141 replies to this topic

[El Bandito]

One thing I love as much as playing Mechwarrior games is reading classic Battle Tech novels. From them I got this idea to change the current stale meta of long range sniping. It is a long post so please bear with me and finish reading my post before you vote/comment.


First, read the following parts I specifically took from the BT novel "End Game".

"The khaki-painted BattleMech was scarred along its right side from earlier damage. Careful of the buildings behind the Cestus, Pierce worked to lock his targeting computer over the wounded flank.
The targeting crosshairs burned a deep golden hue, and he pulled into the trigger. Both of his rotary cannon spat out several hundred rounds, the slugs tipped with depleted uranium for 'Mech-stopping power."

"Pierce's targeting computer couldn't grab an angle on the Cestus's already-damaged side, and his crosshairs flashed the alternating gold and black of partial lock."

"The hard-hammering blows left Peter's ears ringing as he dragged his own crosshairs over the wispy gray cloud and searched for the Viking. The reticle changed from red to a flashing gold, and then burned steadily as his targeting system found a solid lock. Peter braced the Fafnir forward, leaning into the heavy recoil as each of his gauss rifles spat out a hypersonic mass."

"Tancred knew the Nightstar and the kind of hurt it was capable of dishing out among other 'Mechs. He swallowed dryly, facing his old ride, then toggled in his large laser with his rotary autocannons. His crosshairs burned a deep gold as the Templar's targeting computer grabbed a hard lock, and Tancred drilled a good measure of scarlet energy and hot metal into the Nightstar's chest."


Basically the parts I selected all talk about novel's characters trying to lock on to the enemy with direct fire weapons such as Rotary AC, Gauss Rifle, and Lasers. That's right, to make an accurate shot they need to wait for a solid lock using direct fire weapons. (not even guaranteed then).

Why not use the novel's idea of targeting in MWO to address pin-point shooting with direct fire weapons (non-missile) from 1000 meters away? With some tweaks?

Suppose every mechs' targeting computer--being Inner Sphere junk--can only give you 100% accurate shots with ballistics and lasers/PPCs within 400 meters (actual distance is subject to change--it can be 500 or 600 depending on balance). To shoot accurately over 400 meters you will need to lock on to the enemy and hold your targeting reticule for 0.5-2 seconds (also subject to change) depending on how far the enemy is. Further away the enemy is, longer you will have to keep you cross hair over the enemy before it achieves hard lock.
Once a hard-lock is achieved, the cursor will change color and/or give you a warning sound (or have some different animation), and the direct fire weapon will hit the exact spot when fired.

You can still immediately fire (ie, without hard lock) any direct fire weapons if you choose to, but it will only hit targets accurately up to 400 meters. More than 400 meters and without a hard lock, the shot will not go straight forward, instead it will shoot at slight angle (the path of the shot is random within certain limit). How wide the shot will go will depend on the distance. For example, if the enemy is standing at 600 meters, your shot without hard lock will most likely still hit the enemy but might not hit the section you targeted. If the enemy is over 1000 meters your shot will probably completely miss him even if he is standing still, without hard lock.

edited: Unlike Missiles, direct fire hard-lock will have 1 second fade time if the enemy move out of your reticule zone. This is enough time for you to make an accurate leading shot over 400 meters.

In regards to leading shots: Without a hard lock, the shot will not be 100% accurate. With hard lock, you can accurately lead the target.


To repeat for clarification--In order to accurately shoot a target over 400 meters (did I mention that it is subject to change?)...

1. You must have a lock onto the enemy. Your allies can spot for you to achieve such lock if the enemy is further away from your max targeting range.

2. After you lock onto the enemy you must keep the cross hair on the target for 0.5-2 seconds (subject to change) depending on the distance. Longer the distance, longer the lock time.

Reminder: You can still shoot your guns without hard lock but over 400 meters its accuracy will not be guaranteed and it gets worse as the bullet/laser/PPC travels further.


I believe with these changes, snipers and poptarts will now have to expose themselves longer for retaliatory fire and lights/mediums will have much better survival rate crossing the field.

With such drastic change comes pros and cons. I do not yet know the all specifics about them since I just wrote this thread but IMO:

Biggest con--Introducing RNG, or luck in this game--but you can control it. Your shots might still hit the moving enemy at long distances even without lock depending on the random path of the shot. Or you might completely miss a target that is traveling around 600 meters without hard lock. Lore wise, it is correct though.

Biggest pro--Making the game feel more Battle Tech, less common FPS.


Discuss away, ask questions and vote. Thanks.

Edited by El Bandito, 14 July 2013 - 12:55 AM.

[Thundercles]

Interesting concept, not sure how it would pan out in practice though.

