Why does the ion gun of a GunShip go through objects to hit you?

[PaladinSoul]

Is this a bug or is this intended?

[Zharik]

Is this a bug or is this intended?

 

It is the same as all AOE hits, so my guess is intended.

[QuinMantha]

*cough*

 

If it's a direct hit, it can be attributed to bugs, lag, exploits, or you weren't as far under cover as you think you were.

 

If it wasn't a direct hit, which I suspect it might not have been, it's a Tier 4 upgrade that lets you hit one target and tag three others within a certain radius. I expect that radius cares not for impediments like objects.

 

Not to diminish the responses from my predecessors, of course! Still totally valid answers!

[DroidDreamer]

Because it wipes out your shields, drains your energy, snares your movement so, duh, it should also be AOE. Which is how it hits you. Under the node. Out of LOS.

 

Just plain dumb. And I hope soon to be fixed. The devs have a great track record of adjustments so far. Here is one with a lot of easy fixes.

[MallocV]

Because while you and your bud are sitting on a sat with your bombers I can hit one of your 8 potential drones/mines and clear them out and assist my team and taking you two out. Edited March 8, 2014 by MallocV

[MallocV]

I also use the plasma rail so after I hit you with Ion I can get one full Plasma hit on you while you run out of LoS and watch you bleed to boom

[Cuomo]

The AOE ignores line of sight. It also let's bombers hit you from even further than 15000 away, they hit an object within range then the AOE functionally extends their range to you.

 

Pretty obviously a bug and I think everyone who isn't in love with their FotM gunship knows they are OP and need to be fixed, but SWtOR is very slow with these sorts of adjustments.

[Deimos_Olympian]

A Ion AOE should isn't a bug the AOE effect is a energy wave of course it ignores asteroids or satellites and i really should keep working as it does now so people have a slight change destroying and taking a point from a satellite defended by bombers. And no i am not a gunship pilot, i fly a bomber

[Verain]

The AOE ignores line of sight. It also let's bombers hit you from even further than 15000 away, they hit an object within range then the AOE functionally extends their range to you.

 

While the aoe does ignore LOS, it does not extend the range. I have accidentally ionned defsats at 14800 and not hit anything else despite their being a bomber and his hoes all up in that sat.

 

Pretty obviously a bug

 

Trivially disagree. Here's the list of AoE effects in the game that respect line of sight:

 

Trigger effect on mines

 

Here's a list of AoE effects in the game that IGNORE line of sight:

 

Explosion effect on mines

Explosion effect on EMP Pulse

Explosion effect on EMP Missile

Explosion effect on Ion Railgun AOE

 

 

So, they have two kinds of code for this, and they very deliberately went with the second. Every explosion effect in the game uses the second type of thing.

 

Lemme sum up this thread:

Every AOE in this game that does damage ignores line of sight. Ion railgun is in no way novel or interesting in this regard.

[Armonddd]

So, they have two kinds of code for this, and they very deliberately went with the second.

 

You've never actually coded a large project, have you?

[Verain]

You've never actually coded a large project, have you?

 

Lol. Personal attacks on my professional career, stylish.

 

 

More importantly- it's clear that they chose for explosions to ignore LOS. They could change their mind, but that's very clearly deliberate.

[Cuomo]

While the aoe does ignore LOS, it does not extend the range. I have accidentally ionned defsats at 14800 and not hit anything else despite their being a bomber and his hoes all up in that sat.

 

Tested this multiple times. I'm guessing you miscalculated the distance between the bomber and the satellite you hit, but whatever it was, you are incorrect. AOE from Ion ignores max range of Gunships.

 

And pointing out other effects which ignore LOS doesn't make it working as intended. They may not have taken the time to properly code their game, but that isn't an argument for whether or not it is a bug.

Edited March 8, 2014 by Cuomo

[Armonddd]

More importantly- it's clear that they chose for explosions to ignore LOS. They could change their mind, but that's very clearly deliberate.

 

No, it's clear that the function call to deal explosion damage ignores LoS. That's likely a completely different function than the one used to determine when mines trigger, and likely coded by completely different people who may or may not have been communicating. Further, given the crappiness of the game engine, there could very well be a number of obstacles between making AoE respect LoS, but none between making the mine triggers respect LoS. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say they likely scavenged code from the ground game for those two -- AoE damage for AoE damage, and spell casting checks for mine triggers.

 

There's nothing to imply a deliberate choice of code. There's nothing to imply they took their time coding everything. There's also nothing to imply the opposite of either. We can guess, but we simply can't know for sure without a dev's response, and communication isn't their forte.

[DroidDreamer]

I don't mind the AOE aspect. It's the AOE aspect plus all the other aspects of this derpy, derpy gun that bug me. Other weapons present a choice between the various functions of the ion railgun. The ion railgun has it all.

 

Needs to be fixed.

Edited March 8, 2014 by DroidDreamer

[Verain]

Needs to be fixed.

 

Sorry, I thought this thread was about mechanics, not just more gunship nerfherding. Waste of time.

[Armonddd]

Sorry, I thought this thread was about mechanics, not just more gunship nerfherding. Waste of time.

 

The moment you give me a sensible explanation for AoE -- of any kind -- ignoring LoS, I'll shut my trap about it. It's not just gunships, it's stupid in every form.

 

But by all means, play the martyr if you'd rather do that than contribute further to the discussion.

