140 replies to this topic

[wolf74]

Cone of Fire.

The way I see the COF is for Each Weapon not as a whole. The Size of the End Cone I think should be about 4-6m radius at the CBT Long range Mark. So as the Target gets closer to you the Shots have a greater chance of hitting what your aiming for.
The Above Image is for a I.S. M-Laser & ER M-Laser.
if you could move the Mech Image up on down the cone you can see how the cone would look for firing a target at that range. you will see the Cone of Fire Area get some and closer to Pin Point, you can see how two weapons Cones of fire would Overlap.

As for the the Min Range a High arch from the fire point to the Min range point Might be the way togo for Mini-Range effect.

Edited by wolf74, 10 November 2011 - 06:51 PM.

[omegaclawe]

...this seems to have gotten a little out of hand since I left...

I did not say that a cone of fire would make the game unplayable. I just said that, implemented as most games do (pure RNG), it takes a large element of skill out of the game, which would make it a worse game than it would be otherwise, and lazy on the developer's part.

FPSes were pointed to as an example of Cones of fire not ruining a game. Let me point to this: Counter Strike 1.6 is far, far more popular than Counter Strike Source. Valve has admitted as much, and have taken steps to make Global Offensive more like 1.6. Chief among these was that Source contained a "true" RNG for determining things like Cone of Fire, which meant it was impossible for a player to predict where his shots would go. In 1.6, instead of an RNG, the bullets would follow a specific pattern, so an extremely skilled player could use this to place subsequent shots on the head/torso that would otherwise have missed. This meant, of course, that newbies could never really take on an expert alone. In Source, however, these skilled players noticed, rather quickly, that they only beat the noobs something like 60% of the time in solo engagements. Still in their favor, still statistically significant, but it had diminished to the point where being the expert wasn't as much of an advantage; everything was normalized.

All I am asking is, is in whatever method they use to make sure the accuracy isn't perfect (and it shouldn't be), that it can be predictable, and is based on battlefield factors, rather than RNG's or Patterns. This makes skill mean something more. Whether this is through recoil, the impacts of the mech's movements, crosswind, or even a schmogusboard of everything they can possibly come up with, it would be preferable to pure randomness.

...certainly better than World Of Tank's artillery where I have to wait, unmoving, for five seconds with a bead directly on my target to have even a slight chance of hitting him, even when stationary, and even then it's not a guarantee. :/

[mekabuser]

someone hasnt played mwll if you think there is a mw game with lights that arent usefull.

[TheRulesLawyer]

Seth, on 10 November 2011 - 04:20 PM, said:

Cones won't work because they don't distinguish between weapons with different ranges. With a cone, all weapons at 90 meters would be equally accurate. But that's supposed to be maximum range for a small laser and the range at which it is least accurate. However, at 90 meters a large laser is supposed to have the best accuracy it can get. You can try having different cones for each weapon that has a different range, but that can cause an extreme amount of clutter on your screen and end up being a distraction.

This only matters for group fire. Chain fire you can show the individual weapon. I actually consider this a useful opportunity to balance group fire. In group fire you would only see the worst aiming circle. Each weapon could have its own calculated circle still, you'd just be less certain exact where the edges of where it would go are. In range weapons could be indicated in the weapons list. Hopefully they'll use the extreme range rules as well in stead of making the weapons stop dead at a set range.

[Seth]

If I understand correctly and using the picture from above, here's what you would be looking at with a reticule that has separate circles for each weapons cone of fire. It starts to get cluttered when you have weapons with three different ranges. It would become worse when you start adding more. Why deal with ER Medium when it would add a whole new circle to get in the way of what you're looking at.



In this example, you have a Mech with weapons that cover 3 different ranges (minus the hatchet at 30). At 90m, you have three circles on your target and your red one will actually dwarf the other two as you move farther past its minimum range. It would accurately accuracy fall off as you move farther from your target, but it would be distracting and probably a turn off for most players.

TheRulesLawyer, on 10 November 2011 - 10:25 PM, said:

This only matters for group fire. Chain fire you can show the individual weapon. I actually consider this a useful opportunity to balance group fire. In group fire you would only see the worst aiming circle. Each weapon could have its own calculated circle still, you'd just be less certain exact where the edges of where it would go are. In range weapons could be indicated in the weapons list. Hopefully they'll use the extreme range rules as well in stead of making the weapons stop dead at a set range.

I'm still not sold on the idea that firing a weapon individually would be more accurate than firing two or more weapons.

[Amechwarrior]

Seth, on 10 November 2011 - 11:23 PM, said:

In this example, you have a Mech with weapons that cover 3 different ranges (minus the hatchet at 30). At 90m, you have three circles on your target and your red one will actually dwarf the other two as you move farther past its minimum range. It would accurately accuracy fall off as you move farther from your target, but it would be distracting and probably a turn off for most players.

