Sometimes shadowers lock onto pools and sometimes they don't, is this a bug?
They are not supposed to. But them sometimes locking on is probably an effect of a unit that can be locked on nearby when the shad. is fired.
Are you talking about freshly deployed or upgraded scavengers?
Shadowers lock on to the centre of the target's bounding box. Since a good portion of the extractor goes underground, the centre of the extractor that the shadower tries to lock on to is often blocked by the edges of the pool. Get closer to it, or get above it, and you'll be able to lock on.
In short, imagine that the extractor is *IN* the pool for the sake of locking shadowers on to it, you have to be at a position in which you can see inside the pool to lock on.
I think it's a major balance concern of 1.3, but it's one of many. It's best not to allow shadowers to lock on to extractors at all, lest the missile scout become too useful.
Normal extractors, and it does this even when there aren't any other ships or buildings nearby.
Quote from: DarkFoxI think it's a major balance concern of 1.3, but it's one of many. It's best not to allow shadowers to lock on to extractors at all, lest the missile scout become too useful.
But how do you explain Shadowers (which lock onto a unit's image signature) not being able to lock onto that bigass image?
Missile scouts kill scavs much faster then chaingun scouts do, but it takes almost forever for them to lock on to extractors, so its not very unbalanced IMO.
Of course, DF is nitpicky about balance, and I agree with him on this one, but shads being able to lock on to extractors doesnt seem to be a major unbalanced thing that can wreck games, maybe moderate or minor, but now i'm being nitpicky.
I just did what DF said about getting to where you can see the pool under the extractor and it locked on just fine, but it didn't take too long ZA about a second and it was locked on. :mrgreen:
I have a custom which lockes on just fine on extractors. As fast as it would do an any ship.
While we're on the subject of Shadowers, how hard would it be to come up with a new sound for when missiles lock-on instead of that godawful beeping noise that they have now?
I'd say it's a major balance problem. The shadower does nearly as much damage/second as the chaingun, but the big problem is it's *huge* range for the early-mid game, and the massive ammo capacity. It worries me somewhat more than most of the other balance issues in 1.3, actually.
Perhaps extractors should be modeled completely differently, so that they're "flat". Then you can get by with not being able to lock on very well.
My solution would be to make them lockable...but have their image signiture relativly low (not for upgraded ones though).
One could say they had special anti-missile-locking hulls to compensate for the missile scout being so good.
I always imagined image missiles mistook them for terrain, since they're stationary and linked to the geometry of the map.