[Davionix]

The moment you give me a sensible explanation for AoE -- of any kind -- ignoring LoS, I'll shut my trap about it. It's not just gunships, it's stupid in every form.

 

But by all means, play the martyr if you'd rather do that than contribute further to the discussion.

 

Aoe ion railgun is counter to groups of strikes & scouts boosting to 1 target, ganking them in really short time with missiles, probes, lasers etc and then boosting to another target and doing the same. This is not even considering the probable effects of command strikes & scouts in swarming.

 

At the moment only effective ways to break up a swarm are mines or ion aoe. Remember, if you are close enough to friendly targets & objects to buff them with running interference, wingman, type 3 scout/strike buffs then you are at risk of getting hit by aoe portion of ion.

 

It is true that it can be annoying getting mine damage or ion splash damage when someone close to you is not flying casual like Han Solo but I guess we cant do anything about that but hope they get better at flying

 

TL;DR : Quid pro quo:D

Edited March 8, 2014 by Davionix

[Verain]

The moment you give me a sensible explanation for AoE -- of any kind -- ignoring LoS, I'll shut my trap about it. It's not just gunships, it's stupid in every form.

 

It's an explosion

 

Quite honestly, I wouldn't mind if it was reduced or eliminated. But it isn't about ion railgun at all. The big nice thing about it is that it shoos people away from sats. That's also a giant perk of bombers. If you get rid of that, you need something else to shove those ever present type II scouts away from the objective, and for that matter to interact with a furball meaningfully anyway.

 

That doesn't have to be ion railgun, seismic, and interdiction mine- but it needs to be something.

 

But by all means, play the martyr if you'd rather do that than contribute further to the discussion.

 

This thread isn't about the topic any more, it's the same crew of gunship nerfherders come to roost, destroying anything novel. I've been in that thread before. That's a lot of thread.

[Armonddd]

TL;DR : Quid pro quo:D

 

I meant a logistics reason. You know, why a railgun hits aoe but protorps don't.

 

It's an explosion

 

Quite honestly, I wouldn't mind if it was reduced or eliminated. But it isn't about ion railgun at all. The big nice thing about it is that it shoos people away from sats. That's also a giant perk of bombers. If you get rid of that, you need something else to shove those ever present type II scouts away from the objective, and for that matter to interact with a furball meaningfully anyway.

 

That doesn't have to be ion railgun, seismic, and interdiction mine- but it needs to be something.

 

What if it were protorps and ion missiles? EMP missiles could obviously use a buff to explosion radius and/or lock on time, too. And I could see a detonator charge kind of thing -- short lock on time, short cooldown, small explosion radius, low damage, lots of ammo.

 

but why do railguns explode

[DIVAvonFarstar]

but why do railguns explode

 

Because it is StarWars, where we do have Sound in Space [except those who still do use Win XP], here everything is possible

[Davionix]

I would guess railgun uses magnetic fields to contain & compress ionized gases and then projects them upto the effective range of 15,000 after which ionized gas-ball dissipates harmleslly. When the ionized gas-ball reaches its target any nearby object with electronic components (anything but environment like astreoids) attract this gas-ball so ionizing effect splashes to nearby targets as well.

 

In my usage I found the explosion radius of emp to be quite good. Explosion radius seems approximately big enough to cover almost all of the "capture range" of a satellite by hitting any of the defensive turrets around the satellite.

 

I think making ions missiles have an aoe radius similar to emp missiles would be interesting as well but with the upcoming nerfs to missile break options that idea is open to debate. In the case of protons having aoe damage I believe it should not happen due to the 100% armor and shield penetration protons have.

[Armonddd]

I would guess railgun uses magnetic fields to contain & compress ionized gases and then projects them upto the effective range of 15,000 after which ionized gas-ball dissipates harmleslly. When the ionized gas-ball reaches its target any nearby object with electronic components (anything but environment like astreoids) attract this gas-ball so ionizing effect splashes to nearby targets as well.

 

That's ridiculous, even ignoring the fact that we've defined how ion cannons work and it's nothing like that.

[Zoom_VI]

That's ridiculous, even ignoring the fact that we've defined how ion cannons work and it's nothing like that.

 

Yeah well we have also define how the railguns in GSF don't follow any of the laws of physics for such a weapon.

[Kuciwalker]

Yeah well we have also define how the railguns in GSF don't follow any of the laws of physics for such a weapon.

 

It's Star Wars. Nothing in Star Wars remotely follows any of the laws of physics.

 

That asteroid field? Doesn't exist, can't exist. Totally impossible.

[Highborne]

Is this a bug or is this intended?

 

As a veteran gunship pilot, I'm going to clear a misconception here up:

 

Ion cannons do not directly hit you through an intervening object.

 

When a gunship is ion-sniping you "through an object", you can bet that what's really happening is this: the gunship pilot can't draw a bead on you, so s/he instead targets something near you that they can see, and what hits you is the arcing effect in the GS' fourth-tier ion cannon upgrade, dealing half damage and draining 18 engine/weapon power. How do you avoid it? Mostly by not circling satellites - that ion cannon upgrade is mostly designed to deal with people who like hiding in corners of satellites and never coming out. ID the gunship that shot you (default key; "R" for "retaliation" to target the enemy that last shot your ship) and run out at an angle toward them, not in a straight line.

 

Hopefully that helps.