1063 replies to this topic

[AndyHill]

It's hard not to compare MWO to WoT - which has a lot of dice throwing in the way hits and damage are calculated. I played a lot of it, but after going MWO haven't looked back. One of the reasons was the randomness of it all, once I got a pretty good feel of the system and understood exactly what was me and what was pure luck, I started becoming very frustrated.

To an extent, this is personal opinion and in fact many design issues important for MWO are. My personal view based on how I see the issue is that there should be no (or little) weapons spread. However, I understand completely why some of you want it, I would just try a different approach.

Prevent alpha strikes entirely.

IMRO, the biggest issue when translating turn based dice rolling TT rules to real time simulator is pinpoint damage, and so far every single iteration of MechWarrior (except perhaps the very first one, I don't remember how it handled alpha strikes) has failed. For MWO this is especially critical, since it's purely competitive multiplayer, a setting that tends to exaggerate the slightest balance issues.

I also don't think it's fair to say the MWO team tried TT mechanics and didn't like them, it's probably more accurate to say that they tried putting TT numbers into the traditional MechWarrior gameplay, which, of course, hasn't worked terribly well before and won't work in the future. Turning a TT game into a simulator needs to start by understanding the problematics of the translation and compensating for them. And as I said earlier, I think the biggest issue is pinpoint accuracy combined with a heat system that encourages massive pinpoint alpha strikes, and I also think pretty much every balancing issue since stems from that decision.

The opinion of boredom in 10 seconds per shot -gameplay would be contested by an immense amount of WoT players (and me), but that's personal opinion. If, however, MWO didn't allow alpha strikes, you would be firing weapons much more often than that simply because 'mechs tend to carry more than one weapon.

Thus there would be no need to triple firing speed and screw the heat balance between weapons.

Probably no need to double armor, since the DPS would be lower and instant pinpoint monster alphas wouldn't exist, so no screwing the balance between ranged weapons and brawling stuff.

The TT values would probably not be a perfect solution for everything, but I believe we would at this point be closer to a manageable balancing effort than what we have now. (I'm very worried about omnimechs with massive boating and instant alpha -potential) I would even go as far as to make a few deviations from TT rules:

PPCs would have a beam duration and not hit one location with full force.

ACs would be true autocannons firing volleys of shots, again not hitting one location.

In short; I would try to use game mechanics design in a determined and calculated effort to combat the translation process before making drastic changes to the numbers based on a well known and understood starting point. And as a personal opinion and an educated guess I would rather try to prevent the balance-breaking pinpoint alphas by preventing alpha strikes entirely instead of adding a CoF.

Edit: Forgot to mention that anything to do with heat will be powerless to stop some alpha builds such as Gauss monster assaults (Cats shouldn't be able to field Gauss at all, but that's a different topic entirely). If alpha strikes didn't exist, you could do massive gauss damage to a static and unaware opponent, which I think you should be able to, but not to ()even ever so slowly) moving targets.

Edited by AndyHill, 22 February 2013 - 09:33 AM.

[Doc Holliday]

Roland, on 22 February 2013 - 06:55 AM, said:

Eh, that's not really the case. It was not added in simply to "lower the skill ceiling". They added it because it adds additional depth to the gameplay, enabling things like differences in accuracy among weapons.

And if you aren't ever going to play a game with any kind of weapons spread, then that means you aren't going to play any shooters again.. ever. Because every modern shooter incorporates such things.

No, they put it in to "simulate recoil". Which it doesn't. At all. And they know it. Hence the real purpose, which is to lower the skill ceiling. And it does do that, in spades. Catering to players with no skill is how it's done these days.

I do play shooters - older ones, that were done right. You would be correct that I never play newer CoD or Battlefield games, and crap like that. They all suck, every one. UT is still miles better than any of them. And if you want realistic weapons, there's a mod for UT called Tactical Ops that did modern weaponry way better back in Y2K than ANY other FPS has since. Why? Because it did recoil properly.

