  2. Radec594

    You can't deal rear damage like that, that is not how damage detection works in this game.
    If you shoot while in front of the tank, and hit its rear, you'll still deal front damage.
    I R WRONG

    This is probably just to make the grounders not so worthless on any environment that's not a flat valley, it acts more like a Javelin, which makes sense.
    • Up x 3
  3. Knarfis

    Does this work with air units as well??
    • Up x 1
  4. Eclipson

    Hmmmm, It does seem pretty cool, make using a lock on a bit more entertaining. Especially good for striker users. I really think this should be a Striker only thing, as it would make the weapon unique. In PS1 I bealive the Striker could do something similar to this.
    • Up x 3
  5. Cinnamon

    Good luck standing in front of a MBT <70m away and pulling off that trick with a striker.

    But anyway just buff rear armour and this will not even be worth mentioning as a problem.
    • Up x 1
  6. Aesir

    I know how it should work but it does not as you can clearly see in my Video, I'm ok with the change to make it able to better bypass terrain in form of top down attacks. But the directional damage thing can not go live in this form!
    • Up x 3
  7. Aesir

    Yes.. you can shoot strait into the air while the plane actually made it past a hill to increase the chance for it to go over the hill and follow the Aircraft.
    • Up x 1
  8. Radec594

    You're right; according to ps2calc it should take lock-ons 5 hits and a half to kill a tank, they're clearly taking 2 and a half in that video which means rear armor damage is being detected.

    Interesting..

    So they decided to fix hit detection, and gave lock-ons maneuvering space at the same time.
    It's an indirect buff, I can foresee the OPness threads :|
    • Up x 1
  9. Purg

    I love this change, I hope it's intentional as the lock-ons really are gimped in the way they track and having to fire them pretty much directly at the target to begin with decreases their effectiveness by a huge margin.
    • Up x 1
  10. Aesir

    I know that the interesting part about it is that there could actually be a better directional damage system ... not only for Lock Ons but in general.
    • Up x 1
  11. Aquilae

    yep, can confirm, just tested this out on the test server, it is indeed taking into account where lockon rockets impact a tank.

    yet bizarrely, it still doesn't care where dumbfire weapons hit, same as live. (if you happen to be standing behind a tank and shoot a rocket at the very tip of it's barrel in the front, you still do rear damage, and vice versa if you are standing in front of it but shoot the at the rear)
    • Up x 1
  12. siiix

    that is super cool.. now lets hope they buff the vehicles too other wise we wont have any to shoot
    • Up x 5
  13. TheBloodEagle

    Finally, that's great news!
    • Up x 1
  14. Jezs

    It's all about the angle of impact relative to the tank's direction, not where it hits on the model.
    Lock-ons do the exact same thing. Theoretically if you shoot a lockon at a tank that's moving fast enough, it'll do rear armor damage regardless of where you're firing it from
    • Up x 1
  15. HadesR

    Hmm Looking at it .. I would have made that Striker only .. To give that launcher something new that all other lock-on's don't have
    • Up x 2
  16. Aesir

    Really? I never noticed ...
    • Up x 1
  17. madman278

    This is probably to give the striker the ability to attack ground forces "indirectly", I'm pretty sure anyone in the path of the 70 meters straight flight will get a good face full of striker. Someone at SOE has a bro-crush on the TR and the striker it seems, it already is the highest vehicle killing launcher of all the launchers.. might as well make it more effective killing infantry and max too..
    • Up x 1
  18. Aesir

    Not really... also it works with all the Launchers, even the Annihilator.

    I think it is there to give Lock on uses slightly more control over the missile to maybe avoid terrain. Right now on the live server if the center mass of a Tank stands behind cover the striker is rendered useless, while the Tank probably can still lob shells in your direction.
    • Up x 1
  19. m44v

    OP is right, firing normally at side armor, it took me 5 rockets to put a tank in fire, by using this trick I could put it in fire with two rockets.

    I used the anti-armor lockon.
    • Up x 1
  20. Mekhazzio

    Guided missiles have always been like this, it's not a new mechanic. It just typically takes a vehicle moving pretty quickly, at long range, to get enough of an arc to change the hit location.

    More control over the path of the missile is a good thing. Lock-ons aren't really viable weapons against competent enemies because of how limited they are. I haven't equipped one since the Lancer came out, and probably still won't even with this buff.

    That said, the turn rate letting you do U-shaped hook shots -is- a bit silly. With this change they can finally put all the missiles on lead intercept tracking and throttle down the turn rate, so the missiles can both reliably hit things not maneuvering against them and -also- be more easily dodgeable by those that are.
    • Up x 3