Great job visualizing that. That is why I posted that the single reticle should simply represent all weapons max range cone, not its current cone at current engagement range. It just becomes a mess for 'mechs with multiple weapons that all have their own range brackets and min. range modifiers. It would favor single weapon boats for ease of use. Let the players learn that at 100m the PPC is most accurate and at 90m that accuracy starts to drop off due to minimum range.

[TheRulesLawyer]

Seth, on 10 November 2011 - 11:23 PM, said:

I'm still not sold on the idea that firing a weapon individually would be more accurate than firing two or more weapons.

I'm not suggesting that it would be less in this case. Just you'd only see the largest cone displayed. It'd give you a reason to group by range bracket. Doesn't hurt that it'd make super accurate alpha strikes a little harder. You'd still have the crosshairs at the center. Long range weapons would still have their own accuracy.

[UncleKulikov]

TheRulesLawyer, on 11 November 2011 - 10:13 AM, said:

I'm not suggesting that it would be less in this case. Just you'd only see the largest cone displayed. It'd give you a reason to group by range bracket. Doesn't hurt that it'd make super accurate alpha strikes a little harder. You'd still have the crosshairs at the center. Long range weapons would still have their own accuracy.

In a word, firing a single weapon should be more precise, not necessarily accurate.

[UncleKulikov]

Seth, on 10 November 2011 - 04:20 PM, said:

Drop the short, medium, and long range modifiers for weapons altogether to begin with.

So machine guns would be as accurate as a PPC? Or do you mean something different? Range differences between weapons is vital for the game's balance.

[Sirisian]

Seth, on 10 November 2011 - 11:23 PM, said:

I'm still not sold on the idea that firing a weapon individually would be more accurate than firing two or more weapons.

I think for balance it should be. That is if you choose to put a cannon and say a laser weapon one arm and fire them at the same time the accuracy modifier will be added to both cone's causing the reticule for the laser weapon that's normally deadly accurate to increase.


Still a bit confused about the whole skill argument against COF. If battletech had a shotgun (don't really know the lore) you wouldn't want it to be 100% accurate for all the pellets. You'd give it a COF that's large. The skill would be in using that weapon at close range and not firing it at far ranges where few of the pellets would hit.

Same goes for machine guns. I mentioned this in another thread, but if I put dual machine guns on a mech's arm and begin firing them in a group I would expect the CoF for both weapon's accuracy to go up faster than if I had 1 machine gun on each arm. That is weapons connected to the same arm share in the recoil. This gives players choices on how they want to configure their mech. So if someone wants to go for range they'd put one on each arm for far range rather than putting them both on the same arm and having to burst fire to let the COF go down for hitting long range targets.

Also while it's confusing to some people I prefer the reticule circle to be broken up for each component and weapon on the mech so I can see the individual accuracy of each weapon at all times and their current modifiers.

Edited by Sirisian, 11 November 2011 - 01:46 PM.

[Creel]

Sirisian, on 11 November 2011 - 01:45 PM, said:

I think for balance it should be. That is if you choose to put a cannon and say a laser weapon one arm and fire them at the same time the accuracy modifier will be added to both cone's causing the reticule for the laser weapon that's normally deadly accurate to increase.


Still a bit confused about the whole skill argument against COF. If battletech had a shotgun (don't really know the lore) you wouldn't want it to be 100% accurate for all the pellets. You'd give it a COF that's large. The skill would be in using that weapon at close range and not firing it at far ranges where few of the pellets would hit.

Same goes for machine guns. I mentioned this in another thread, but if I put dual machine guns on a mech's arm and begin firing them in a group I would expect the CoF for both weapon's accuracy to go up faster than if I had 1 machine gun on each arm. That is weapons connected to the same arm share in the recoil. This gives players choices on how they want to configure their mech. So if someone wants to go for range they'd put one on each arm for far range rather than putting them both on the same arm and having to burst fire to let the COF go down for hitting long range targets.

Also while it's confusing to some people I prefer the reticule circle to be broken up for each component and weapon on the mech so I can see the individual accuracy of each weapon at all times and their current modifiers.

I'm for this. I've stated before that I am far from fearful of information overload.

[Devlin Stone]

Pht, on 09 November 2011 - 07:00 PM, said:

Which amounts to some way of indicating where the individual weapons are pointing at, correct?

If it is, this is still information overload; and the gameplay/fun return is minimal.

It amounts to an indicator for each hardpoint, if not each weapon. You could have the option of hiding hardpoint indicators for unselected weapon groups, if you think it would clutter otherwise.
One of the major problems with MechWarrior 4 was the non-existance of weapons tracking. You could knock an Adder onto it's side, and it would still fire PPC's out of the side of it's barrels at you. Adding weapon tracking as I have described would also account for minimum range penalties on larger weapons.

