How about getting rid of sunflares and putting laser-guided missiles in its place? To successfully hit your target, you'd need to keep your reticule aimed at your enemy until the missile impacts. It won't be as agile as homers or seekers, where it would have the ability to turn around on a dime and come right back, but giving it a high speed and a very low proximity radius would certainly make for a fun weapon to use.

It's a cool idea i think, just wondering how you were thinking of approaching the expiration time...

The ability to have multiple missiles in flight would have to go. I think you'd have to be able to have only one in flight at any given time. Having said that you could aslo give it a player controlled destruction message (when you think it's close enough etc...).

6 missiles to 1 small port?

of course this would go the way of the rail gun because no one wants to sit th3ere and try to follow 1 target the entire fight with their crosshairs. Anyone who does that is just begging for a gauss cannun up the ass.

If possible, you could apply different behavior to the rocket if the laser were on/off. If on, the rocket would increase in speed and/or maneuverability and head straight towards the laser. If off, the rocket would continue towards the last-targeted point with the same speed and smarts as a homer.

That is: if you simply 'tagged' someone with a laser, the rocket would miss them (unless they weren't moving at all). But you could repeatedly 'tag' a ship rather than trying to keep a laser trained on them. The rocket would correct its course each time. Of course, if you **missed** with the laser, and tagged an asteroid by mistake, the rocket would go there.

I think such a weapon would be fun, but probably very hard to do. And it would be VERY strong... and probably hard to balance against current weapons...

In short, I think it's a good idea for a future weapon, but probably not as a "fix" for sunflares or current weapons. It will require to much balancing of its own to be used as a way to balance another weapon. Did that make any sense?

I agree with slappy.

orrr.. IF you manage to keep your crosshairs on them for 5-10 seconds, it locks on and then follows. or you can just point and shoot.

How about a camera in the corner, allowing the warhead to be guidable?

You could put the numberpad to some use.

Sorry for being off-topic, but I didn't want to make my own post. Here's another missile type:

True Heat-Seeking Missile
Damage: 750
Speed: 100
Maneuverability: Medium
Duration: 30 seconds

This missile targets the nearest moving target automatically. If that target gets out of its 45 degree "Field of View", it selects a new target. It will continue to select targets until it either hits something, runs out of fuel, or runs out of targets. This missile DOES NOT require you to use your targeting computer to establish a lock. Fires in pairs, above stats are per missile