But all that aside, it's even more stupid to implement something like that for lasers in a mech game. Lasers have no recoil and no varying precision. They point at where you aim them, pure and simple. It's a beam of light FFS.

So again, I can assure you, if PGI is stupid enough to put something like that into MWO I'll quit for sure and never look back, and they won't even get a second chance.

[Inyc]

I fully agree with anything that cuts down on the boating and blasting. Its boring to play as or against. It doesn't feel like MW. Cone of fire is a great idea.

I actually love seeing people who boat PPCs are them consecutively instead of in a single blast. It actually feels like giant mech battles instead of the peek-a-boo one shots.

[Josef Nader]

Roland, on 22 February 2013 - 06:55 AM, said:

Eh, that's not really the case. It was not added in simply to "lower the skill ceiling". They added it because it adds additional depth to the gameplay, enabling things like differences in accuracy among weapons.

And if you aren't ever going to play a game with any kind of weapons spread, then that means you aren't going to play any shooters again.. ever. Because every modern shooter incorporates such things.

No, CoF was not put in to add depth. Lowering the skill ceiling is a side effect, but the real reason CoF was introduced was lazy programmers. Seriously.

Good weapon recoil in games relies on the perfect accuracy of the gun but the instability of the model. The bullet will always come straight out of the barrel on a consistent ballistic trajectory. The model jumps around to simulate recoil, but a good player who knows how to read the gun viewmodel can land extremely accurate hits even with the gun bouncing around. Mechwarrior Online currently uses this system. All of the ballistics are perfectly accurate, and they use delays in your actual mech model to simulate convergence and make snap shots more difficult. This is a -far- superior system to any CoF shenanegins.

Red Orchestra 2 uses a similar system:



The bullets -always- come straight out of the end of the gun model. The gun model bounces around to simulate recoil.

Compare and contrast:



Notice how the movement of the gun has very little to do with where the projectiles go. It makes the weapons -extremely- difficult to be accurate with and it promotes spray-and-pray gameplay rather than rewarding skillful players and forcing engagements outside of ticklefight range. This is done because it's very easy to send hitscan rays out of a preprogrammed cone and it's more effort to make the ballistics synch up with your recoil model (and make your recoil model more realistic).

Introducing option two when the far superior option one is already in the game would be terrible.

[Inyc]

Doc Holliday, on 22 February 2013 - 09:45 AM, said:

No, they put it in to "simulate recoil". Which it doesn't. At all. And they know it. Hence the real purpose, which is to lower the skill ceiling. And it does do that, in spades. Catering to players with no skill is how it's done these days.

Wouldn't having to land 4 pinpoint shots in a row from your 4 lasers require much more skill than just one shot with all your weapons?

[HRR Insanity]

Captain Midnight, on 22 February 2013 - 12:35 AM, said:

Fundamentally, CBT is a game of luck whereas MWO is a game of skill. Not to say that there is no luck in MWO or no skill in CBT, but the dominant governing factors for each game pretty much spell that fact out.

No one wants to play a luck based multiplayer oriented videogame, therefore every idea you suggested is a bad one. Sorry.

You didn't even read the post.

It's not luck or random. It's a choice. You can be perfectly accurate with individual weapons or you can be subject to a balancing factor to prevent weapon damage summation which breaks the damage/armor model in the game.

[Zerethon]

Inyc, on 22 February 2013 - 10:19 AM, said:

Wouldn't having to land 4 pinpoint shots in a row from your 4 lasers require much more skill than just one shot with all your weapons?

Allow me to put this bluntly.

IF THERE'S A BIG RED BUTTON, BY GOD I'M PUSHING IT TWICE.

There's already a balancing factor for alpha strikes, are you ready for this? SERIOUSLY ready?

Heat and cooldown

HOOOOOOOLY crap, how does everyone miss the most obvious thing? Yeah, 4 PPC's to the face hurts, but the mech that SHOT them has to wait not only a goodly period before the next shot, but it's WORSE if he overheats (Sitting duck syndrome) or misses (36-odd heat for nothing)

Cone of fire/false recoil systems are stupid in a big stompy mech game that already has a working better system in place.

