i'm not shore if anyone has given any thought to this posability, but what if there were a target lead indicator for each weapon groop that you have selected? This way it would be more efective if you have weapons with drasticly different velocities.

There are a few problems than come to minde imediatly: namely keeping track of up to 3 lead indicators could be too much for some players, and i'm shore somone will say that this takes skill out of the game, but all and all i think this is worth concidering.

I thought about this also lord.
Still not sure if it would be helpful though.

/givemoney Devs 2c

1 per gun would be more useful than 1 per group. They could give each of the guns a unique cross hair.

Well and good to talk about it Eldrad, but let's see some money where the mouth is. Make us some good crosshairs! I'll probably make a few myself. It's better if they're vector images (but post a pic so we can check 'em out!). If they must be bitmap, put them on a good, contrasting background, and make 'em at least 300x300 so we can get a good look at them!

P.S. I'm not saying they'll be used. 99.9999% chance says they won't. I don't even know what will be used. I'd just like to see what people had in mind.

Yeah, anytime I mention to the other guys how lame it is that only your first weapon has leadoff, their conclusion is that it'd be too confusing with multiple leadoffs. But I'm not sure whether "confusing" is better or worse than "wrong".

Certainly a better-looking leadoff indicator would help. But you need some way to indicate which one's for which weapon without it looking dumb.

And they're not vector format anything, they're 32x32 alpha-blended textures.

Color coordinating weapon groups would be a good thing.

Have the multiple leads as an option for on or off. This way people can choose to use it or not use it.

I find it very awkward using the Gat and having some other weapon since it isnt actually as accurate.

Different style crosshairs might be a bit difficult to discern since the colors are the same and the minor details usually blend out in combat and sometimes it blends out over time.

Also adding a number or some marker to each lead might help a little as well so it corresponds to the weapon/group.

Possible solutions (no matter what make it optional to have just 1 target):

A) Different image and color for each gun, there are lots of variations of cross hairs that are easily distinguishable from each other, Circles, Dots, Crosses, Xes, Boxes, short and wide, or tall and skinny, right angles, carrots, etc. Homing weapons wouldn't need any cross hair at all, similar weapons could have similar designs, (all dumb fire rockets could use a circle of different colors with different markings on the edges). Advantage: Might look good and be fairly easy to distinguish weapons. Disadvantages: Overlapping targets could get very confusing and making the HUD "busy".

B) Have each port on a ship have a wedge shaped target where the tip of the wedge represents where that port should be aimed to hit the target, and the orientation of the wedge would indicate which port it was. So for example a vulture with the same weapon in both ports would have a > for the left port, and a < for the right port, making >< target, if it had two different weapons it would still have a > and <, but they would move independently of each other, so it would be possible for the cross hairs to switch. A valk on the other hand would have a ^ target in addition to the > and <. Again Fire and forget weapons, and empty ports wouldn't need targets. Advantages: Accurately display when different identical guns are not simultaneously on target (ie when the left gun's auto aim kicks in while the right's is still off). Disadvantage: May be difficult to keep track of which gun goes with which target. This could still cause confusion with overlapping targets, but is less likely to.

in truth i don't think that i can honestly say if i like any of these sugestions untill i've tried them (including my own). I keep trying to imagin what it would be like, but i can't decide if it would be better or worse.

I think the best solution would be to have several options that could be chosen from in the options screen, and posably eaven bound to keys for easy switching in combat. I could see diferent configurations being usefull in different situations

yeah, its a shame that right now you have to rely on the strengths of one wep. It would be neat if you had N3's and N2's and could use the 2 aimers to sandwich them. lets you use a number of the "weaker " weps too.

Also since new players wouldn't have to deal with it until a few levels later, they could be brought into it slowly

I want multiple lead indicators too, a simple small 1 on one crosshair and 2 on the other would suffice, etc, etc.

heh, shape, I tried a GC and AGT setup for a while (the original idea we came up with)... sandwiching opponents is VERY difficult.

yeah, :) but that's an example where you have one wep that you have no control over

Another use for the equipment slot?
That way each player can decide if they want "Upgraded targeting computer" or not.

Other than that I really like the wedge idea, but also agree that this would need a bit of testing before finding something that works well.