12 replies to this topic

[Phaesphoros]

Two suggestions about how speed is displayed:


1. Own mech's speed
It's currently displayed as a bar (0-100% and reverse) plus a value in kph, that is, km/h. As far as I'm concerned, km/h is a good unit to display cruising speed, e.g. how far will you will travel in some hours. But the MWO fights are limited to 15 min = 1/4 h, and the map size is some kilometres at max.

During battle, speed in m/s is much more useful IMHO. Every distance (I know of) in MWO is given in metres (or meters, if you like ), like the distance to what's under your crosshair, the distance to other mechs, weapon ranges, ECM range. And every duration (but the battle duration) is given in seconds, like weapon cooldown / reload, JJ fuel, PPC effect on ECM.

With a m/s speed value, you could far easier tell how long it would take for you to get somewhere (e.g. enemy mech) or to get out of a weapon range. Example: You're in a light mech and stumble upon a STK packed with streaks. As a good light pilot, you know streaks max range is 270 m. Your speed is 40 m/s (about 150 kph), so you could get out of range in about 7 s. As a really good light pilot, you know that SSRM2 cooldown is 3.5 s, so the STK can shoot 2 volleys of SSRM2 until you're out of range.

To get m/s from kph, you have to divide by 3.6 (60*60=3600 seconds in an hour, 1000 metres in a kilo metre). That's not what I'd like to do while focusing on piloting the mech.

Edit 1&4: I've changed the suggestion from "use m/s instead of kph" to "introduce a toggle for m/s instead of kph, default = kph" (like arm lock / throttle decay)
Edit 3: I've edited the question title slightly ("add toggle"instead of "use instead of"). I think that's ok as it's a weaker suggestion.


Edit2: forget about the second suggestion. It should have been separated.
2. Other mech's speed
We currently get only the distance to other mechs in the HUD. But when you can target them, you know their direction relative to your mech and their distance relative to your mech (and you know your own speed relative to ground). So it's possible to determine their position and therefore their speed from these two values.

I think it would be very useful to know if you're fast enough to escape a mech or not, see the above example.

Edited by Phaesphoros, 01 April 2013 - 04:23 AM.

[ICEFANG13]

M/S, yes, that's something I calculate for my mechs to get an idea if I will make it or not.

Seeing speed no, at least not immediately, maybe if you had BAP or another thing, it could show you more detailed info, maybe even engine, but not just added on.

[Deathlike]

Personally, I don't think this is exactly practical or the most useful. Most of this should be picked up through tactical awareness and experience.

Besides, it would probably indirectly help "unwanted and unethical tools".

[Phaesphoros]

Deathlike, on 31 March 2013 - 09:23 AM, said:

Personally, I don't think this is exactly practical or the most useful. Most of this should be picked up through tactical awareness and experience.

Besides, it would probably indirectly help "unwanted and unethical tools".

Could you elaborate on this? I don't quite get 1) what you're referring to and 2) help (black-hat) h4cking? in which way?

Edited by Phaesphoros, 31 March 2013 - 11:01 AM.

[Deathlike]

For the "hack" component, it would probably make it easier to calculate the trajectory for a perfect shot to land (it would actually get worse with the state rewind component for projectiles). It shouldn't be that complicated in theory.

For the experience point... it isn't that hard to tell how fast a mech is going based on loadout (stock makes it dreadfully obvious), but moreso on how it handles at the top speeds. It is much easier obviously if you pilot the mech yourself with the various engines (usually a Jenner or a Raven) to get an idea of how fast a mech goes. This and a good understanding of adding the engine as the final step in the mechlab would be a lot more practical than actually being able to "clock your teammate's/enemy's speed".

Simply put... you know fast when you see it.

Also, changing the "metrics" (or the value/measurement) which I believe you are advocating of the current speed is... meh. It's been rather common to use kph in every MW that I've played, so I don't think changing it would do much.

Edited by Deathlike, 31 March 2013 - 01:20 PM.

[DeadlyNerd]

I don't like m/s as it's not mainstream but I can see how it would be useful to determine how fast someone would get to a spot on the map.

Seeing other mech speeds? It's kind of a known fact that something the size of a banana can determine the speed of an object.
Then again, if we did know enemy mech speeds it would make it too easy to decide whether to chase or let go.

[Phaesphoros]

Deathlike, on 31 March 2013 - 01:16 PM, said:

For the "hack" component, it would probably make it easier to calculate the trajectory for a perfect shot to land (it would actually get worse with the state rewind component for projectiles). It shouldn't be that complicated in theory.

Though I don't know very well the ways hacker use to gather information from games, I'd rather guess they're reading the info from RAM, not parsing any visual information. As all mechs' positions already have to be passed to the MWO client in order to draw them, you can get the speed info very easily as I said. Or you use the direction and distance which are already displayed in the HUD. If you can get the position of a mech, you can also get the speed of that mech, speed = (current position - last position) / time passed.
You won't even get much of a prediction where the mech will be next, as the server is constantly relaying the other pilot's input which also leads to the warping effect (there's already a prediction involved in the movement code AFAIK).