Learn to deal or go away if you can't understand this concept.

[Zyllos]

Might I suggest another way of adding spreading mechanics without a cone-of-fire. It will also add more emphasis on the usefulness of arm mounted weaponry and make a point of wanting to de-arm mechs because of it's usefulness.

Reduction of Pin-Point Alphas and Emphasis on Arms

Zyllos, on 17 February 2013 - 07:59 AM, said:

Something I have begin to notice in MWO is that builds which can pin-point a lot of weaponry onto a single point for as long as possible than builds which can actually deal more damage but generally spreads the damage across a target.

This is part of why the phenomenon on why players generally only aim for the torsos. All their weapons can easily pin-point to a Left/Right Torso, which also destroys the arms in the process. Thus, there is little emphasis on destroying arms because you can just aim all your weaponry at the torso and destroy a mech or maim it by killing both a torso and arm.

I suggest three mechanic changes to fix this issue by placing more emphasis on arm mounted weaponry while removing some ability for all weapons to target a specific point, thus allowing more weapon fire to spread.

Suggestion One - Multiple Weapon Fire Out of a Single Weapon Port

This is an odd mechanic by PGI. I understand the logic behind allowing multiple weapons to be equipped to allow for more customization but why allow multiple weapons to fire out of the same physical weapon port at the same time?

A good example of this is the Atlas Right Torso 2 Ballistic hardpoint / 1 Physical Weapon port location. If someone equips two UAC/5s in this location, and places both of them on the same weapon group without chain fire, then why does both UAC/5s fire at the same time, having overlapping projectiles? This essentially makes it a UAC/10. This also fools your target because they believe a single UAC/5 is firing but actually it is 2 UAC/5s firing at the same time.

The Cicada is another prime example of this. With multiple Energy hardpoints in the same physical Weapon port, they can fire both laser, which overlaps each other looking like a single laser.

So I suggest adding a mechanic where if multiple weapons are fired at the same time out of a single weapon port, just fire the weapons immediately one after the other. This will help spread a bit of the damage just because of the delta time between each firing while moving and also not be used to fool your target.

Suggestion Two - Arm Actuators Given Meaning

This is a brand new mechanic added, which I believe PGI is planning on adding at some point in time. It is fairly straight forward implementation based on how existing mechs already behave and actually sticks to the TT actuator charts fairly well.

Shoulder actuator - Allow arm weaponry to converge on the Arm crosshair.
Upper Arm actuator - Allow vertical deviation of the Arm crosshair from the Torso crosshair.
Lower Arm actuator - Allow horizontal deviation of the Arm crosshair from the Torso crosshair.
Hand actuator - Allow hand related actions to be performed.

Suggestion Three - Torso Mounted Weaponry Do Not Converge

I personally think this is a big balancing factor to the game and part of the reason why nobody aims on arms and everyone can just place the crosshair on a single location and alpha strike, having all damage hit that single location.

I suggest making all torso mounted weaponry only aim straight ahead, aiming in relation to the cockpit view. Basically, a straight like is drawn down the center of the player's perspective. All torso mounted weaponry fires straight ahead from the mech in relation to this line.

A good example is the Atlas. The two Center Torso Laser ports will fire straight ahead, not converging on the location on which it is aimed at, but instead will be aimed at the Torso crosshair, landing in relation to the weapons mounted on the mech. So the two Lasers will land below the Torso crosshair, one directly below (because the cockpit is actually out of the left eye, thus the left Center Torso laser will be directly below you) and the other below and slightly to the right. The Ballistic and Missile hardpoints will be aiming to the below/left and below/right of the Torso crosshair.

What this does is removes the ability to pin-point all weaponry mounted on a mech (unless it is all in the arms) to hit a single location. Thus, placing a larger emphasis on arm mounted weaponry (with intact Shoulder actuators). While alpha strikes will still be around, they will not be the single location devastating that they are now, but instead be the wild firing of multiple systems to place as much damage on the target as fast as possible, not worrying about where on the mech it hits.

