Deep Doom Question

So, you're playing your favorite wad and come across for example this situation. Three mancubuseses are on a random platform like this (I also added beautiful Ribbiks's curves to capture the authenticity)


◠◠◠◠◠◠
( M M M )
◡◡◡◡◡◡


and you only have a limited amount of rockets at disposal. How do you shoot them to cause the most damage and possibly save the most rockets?

run around them and make em shoot each other till only 1 is left , after that i will use my rockets .

I would probably alternate between shooting "between" 1 & 2 and 2 & 3 till 2 is dead, then let 1 and 3 get close, then do the same sort of thing, I guess

DMGUYDZ64 said:

run around them and make em shoot each other till only 1 is left , after that i will use my rockets .

I know same species won't infight but... will that still do damage?

Fire 3 rockets on one of the side Mancubi to hit him as close as possible to the middle Mancubus, then more 3 rockets on the opposite side Mancubus again to impact as close as possible to the middle one, and if any of them survives, at most 1 additional rocket should kill him/them. 6-7 rockets consumed in total.

Will shooting "between" two mancubuseseses even work? Won't autoaim just choose one of them?

Tango said:

I know same species won't infight but... will that still do damage?

Of course not.

Even when DMGUYDZ64 writes something that appears to be true based on solid experience, you should probably re-check.

I'm not sure the exact radius of the blast for rockets, but id estimate that shooting directly in the middle will do something in the ballpark of 140 damage to the middle manc and maybe 10 to the surrounding mancubi, while aiming between two mancubi of your choice would do something like 90 damage between the two.

140+10+10 = 160
90+90 = 180

However, considering the amount of damage divisible by each rocket, I'm not sure you'd save more than one or two rockets. Though I understand this can be vital in demo recording.

I'm just going by experience, I could totally be talking out of my ass. ive killed a lot of monsters on a lot of levels if those are good enough credentials. I haven't looked too deeply into the numbers of it.

kuchitsu said:

Will shooting "between" two mancubuseseses even work? Won't autoaim just choose one of them?

Horizontal autoaim doesn't redirect shots perfectly onto the enemies detected in front of the player. This is how it works. It fires a dummy hitscan perfectly straight, and if the hitscan hits some shootable thing, autoaim doesn't take any effect. Otherwise it fires more 2 dummy hitscans 5.6 degrees to the left and to the right, and if one of them hits some shootable thing, it aims the player's shot 5.6 degrees to the left or to the right from the player's angle. Otherwise no autoaim takes effect.

Just type in IDFA and go to town on those fat bastards. The only threat they pose is to Sizzler buffets.

This depends on how far you are from the mancubi, how close they are together, and your position relative to them (as if they are awake they will of course move toward you). Also, are these mancubi able to cross in front of one another, or are they fixed in their lateral positions?

An experienced doomer should know instinctively how they will move, and how quickly, for any variation of the above.

The best option is to manipulate the mancubi to be right next to one another, if you can, then give the direct damage to whichever mancubus will afford the greatest splash damage to the other two. Ideally after that one is dead you wait for the remaining two to move to be right next to each other, then aim between them, knowing you'll catch one with the full hit.

Hard to do perfectly well with the RL in practice, especially with "wide" monsters like the mancubus. You could do it a dozen times and probably find yourself using a different amount of rockets many times.

Here's a wad simulating that situation and a demo. I had them fixed laterally, and I'll do one where they can move next.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/4ngh0a7962vos2c/manctest2.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/download/jr31ulr5l21u1rd/manctest2nfl.zip

Heh this reminded me, in Speed of Doom there's a map where you can gib 50 (stuck) zombiemen with a single rocket. A rocket can do far more cumulative splash damage than the BFG, if the conditions are right, and in addition it doesn't have a 40 tracer limit, nor a restricted directional effect.

Also, in ZDaemon, there was a server with 100 bots. The quickest way to rack up kills was simply to spawn on the RL, and as the bots rushed to pick it up themselves, just suicide: up to 16 bots all around you could be killed with one rocket, a performance that was hard to duplicate even with the BFG.

Dang I was hoping this thread would be about something like Deep Dream except with Doom hellspawn instead of dogs. That would be pretty cool.

Anyhow I just do what Tango said if I need to conserve rockets.