15 replies to this topic

[Majestic Mopar]

Been playing a few months now and it seems I've barely scratched the surface on MechWarrior online. I've learned a lot from spectating (dying lol).
Anyway, the whole reason I started this topic was to find cool people to play MWO with so add me in game if you would like to have a dedicated MechWarrior friend.
Also what does Weapon Convergence mean?
I unlocked the upgrade when I leveled elite with my first mech.

[dragnier1]

Weapon convergence is when your torso weapons align with your arm weapons. You can find some info at :
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page
http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/

The latter will also let you design mechs before paying for them in-game.

More videos for you if you need information explained verbally - https://www.youtube....tNUCKmcC0Q7pKJQ

[Majestic Mopar]

Thanks for the info dragnier

[dragnier1]

Before i forget, look through the patch notes everytime they release one just to keep yourself updated on changes.

[Banditman]

FYI - Weapons convergence does next to nothing in game right now. The concept stated above is correct, but you won't notice a difference.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Weapon convergence is like when you look through a camera lense and you move from a far away object to a close up object and it takes a few seconds to focus at the new distance. In the case of weapons, it's where they converge at the crosshair once fired, whether that's 100 m or 1000 m alters the path slightly to where the bullets cross in an X.

However, convergence is immediate (took a small amount of time originally requiring more skill and complicating the firing process for gamers when dealing with lag and serverside hit reg etc.). Unfortunately, that elite skill does absolutely nothing but is necessary to unlock anyway to finish the tree.

[Modo44]

The pilot skill related to weapon convergence does nothing. However, the concept of convergence is very important when building and using mechs. It matters a lot where your weapons are if you want to reliably hit specific locations. That is why many competitive builds put all/most weapons on one side of a mech, or keep the main weapons in the torso.

[Banditman]

Putting all the weapons on one side of a mech have very little to do with convergence. That particular tactic is used to create a more favorable peeking scenario.

If I have all my weapons on the left of my mech, and I'm peeking around a left corner, I can expose all of my weapons to the enemy while exposing only half of my mech. I peek, take my shot, and immediately turn the opposite side of my mech to the enemy while regaining cover.

If my enemy is peeking, and has his weapons evenly distributed on his mech, he's outgunned. The trade is favorable to me.

If my enemy is in the open, the weapons are even, but I've got cover, and he's shooting at a side of my mech that I don't care about.

The disadvantage to an asymmetric mech is that a really talented opponent can castrate you by taking out one section of your mech. If my opponent is left handed, and I take out his left torso, I can then ignore him.

If you're really worried about not putting all your shots on the same location, that is solved by turning on arm lock, or using the hotkey to do so in a particular situation. The hotkey is really your best bet, because there are definitely situations where you'll want to use the extra movement in your arms to get a shot on a target.

[Modo44]

Yeah, try Gauss+2xPPC on a Victor 9K, and then on a Dragon Slayer. Completely the same build, and yet...

[LanceKoth]

It isn't entirely false that the build matters in weapon convergence. There is zero need to worry about weapon convergence in an asymmetric build. In a symmetric build, the issue comes into play when a target is coming towards you. Because, I assume, of projectile travel speed, your missiles and ballistics are traveling to converge on where your target was when you pulled the trigger. So, if the enemy is advancing towards you it is possible that you will hit slightly to the right and to the left of where you are aiming.

Whilst charging a SplatCat, i have had both arms blown off my mech rather than having my CT destroyed. Like wise, i switched my AC5s to be on the same side of my mech, not for peeking, but so the shots at range would hit the same place. I was noticing when shooting 600M out, at targets moving towards me my shots were not hitting the same torso, so putting both acs on the same side eliminated that issue

[Tim East]

LanceKoth, on 29 March 2015 - 08:09 AM, said:

It isn't entirely false that the build matters in weapon convergence. There is zero need to worry about weapon convergence in an asymmetric build. In a symmetric build, the issue comes into play when a target is coming towards you. Because, I assume, of projectile travel speed, your missiles and ballistics are traveling to converge on where your target was when you pulled the trigger. So, if the enemy is advancing towards you it is possible that you will hit slightly to the right and to the left of where you are aiming.

Whilst charging a SplatCat, i have had both arms blown off my mech rather than having my CT destroyed. Like wise, i switched my AC5s to be on the same side of my mech, not for peeking, but so the shots at range would hit the same place. I was noticing when shooting 600M out, at targets moving towards me my shots were not hitting the same torso, so putting both acs on the same side eliminated that issue

That's actually because convergence is instant. If your reticule is on the foe as he approaches, the shots you take are set to be pinpoint at the moment you fire. Not the moment they hit. Projectile flight time applies here. Also, for shooting laterally moving targets, if you are aiming in front of them so your shots hit, your pinpoint can get messed up because the convergence of your weapons is set to the reticule location, so probably a piece of the ground or a wall/rock behind where they are going to run.