And with the greater emphasis on allowing convergence on arms only, players might start choosing to destroy an arm first before taking out the Left/Right Torso, especially on mechs which mount a large amount of weaponry on those arms.

TLDR

Remove ability to fire multiple weapons out of the same weapon port at the same time.
Add arm actuator functionality.
Make torso weaponry not converge, but instead fire straight ahead.

I also want to add that weaponry mounted in arms which have space between them (Cataphract's right arm) will also only fire straight forward. Just the arms will converge to point toward the Arm crosshair.

Edited by Zyllos, 22 February 2013 - 10:46 AM.

[HRR Insanity]

Zerethon, on 22 February 2013 - 10:29 AM, said:

Allow me to put this bluntly.

IF THERE'S A BIG RED BUTTON, BY GOD I'M PUSHING IT TWICE.

There's already a balancing factor for alpha strikes, are you ready for this? SERIOUSLY ready?

Heat and cooldown

HOOOOOOOLY crap, how does everyone miss the most obvious thing? Yeah, 4 PPC's to the face hurts, but the mech that SHOT them has to wait not only a goodly period before the next shot, but it's WORSE if he overheats (Sitting duck syndrome) or misses (36-odd heat for nothing)

Cone of fire/false recoil systems are stupid in a big stompy mech game that already has a working better system in place.

Learn to deal or go away if you can't understand this concept.

Please explain how your solution solves the problem of multiple AC20s, multiple Guass, multiple AC2s, or any other weapon that is not largely heat limited.

Please also explain how to balance single weapons so they are useful, but not overpowered in groups when the grouped weapons do N*Damage where N is the number of weapons hitting the same spot on a 'Mech.

PS: You can't.

Edited by HRR Insanity, 22 February 2013 - 11:00 AM.

[Hatachi]

I've always thought they should of had a cone of fire that widens based on percentage of throttle and percentage of heat. It would make people use more than just 100 and 0 throttle and do more than keep your heat at just below dangerous.

[Zyllos]

Hatachi, on 22 February 2013 - 10:49 AM, said:

I've always thought they should of had a cone of fire that widens based on percentage of throttle and percentage of heat. It would make people use more than just 100 and 0 throttle and do more than keep your heat at just below dangerous.

See, originally, I like this idea. But will be a hard sell for PGI (they do not like randomization of aim). So thats why I suggested on leaving the weapons pointed straight ahead so that really only arms can converge weaponry, and that is only because the arms can point directly at a crosshair. The weapons mounted on the arms will still deviate a bit from the crosshair because of how they are mounted.

I think they just need to make the heat generated by moving quickly effect heatsink dissipation rates instead of adding to the environment heat. Thus, moving at full throttle effects your heatsinks by 25% and go down as based on your throttle goes down, linearly, down to 0% at 50% throttle.

Edited by Zyllos, 22 February 2013 - 11:04 AM.

[StalaggtIKE]

HRR Insanity, on 07 January 2013 - 05:12 PM, said:

On June 17, 2012, I posted a thread (http://mwomercs.com/...__fromsearch__1) stating that the Developer’s on-going attempts to balance weapons without some mechanism of weapon spread (cone of fire, convergence, etc) were doomed. And by extension, the game itself was likely doomed to suffer terrible weapon/armor balance...

*snippet*

I finally read this all the way through. Though I originally upposed it, I now recognize the logic. This is an ingenious fix. There was a similar setup in BF3. Admittedly I did not care for it there, the difference being you had only one primary weapon. Here you have access to several. I am afraid that the game has progressed too far along to have this implemented. It would require a shift in player's tactics and builds. As well as a lot of patience on our part. For the smoothest transaction, PGI would have to do the following all in one fell swoop:

• implement grouped weapon spread
  
• implement unique weapon spread per weapon
  
• half the armor values
  
• possibly readjust ammo, weapon damage values and critical damage.

