Locks: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 13:59, 12 October 2026

A lock tracks one live ship as a scanner and fire-control target. It remembers the ship's active slot, not the temporary letter shown on a scan. The player can then use @ with supported commands to refer to that target even if its scan letter changes. A lock is a choice of target, not a guarantee that a weapon has a firing solution or that the target remains visible. For the command itself, see Lock command.

Why locks were introduced

Before Galactic Empire 3.0, a ship's scan letter followed its BBS channel. Classic 3.0a introduced proximity-based letters that could change as ships moved, so it also introduced LOCK and @ to preserve a target across those changes. Classic 3.1b later made letters more stable while a contact remained in scanner range, but a letter could still be reassigned after the ship disappeared and returned. See Scantab for the letter-assignment history; the lock's role is to remember a ship slot rather than a particular letter.

Classic 3.2e

The classic LOCK command stores the chosen live slot. It does not notify the target when the lock is first set; a later torpedo or missile attempt can produce a fire-control warning. Classic checks a stored lock when a command uses @, not continuously. If the slot is no longer active or the target is beyond the locker's scanner range at that point, the game clears the lock and the command fails. The help text's promise that a lock lasts while the target is within scanner range therefore describes its intended usable range, not continuous range monitoring. See Classic bug: Stale scantab and lock state for stale-reference hazards in the classic implementation.

A scanner lock is separate from the firing solution obtained by a torpedo or missile launcher. A stored target can still be too distant, cloaked, jammed, protected by the neutral zone, or otherwise unavailable to a particular weapon. Standard phasers are aimed by bearing, not by @.

ge-next

ge-next 0.3 made locks an actively maintained part of ship state rather than only a target saved for later command use. Setting and releasing a lock can notify the target; Lock command covers those immediate messages and command restrictions.

During ship-state updates, ge-next checks whether the target is still active and within the locker's effective scanner range. A vanished target is cleared; a target that moves out of range is released with a lock-lost notice. A fully cloaked target or one hidden by nebula conditions can be retained internally for a short grace period, approximately five ship-state checks, but cannot thereby be scanned or attacked through the concealment. If the target becomes visible again in time, the lock continues; otherwise it is released. A target lost to range has no such grace period. Cloaking and jamming can prevent a new lock from being established.

A locked ship receives red highlighting in applicable range scans and ordnance reports and takes precedence when objects overlap on a range-scan map. The underlying lock still identifies a slot, not a display letter. It can also express deliberate hostility: locking an idle Cybertron makes that Cybertron engage the player, and an explicit lock can override some teammate or distress protections for phaser fire. It does not itself aim standard phasers or bypass launcher, range, visibility, or neutral-zone checks.

Enhanced lock

The optional enhanced-lock ship upgrade was added in ge-next 0.3. It does not change how the ordinary LOCK command selects a ship. Instead, while the target is locked and identifiable, the upgrade reports some of that ship's actions to the locking player: hyperspace entry or exit, entering or leaving planetary orbit, entering a wormhole, activating a cloak, and firing phasers, torpedoes, or missiles. Orbit and wormhole notices include the target's sector; projectile notices include the intended target's letter when that target is also identifiable. Some ordinary same-sector activity is already visible, so the upgrade suppresses redundant hyperspace notices there.

Enhanced lock is not omniscient. These reports depend on an active lock and an identifiable target letter; concealment and lost locks can interrupt them. A ship without the upgrade can still set a normal lock and use @. Upgrade availability depends on the ship class and game configuration.