Tracking rounds do not exhibit smooth movements

[TheLoneWolf]

I have been noticing this for quite a while. Why do tracking rounds, such as a smartcannon round, waver and vibrate like hell before hitting the enemy, rather than flying in smooth curves?

[DigaRW]

I don't know, maybe smart cannon isn't smart enough. Possibly because it's isn't like straight or omnidirectional weapon. They using tracking missile style, but because it's smaller than regular missile. They more unstable when tracking enemies, they sometime miss or building circle when target hard to hit. But it's shouldn't be problem as long they hitting enemies.

[Ultimate Chicken]

Programmer's logic: because pathfinding is not done every frame. ;3

[AssumedPseudonym]

 A lot of the issue stems from the fact that an overwhelming number of tracking projectiles only have 20 facings, rather than the 120 facings that a lot of the more recent ships have been (re)designed with.

[TheLoneWolf]

 A lot of the issue stems from the fact that an overwhelming number of tracking projectiles only have 20 facings, rather than the 120 facings that a lot of the more recent ships have been (re)designed with.

They are lagging behind the game. That makes them feel weird. I say that must be fixed. I wonder why TSoP HD didn't fix those. There are only a bunch of trackers in all.

[Atarlost]

Um, real missiles do that. The cheapest guidance package is four position. You subdivide your detector into a two by two grid and have two positions on your fins in air or on each axis of your engine gimbal for space use. The missile doesn't take a straight line, but it gets to the target.

And, in a world with laser AMS, not taking a straight line is a benefit so even expensive missiles would be deliberately designed to oscillate. The unrealistic thing is that tracking missiles ever fly straight.

[Song]

Atarlost is correct....I once found an actual book on guided missile design in my local public library when I was in intermediate school and spent a day or so looking at it (No, really. It vanished at some point sadly. That library was fun before they got rid of all the books like that). While a smooth path is more likely with a good sensor.....a bit of wiggling is entirely ok. With some methods of acheiving controllability [without fins, obviously] (eg: offset center of mass relative to thrust vector, then using roll to control the direction it turns in [granted, 'controllable' might not be the best term for that system]) it would require a curved, wiggling or corkscrewing path.

However, missiles have different physics to ships ingame, and while I don't know exactly how they work, here's what I do know:

-Missile movement isn't Newtonian, for the most part. So they don't need an acceleration in order to turn (this would be very difficult to change and is a nice, simple, computationally cheap way to do it, so it makes sense)

-That being said, gravity does affect missiles. Mostly. It's complicated at times. I have not tested how tracking missiles react to gravity wells because of problems I'm having with G.O.D

-Missiles are restricted by facings. So greater smoothness is possible with more facings....however this also makes weapons significantly more accurate if they fire a high-speed tracker. Take a look at the Gotha 400 for an example...it's the only tracking missile in vanilla (except possibly the Qsphere) that can actually miss. Which I actually consider to be a feature, not a bug.


Personally, I wouldn't say no to more facings in the long term, but I wouldn't want things getting too smooth...I like the wiggle, and I like being able to make things miss.

[catfighter]

Yeah, the Q-shere misses all right. But only things moving as fast as a hornet/auton that are traveling in the opposite direction and suddenly change direction.

[DigaRW]

Another difference is smart cannon doesn't have thruster, but missile have it. You can see smoke when you launching missile, it's indicating that missile use thruster to hit target. Smart cannon doesn't have thruster because smart cannon is Kinetic, they launching projectile and they magically tracking target. Maybe they actually move to target because their bullet "pushed" to the space, not like missiles because they launch with thruster in the back of missile. So smart cannon vibrate and unstable when projectile moving because what was "control" them actually not expert to make them tracking . Maybe that's why they have low facing. Missile tracking? It's common. But Kinetic tracking? Only Rassiermesser who have it, Smart Cannon.

[JohnBWatson]

Smartcannon shots indeed have trails. It's possible that they aren't visible with lower quality settings.

[sun1404]

Doesn't the Smart Cannon also make use of thrusters to change the projectile's trajectory? I've always thought so, and thought it a pretty silly system for a kinetic weapon.

[Ultimate Chicken]

Smartcannon has trails. These trails are disabled if you try to run Transcendence on a lower spec PC (like the solar shadows).

My other PC is one of those ION2 powered Atom machines...