This would eliminate several problems such as boating, diversity and trial mech inferiority. Boating would no longer be used for maximizing damage, but instead simply as a form of redundancy. Boating will become a lot less popular as pilots would prefer diversity. As more large maps are added to the map rotation, one would prefer to pilot a more diverse build thus feeling more at ease, despite which ever map is loaded. Trial mechs are typically built to accommodate several roles, kind of like a jack-of-all-trade. Given this type of build would lose to a specialist in its ideal battle, however, in our current system, they will always be greatly inferior to a premade build.

I can see why your suggestion would be very unpopular. It would require most of us to adjust our play-styles and rebuild a lot of our mechs. I for one am having a lot of fun, winning games with my brawling D-DC. Your suggestion would have me completing an overhaul on it. Truth is the game would survive whether the devs continue on their current route or choses yours. On the current path, it will require PGI to constantly change things around (new mechs, new maps and readjusting for weapon balancing) in order to keep the game from going stagnant. However, this becomes counter productive, as each new mech or weapon has the potential to send game balance askew.

Edited by StalaggtIKE, 22 February 2013 - 11:20 AM.

[Inyc]

Zerethon, on 22 February 2013 - 10:29 AM, said:

There's already a balancing factor for alpha strikes, are you ready for this? SERIOUSLY ready?

But you see, those don't balance anything. For one, if your alpha strike kills your opponent, then you have 0 care for heat and cooldown.

For two, very few builds don't allow you to alpha strike multiple times in a row. SRM builds give no ***** about heat, PPC stalkers can always get 2 shots of their 6 PPCs in a row, most of the time they can get 3. This will always be enough to kill their target. The problem isn't so much alpha strikes as the risk vs reward of the builds. In that they have very little risk for very high reward.

I mean compare it to someone who is using alternating weapons fire. That poor ***** is giving his opponent the opportunity to shoot back at him, while the boat builds don't. Its obvious which is best, right?

[Kaziganthi]

Without having read all 26 pages...has anyone brought up the Clan Targeting computer. Its primary function is weapon convergence. Now bercause we already have it in place on every single mech that uses direct fire weapons, this piece of equipment that made some of the clan mechs super deadly is now useless.

[Kommisar]

Doc Holliday, on 22 February 2013 - 09:45 AM, said:

No, they put it in to "simulate recoil". Which it doesn't. At all. And they know it. Hence the real purpose, which is to lower the skill ceiling. And it does do that, in spades. Catering to players with no skill is how it's done these days.

I do play shooters - older ones, that were done right. You would be correct that I never play newer CoD or Battlefield games, and crap like that. They all suck, every one. UT is still miles better than any of them. And if you want realistic weapons, there's a mod for UT called Tactical Ops that did modern weaponry way better back in Y2K than ANY other FPS has since. Why? Because it did recoil properly.

But all that aside, it's even more stupid to implement something like that for lasers in a mech game. Lasers have no recoil and no varying precision. They point at where you aim them, pure and simple. It's a beam of light FFS.

So again, I can assure you, if PGI is stupid enough to put something like that into MWO I'll quit for sure and never look back, and they won't even get a second chance.

As a professional engineer (no, really, I'm legally registered as such!) I have some serious issues here. If someone with a physics degree wants to jump in to back me up, great. You really don't need that sort of education; anyone with some high school physics can handle this; this is the internet.

Lasers would not necessarily fire in a perfectly straight line.

One. All of our maps are currently set in environments with an atmosphere. Now, these combat lasers are, theoretically, very powerful. Capable of "burning" through a lot of the effects. But they are also not immune.

Two. The laser is only as accurate as the manufactured parts and the assembly of those parts allows. That shrapnel make a nice micro-crack in your focusing lens? Been running hot for to long and it's caused some distortion in your alignment? Or maybe an O-ring is faulty and now you have some moisture trapped between the aperture and a lens.

Three. Mounting. Your weapons (laser or not) can only be as accurate as the mounting and sighting allow. I don't care how much love and care you put into a machine; it it is combat active, it is not going to up to factory spec and alignment. You'll lose that walking off the drop ship. Or the first time your armor eats an AC shot. Someone mentioned WWII fighters. Those things were constantly being maintained. Every time they landed, the mechanics would have to readjust and re-align them.