How would you keep lock on something at the same time as leading it, for example?

As a test, perhaps weapon convergence could be based on this lock? This would simulate the inaccuracy, but more importantly, would make the 'pinpoint sniper alpha' harder to achieve while not messing with chainfire as much. No lock, no convergence (You can still fire your weapons with their default 'spread' based on their locations on the mech though.) Lock, you get convergence as it currently is.

Just an idea - not even saying its a good one. Just tossing it into the ring.

[Davers]

I am assuming ECM would disrupt the lock in the same manner it does LRMs/Streaks?

[El Bandito]

Davers, on 01 May 2013 - 12:00 PM, said:

I am assuming ECM would disrupt the lock in the same manner it does LRMs/Streaks?

ECM should increase the lock time but should not **** block the hard-lock like missiles. We don't want the repeat of ECM Warrior: Online here.

Thundercles, on 01 May 2013 - 11:59 AM, said:

Interesting concept, not sure how it would pan out in practice though. How would you keep lock on something at the same time as leading it, for example? As a test, perhaps weapon convergence could be based on this lock? This would simulate the inaccuracy, but more importantly, would make the 'pinpoint sniper alpha' harder to achieve while not messing with chainfire as much. No lock, no convergence (You can still fire your weapons with their default 'spread' based on their locations on the mech though.) Lock, you get convergence as it currently is. Just an idea - not even saying its a good one. Just tossing it into the ring.

Yes, weapon convergence can also be implemented using this lock model. I am also just throwing out ideas here.
Only problem with the convergence model is that people will simply macro their chain-fire.

Edited by El Bandito, 01 May 2013 - 12:06 PM.

[Asmudius Heng]

Yes, i agree, some element of randomness is acceptable in a game like this as long as that randomness can be negated by skill, careul aiming and piloting etc. Waiting for a lock to gain greater convergeance is a fine idea to me. Different weapons might need different lock speed as well so brawling weapns can be snap shot more and snipers at long range need to be more careful.

It also means you can have modules to help with this giving players another thing to grind towards.

However it will never happen. PGI have flatly stated they do not like any randomness in thier game at all ever even though it would be a much better addition to the game because it is controlled and requires skill to negate. Either it is too hard for them to add in now, or they never even considered it which would be a damned shame.

It is part of the lore, the IP they are using, it is also key mechanic from the mathematical balance of the TT game that if removed breaks the system when they implement all the other parts.

Anyway - its a dead topic PGI will never do it much to thier discredit,

[Renthrak]

Similar to an existing poll:

http://mwomercs.com/...out-randomness/

[El Bandito]

Asmudius Heng, on 01 May 2013 - 04:17 PM, said:

Yes, i agree, some element of randomness is acceptable in a game like this as long as that randomness can be negated by skill, careul aiming and piloting etc. Waiting for a lock to gain greater convergeance is a fine idea to me. Different weapons might need different lock speed as well so brawling weapns can be snap shot more and snipers at long range need to be more careful. It also means you can have modules to help with this giving players another thing to grind towards. However it will never happen. PGI have flatly stated they do not like any randomness in thier game at all ever even though it would be a much better addition to the game because it is controlled and requires skill to negate. Either it is too hard for them to add in now, or they never even considered it which would be a damned shame. It is part of the lore, the IP they are using, it is also key mechanic from the mathematical balance of the TT game that if removed breaks the system when they implement all the other parts. Anyway - its a dead topic PGI will never do it much to thier discredit,

I am gonna e-mail them my idea anyway. If they don't take it, oh well.

[Surtr]

YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYES

I have always loved this idea. You can see it implemented in the indie Blender Battletech (free to download)

Unfortunately I made repeated posts with virtually this same idea during early CB, and never got any sort of response or discussion. It would make the game awesome, different, and VERY btech. However the QQ rage on the forums among the l337 player base would be too much for pgi to handle. Thanks to games like COD, gamers can't handle randomization any more. It all comes down to hand holding and point & click skills most of the time.

[El Bandito]

Surtr, on 02 May 2013 - 10:40 AM, said:

YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYES I have always loved this idea. You can see it implemented in the indie Blender Battletech (free to download) Unfortunately I made repeated posts with virtually this same idea during early CB, and never got any sort of response or discussion. It would make the game awesome, different, and VERY btech. However the QQ rage on the forums among the l337 player base would be too much for pgi to handle. Thanks to games like COD, gamers can't handle randomization any more. It all comes down to hand holding and point & click skills most of the time.

Neat game.

[Texugo87]

Interesting idea, I would make one suggestions.

