| abstract
| - The Naegling is a single-seat tracked self-propelled multiple missile launcher, and the closest thing to a controllable artillery piece that the Air Raider can access outside of certain BM03 Vegalta variants. It handles a little awkwardly since the launcher makes the vehicle top-heavy and prone to wobbling alarmingly. In EDF 2025 the Naegling is slow and ponderous, while in 4.1 it is fairly fast, being about halfway between the Epsilon Armored Railgun and E551 Gigantus. The Naegling's only weapon is its launcher; it is fairly long-ranged, and can lock on to up to ten targets at a time. There are two types: the standard "Homing Rocket Cannon" fires single missiles with a small amount of splash damage that are capable of destroying buildings, while the "Convergence Guided Rocket Cannon" models fire missiles that split into four as they approach their target. These sub-missiles are "hittiles" that strike their target directly with no blast effect, and cannot destroy buildings even if they hit them before dividing. Like all guided missile launchers in the two games, the Naegling locks on to targets using a red bounding box to indicate the lock-on search area, which on the Naegling is most of the middle of the screen. It seems to lock on to the central "origin bone" of an enemy's 3D model rather than their hitbox; for normal enemies this makes no difference, but on very large enemies like bosses it may need to be pointed at their approximate middle to actually get a lock. Like other guided weapons, it cannot fire at all if it is not locked on. It is not particularly clear what method the game engine uses to determine what enemies to lock on to, but the player has little control over what things it chooses. Locking on does not require line of sight to the target; anything within the bounding box and within range will be targeted. As with all guided missiles, the Naegling will "remember" locks for a few seconds even if they are no longer within the bounding box, allowing the launcher to be pivoted upwards to fire over intervening buildings when it is locked on to ground targets. The missiles fly in a straight line for about a second before their guidance engages and they start to manoeuvre: they have excellent turning performance and homing ability, and very rarely miss unless they hit something else before reaching their target. Being an artillery piece not designed for front-line combat, the Naegling has extremely weak armor, with the top-level version actually significantly less durable than the top-level attack helicopters. After firing there is a brief pause while the Naegling reloads (presumably) during which it cannot acquire locks. In EDF 2025 a Naegling would skip its reload pause if the driver exited and re-entered the vehicle, allowing it to be fired much faster than it normally could. This no longer works in 4.1. As compensation, the vehicle's ammunition payload is doubled in 4.1 and the movement speed of all Naeglings is also approximately doubled.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)