56 replies to this topic

[MustrumRidcully]

One Medic Army, on 02 July 2013 - 06:06 PM, said:

You're the one who said:

The example still requires aiming. The gun doesn't aim for you, it just tells you when you'd hit. If you'd use that weapon and were, say running and trying to hit another running target, only a very good shooter would be able to hold the rifle on target long enough for him to register that he could hit and fire in time before the hit chance is over. It gets even more complicated if you actually not just want to hit the runner, but a specific location.

[Ningyo]

Pht, on 02 July 2013 - 06:23 PM, said:

All this rage and fuss about how capable battlemechs are supposed to be When we ALREADY KNOW how capable they are!

http://mwomercs.com/...different-idea/

... lest anyone think this is mere guessing or opinion on my part:

http://bg.battletech...ic,26178.0.html

and:

http://bg.battletech...ic,29328.0.html

Nice references. I would like to semi refute them as far as pinpoint alphas go though. (and yes I know they are the experts)

In Battletech, if you alphastrike you do not make one roll for hit location, you still make separate rolls for each weapon. This implies that either weapons cannot all be fired at once, or that they cannot all target the same point, or that firing multiple weapons at once causes a reduction in accuracy. (unfortunately I am not well enough versed in lore to give non-TT rule examples, but I wonder if there are examples in books of a mech firing multiple weapons and having them hit different locations too?)

[One Medic Army]

Ningyo, on 02 July 2013 - 11:11 PM, said:

Nice references. I would like to semi refute them as far as pinpoint alphas go though. (and yes I know they are the experts)

In Battletech, if you alphastrike you do not make one roll for hit location, you still make separate rolls for each weapon. This implies that either weapons cannot all be fired at once, or that they cannot all target the same point, or that firing multiple weapons at once causes a reduction in accuracy. (unfortunately I am not well enough versed in lore to give non-TT rule examples, but I wonder if there are examples in books of a mech firing multiple weapons and having them hit different locations too?)

There is a Pilot Special Ability in one of the books that lets you target specific components without a target computer.
You're only allowed to fire a single weapon that round though.

[Waking One]

So how does a mech suddenly magically converge weapons in its torso, you know, fixed weapons... to whatever point you want to shoot at? I can understand arms, but not torso weapons or arms without actuators.

Current convergence mechanics lower the skill needed massively.

I'm for removal of convergence on anything but lower-arm-actuated arms. That will truly show you who's good and who's not.

[Livewyr]

Ohai Abrahms!

I told you so.

[Lykaon]

Here is the truth about why mechanics like RNG and heat existed in Battletech table top.

Both are mechanics intended to draw out game play and improve survival time of battlemechs in play.These two mechanics were to balance out the capacity of battlemechs to dish out massive damage.

It's not much of a game if the first player to get into range wins because they just dished out enough damage to core the target.

And to be brutaly honest MWo is also currently not much of a game because it has failed to put in sufficent checks and balances to prevent high Alpha fueled victory.

"Thinking man's shooter" The thinking ends when a player realizes they need to pilot an assault mech with as much pinpoint alpha strike potential as possible.

[Milt]

individual wpn convergence would be amazing, but the time to implement would be huge. perhaps wpn location convergence would be feasible in the time frame we have available, but im still not convinced it is something that could be implemented in our limited time. regardless of release date if this beta drags on for the "perfect game" it would be so dated as to be irrelevant. we really have to start looking for quick fixes now. heat cap and dissipation should be quick tweakable fixes. convergence is coding to affect the behavior of the game and is most likely not possible which is very unfortunate.

[meteorol]

You know what i would love to see? Some kind of recoil mechanic. (I don't really care if it is "canon" or "realistic" for a GR or PPC to have it)
For example:

Fire 1 PPC: always 100% accurate
Fire 2 PPC at a time: First one is 100% accurate, 2nd one gets a little bit of inaccuracy
Fire 3 PPC at a time: First one is still 100% accurate, 2nd one gets a little bit, 3rd one a bit more inaccuracy.

Chainfire them: always 100% accurate.

The player and noone but the player can decide if he wants to fire 100% dead on shots, or live with a bit of inaccuracy for using all his weapons at once.

This would vastly improve the usefulness of chainfire, and award pilots who have good enough aim to put down accurate chainfire over long distance.
Alpha strikes would be more of a "OH SH*T" button for close combat situation, in which you are sure to hit the same location with every weapon regardless of the added inaccuracy. (and not the normal way of attacking targets at any distance).


Players would be able to weigh l the advantages of huge damage alphas against pinpoint accuracy for every range.