Lasers are tricky and can be fickle. Not a lot of room for slop at all.

As for Cone of Fire. They were never used to model recoil. They used recoil to model recoil. I can't speak for every game ever produced; but I did EXTENSIVE small arms modding for Forgotten Hope (Battlefield 1942 & 2) for our WAW tournament. They had all sorts of factors that went into their "cone"; largely controlled by movement and if you were standing, crouched or prone. Recoil was separate. I like a flavor of realism in my games. I'm not a realism absolutist by any means; but I like some grounding. Being able to UT style jump 400 feet, somersaulting through explosions at over 90 kph while putting a 1000 chaingun rounds through the same hole at a distance of 1000 meters is not something I care for in my games. I am guessing that by the popularity of movement restrictions to accuracy in FPS over the last 10 years, I'm not alone. It's a skill. Just not the skill I prefer to dominate my games.

I prefer a tactical shooter. Not old-skool counter-strike with mobs of bunny-hopping AWP armed players bouncing around.

[Doc Holliday]

Inyc, on 22 February 2013 - 10:19 AM, said:

Wouldn't having to land 4 pinpoint shots in a row from your 4 lasers require much more skill than just one shot with all your weapons?

Not really, the way chain-firing currently works. But that's beside the point, because as soon as you introduce a cone of fire you take away the potential for skill in firing the weapons, because no matter how skilled you are, you still won't be much more likely to hit than the next average joe.

Kommisar, on 22 February 2013 - 01:30 PM, said:

As for Cone of Fire. They were never used to model recoil. They used recoil to model recoil. I can't speak for every game ever produced; but I did EXTENSIVE small arms modding for Forgotten Hope (Battlefield 1942 & 2) for our WAW tournament. They had all sorts of factors that went into their "cone"; largely controlled by movement and if you were standing, crouched or prone. Recoil was separate. I like a flavor of realism in my games. I'm not a realism absolutist by any means; but I like some grounding. Being able to UT style jump 400 feet, somersaulting through explosions at over 90 kph while putting a 1000 chaingun rounds through the same hole at a distance of 1000 meters is not something I care for in my games. I am guessing that by the popularity of movement restrictions to accuracy in FPS over the last 10 years, I'm not alone. It's a skill. Just not the skill I prefer to dominate my games.

I prefer a tactical shooter. Not old-skool counter-strike with mobs of bunny-hopping AWP armed players bouncing around.

Yeah, whatever, NONE of that crap is anything remotely realistic. And if you think it is, you know nothing about how real guns work. Whatever their reasons for putting in that ridiculous cone of fire, it does lower the skill ceiling dramatically and it makes the game a joke, and if anything, more unrealistic than UT ever was. Real guns don't care if you're standing, crouched, prone, running or anything else. Real guns always shoot exactly where they're aimed. They never shoot in random directions (well, except cheap crappy snub-nosed pistols with very poor precision). Red Orchestra (mentioned above by someone else) is probably the best current FPS example of how to simulate guns properly. CoD and Battlefield series are a pathetic joke, and not remotely realistic.

But that's all beside the point. The point is that crap won't help MWO and I'll quit permanently if they put it in.

Edited by Doc Holliday, 22 February 2013 - 08:28 PM.

[Kaziganthi]

Doc Holliday, on 22 February 2013 - 08:26 PM, said:

Real guns don't care if you're standing, crouched, prone, running or anything else. Real guns always shoot exactly where they're aimed. They never shoot in random directions (well, except cheap crappy snub-nosed pistols with very poor precision).

Yes real guns shoot in a straight line if the barrel has no deformities, but the aiming of that weapon does matter if your standing, crouched, prone, running or anything else. Ask any person of the military persuasion, which position do they find aiming and actually hitting the precise spot they're aiming at.

Why do you think iron sights < scopes < laser sights (red dot). We use a targeting computer in MWO for weapons aiming, that tartgeting computer is currently the equivalent of the Clan Targeting Computer in its current form. The IS never had this technology, so neither should any of the current mechs we are piloting.

