Rocket launcher
From DoomWiki.org
The rocket launcher is used to fire rockets, missiles that fly in a straight line and explode when they hit anything solid. When picked up, the launcher contains two rockets (four at the I'm Too Young To Die and Nightmare! skill levels).
The launcher first appears in a secret area of the level E1M3: Toxin Refinery and appears again in secret areas of the following three levels. It is finally found in a non-secret area on E1M7: Computer Station.
Contents
Combat characteristics
Each rocket does 20-160 points of damage, in round multiples of 20, plus a blast radius of 128 units (taking a direct hit automatically incurs the full 128 additional points). Thus the rocket launcher is approximately as powerful as the super shotgun, but equally effective at long range and with a more rapid rate of fire.
It can be used for rocket jumping in some areas, for example to reach the secret exit of E3M6: Mt. Erebus.
Tactical analysis
When using the rocket launcher at close range or within a confined structure, great care must be taken to avoid the effects of blast damage (even a player with 200% health and armor can be killed by several such accidents). For this reason, using a rocket launcher around Lost Souls or Pain Elementals is hazardous. Novice players may also be caught off guard by the weapon's horizontal auto-aiming which sometimes causes a rocket to be launched a few degrees away from center.
Notes
- As with the BFG 9000 and chaingun, the full rocket launcher sprite (after pickup) is slightly too large for the screen, and can only be viewed with a level or resource editor.
- On Sony Playstation version of Doom and Final Doom the rocket launcher blast doesn't do any damage when the player is facing a corner of 90 degrees. This requires the player to be facing a bit off the corner's edge and be as close to it as possible. There's a series of snapshots taken in the level "Crater" of Final Doom below.
Data
Rocket launcher data | |
---|---|
Weapon number | 5 |
Damage | 20-160 (direct hit) 0-128 (blast radius) |
Included ammo | 2 (4 on skill 1 & 5) |
Max ammo | 50 (100 with backpack) |
Ammo type | Rocket |
Shot type | Projectile |
Velocity | 20 map units/tic (700 map units/second) |
Shots / minute | 105.0 |
Sound | DSRLAUNC (firing) DSBAREXP (impact) |
Appears in | Shareware Doom Registered Doom Ultimate Doom Doom II/Final Doom |
Thing type | 2003 (decimal), 7D3 (hex) |
Radius | 20 |
Sprite | LAUN (before pickup) MISG (wielded) MISF (firing) MISL (in flight) BEXP (impact) |
Class | Weapon Pickup |
Shots needed to kill1,2 | Mean | Standard deviation |
Min | Max |
Barrel | 1.00 | 0.00 | 1 | 1 |
Trooper | 1.00 | 0.00 | 1 | 1 |
Sergeant | 1.00 | 0.00 | 1 | 1 |
Wolfenstein SS | 1.00 | 0.00 | 1 | 1 |
Imp | 1.00 | 0.00 | 1 | 1 |
Chaingunner | 1.00 | 0.00 | 1 | 1 |
Lost Soul | 1.00 | 0.00 | 1 | 1 |
Commander Keen | 1.00 | 0.00 | 1 | 1 |
Demon | 1.13 | 0.33 | 1 | 2 |
Spectre | 1.13 | 0.33 | 1 | 2 |
Boss Brain3 | 1.76 | 0.43 | 1 | 2 |
Revenant | 2.03 | 0.16 | 2 | 3 |
Cacodemon | 2.35 | 0.48 | 2 | 3 |
Pain Elemental | 2.35 | 0.48 | 2 | 3 |
Hell Knight | 2.86 | 0.41 | 2 | 4 |
Arachnotron | 2.86 | 0.41 | 2 | 4 |
Mancubus | 3.24 | 0.43 | 3 | 4 |
Arch-Vile | 3.72 | 0.55 | 3 | 5 |
Baron of Hell | 5.09 | 0.50 | 4 | 6 |
Spider Mastermind | 34.03 | 2.60 | 27 | 40 |
Cyberdemon | 45.16 | 3.09 | 36 | 52 |
- This table assumes that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, impact animations, and backfire checks are consecutive. In real play, this is never the case: counterattacks and AI pathfinding must be handled, and of course the map may contain additional moving monsters and other randomized phenomena (such as flickering lights). It is also assumed that all projectiles are launched at nearly the same range, so that the various procedures call P_Random in the same sequence each time. Any resulting errors are probably toward the single-shot average, as they introduce noise into the correlation between the indices of "consecutive" calls.
- Assumes that all rockets actually strike the target.
- Assumes that direct hits are possible, which does not occur in any stock map.
Appearance statistics
The IWADs contain the following numbers of rocket launchers:
Game | ITYTD and HNTR | HMP | UV and NM |
---|---|---|---|
Ultimate Doom | 32 | 32 | 32 |
Doom II | 27 | 28 | 28 |
TNT: Evilution | 31 | 32 | 32 |
Plutonia | 31 | 32 | 32 |