Enemy mech is 800 meters away?
-Better chainfire my ppcs to hit every single one of them.
Only 400 meters?
-Very high chance for the 2nd ppc to hit the same location, i'll use 2 of them
100 meters?
- All 4 will hit the same location, i'll alpha his ***

System would have to be tweaked for all weapons (inaccuracy after using 1 medium laser would hardly make sense.) There would have to be a way to decide which weapon is the "first" when using different weapons at one time. Easiest way would be "Weapon in Group 1 is fired first" and so on
Again, i know this is neither realistic nor canon, and it doesn't have anything in common with BT rules... but i think it would greatly improve the game.

Edited by meteorol, 03 July 2013 - 05:30 AM.

[Lootee]

meteorol, on 03 July 2013 - 05:25 AM, said:

You know what i would love to see? Some kind of recoil mechanic. (I don't really care if it is "canon" or "realistic" for a GR or PPC to have it)
.

It is canon. PPCs are one of the few energy weapons with recoil. The heavy gauss rifle can knock the firing mech over if they don't skip the movement phase to firmly plant their feet in the ground, so gauss rifles also generate recoil. Autocannons, a no brainer. Rockets and missiles as well. The only weapons that wouldn't generate much recoil are lasers.

In TT the heavy gauss rifle has a chance of knocking yourself down and it only does a maximum of 25 pts of damage. So why in the hell should the game allow you to fire 35, 40, 45, 55, 60, 90 pts of dmg worth in recoiling weapons all with 1 trigger pull without the same chance of self knockdown as the measly 25 dmg heavy gauss ?

If a player has moved in the past 5sec and fires 25+ dmg worth of recoil producing weapons with 1 mouse click it should have a chance of making his mech fall over. This forces them to either stagger their weapons fire or expose themselves for 5s motionless while bracing for the recoil from a full alpha strike. Or they could cut loose with everything while moving anyway and be prepared to pay the price if they fall down out in the open.

It'd be easy to code too. If you set throttle to 0 and don't jump for 5 seconds make the word STABLE appear on the HUD. That means you can fire whatever you want with 1 click. If you throttle up or jump STABLE goes away. If you fire 25 or more dmg worth of recoil weapons with 1 mouse click without STABLE, you might knock yourself down.

So double gauss rifles, a heavy gauss, huge swarms of LRMs, 2 AC/20s, many PPCs you would have to either fire from a stable position, chain fire them, or take the risk of falling. Seems like a fair drawback for putting that much dmg out in 1 strike.

Edited by PanchoTortilla, 03 July 2013 - 06:39 AM.

[Aym]

Well, SOME kind of spread is realistic and models the physics inherent in ballistics with minor variations in propellant, projecile, and conditions.

[Skoll Lokeson]

Abrahms, on 02 July 2013 - 02:19 PM, said:

If today's main battle tanks like the M1Abrams can jump a hill at 50 mph and snipe a tank a mile away in mid air, I dont think that Battletech mechs would suddenly suck at aiming.

Just curious. Is that a near mint condition M1 with all original parts or a 200 year old one that's been customized beyond recognition and repaired with parts salvaged from T90s and Merkavas? I can imagine replacing the M2HB with a jury rigged 120mm MG253 might cause some issues.

[Abrahms]

One Medic Army, on 02 July 2013 - 06:29 PM, said:

Gameplay comes first, gameplay always comes first.
Shooting accurately (clicking where on the enemy mech you want to hit, and the shot hitting it) is incredibly easy.
Most games, in fact nearly all games add random cones of fire just so that accurate hits require accurate weapons which have downsides (usually low ammo, slow firing). Some games also add things like bullet drop.
Most games don't have perfect pinpoint accuracy, because it makes the game too easy.

In MWO we're piloting military machines, if you need a "realism" reason for why we shouldn't be perfectly accurate (which would enhance the gameplay) then consider that military ammo is horribly inconsistent, and battlemechs use giant "muscles" that twitch when they're heated up in "lore".





Bull, they're perfectly accurate, that's just the travel time, or you're bad at aiming.

You say its easy, then you say im bad... haha. No, Im not referring to travel time. Have you ever fired two gauss at the same time and watched them spiral? They are not perfectly accurate.

They land within 10 meters of your crosshair at about 800+ meters though.

And no, if you watch most players, including yourself, aiming is not "easy" per se - some people are much better at it than others. Travel time is not RNG, travel time calculation is part of the aiming skill. Back when headshots were fairly possible, I could rack of 3-4 kills in a row just by AC20 x 2 headshotting people with my catapult. Some players like me are too good at aiming, meanwhile everyone else flounders around, so they made headshots harder to get, sometimes impossible even when the target is overheated (not all mechs are the same - some are still real easy to hit even while moving).

Sorry I have the advantage over you because I aim better. Cone of fire or RNG is not good for gameplay. What other handicaps do you want to help narrow the skill-factor?

edit: I dont want this to be CoD- I hate that game. Im an old MW league player. I like my shots to go where I aim. I also enjoy min/maxing and breaking down the balance and math. I like the strategy involved in battletech. However, RNG with aiming has no place in the first person battletech games. Reserve that for TT and top-down games like mechcommander.

