28 replies to this topic

[DarkJaguar]

Understanding the “Cone of Fire”

Lately on these very forums, there has been a lot of disinformation and mistaken beliefs about something called a “Cone of Fire”. For those not familiar with the term, a “Cone of Fire ( CoF for short), is a mechanic in which your shot does not travel to the exact point indicated by the reticle, but rather travels to a point within a cone that projects from the muzzle of the weapon.

The primary opponents to such a mechanic seem to be a crowd that have decided that such a “random” factor has no place in their stompy robots game, and that every shot should arrive at the exact pixel they directed.

To address this, I wish to approach it from two directions. The first will be gameplay mechanics, as this is a video game. The second will be reality based, as this is a ‘mech combat simulation game, thus a bit of reality is usually good for immersion.

GAMEPLAY MECHANICS
From a gameplay mechanics perspective, pin-point accuracy is a bad thing. First, MW:O uses a hit point system that is location based. Allowing players to dictate the very pixel they hit causes issue in such a system, as the player can now bypass 80% of the health (armor and internal structure) points of a mech. The argument here is that “well, I can aim, I shouldn’t have a penalty to my skill!”

My counter argument is that I do not wish to nerf skill, I wish to make hitting a specific location MORE difficult, while maintaining close to the current level of difficulty to hit just –THE- mech. This makes highly skilled players stand out that much more from the mediocre players who get by because the current target areas are so large.

To do this, a cone of fire should be utilized. The cone need not be big, the easiest way to approach this is by having the cone’s diameter at a weapon’s maximum optimal range be about the same as a medium mech’s torso is wide (a Hunchback would make a great benchmark for this.) What that would mean for players is that at a weapon’s optimal range (be it 270m, 540m, 600m or whatever) if they aim at the center of mass on a target, they will hit it.

For the developers, this means that balancing weapons against armor becomes a bit easier. No longer do the developers have to try and balance against 4 high alpha weapons hitting the same pixel. This would as a side effect lead into a more diverse loadout among player’s mech. This happens by players balancing on their end, the maximum hit probability on the desired location through volume of fire, and the desire to deal lots of damage to an enemy mech as efficiently is possible.

These goals are counter to one another under a system that adds a slight inaccuracy to the weapons, as the highest alpha damage weapons generate a lot of heat and are very heavy, whereas the lighter weapons that you –can- carry a lot of, do much less damage.

In addition to the above, because there is no great risk of taking 4 high-alpha weapons to the same pixel on your mech, players will be more diverse in their tactics. There is simply no more reason to hide, because a brief exposure no longer guarantees that you will take 40 damage to a single location. With the ability to maneuver more openly, light and medium mechs will gain further viability, and likewise mechs that can’t mount 4 of whatever the current high-alpha meta is will be useful because they’re capable in other aspects.

As an aside, if such a system were to be added to the game, the weapon’s “optimal” range would be defined as the point at which you can guarantee a hit, and not as the arbitrary point at which damage falls off. This system could be thrown out, allowing for high-risk long range shots that still do damage if they hit.

REALISM
From a realism standpoint, “pinpoint” accuracy does not exist in any weapon (even lasers).

Quote

ac•cu•ra•cy
/ˈakyərəsē/
Noun
The quality or state of being correct or precise.
The ability to perform a task with precision

Accuracy is not necessarily even hitting the specific rust fleck on the ****** of an atlas from 2km away. If the task as defined by the players is “Hit the enemy mech” then by placing your reticle on the center of your target and making a hit 100% of the time is perfect accuracy. If accuracy for you is “Hit the enemy mech right between the eye ports”, a COF does not prevent you from doing such 100%. What it does prevent you from doing, is that task with multiple weapons at a time at ANY range you so desire.

Snipers, for example, are not chosen because they’re the best shots in the world to begin with. They’re chosen because of their ability to learn. “Learn what?” you might ask. Learn all of the variables that affect accuracy and how to properly account for them. Those factors include, but are not limited to…

• Wind Speed
  
• Temperature
  
• Air Density
  
• Concentricity of bore
  
• Concentricity of bullet
  
• Amount of propellant used
  
• Surface area of the propellant
  
• Height over bore
  
• Parallax
  
• Current lung capacity
  
• Heart Rate, and...
  
• Bone support structure

Vehicles, while not having to worry about necessarily breathing or bone support do have some other factors that are also added to the list.

• Power train vibration
  
• Movement vibration
  
• Recoil forces
  
• Bore sight alignment, and...
  
• Mechanical limits

All of these factors contribute to make pin-point accuracy an impossibility. Because of this, the military (probably some of the foremost experts on weapons) use a measurement for accuracy of vehicle based weapons called “Circular Error probable”, or CEP for short.
CEP is defined as…

Quote

the radius of a circle, centered about the mean, whose boundary is expected to include the landing points of 50% of the rounds.