In addition to that, the displayed speed info could easily be calculated by the client. This would add no new information at all for any hacker.

Deathlike, on 31 March 2013 - 01:16 PM, said:

For the experience point... it isn't that hard to tell how fast a mech is going based on loadout (stock makes it dreadfully obvious), but moreso on how it handles at the top speeds.

Yes, it would take out some need for experience -- or to put it another way, it would simplify the task. But IMHO it's not easy to tell with customized loadout, even if you've piloted the mech before. For lights, you'll see only very few that don't use max speed; but mediums, heavies and assaults can trade speed vs firepower and you don't know whether they have speed tweak or not (or XL or not, sometimes hard to tell).

Deathlike, on 31 March 2013 - 01:16 PM, said:

Simply put... you know fast when you see it.

Right, but you get all of the other info even if you're not in LOS (via info sharing if a team mate target the mech).

Deathlike, on 31 March 2013 - 01:16 PM, said:

Also, changing the "metrics" (or the value/measurement) which I believe you are advocating of the current speed is... meh. It's been rather common to use kph in every MW that I've played, so I don't think changing it would do much.

Yes, I know it's rather common, as it's very common in RL vehicles. But those don't engage in brawls and (cars, mostly) are used to cover large distances (not just 2 km).
Btw I don't want to change the measurement or metrics, just the unit - like mph vs kph. I agree kph is the more known unit for speed, but is it the more useful? I mean, is it useful you can compare the speed of a mech to the speed of your car?
By introducing a toggle, you'd be able to get the comparison between MWO and the previous MW titles (default = kph).

DeadlyNerd, on 31 March 2013 - 01:47 PM, said:

I don't like m/s as it's not mainstream but I can see how it would be useful to determine how fast someone would get to a spot on the map.

In engineering and physics, m/s is very common as it's a SI unit (a widespread unit system with very simple relations between different units like 1 N = 1 kg*m/s^2). But this is not a very good argument considering the BattleTech physics

Edited by Phaesphoros, 31 March 2013 - 02:19 PM.

[Zyllos]

1.00 kph = 0.278 m/s

Here are some speeds for reference:

48.5 kph = 13.5 m/s

64.8 kph = 18.0 m/s

90.8 kph = 25.2 m/s

109.2 kph = 30.3 m/s

152.0 kph = 42.2 m/s

Edited by Zyllos, 31 March 2013 - 02:20 PM.

[Sable Dove]

Really the only thing it's that useful for is as a relative term, as in, which mech is faster.
Using smaller units (km/h) (and yes, it is smaller, despite km and h being larger than m and s, respectively) allows for greater precision in determining just how much the difference is.

[Phaesphoros]

Sable Dove, on 31 March 2013 - 02:29 PM, said:

Really the only thing it's that useful for is as a relative term, as in, which mech is faster.

Sry, what are you referring to? km/h or m/s? Or speed in general?

Sable Dove, on 31 March 2013 - 02:29 PM, said:

Using smaller units (km/h) (and yes, it is smaller, despite km and h being larger than m and s, respectively) allows for greater precision in determining just how much the difference is.

Unless you introduce the decimal places. Oh wait, we currently do that already. But basically, I'd agree km/h is "finer grained" than m/s. As Zyllos correctly stated, m/s speed for mechs would go from about 15 to 40 m/s (50-150 kph). But 15.0-40.0 m/s is even finer grained than 0-100 %.

Edited by Phaesphoros, 31 March 2013 - 02:51 PM.

[Sable Dove]

Phaesphoros, on 31 March 2013 - 02:44 PM, said:

Sry, what are you referring to? km/h or m/s? Or speed in general?


Unless you introduce the decimal places. Oh wait, we currently do that already. But basically, I'd agree km/h is "finer grained" than m/s. As Zyllos correctly stated, m/s speed for mechs would go from about 15 to 40 m/s (50-150 kph). But 15.0-40.0 m/s is even finer grained than 0-100 %.

Speed in general, and I don't think having m/s in addition is bad, but I'd rather they put the effort into more important aspects of the game.

[Phaesphoros]

Sable Dove, on 31 March 2013 - 02:56 PM, said:

Speed in general, and I don't think having m/s in addition is bad, but I'd rather they put the effort into more important aspects of the game.

Currently, I also do not make much use of the displayed speed value (too lazy / busy to convert ), but I guess / hope that could change with m/s. Also, it shouldn't be much effort to introduce this, though I'd basically agree with you again that there are more important features. But as features are not developed sequentially (not all of them), one of the devs could just spend half an hour (at max) to get it into the next scheduled testing cycle.

Edited by Phaesphoros, 31 March 2013 - 05:12 PM.

[Corvus Antaka]

hmmm meters per second is a good idea, but people know KPH, and changing it will most likely just lead to tons of confusion