Edited by Abrahms, 03 July 2013 - 12:35 PM.

[Abrahms]

Roland, on 02 July 2013 - 06:35 PM, said:

There is no weapons spread in this game. Ballistics are perfectly precise, and perfectly accurate.

Ive fired enough dual gauss shots from my cat to know that ballistics are not perfectly accurate. However, they are extremely close to being perfect - you wont really see the difference unless youre zoomed in on targets at 800 meters +.

There is a chance that other factors contribute to this, like convergence lines and lag picking up different surfaces at 800 meters which leads the rounds to both stray from a single point, but I have seen it many time.... right torso gauss goes up and to the left a couple meters and left torso goes to the right and perfectly sideways a couple meters.

[Pht]

Ningyo, on 02 July 2013 - 11:11 PM, said:

Nice references. I would like to semi refute them as far as pinpoint alphas go though. (and yes I know they are the experts)

They aren't merely the experts paid to write in the lore. They are the authors of the lore and herb beas is the one who decides what the lore means... it's his job.

Quote

In Battletech, if you alphastrike you do not make one roll for hit location, you still make separate rolls for each weapon. This implies that either weapons cannot all be fired at once, or that they cannot all target the same point, or that firing multiple weapons at once causes a reduction in accuracy.

The answer for this is in the third link in the post you're referring to.

Alpha strikes still roll each weapon individually on the hit location tables because the hit locationt ables simulate the mech's ability to aim each individual weapon fired.

The weapons are aimed individually. The fact that the alphastrike goes to the same hit location table indicates that the hit location tables are representative of the 'mechs ultimate ability to converge it's weapons under the reticule.

Quote

(unfortunately I am not well enough versed in lore to give non-TT rule examples, but I wonder if there are examples in books of a mech firing multiple weapons and having them hit different locations too?)

Yes, the behavior is like this in the novels.

BT mechs simply aren't capable of getting their weapons to cluster under the crosshairs to the extent people presume.

Anyone who's read the novels knows that the mechs have always behaved like this.

[Hotthedd]

Abrahms, on 03 July 2013 - 12:25 PM, said:

You say its easy, then you say im bad... haha. No, Im not referring to travel time. Have you ever fired two gauss at the same time and watched them spiral? They are not perfectly accurate.

They land within 10 meters of your crosshair at about 800+ meters though.

And no, if you watch most players, including yourself, aiming is not "easy" per se - some people are much better at it than others. Travel time is not RNG, travel time calculation is part of the aiming skill. Back when headshots were fairly possible, I could rack of 3-4 kills in a row just by AC20 x 2 headshotting people with my catapult. Some players like me are too good at aiming, meanwhile everyone else flounders around, so they made headshots harder to get, sometimes impossible even when the target is overheated (not all mechs are the same - some are still real easy to hit even while moving).

Sorry I have the advantage over you because I aim better. Cone of fire or RNG is not good for gameplay. What other handicaps do you want to help narrow the skill-factor?

edit: I dont want this to be CoD- I hate that game. Im an old MW league player. I like my shots to go where I aim. I also enjoy min/maxing and breaking down the balance and math. I like the strategy involved in battletech. However, RNG with aiming has no place in the first person battletech games. Reserve that for TT and top-down games like mechcommander.

If your aim is so phenomenal, surely it wouldn't be very hard for you to achieve the same results from chain firing.



oh wait...........

[Abrahms]

Hotthedd, on 03 July 2013 - 01:00 PM, said:

If your aim is so phenomenal, surely it wouldn't be very hard for you to achieve the same results from chain firing.



oh wait...........

If mechs had lower heat caps and it was wise to make groups (so a 5 PPC mech would have a 2x, 2x, and 1x group) you would end up staggering your fire. Naturally, enemies move, turn, etc, not every shot will always go in the same spot. Sometimes, you will shoot another component because your cooldown is ready and you know it will be ready again before the primary component is again available to hit.

Its a lot easier to land every weapon in one spot when you know you can do just 1 large alpha... you will take longer to shoot, and you dont lose as much by waiting. For every moment you wait during staggered fire, you are losing opportunities and they add up. But when everything goes out in one big alpha, its more economical with time (example: every moment you spend aiming an AC2 is a lot of lost DPS, but every moment you spend aiming an AC20 is very little lost DPS - in other words, the longer the interval between shots, every .1 sec of aiming is less lost DPS)

Edited by Abrahms, 03 July 2013 - 02:23 PM.

[Hotthedd]

Abrahms, on 03 July 2013 - 02:23 PM, said:

Its a lot easier to land every weapon in one spot when you know you can do just 1 large alpha...

This is what we have been saying all along. But for some reason you seemed pretty upset when WE say it.