How can I stop losing my missile lock 8 times out of 10?

[gsummers]

This is beyond frustrating. I get missile locks on ships, release the mouse button to fire the missile, and nothing happens. This happens even when the enemy ship is sitting perfectly still, at an unchanged range for the entire lock. Many times, it also happens that I am getting a missile lock, the enemy ship remains within range and within the missile lock circle, and the lock just suddenly stops.

 

On the other hand, it seems like enemy players are able to get near instantaneous missile locks on me, even in close quarter combat where we are circling around and around. What gives? How can I also get near instantaneous missile locks on my opponents that don't suddenly vanish into the ether, like the game's code is subpar at best?

[Toraak]

well sounds like the enemy ships are using either Line of Sight to break the locks, or using Missile breaks. As for other players getting off faster missiles, some missiles (clusters missile for one) have really short Lock on timers.

[Drakkolich]

First and easiest thing to check is if it's a mouse issue, I've had tons of players message me asking how I manage to lock on while streaming so seamlessly only to realize their own mouse had been sabotaging them over and over.

Easiest way to check this is just to go into the tutorial and repeatedly lock missiles onto the stationary targets, if you're still losing locks in there it's either player error (you're not holding the mouse button long enough) or your mouse is "letting go" even while you're holding down the button.

 

If you're mouse checks out next step is really trying to tell just where you're losing the most locks. There are plenty of abilities in the game that break locks even after the missile has been fired, there are others that can make the player (and his nearby allies) immune to being locked on for a few seconds.

 

A good strategy might be to stop using lasers all together for a few matches just completely focus on landing missiles. After you fire the missile at your target keep a close eye on your targets buff tray, if you see a buff appear and your missile does no damage they used an ability to break that missile. You can even familiarize yourself with which icons represent all the missile breaks. If you think this is what's happening I'd be happy to give you a comprehensive list of all the abilities that can be used to break missile locks.

 

 

If after all that you're still losing many missile locks it might be a latency issue on your end, missile locks are odd because you have to keep the enemy ship in your firing arc for the duration, however what you see on your screen and where the enemy actually is aren't exactly the same so even if to you it looks like you kept him in the arc the whole duration if he got close the edge he might actually have gotten out even though on your end it looks like he doesn't.

 

 

Finally if all of these don't work and you have the ability to record video you could show us a little of your flying and some attempts at locking missiles we might be able to help.

[lobstah_rofls]

Are you using thermite torps? I would guess so since they and sabotage probe are the only choices with lock on for the t1 scout. I'm new this week and it kept happening to me too.

 

So I read up on it. Turns out it is probably a bug that hasn't been fixed since 2014. And apparently there are lots of bugged abilities that haven't been fixed going back to 3.0.

 

Anyways, all the other lock-ons are supposed to work fine, and I've tried Strikes and they're fine for me. But it's bad news for the T1 Scout of course. It's going to be a while before I can point blank people with rocket pods; feels like a pretty steep learning curve so far.

[TheMendac]

The answer is simple :] distortion field breaks missile locks when fully upgraded, even after the missile is fired.. you are using strike fighter so you haven't had much experience yet with distortion field yet, but they use that ability while you're locking on and it interrupts it, if you reclick again it will start locking again, and it definitely not a big :] a lot of times the missile will still hit the person who p but just do no damage or anything cuz it was already pwned by distortion fields missile break

[TheMendac]

check their debuff tray when it happens:) I am sure you will see a little icon there that looks like the little light blue icon for distortion field;)

[Krixarcs]

simple answer dont use missile they suck, use rocket pod

[lobstah_rofls]

The answer is simple :] distortion field breaks missile locks when fully upgraded, even after the missile is fired.. you are using strike fighter so...

 

I was using thermite torps in the NovaDive and it seemed to happen way too often for that to be it every time. I get plenty of lock-ons in the t1 strike no problem where they don't use the missile lock break before I even fire. For the thermite torps, I don't think I ever managed to fire one. I should at least be able to fire them some of the time because a lot of players will wait to make sure they don't waste their lock break. The loss of lock happened precisely on the mouse button release every time, which would have to have been an incredible coincidence. And as I said, there are old threads about this and Bioware never fixed it.

 

So given all that, it seems to definitely be a bug. I can try again and try to keep an eye out, I guess. Although that would require me playing scouts again which seems kind of pointless other than capturing nodes at the start.

 

Clearly, the GS in GSF is for Gun Ship. It's always 6+ gun ships in a TDM so I'd recommend other new players switch to them asap. If vets won't even play Scouts/Strikes, why should new players try? The answer to everything is Gun Ships. Yeah they still have their own learning curve, but it's not hopeless, and you can get a few kills and contribute a little right from the start.

 

Maybe I'll try Strikes and Scouts again if I'm still playing in a month or two after I have powered them up with dailies/weeklies. But then again if they aren't specific about starting to work on GSF again in the next dev stream then I'm done anyway. I mean it's crazy to play a game they won't even do balancing and bug squashing for.

[Ramalina]

Thermite torpedoes are pretty reliable if you meet some specific conditions:

 

Use an internet connection with low average latency and small latency spikes;

Have lots of practice locking torpedoes in GSF;

Shoot at targets that don't know how to defend against missiles and torpedoes.

 

 

 

 

Their main problem is that they have the lock and reload stats of torpedoes.

 

I've used them a bunch of times lately, and they're working normally as far as I can tell. It's just that normal for torpedoes in GSF is not that great.

[lobstah_rofls]

As that ignores quite a bit of what I wrote (and my connection is very good) I think it's more likely that the veteran players here are aware that Bioware isn't going to fix any bugs and want people to keep playing a game they like anyway.