Edited by Kaziganthi, 22 February 2013 - 08:39 PM.

[Doc Holliday]

Kaziganthi, on 22 February 2013 - 08:38 PM, said:

Yes real guns shoot in a straight line if the barrel has no deformities, but the aiming of that weapon does matter if your standing, crouched, prone, running or anything else. Ask any person of the military persuasion, which position do they find aiming and actually hitting the precise spot they're aiming at.

So to properly simulate that in a shooter, you make it harder to aim depending on what you're doing. You don't make the gun shoot randomly in a cone of fire. But I don't need to ask anyone of the military persuasion, I've experience with real firearms myself.

Kaziganthi, on 22 February 2013 - 08:38 PM, said:

Why do you think iron sights < scopes < laser sights (red dot). We use a targeting computer in MWO for weapons aiming, that tartgeting computer is currently the equivalent of the Clan Targeting Computer in its current form. The IS never had this technology, so neither should any of the current mechs we are piloting.

I find it hard to believe a cone of fire would properly simulate the targeting computers the IS had. I've never played TT but I'd guess it probably has to due with convergence, not inaccuracy. So if this really is a problem that needs to be fixed (and I'm not at all convinced it is) then the proper solution would probably be as someone else suggested, to make players set convergence distance themselves.

[Roland]

Quote

So to properly simulate that in a shooter, you make it harder to aim depending on what you're doing. You don't make the gun shoot randomly in a cone of fire. But I don't need to ask anyone of the military persuasion, I've experience with real firearms myself.

Just out of curiosity, what experience do you have with firearms?
Because most folks who have done long range shooting would tell you that there's more to putting a round on target then simply pointing the gun at the target.

I mean, aside from various slight alterations caused by defects in the rounds and mechanical components of the firearm itself, there are all kinds of other factors such as atmospheric affects.

This is kind of moot though, as it's not really about necessarily trying to make the firearms "more real". It's more about an aspect of gameplay which you don't really see in most other shooters on the market.. which is, essentially, the ability to essentially combine a bunch of different weapons into a single super weapon.

I think that perhaps you've missed this aspect of the discussion, and why the suggestions are being made, and think that folks are suggesting just introducing randomness for the sake of randomness, with no thought given to actions taken by the pilot themselves.

Even in the suggestion of linking weapons spread to the number of weapons fired, it gives the pilot the ability to achieve pin point precision.. it just requires that he have the skill necessary to land multiple shots on the same panel, rather than just duct-taping a bunch of weapons together and pulling the trigger once.

[Kaziganthi]

Doc Holliday, on 22 February 2013 - 09:08 PM, said:

I find it hard to believe a cone of fire would properly simulate the targeting computers the IS had. I've never played TT but I'd guess it probably has to due with convergence, not inaccuracy. So if this really is a problem that needs to be fixed (and I'm not at all convinced it is) then the proper solution would probably be as someone else suggested, to make players set convergence distance themselves.

Okay lets go down that path...you've got GMPMG60's links on a platform that aprox 5 meters wide. For them to converge on the same point you'd have to pick a distance for that convergence. Anything less or greater than that distance would mean they don't all hit the same place. So lets set it at 400m, anything above or below would cause a spray effect and not maximise damage, wouldn't you agree?.

This convergence distance would have to be done in the mechlab prior to launching and could not be changed once you have launched, just like loadouts can't be changed. I think if this was done, you'd probably have more screams of fury, than what the OP is suggesting, because people would have to pick their perfect fighting range and stick to it.

A Guasscat set up for 1000m sniper shots would be completely useless at anything under 200m as all shots would go wide of the target, unless firing 1 weapon at a time and compensating for the calibration of the weapon. A laser boat set for brawling at 100-150m would similarly have problems on anything above that range. What would happen is, you'd see the rise of missile boats just to ensure you actually hit your target. And we all know how much people love missile boats in this game.

Edited by Kaziganthi, 22 February 2013 - 10:19 PM.