For the record, this could also take the form of a plug-in, but it would probably be best to have this game-wide.

Here's the idea: say you are targeting a player, and then they run behind a roid. The player will disappear from radar and you will lose your radar lock on them. It would be great if when the player emerged from the roid, your ship could automatically reacquire them as a target without any input from the pilot. The heuristics here aren't hard to get right: only reacquire if the pilot hasn't targeted anything else in the meantime.

This kind of fix would make group combat in roid-filled sectors much more enjoyable, and is most likely a pretty easy fix.

Yes, this should happen.

yup

I'm going to have to disagree on this one. I think for gameplay, the advantage of being able to cause your opponent to lose their targeting is better. Most folk have targeting on an easily accessed key anyway, so your talking about a fraction of a second loss once the target re-emerges.

As usual, Fluff, you don't know what you're talking about. A targeting computer that can't re-target something after it emerges from occlusion is not 'gameplay enhancing', it's just bloody annoying.

This should not happen

May aswell bail on occlusion if this is going to happen

CrazySpence... why?? Like seriously... why?
Hiding behind a roid still works. You can still change directions behind the roid. You can still use the roid to your advantage. Plus, this fix requires that you were locked onto to begin with! Now, instead of having the player see you on radar after you are outside the occlusion bounds and having to select you, the selection automatically happens. How does that kill occlusion?

Well, since I don't actually participate in the combat activities such as NW anymore, and I'm more likely to be heading towards open space than a roid belt if being pursued, you guys go for what you want. I'll stick with my opinion however that using an asteroid or other object to break the target lock of a pursuer becomes less advantageous and like CrazySpence alluded, not worth bothering with as a tactic if targeting is immediately and automatically restored.

In my opinion, auto-reacquire should happen if within a short period of time. Like two seconds of losing the target, after that you have to do it manually. Honestly, I thought we implemented something like that already.. maybe that wasn't released yet.

This functionality is coming to targetless... In fact, it's already present if you pull from svn. I just have to get around to fixing a few more bugs and posting a release.... Maybe tonight :d

2 seconds sounds reasonable.

In my opinion, auto-reacquire should happen if within a short period of time. Like two seconds of losing the target, after that you have to do it manually.

Yeah, this isn't in-game currently. I too was under the impression it was supposed to be (I get the feeling Atice did as well), hence the thread. I think part of the problem is that no one is quite sure which parts of the occlusion behavior are intended and which parts are bugs, heh. To that end, have you at some point actually spelled out exactly how the occlusion is supposed to work (I can't find anything along those lines but I could always have missed something)? If not, could you, pretty please?

Well, I really need to just talk to Ray about it. We shot from the hip, I gave him a bunch of stuff to do, and then I was around very little. By the time I was back, we had mission-critical crashes and high priority stuff to fix. We just need to get on the same page again. So.. I'll look into it.

1 Second, at most.

Given the size of some of the huge asteroids, I was thinking that re-aquisition could occur up to five seconds after loss of target, assuming that that the pilot had not targeted anything else in the meantime. Of course, I'm willing to settle, though I will say that limited to one second would render the feature useless in the majority of circumstances.

Thanks for looking into it Inc. Occlusion is a huge stride towards achieving pure awesomeness :).

Given the size of some of the huge asteroids

Uh, if I fly behind a really big 'roid and you lose me, that's your goddamn problem. That's sorta the whole point of occlusion.

5 seconds is definitely too long. I'd rather have 2 seconds than nothing at all, but I think 1 second is preferable. That's long enough to get rid of the 'oops, my target slid too far around the roid for a split second and now I have to hit b and hope it gets him and not the asteroid' thing, while preserving the usefulness of occlusion as a method of hiding.

/me agrees with Lecter

I, also, am in agreement with The Lectorzoid.

Agreed...if I move out of your vision and radar field...tough noogies.

1 or 2 seconds would be ok....