 

Searching the forums for 'thermite' you can see that it is a topic that keeps coming up and has never been addressed let alone fixed. Here are some of the times it comes up:

 

Dec 2013:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=704081

 

Feb 2014:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=724323

 

Oct 2014:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=768844

 

Sep 2015: 3rd post

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=835010

http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=8438230&postcount=3

 

It's funny because every time, plenty of people show up to say 'they are using lock breaks' and 'it's lag' over and over again while they ignore everything else the people experiencing this bring up that makes it pretty clear that it is in fact a bug.

 

But like I said, it also doesn't take long to figure out that this is Gun Ship Fighter, so it doesn't really matter; if you're new just play gunships like most everyone else till you're doing well with them.

[Greezt]

Not sure where you got your connection. Yes, thermites are buggy. Why do you assume that's what OP is using? Or the T1 scout for that matter? He never said anything about it in his post.

 

As for gunships -check the records thread. You'll find that there are a bunch of other viable ships, and some do better than gunships in certain situations.

[Blizzax]

In my experience Thermites work as expected.

I use them frequently at the beginning of DOM matches with some of my T3 scouts on bombers.

I didn't see "mysterious" lock losses so far, but bombers are pretty easy to keep centered.

 

Usually I don't try to lock on Thermites on scouts or gunships - maybe sometimes to annoy them. But landing them on ships with two missile breaks is almost impossible - as it is with any missile except Cluster Missiles.

 

On the servers I fly most of the time I have ping times of 30-40ms. And as I've said keeping bombers centered isn't that difficult if you choose the right angle to target them.

Maybe there is an issue at the edges of the firing arc, but my guess is that it's a lag or fps related issue.

Could also be that the targets you try to lock on are lagging if both your connection and client are in best shape.

[Blizzax]

 

This video shows successful and unsuccessful lock-on attempts.

On failed attempts the reason for the lock-on failure is highlighted.

The material is from a single match this afternoon.

 

Remember: No matter that you can land hits with this weapon, it is not a great one.

They may have a benefits when dealing with bombers, but that job can still be done much better by gunships.

 

You may not have good alternatives for the secondary weapon on a T3 scout (Spearpoint/Bloodmark), but this scout type is inferior to the other two types. On the T1 scout (Novadive/Blackbolt) you should go with Rocket Pods.

[lobstah_rofls]

I tried NovaDive/thermites on defensive satellites today. I got one out of three shots off against a target that doesn't move and can't use escapes while I was moving slowly towards it and had it dead centered. One of the ones that didn't fire was only from around 5000m.

 

Not sure where you got your connection. Yes, thermites are buggy. Why do you assume that's what OP is using? Or the T1 scout for that matter? He never said anything about it in his post.

 

As for gunships -check the records thread. You'll find that there are a bunch of other viable ships, and some do better than gunships in certain situations.

 

Yeah you can go ahead and try reading my posts for the first time and see that thermites are what I was using and I'm having the same issue as well. They're the only torp I have the issue on so far so I started out by asking the OP, not assuming, if they were using thermites, which btw is entirely likely because they are the only lock on missile on the T1 Scout.

 

My connection is fine and better than most peoples, my ping is under 50ms, and I experience no other symptoms of lag.

 

As for gun ships, space combat games have an inherent problem with turreting. Most games take steps to minimize it. This one embraced it and so we have gunship fighter. When you read my posts for the first time, you will see that I said that while they still have their own learning curve, they give new players a fighting chance to do some damage and contribute.

 

But yes, while the small vet community on my server all plays republic and all group together to avoid having to play against each other for more balanced matches, the main upside I guess is that you can watch them to see what they do. In a TDM the one or two Vet Scouts always go for powerups as a top priority. If they don't have one, they will even hunt for one till they have one. Obviously, it makes them a lot more useful since they can then take out new ships in one short burst. And of course they have multi-gunship backup, which helps a ton.

Edited January 9, 2017 by lobstah_rofls
clarification

[Greezt]

I tried NovaDive/thermites on defensive satellites today. I got one out of three shots off against a target that doesn't move and can't use escapes while I was moving slowly towards it and had it dead centered. One of the ones that didn't fire was only from around 5000m.

 

 

Yeah you can go ahead and try reading my posts for the first time and see that thermites are what I was using and I'm having the same issue as well. They're the only torp I have the issue on so far so I started out by asking the OP, not assuming, if they were using thermites, which btw is entirely likely because they are the only lock on missile on the T1 Scout.

 

My connection is fine and better than most peoples, my ping is under 50ms, and I experience no other symptoms of lag.

 

As for gun ships, space combat games have an inherent problem with turreting. Most games take steps to minimize it. This one embraced it and so we have gunship fighter. When you read my posts for the first time, you will see that I said that while they still have their own learning curve, they give new players a fighting chance to do some damage and contribute.

 

But yes, while the small vet community on my server all plays republic and all group together to avoid having to play against each other for more balanced matches, the main upside I guess is that you can watch them to see what they do. In a TDM the one or two Vet Scouts always go for powerups as a top priority. If they don't have one, they will even hunt for one till they have one. Obviously, it makes them a lot more useful since they can then take out new ships in one short burst. And of course they have multi-gunship backup, which helps a ton.

 

Alright. Your posts reek of self importance, so I'm out. I have read them though - that's how I know that you seem convinced that OP is using the T1 scout. He never said anything about it in his OP, you just decided it. OP is not a new players by any means.

 

You might be taken more seriously if you stop complaining about ships, and especially power ups (which are part of the game). You're welcome to check out my videos, I fly mostly scout. That ship that only does well with gunship support, only often I fly without it...

 

Also, stop trying to turn this thread into a venting/whining thread. If your server sucks, make a new thread or ask for help.