Eg : A small mech is running around a heavy mech. As the light mech's distance from the heavy mech increases, the arc around the heavy mech the light mech covers in a given amount of time decreases, even if it's speed remains the same.

Pht, on 09 November 2011 - 07:00 PM, said:

I suppose they could do that, but I'd rather see the ability to calculate for each weapon that fires - that way, they have an easy way to dump in the penetrating hits and other performance factors directly from the parent system in a way that would "fit" the video game implementation quite well.

Weapon impacts would, by definition of "fired in parallel", be distinct between weapons assigned to a hardpoint. You would still have critical rolls for each weapon impact, so that wouldn't be an issue.

As for people who want a 'cone of fire' system, please realize that we are discussing weapon convergence because the way it has been implemented in the past gives clusters of light weapons an advantage in PRECISION untrue to the source material. The original topic of the thread was NOT how to deal with ACCURACY modifiers for skill, weapon recoil, or movement. Even if it was, lasers are essentially recoil-less, and extremely focused weapons by definition. A randomized spread of weapons fire not only looks ludicrous with multiple weapons, it has no advantages as a solution to the actual problem over a defined separation of parallel weapons fire per weapon hardpoint.

Sirisian, on 11 November 2011 - 01:45 PM, said:

Still a bit confused about the whole skill argument against COF. If battletech had a shotgun (don't really know the lore) you wouldn't want it to be 100% accurate for all the pellets.

http://www.sarna.net...LB-X_Autocannon

No one is saying weapons that the munitions from cluster fire weapons like the LBX shouldn't spread. I AM saying that a group of individual small weapons should have a realistic pattern of fire. See -

VYCanis, on 11 November 2011 - 06:39 AM, said:

allow me to give a visual example as to why CoF looks bad

http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/4457/coneoffire.jpg

cause that is exactly what it will look like if you have CoF in effect. I don't care if you just did a 1080' while firing jumpjets and an atlas is now shaking you like a loud baby. Your weapons should not be doing that ever.

Edited by Devlin Stone, 11 November 2011 - 03:35 PM.

[Seth]

UncleKulikov, on 11 November 2011 - 12:47 PM, said:

So machine guns would be as accurate as a PPC? Or do you mean something different? Range differences between weapons is vital for the game's balance.

In the TT game, weapons have three different range modifiers (4 if you include a weapons extreme range limit). The machine gun for example has a range of 90m. However, 61m to 90m is considered its long range and in the TT game, you would suffer a +4 to hit modifier for being at the edge of the weapons range. 31 to 60m is considered its medium range and has a +2 to hit modifier, and 0 to 30m is its short range and suffers no modifier penalty. This gets even more complicated with weapons that have a minimum range like the PPC. Its minimum range is 90 meters. For every 30m in range that you subtract from that, you suffer a +1 to hit modifier. That's why in my picture above, the LRMs cone actually got bigger the closer it was to the firing mech (LRMs have a minimum range of 210m). That is what I was referring to when I said simply drop the range modifiers and make a machine gun as accurate as is can get out to 90m. That way you can eliminate the multiple circles representing the cones for each separate weapon on your screen. You'll be left with a single reticule that will get smaller as your targeting computer comes up with its best firing solution. Any weapon with the range to hit your target will have their best chance to hit. That doesn't mean that every weapon will hit. My idea eliminates the cone altogether and instead give you a probability for each weapon to hit. That can range from 100% for two mechs standing 30m from each other out to 5% for two mechs 600m from each other, moving, jumping, and using cover. If you hold your fire until you have a solid gold reticule, you might increase that 5% chance to hit to 16% (I'm just throwing numbers out there btw). If you want to increase your chance to hit that other guy, you need slow down, cool off, and ideally park yourself behind some cover. That's no different from the TT game where you want to position your mech so that it has cover from a hill, trees, or a building. I would like to preserve the minimum range for weapons though, so a weapon within its minimum range can have a separate chance to hit number next to its name.

Edited by Seth, 11 November 2011 - 03:28 PM.

[MaddMaxx]

Question 1

Do all Weapon hard points have articulation? Can any Beam weapon be provided a convergence point? If not one assumes a straight line trajectory right? Arms are an obvious articulated converge-able weapons hard point/mount.

Question 2

Can Mech's have beam weapons mounted in the Legs? If so, and they were added to a Firing Group, and if said Mech is moving in one direction, while Torso twisted 90 left or right, would these weapons be eligible to fire?

Question 3

Can a Mech running straight ahead fire BOTH arm mounted weapons when not Torso twisted? Assuming the Pilot has his/her head turned to find the target do both arms get the same same accuracy rating? If not, why not?

Seeing as it is a game but many hope it is quite "Simmy" having any of the above scenarios not followed, simply because it is a game, would kill the immersion as I see it.

