It's not huge issue and maybe it's even intential but it's kind of anoying.

I often waste missiles if I reload at the wrong time during critical and central skirmishes.

Yeah, I noticed this one too a long time ago. (support issue 1884)

It also happens if you switch ships on a player Trident or take control of the Trident. Any fired weapons do zero damage after the switch.

Yep. This is annoying.

Given the current topic in the suggestion forum related to, among other things, swarming and running, I hope they do not fix this. I am imagining scenarios where people pop out of stations, and just before redocking launch swarms at another player in sector.

I would be fine with that if we could destroy the station they were cowering in.

I thought this was intentional....

if this was "fixed" eventually, the missiles should lose target at the very least, similar to what they do when a target is destroyed or jumps out. But it seems like fixing it would do more harm than good to gameplay (thinking players popping in and out of dents more than stations)

Yes, this is annoying if used by players to swarm and run, however the mechanics don't make sense. There's no good explanation why they still track, but their payload immediately becomes zero when you dock.

if this was "fixed" eventually, the missiles should lose target at the very least, similar to what they do when a target is destroyed or jumps out.

I don't see why the missiles should lose their targets. If I launch a bunch of swarms and geminis to deshield a queen or capship, then get in my Trident to close in for a turret weapons assault, why should those missiles fly away?

They've already locked on and launched. It's not like they're under remote control from your ship. you can't tell them "Hey, I changed my mind, switch targets now."

They'll even lock on to something else if it flies in the way of them and their mark.

I would be fine with that if we could destroy the station they were cowering in.

This is why it's not a problem for Tridents. They can be destroyed if you find one annoying. :)

As far as I can tell, this bug is sort of a side-effect of the hit-check mechanism on the server side. If you're in a ship that doesn't have the same weapon as was used to launch the missiles/rockets/torpedos, then it ignores their damage. I'm willing to bet it affects energy weapons too, but they're so fast and short-lived that you just don't notice.
That's just speculation on my part. Maybe one of the devs can explain in more detail.

You could probably use a Plasma HX to test that if you got a helpful volunteer to stand still a good distance away and fire from just outside the docking bay of a trident.

This feature is intentional to prevent spammers from hiding inside stations.

Perhaps a better way to handle it would be to allow them to cause damage, but apply NFZ penalties for missile hits that occur while the person who fired is docked inside the station. Don't necessarily eject them from the station, but apply temp-kos and reset their home if appropriate. Don't let the 15 minute timer start ticking down until they actually undock as well.

yea, as far as stations go, if the NFZ was actually an No Fire Zone then the act of firing the weapon is what should trigger a punitive response. Not whether you hit someone. Then your 15 minute timer will keep anyone from spamming without having to synthetically disable missiles.

As far as spamming from the dock of a trident, if tridents had a timer on refilling a player's ship then this would keep players from abusing that way as well.

Ray, that sort of makes sense for stations where they're perfectly safe. Not so much for capital ships that can be bombed and destroyed.

Nah it still makes sense for capital ships. If you want your spam to do damage you gotta be floating in space.

This also applied to avalons, by the way.

Greenwall, it's not about "spam." This one hurts the most when bombing big NPC targets like HACs and Leviathans, which is what I assume mr_spuck is complaining about. That's what I'm complaining about.

People who want to spam swarms just dock, reload, and undock again, so this already isn't an issue for them. But you already know that...

I don't understand your point... perhaps because you haven't backed it up with any reasoning.

Ray stated this is in place to prevent people from spamming and then hiding in a station or ship while the missiles flew around. This makes perfect sense.

I don't see how HAC and Levi bombing is effected negatively by this feature the devs implemented. Neither HAC or Levis are supposed to be easy, so forcing you to be undocked while your missiles and avalons hit is perfectly in line with that.

You, ARF, of all people would end up being more pissed if they changed it -- I distinctly recall you complaining that in a matched Deneb battle, the largest determining factor is whoever wins is who ever starts first. Allowing people to hide in a HAC while their barrage of avalons impacts would just make this more the case.

Logically speaking, avalons SHOULD be allowed to have their damage count when docked because they aren't guided. It's really the guided missiles that need to have this nerf in place because it DEFINITELY would be abused otherwise.

"It's really the guided missiles that need to have this nerf in place because it DEFINITELY would be abused otherwise."

Perhaps I am nitpicking, but they don't specifically need this nerf, just some nerf. Personally, I'd prefer the "become unguided but still do damage" approach over the "keep seeking but don't do damage" one. And even more than that, I'd prefer the alternate solution I proposed above of letting them seek and do damage, but then applying NFZ penalties, and just not worrying about capships (since those can be destroyed). Although, cellsafemode's suggestion of adding an RR delay on capships wouldn't bother me as long as it was no more than five seconds or so, and included a progress bar on the interface (not as a popup window).

The rep and reload suggestion doesn't have to be 1 timer. It makes sense that reloading would be rapid, but it also makes sense that repairing could be made to work slower. So if you want to jump on a trident and reload, fine, 5-10 seconds whatever (maybe have this increase each time you do it within a certain time frame). But repairing should be a separate timer that takes significantly longer than reloading (Faster than a gun but proportional to the damage). It's free afterall, but that doesn't mean there can't be a cost.