I noticed each weapon has a targeting/autoaim classification (i.e. Little, OKAY, Good, Very Good, Excellent). What does this mean? I thought we were doing the aiming on most of the weapons with exception to the Gatling Turrets... and also explain why some people switch autoaim off and on. (probably the same answer)

p.s. this is important to me because I'm an old dog and can't learn new tricks!

thanks

Each weapon has an autoaim "threshold". This is basically a little circle around your crosshair, in which the leadoff of your target will turn red. When it turns red, the client (or your "ship's computer") will attempt to aim to the best of its ability, based on your relative motion with respect to the target. The threshold-circle can be of various sizes, depending on the weapon, meaning you must get the leadoff closer (or less close) to the crosshairs before autoaim kicks in.

People disable autoaim entirely because it doesn't excel in all situations. For instance, with rockets (sunflares and the like) an experienced pilot can be far more accurate than the auto-aim system, taking into account the proximity radius of the weapon, psychological reaction of the target, and other factors out of the scope of the autoaim system. Autoaim is also highly predictable, which can be a disadvantage in combat.

Ultimately, you are still doing the aiming most of the time, autoaim helps to some extent, it certainly makes the game more accessible to newbies, but at the higher end of combat it isn't as huge of a deal as it might seem (at least, in my opinion). Especially since we have no instant-kill high speed weapons. You can look at the variations in the autoaim thresholds as one more tweak to differentiate weapons.

Autoaim is broken, turn it off now and save yourself!

(honestly it is btw, get a rail gun, and try hit a stationary target at 1000m with it on *not possible*, turn it off and *beep*)

yoda: it still might not be possible even without autoaim because of the way VO quantizes angles. :/

I've noticed the same thing, quantizing or not. There's only a few targets that are smaller than a quantum of angle at 1000m anyways.

It's better at closer range...if you like that sort of thing.

Yeah, I've noticed that if you fire rails or missiles and you don't have a target, umm, targeted, they tend to stray away from the cross hairs. Might be that quatizing thing, whatever that is. I figured they would at least "aim" at an infinite point somewhere done the line of the cross hair. Not, down and to the left, which isn't consistent enough to even adjust for.

Yoda seems to contradict what Incarnate said.

Is it possible that autoaim affects the trajectory of weapons or is that a myth?

Sunflares have autoaim?

Edit: It's pretty easy to dodge energy weapons if you know your target completely relies on autoaim though.

Flares are not affected by autoaim, kinda makes me want to cry seeing a dev say such silly stuffs!

[edit]

oh yah, and go try what I said about rails, then bring up quantized angles and stuff. 1000m is possible without autoaim, impossible with.

Flares are not affected by auto-aim, but you can use auto-aim to aim your flares. Thus, "an experienced pilot can be far more accurate than the auto-aim system".

Mynt, you just contradicted yourself in one and the same sentence.

Yeah autoaim can be predictable when fighting. I've found that even against the less extreme autoaimed weapons like neutrons. I know that almost everyone that will fight me with energy will use autoaim. So by judging the orientation of their ship and the angle they come at me, I know where to slip outside the autoaim's "circle". Also Know how to jump in and out of it and throw the enemy's fire all over the place. I generally like it off, since autoaim seems to over correct a lot and leaves my chances to attack very limited. With it off I can attack *anytime* I want, so I can just keep nicking "health" off my enemy when they're trying to dodge and turn autoaim on (sometimes) when they come in close for attack and nail a string of posis on them. Or if they seem to strafe in smooth straight angles I leave it on and just unload posi strings on them. But I'm speaking of small port energy weapons (excluding gauss). Gatling turrets and gauss work better with autoaim on since their targeting is much better than neutrons or positrons, I've only played with gauss without autoaim a few times and it seems okayish but not really practical. Gatling turret with autoaim off (unless you barrel roll to stabilize your aim or something) pretty much sucks, tried it a few times with a hog was just a mess. But ultimately according to my weapon/ship/flying choices I prefer to leave it off or toggle it when the situation grants that autoaim will allow me to hit more for that brief moment of opportunity.

All mynt is trying to say is that matching your crosshairs to the target leadoff is not as effective with sunflares as it is with other weapons. It's true, rockets aren't affected by autoaim anymore. They used to be. In alpha I used to deselect targets in order to fire rockets more effectively. Anyway, we fixed that a long time ago, but rockets remain one of the more obvious examples where a pilot can be far better than any idealized autoaim computation, and where it's better to go with your gut than to use the leadoff. The differences are more subtle with energy weapons, but I guess rockets were just a more confusing example.

I have no idea why autoaim doesn't work properly with railguns beyond a certain distance (although I think Andy did look into it at one point). I would guess it has something to do with quantization, although not necessarily the quantization of your ship angle. We quantize to reduce the amount of data we have to send over the network. It makes things a bit less accurate, but it reduces overhead as well. 99 times out of 100, you never notice.

Oh, I got it. I completely forget that there was a reticle there when I'm using rockets. :x

That's probably at least in part because the reticle only appears for the primary weapon. Which is, of course, annoying if you have a rail as your primary and an AGT as your secondary. Hey Inc, I don't suppose there's any chance of displaying multiple auto aim reticules (one for each weapon), is there?

My favored loadout consisting of Gatling Turret and Rail Guns on a Prom, I made a bind that acts as a fix. Basically, it swaps between 2 weapon groups fast so that you can see both reticles with accuracy. I use primary fire only for it's targeting function, replacing it with tertiary fire.

Here's what you have to do:

- Set your key binds so that what's normally used for primary fire is actually tertiary fire.

- Configure your weapon groups so that the primary fire for weapon1 is the same as your tertiary fire

- and that in weapon2 your primary fire is the same as your secondary fire.

Then give the bind a go.

Edit: For those concerned with advanced targeting techniques, this might also be useful. Directly below on that link is my bind for spray fire. What it does is make approximately half your shots use autoaim, and the other half not. Also, is a function that temporarily swaps your autoaim off/on as you hold it down.

No, I completely forget about the retical when using rockets too, and I never leave home without a laser, I energy spam constantly, I am an energy spammer. I only try to hit people with the energy guns when they can dodge like eldrad, or shape, oh no, wait, shape eats rockets too ;)

Rogue, rockets are my primary and only weapon :x

Edit: Always.

Edit2: Unless I'm botting, then I go with Guass.