Keeping the weapons in the same location minimizes the difference in projectile origin, thus the need for convergence at all, since the ballistic trajectories are much closer to parallel.

edit: If you'd like an illustration of the point, I can make one, but it's going to have to wait until tomorrow due to work.

Edited by Tim East, 29 March 2015 - 08:21 AM.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Convergence used to take a few moments, leading to some interesting gameplay, such as deliberately putting your crosshair on an object at Distance 1 in order to get better convergence against a mech at Distance 2 that was moving toward Distance 1.5, or aiming at the ground ahead of a laterally moving target before aiming up and firing to get convergence appropriate for the range.

PGI found that it was glitchy with lag and HSR, though, and made it instant, leaving the Elite convergence unlock pointless. They are aware of the issue and plan to redo efficiencies eventually, but they haven't yet and it doesn't seem to be scheduled for any time soon. Any such development resources are probably working on UI 3.0 or CW or some other such higher priority target.

@OP: You are doing exactly the right thing by spectating players after you die. Bad players teach you how not to play (all arm-lock all the time, LRMs under 120m, PPCs under 90ms, SRMs past their listed range, all alpha all the time, etc.), while good ones teach you all the tips and tricks that can make the difference between dying and securing a kill.

As for grouping together, you don't actually need a group to get quality play now that VOIP is integrated into MWO. Make sure your push-to-talk button is mapped somewhere reasonable (Caps Lock is a bizarre default; left Alt is my preference). Use it to call out letter codes to focus fire on priority targets, and to inform people of enemy UAVs, incoming arty, enemy vulnerabilities and builds, tactical updates for positioning and such, etc. I've run into maybe two mechwarriors so far who were worth muting, and a handful of others who kept chattering about trivial stuff, though they tended to stop once we made contact with the enemy. The overwhelming majority of VOIP users so far have made positive contributions to the match.

[Koniving]

Welcome to MWO.

Majestic Mopar, on 28 March 2015 - 02:49 AM, said:

1) Anyway, the whole reason I started this topic was to find cool people to play MWO with so add me in game if you would like to have a dedicated MechWarrior friend.
2) Also what does Weapon Convergence mean?

1) During weekends I might get on during the day, and week days (short of Monday) I'll probably be on in the evenings to night time. But I'll be happy to add you.

In addition to MWO, I've been playing a lot of Battletech/Tabletop/Megamek. Think MWO crossed with Battlefield 4, slapped into a hexagonal board game. So if you ever get interested in seeing how things compare to the source, I'm always open.

2) The skill "Pinpoint" for increased Weapon Convergence refers to an old mechanic (now defunct) in which the alignment of your weapons to the point at which you were aiming was delayed under the guise of 'calibrating for range'.

This animated gif shows it in action. It won't load unless you open the spoiler, so give it a moment to load.

Spoiler

Notice how it looks like many different lasers hitting many different places and they 'close' together to hit a single point and try to 'cut' into the ground? That is convergence.

Given the game's architecture (game client asks server for permission for any action you take, hence lag on things like zooming when your ping is ungodly high), the "1 second" for alignment that a low ping player would need could be up to 3 seconds for another player, effectively making them unable to hit anything.

So now, all convergence is instant. The skill trees need an overhaul.

(What Dragnier said is technically not incorrect, weapons convergence is the alignment of weapons to hit a single point. Arm / Torso convergence just isn't what the skill was meant to apply to.)

(Now that I scrolled, I see Levi and some others have also covered it though in more detail than myself. Just tried to keep it simple).

Also, what Tim East is 100% true, the convergence is assigned to the instant you pull the trigger and does not change in real time for projectiles readily fired (it wouldn't in any other video game either unless it is one where the 'bullets' will defy gravity and jump with you).

This is why build and the like matters when it comes to shooting at moving targets, especially if the target is moving towards you and there's a large shot origin difference (say weapon near hand, and weapon on shoulder, that big vertical difference would have a huge role in unintended damage spread when fired at something distant and an enemy closes in).

[Scum of the Earth]

Koniving, on 29 March 2015 - 02:24 PM, said:

*snip* The skill "Pinpoint" for increased Weapon Convergence refers to an old mechanic (now defunct) in which the alignment of your weapons to the point at which you were aiming was delayed under the guise of 'calibrating for range'. This animated gif shows it in action. It won't load unless you open the spoiler, so give it a moment to load.