Now, for a point of reference the M1A1’s 120mm main gun has a CEP of 35m @ 8000m range. To translate that down to the ranges we’re seeing in tabletop, that’s a radius of 4.375m (diameter 8.75) @ 1000m. To put that into context, the width of a hunchback’s torso is between 3 and 4 meters, so a hunchback is MUCH smaller across than the CEP is wide, so that 120mm round is very likely to miss the target laterally (however, if the legs and arms are included, the hunchback is within the CEP, so it would be fairly safe to say that at 1000m you will hit it 50% of the time.)

What I have suggested in my other thread is similar, but in actuality MUCH more accurate than that. Instead of using CEP, I have elected to use R100, or the radius of a circle in which 100% of the round will land. This is not random, in that every round will hit that circle. It’s not pin-point, but it –IS- predictable, and predictable is what accurate shooters bank on, because it means they can adjust for it.

The R100 that I have suggests is as follows. R100=1.65m@MOR where MOR is the Maximum Optimal Range, or the range at which PGI wishes that weapon to become dramatically less effective at. Beyond MOR, shots are still possible (and should deal full damage if they hit, as mentioned above) just much less likely to hit. This also introduces a new factor to which PGI can balance weapons by, their absolute accuracy value (perhaps lasers should have a tighter R100 to offset their D.O.T. nature?).

I could (and will if asked) go on and on about all of the variables listed above and how they affect accuracy, but for the sake of brevity, I will wrap this post up now. I hope that if you were on the fence before, you are better informed to make a decision based upon fact and logic as opposed to a knee jerk “I want to hit where I aim!” response. Especially knowing that “where you aim” depends on the resolution at which you consider a hit to be a hit.

P.S. This is the first time I have mentioned the words “Table Top” or “Lore” in this post, please refrain from using them in this thread’s discussion, as while it has bearing on the topic, it’s not what I wish this thread to be about.

[TehSBGX]

The thing is, cone of fire would turn everything into the lbx. Which would bring up just as many problems as it fixes.

[DarkJaguar]

TehSBGX, on 13 July 2013 - 06:35 PM, said:

The thing is, cone of fire would turn everything into the lbx. Which would bring up just as many problems as it fixes.

Not necessarily. An LB-X fires multiple projectiles within that cone at the same time. it also has a much LARGER cone than I am proposing.

[One Medic Army]

TehSBGX, on 13 July 2013 - 06:35 PM, said:

The thing is, cone of fire would turn everything into the lbx. Which would bring up just as many problems as it fixes.

Not quite.
The AC/20 would still 20 damage to one single location.
10 AC/2s would deal 2 damage to 10 locations.

It would incentivize using fewer, but larger weapons. Oh wait, we're already doing that, silly me.

[DarkJaguar]

One Medic Army, on 13 July 2013 - 06:42 PM, said:

Not quite.
The AC/20 would still 20 damage to one single location.
10 AC/2s would deal 2 damage to 10 locations.

It would incentivize using fewer, but larger weapons. Oh wait, we're already doing that, silly me.

Again, not necessarily. To maximize the chance of hitting the specific location you desire, you need to bring more weapons to the table. If you absolutely HAD to hit the CT of a mech at 270m, 4 medium lasers gives you a higher chance of doing that than 1 AC20.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Nice explanation.

For better balance we probably need something like R100. And I don't see how it would be that complicated to implement since it seems that MG's already have something similar, it would simply apply that to all weapons, (except for the LBX, which simply needs to tighten the flight pattern some, so that it has more range than it currently has).

[One Medic Army]

DarkJaguar, on 13 July 2013 - 06:44 PM, said:

Again, not necessarily. To maximize the chance of hitting the specific location you desire, you need to bring more weapons to the table. If you absolutely HAD to hit the CT of a mech at 270m, 4 medium lasers gives you a higher chance of doing that than 1 AC20.

True.

That's what "Crit-Seeking" meant in TT btw.
Lots of little projectiles, each one had a separate hit location roll so it could hit an unarmored section or get a "through-armor" crit.
SRMs were crit-seekers, so were massed machine guns, and LBXs.

An AC/20 might his in the leg, or the LT, or the RT. If you fired 3 medium lasers instead you could hit all 3 locations, increasing the chances to hit the one you intended.

[The Cheese]

My concern with a COF is that players will treat it the same way they do in every other game that uses it as a powerful tool to differentiate weapons, like MWO would.

That is, players just use whichever build/weapon/whatever is least affected by it. Players who don't do that get screwed in the same way that they do now by not using high-alpha pinpoint builds.

