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[huggs]

Ship and Loadout
Gryphon with Weapon Groups
1. Squall (Autofire)
2. Hypervelocity Driver
3. 2x Dragonfire DEM Torps (Autofire) - Facing left

Repro
1. Start simulation
2. Click 2 to select Hypervelocity Driver
3. Fly into targeting range and click R
4. Fly into range of Hypervelocity Driver

Expected: Dragonfire DEM Torps should have autofired long before getting into range of HVD.
Actual: What is autofire, baby don't hurt me, no more.

Now, turn ship 90 degrees clockwise, so that the "fire arc" of the DEMs point towards the enemy ship and suddenly autofire starts working. Very strange given that firing manually when Dragonfires face 90 degreees to the left works perfectly. They will still head straight forward towards the targeted ship.

[Alex]

Thank you for the report! Not a bug, Dragonfire has the "GUIDED_POOR" flag which means it wants to try to face the target to some degree before it'll fire. Whether this is warranted or not is probably up for discussion; generally missiles like this *could* hit a target when fired off-center but their effective range is not as great.

Edit: I should say, I really appreciate the detailed report! Makes it easy to know exactly what we're talking about.

(Also, worth noting, that the AI will still fire it when controlling the ship; this only affects autofire - which is usually not a concern for missiles, since you'd want to control that yourself the vast majority of the time.)

[huggs]

Should it really have that flag though? If I fire it manually, when launcher is facing straight left of target, the torp will head straight towards the target as soon as it leaves the launcher. The change in direction happens before there is even any space between the launcher and the torp, so it cannot happen quicker than that.

I would understand if it was an unguided torpedo, or if it was a missile/torpedo with very poor turn rate.

[Alex]

The change in direction happens before there is even any space between the launcher and the torp, so it cannot happen quicker than that.

Its flight-time is ticking down during that time, though! Missiles are not limited by range, strictly speaking, but by how long their engine will last until burning out, so the initial turn takes away from its eventual range.

My bigger point is that it doesn't *really* matter, though, because putting missiles like this on autofire is... pretty questionable, let's say. But, this isn't the right subforum for a discussion; I should perhaps move this thread so Suggestions. Yeah, let me do that.

[Wyvern]

Given that this is now in suggestions, I'll add my thoughts:

I do sometimes use 'toggle autofire' as a means of telling a missile group 'fire one salvo now' (for missiles with slow-ish fire rates).

And for the dragonfire in particular, I find that it works better with sideways or otherwise-not-up-front mounts. Tried out an Aurora with 2x dragonfire for a while, and my experience was that the missile fired from the front launcher would frequently just vanish due to ongoing weapons fire from whatever I was attacking, while the rear mount's missile would stay safely behind my shield bubble and actually last long enough to connect.

That said, I don't actually have any strong opinions here one way or the other; as Alex has pointed out, manual fire does still work just fine.

[huggs]

I also use autofire toggle to control launchers.

Let's say I have groups
1. 2x Squall
2. 2x Dragonfire DEM
[...] other stuff on Autofire

I have group 1 selected, and fire it manually and I keep track of its reload timer to decide if I should F to speed up reload, while I watch enemy Flux. Then when I want to fire DEMs to either overload the enemy, or to do massive damage to armor/hull, I Ctrl-2 to toggle autofire.

If the enemy survives the DEMs, I want to autofire another round and leaves it on. If the enemy dies, I toggle autofire off.

Its flight-time is ticking down during that time, though! Missiles are not limited by range, strictly speaking, but by how long their engine will last until burning out, so the initial turn takes away from its eventual range.

This is something you learn while playing. Just the same way that you might fire missiles towards a chasing enemy even if they show as being just outside missile range, and why you will not fire missiles on a fleeing enemy that is shown to be just inside missiles range.
So if I can adjust for this, autofire could too. That would also inline with how a group of turrets on autofire behave when only some can hit the enemy: Those that can hit will autofire, those that cannot hit will not fire.

If the DEM became absolutely useless when fired at a right angle, then sure, I'd call it a feature. As long as DEMs work perfectly when fired manually this way, I want autofire to do the same thing.

My reasoning for autofire working for DEMs is as follows
1. There is an autofire option.
2. I am allowed to activate it.
-> I should be able to use it / It should work

My bigger point is that it doesn't *really* matter, though, because putting missiles like this on autofire is... pretty questionable, let's say.

I personally do not like: "Yeah, there is an option to do [A] but you shouldn't." I'd rather decide that myself. Additionally, why is side-autofire DEM any more questionable than front-autofire DEM? If the argument is that it's so stupid that it shouldn't be done at all, then it would seem more productive to prohibit DEM autofire completely.

Take a Pegasus. Forward-fit 1 DEM and 1 Squall, and Backwards-fit 1 DEM and 1 Squall. Put them all in the same weapon group with autofire. 2 Squalls will fire and 1 DEM will fire, which seems like pretty strange behaviour to me.

[Alex]

I personally do not like: "Yeah, there is an option to do [A] but you shouldn't." I'd rather decide that myself. Additionally, why is side-autofire DEM any more questionable than front-autofire DEM? If the argument is that it's so stupid that it shouldn't be done at all, then it would seem more productive to prohibit DEM autofire completely.

Take a Pegasus. Forward-fit 1 DEM and 1 Squall, and Backwards-fit 1 DEM and 1 Squall. Put them all in the same weapon group with autofire. 2 Squalls will fire and 1 DEM will fire, which seems like pretty strange behaviour to me.

I think that's fair. Just to clarify, what I said is more of an explanation for why I'm not too bothered by how it works than some explicit design intent.

Missile autofire has always been in a weird place; for most missiles (i.e. the ammo-limited ones) it's straight up a bad idea except for the kind of jank (i.e. not-intended-for-this) case of using the autofire toggle to fire them off without switching groups. And so it has some oddities in its behavior. I don't think that's a reason to make missiles not autofire at all, though, that's likely to do more harm then good, and it's just a natural interaction of some game mechanics.

I'm not in theory opposed to tweaking the Dragonfire to fire in this situation. It's more a question of weighing how much of a priority this is vs the time I'd need to take to figure out the impact of any changes on other missiles with similar flags (which might not have the same exact considerations), whether a new flag or a change of flags is appropriate, etc. It's not a huge effort or anything, but it's enough of a context-switch from whatever I'm working on at any given time, vs (in my estimation) a minor benefit at best, that I don't see doing this unless I'm already in that part of the code working on something related. I will keep it in mind for that eventuality, though!

(And there's always the possibility that something will come along that'll render this case moot, such as e.g. a dedicated "fire this group without switching" button or something along those lines.)

[huggs]

I'm not in theory opposed to tweaking the Dragonfire to fire in this situation. It's more a question of weighing [...] I will keep it in mind for that eventuality, though!

I fully understand. Thank you for listening!

(And there's always the possibility that something will come along that'll render this case moot, such as e.g. a dedicated "fire this group without switching" button or something along those lines.)

I really like this idea. Something like Alt-<number key> to fire a group would be awesome!