Instead of use of RNG/cone of fire type inaccuracies, why not slow down convergence? You would have to hold your crosshairs on target longer to get pinpoint (or near pinpoint, could also introduce a max convergence over a certain range). Couple that with a visual indicator of convergence (crosshair colour, or 2 dots that track in from the outside of the reticle to the inside). I would use an inverse log scale for the convergence so quick and dirty shots are possible easily, put pinpoint takes longer (.5 seconds for 50% convergence correction, 1 second for 75%, 1.5 second for 87.5%, etc for example).

One thing the devs haven't adequately addressed is there are plenty of NON RANDOM methods to spread damage. Perfectly repeatable, consistent methods that can be compensated for by skill and planning. This raises the skill threshold of the game, not lowers it like truly random based methods would.

Exception to the above: I wouldn't mind seeing different weapons having different inherent accuracy using a tight "cone of fire" method. With the potential introduction of "varients" or different manuafactures/models of weapons I think this could be an interesting and realistic dynamic. Obviously lasers would have extremely high inherent accuracy.

[Lostdragon]

To solve the problem of leading, just let the mech do it like in lore. You keep the crosshair where you want the shot to go and the mech leads as appropriate. This would allow the concept of requiring you to stay on target to maintain lock to work and it still requires a lot of skill to keep the crosshair where it needs to be.

I don't think they will ever do this though, they seem to be going in a different direction.

[Prezimonto]

I was suggesting this a long time ago. Any direct fire weapon should have a small time to perfect convergence. This would mimic the scope-in time seen in most fps games. At short ranges you wouldn't miss a mech (the spread would be small) but you also wouldn't have pin-point alpha without a small delay. At long ranges you would likely only hit with a portion of an alpha, unless you wait. You can model this without RNG based on convergence, perserving the dev's meta of wanting a skill based game.

[Ishisaru]

cjmurphy87, on 07 May 2013 - 05:27 AM, said:

One thing the devs haven't adequately addressed is there are plenty of NON RANDOM methods to spread damage. Perfectly repeatable, consistent methods that can be compensated for by skill and planning. This raises the skill threshold of the game, not lowers it like truly random based methods would.

Well said.

[Echo6]

Voted "worth it", but it'll never happen.

[F lan Ker]

S!

Started reading the novels as well lately. In all of them hitting targets far away was more luck as in all of the novels the same thing appears over and over: targeting computer being so dated that long range shots were mostly waste of ammo. Looks like ranges of 400-600m being maximum. And as someone pointed out it took a while for the weapons to converge on desired target as the Targeting Computer was not that sophisticated.

Other things could include incrementally increasing heat. Again in the novels it says that Mechs heated up during combat and movement to a point that MechWarriors were in danger of cooking inside them. Sure not BT or TT, but interesting stuff. Heat build up over time.

There is a lot more you can get from the books how the MechWarriors had to juggle and manage their Mechs so they could fight harder and longer etc. Again fluff info, but if you look at the ideas and points there they make sense.

[Belorion]

Isn't Endgame during the fedcom civil war?

[MechWarrior849305]

Can't say what would feel lights about hard locked gausses on them. Yet I support idea, ever since shortening range for sniper play will be also in favour of brawler game.

[Bishop Steiner]

personally, I would rather just add a minor amount of slop to the targeting, not enough to be terribly noticeable out to say 500 meters, but a slightly widening cone, where at 1000 meters people start to shoot the way militaries teach around the globe... CENTER MASS to guarantee a hit, even if the hit itself could be just about anywhere on the mech.

They say they want skill only to influence, but the lack of outside factors effecting ones aim makes it an untrue representation. It still takes skill to make a shot with some slop, it just means you aren't going to insta headshot mechs at 1000 meters very often anymore. Up close and personal (under 500) and the shots do go where you point.

[Jam the Bam]

I prefer what someone suggested, the longer you hold your reticle over the target, the better the weapon convergence.

As long as it doesn't involve any sort of randomness or cones, and I can still snap shot if I have to.

[DocBach]

El Bandito, on 01 May 2013 - 12:05 PM, said:

ECM should increase the lock time but should not **** block the hard-lock like missiles. We don't want the repeat of ECM Warrior: Online here.

ECM shouldn't affect it at all, think of direct fire locks like a LRF on a tank, your lasing the target and the computer is calculating range and trajectory to the target due to internal factors like your movement, heat, damage, ect, and external factors like wind, enemy movement ect.

Could have an indicator like the reticle closes in on itself until its just a gold dot in which you get point of aim, point of impact accuracy, but if you fire before you get a small cone affect. The small cone size would mean snap shots up close would not be too affected with deviation from aim (a shot for the LT might hit the LA or CT), but have larger effects at longer range due to a cone effect causing an angular error from the point of aim.

Edited by DocBach, 08 May 2013 - 07:59 AM.