First person shooters are now an established
genre among
video games, much like
role-playing games or turn-based
strategy games. The many games of the genre have all developed
standard features that make sense, features that players expect to see in the game. Many people think that FPSes are all alike because of this, but avid
gamers know that
subtle but important differences lie elsewhere (for example, the
ambiance, the
physics model, the
weapon balance, the general
complexity of the
gameplay, etc.). Over time, most FPSes have adopted a somewhat
standard set of weapons that fills the
space spanned by few
parameters: the
damage caused by the weapon, the
speed of the
projectile, the
spread, the
reload delay, etc. For example,
Quake 3's
rail gun has zero spread, is almost
instantaneous, causes lots of damage but is extremely long to reload; whereas the
machine gun has a moderate spread, is instantaneous, has a very high rate but only causes low damage.
Rocket launchers fit a corner of choice of this space, with a high damage and a blast radius, moderate reload time and zero spread. Of course, it is balanced with a low speed, which is why a player should not always try to hit directly his opponents.The thing to do with a rocket launcher or similar weapon, be it in Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament or any other FPS, is rocket placement. The player should always try to place a rocket at the position of an opponent, at the time of arrival of the rocket. This is something that is quite simple to say but rather hard to put in practice; when playing, the urge to shoot a rocket when the opponent is right in the line of sight is very strong. The player should thus do something that is quite unexpected in FPSes, that is, try to think. He has to extrapolate the trajectory of its opponent, compute the flight time of the rocket, and find a shooting solution. If the opponent is clearly headed towards health or a weapon, the player should place his rockets there. This is why experienced players often shoot at new corpses that just let go of their weapons: there is often an opponent that is heading right for it. Since it is quite easy to miss an opponent with a slow projectile, the player should use the blast radius of a rocket to maximize the damage inflicted to the opponent. Rockets do not explode when they hit air just beside their target; however, they do when they hit a surface. Most of the time, the player should thus make sure that the rocket path will intersect with a wall or the ground near the extrapolated position of the target. This way, even if the shot is a miss, the rocket may explode close to the target and cause some damage.