Spoiler

Notice how it looks like many different lasers hitting many different places and they 'close' together to hit a single point and try to 'cut' into the ground? That is convergence.

*barf*

Holy Moses there Koniving, if that's what it was like in the "old days" of MWO, I would be punching my desk a ton more then I am now playing. That's with me having a very good ping of high 30's to low 50's too. My fire accuracy is around 50% for most weapons but if we were to go back to the old mechanic, it would probably be closer to 20%. Screw having to use PPCs, it would probably be closer to 5% then... ;P

[Banditman]

It wasn't that bad. You learned how to use it. It felt very natural and for the most part you never really thought about it. It just happened. It was only when you had weird clip plane issues that it was really "a thing". For instance, peeking around a building sometimes did odd things and occasionally a very distant target would show weird convergence if you were trying to lead it.

[Koniving]

Scum of the Earth, on 30 March 2015 - 04:22 AM, said:

Holy Moses there Koniving, if that's what it was like in the "old days" of MWO, I would be punching my desk a ton more then I am now playing. That's with me having a very good ping of high 30's to low 50's too. My fire accuracy is around 50% for most weapons but if we were to go back to the old mechanic, it would probably be closer to 20%. Screw having to use PPCs, it would probably be closer to 5% then... ;P

There was a reason MWO didn't have problems with poptarts or super snipers or mass alpha strike builds.

Then again, there was a lot more open area brawling.

I mean watch that video these mechs are moving at low speeds. (This is where the gif comes from).

Forgive the audio quality, very early youtube stuff and music during gameplay was far too loud.

You will notice mechs are a lot slower. They are more so at their canon speeds. (Keep in mind they are still huge but nothing can be done about that, PGI already sailed that ship.) Links lead to some scale shots of a Shadowhawk, the drawn and center images are Battletech scale. The tank is from Crysis and is also 55 tons.

To paraphrase a player from back then, "It was almost terrifying.

Spoiler

The center of the map flooded with medium mechs dancing around each other and in the middle of them there was these two Atlases exchanging blows like battleships. I was standing between one Atlas's legs, using him for cover in my little Commando, popping a large laser toward nearby mechs at every opportunity.

After like 8 minutes, everyone else was dead and the two Atlases were still hammering each other. Our Atlas, the RS, had lost a leg and was limping, his side torso blown off and his AC out of ammo. The other one, an Atlas D, had lost both of its torsos and was circling around with chest lasers firing. I kept trying to help but I lost my arm and all I had left was an SRM pack and not much ammo, the shots had to count and he still had some armor left on the CT.

Finally, I must have stepped in some sort of pit but I sunk over my head in water. I used this to slip away for a minute without gettin' my butt blown up and crept over to the base. Started capturing the base and was just turning around when here comes these big glowing red eyes over the hill. Wires and metal dangling from the shoulders.

I line up with my missiles. Last shot I got. They started flying toward him and suddenly spread out and I kid you not, about two on each side went around him! Kinda glad they did though, the explosions on the ground behind him managed to get his leg crippled just then. Seconds on the ticker. Base is almost ours. Two lasers come just over my screen and that's it, I'm dead. Cockpit shot. But while the camera pans around my corpse, I can see two more red eyes come up. Our RS is still alive! I'm like 'holy ****, get him!' A blue laser hits that D in the back and that's it, it's over."

Gameplay was just... a lot more epic back then.

Of course there was other things. While thermal made cold but running mechs blue, powered off mechs completely invisible, and hot mechs any color from teal to glowing red... it didn't allow you to see 'through' trees as you can now. Nor could you 'target' someone through trees. This meant that you could hide in the trees on Forest Colony and shoot things. Set up sniper positions. You could be 'invisible' in the water as well. Of course ECM wasn't in the game back then, so these were tricks anyone could do with a mech of the right sizes. (Check out how easy it is to dodge missiles, and you'll see convergence issues weren't much of an issue if you 'aimed'. This meant moving slower was good, just like in Battletech. Targets are being relayed by scouts, so I can't get them on my own. Other mechs are having to target things for me, making scouts important for my sniper mech. The kill I got was by ammo explosion.)

Assaults and heavies, while mostly unable to take advantage of all the stealth tricks, could literally bulldoze you down.


Some other stuffs.
Dragon brawling (no knockdowns)
20 mins of 2012.
An MG standoff. Because why not?

Edited by Koniving, 30 March 2015 - 10:32 AM.