Does anyone see any issues with that kind of reality being followed because the whole I select all my weapons and they all magically converge at some pin ***** of a location would have a similar effect to immersion for me?

[Amechwarrior]

1. Off the top of my head I think there is a fluff excuse that all weapons have a minimum amount of articulation, torso weapons can slightly swivel and adjust(for stabilization and targeting). However, right now, I have no sources to back that up and running off my memory.

2. Yes you can mount weapons on legs, and they will always fire in the front arc, not effected by torso twisting. TT rules have rules for firing at multiple targets, in multiple arcs. So a 'mech like a Quickdraw could engage targets in any arc as it has front, arm and rear mounted weapons. Yes, those weapons are eligible to fire, but only at a target in the respective arc. Multi-target firing is much harder and not exactly a smart thing for the average TT pilot with a skill of 4/5.

3.


Battlemechs have arcs of fire. The black spot is the hex the 'mech is standing on, we are looking down at a standing 'mech that is facing up, to the top. The red zone is the front arc, all front mounted torso(and leg) weapons can fire at targets in the red zone. Both arms can also fire to the front, but also have an expanded arc, the orange zones are the additional areas the arms can normally fire into, left arm to left orange, right to right respectively. The yellow zone is the rear arc. Real mounted torso weapons (can legs rear mount?) fire into this zone.

Torso twisting: A 'mech can rotate this chart, one hex to the left or right. This is the limit of the torso twist, if it twisted to the right, you would see the front arcs right side limit is where the right arms arc is in the image above, the right arms new right limit, is now facing behind the 'mech, as its legs are still pointing up and he has not moved.

Special Case: Arm flipping, some 'mechs that lack hand and lower arm accuators like the Rifleman can take the arms and flip them backwards into the yellow zone. This can be done in addition to torso twisting, but a 'mech cannot flip and unflip arms in the same round.

Now that we have this base knowledge of the arcs, to answer the exact situation, you are wondering about:

Yes, if he is running forward, not torso twisted he could fire the right arm weapons to the right side, or the left arm weapons to the left side, but not both arms to the same side. The pilot could torso twist to bring both arms to bear on one side. This has been all off the top of my head and I may have gotten something wrong. Also I think I remember something about for multi-targeting the secondary targets MUST be in the front arc, which would not allow a mech to fire into both the left arm only arc and the right only arc at the same round. But I do not remember clearly enough on that. Anybody got a Total Warfare laying near by?

[Creel]

Amechwarrior, on 11 November 2011 - 05:47 PM, said:

admirably clear firing arcs explanation

This is one of the things that MW3 did pretty well.

[Omar Thirds]

Look at how most first person shooters handle this: accuracy depends on the weapon, how fast you're running, if you take the time to aim your weapon, and if you've recently fired or not. Overpowered Alpha strikes in modern FPSs are usually the rare sniper who has figured a way around attempts to nerf his rifle of choice in close combat.

[Pht]

Creel, on 10 November 2011 - 08:02 AM, said:

Information overload should be a goal to which we aspire.

Actually, BattleMechs are built to be as simple as possible to pilot, because there's *so* much information that no single pilot could handle a mech. Information overload is antithetical to 'Mech simulation.

Zyllos, on 10 November 2011 - 01:48 PM, said:

I still think a cone of fire is best. The cones diameter will always be the same no matter the distance.

... and if it stays the same shape, your misses will be nonsensical and counter-intuitive.

Let's say you're shooting at a fast-moving mech going left to right - you aim right at the mech with, say, six medium lasers, but because it moves so quickly, your weapons (all similar in type and travel speed) miss ... randomly. They can miss high, low, in front, and behind.

In the lore and in reality, lateral targets are usually missed ... laterally... sometimes in front of the target, most of the time, behind.

So than you have to take the cones and change the shape of them given the behaviors of the target 'Mech.

You also have to change the volume of the cones to simulate the effects that overheating has on your 'Mechs ability to target - and also to account for damage to your 'Mech.

You also wind up having to have a cone for each and every weapon...


It's just a nasty mess for no real returns in gameplay or simulation of what it's like to pilot a 'Mech.

[Pht]

Omar Thirds, on 12 November 2011 - 06:02 PM, said:

Look at how most first person shooters handle this: accuracy depends on the weapon, how fast you're running, if you take the time to aim your weapon, and if you've recently fired or not. Overpowered Alpha strikes in modern FPSs are usually the rare sniper who has figured a way around attempts to nerf his rifle of choice in close combat.

MW isn't an fps.

It's a first person armored combat unit simulator.

[GreenHell]

It would appear that we have gone back to the Cone of Fire argument...

I'll agree that CoF isn't a bad thing, but I wonder if it has a place in a mechwarrior game.
That will be up to the devs in the end, so don't be too disapointed if they choose a different style.