In twitch FPS games like CoD, players who just want to win don't use the big heavy machine guns because they spray all over the place. They use whatever weapon puts their bullets right where they want them (or as close to it as the game allows), ideally with a lot of damage per bullet. That or the noob tube (rocket launcher types, for you non-twitch-FPS players out there).
I use CoD as an example because it doesn't have the range of weapon mechanics that more 'arena' style FPSs have. Arena style FPS's tendency to have a much larger variety of weapon mechanics means the COF doesn't play as much of a role as a balancer because there are generally no other weapons of similar function to balance against. It's more of a way of adding flavour to a weapon. MWO fits the CoD style, where there really are only a couple of types of weapon, so a COF is a big differentiator between weapons of similar function.

I'm not entirely opposed to it (if it was carefully thought out and implemented), but I don't think it'll be the cure-all that people are making it out to be.

Edited by The Cheese, 13 July 2013 - 07:45 PM.

[Mackman]

DarkJaguar, on 13 July 2013 - 06:44 PM, said:

Again, not necessarily. To maximize the chance of hitting the specific location you desire, you need to bring more weapons to the table. If you absolutely HAD to hit the CT of a mech at 270m, 4 medium lasers gives you a higher chance of doing that than 1 AC20.

I don't think you can brush it off that easily. Since you can no longer reliably focus damage onto a component with multiple small weapons (as you can in this current system), it makes sense to equip the heaviest weapons you can: Whatever component your Ac/20 hits is going to take 20 damage: But the odds are drastically against you doing the same amount of focused damage with 4 medium lasers (even if it only has a 50/50 chance of missing the target you want, that's .5 x .5 x .5 x.5 for a whopping .0625 chance that they'll all hit the same component).

And in this game, it doesn't matter how much total damage you're doing to the target: It matters how much damage you're doing to each individual location. So while your group of smaller weapons is busy spreading damage out all over the place, and you have to get really lucky just to put 20 damage on one location, you only have to get lucky a couple of times with larger weapons to start putting serious hurt on your opponent.

"Sure, fine," you might say: "Let's just increase the CoF for the larger weapons!" And I'll admit that there might be a place that statistically balances out the focused damage you can output However, there isn't a place that feels good, either for the person firing or the person being fired upon.

You'll have times where the person with the AC/20 misses 5 out of 5 shots on the light circlestrafing him to death, despite the fact that his reticule was on target the whole time: And you'll have times where the the RNG/CoF gods angrily smite the light pilot with two freak hits in a row to wipe him from the map. Even though those two instances balance each other out statistically, neither of them are fun for the participants.

That's the problem, as I see it, with CoF plans. Too small of a CoF, and it accomplishes nothing (or makes it worse): Too large, and randomness begins having real effect on individual matches, to the detriment of the player experience.

Edited by Mackman, 13 July 2013 - 07:11 PM.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

TehSBGX, on 13 July 2013 - 06:35 PM, said:

The thing is, cone of fire would turn everything into the lbx. Which would bring up just as many problems as it fixes.

Not true. Each weapon would still do lump-sum damage (excepting missiles, which would be exempt from CoF anyway) to a single point.

Re. OP:

A properly-implemented CoF would make a lot of healthy changes to this game, but it'd have to be done very carefully. Here are a few balance points that should be considered:

1 - The base CoF for a stationary mech firing at a target inside its optimal range while at or near 0 heat should be tiny. Tiny as in maybe 1.0m across, if that.

2 - CoF size should scale up slightly as you increase % throttle. This should not be based on raw speed, which would unfairly gimp fast builds, but on % throttle, which would affect everyone equally. Overall movement impact on CoF size should be small, like +0.5m at 50% and + 1.0m at 100% or something to that effect.

3 - Heat should be the major contributor to CoF size. As you climb the heat scale your accuracy should suffer, with it being nearly impossible to hit something reliably at anything outside of point-blank range when at 90%+ heat. This would bring back heat management in a big way, and would reward builds that had some measure of heat efficiency.

4 - JJs should affect CoF like movement does, but significantly more so. It should only do so while the JJs are actually firing, though.

5 - Minimum range on PPCs (and AC2s, Gauss, etc.) could be changed to add increased CoF when inside the minimum range. This would rather nicely impart the close-range accuracy penalty that such weapons are supposed to suffer from.

6 - Missiles should be exempt from the mechanic. They already have their own spread mechanisms, and since they're self-guided a cone of fire would neither make sense nor be necessary (provided the currently-proposed guidance fix goes live).

All in all, I'm not a huge proponent of a CoF mechanic. I think something similar can be achieved by a rework of convergence and real heat penalties (similar to 3 above, but also affecting things like max throttle, turn/twist/arm reflex rates, etc.). I prefer predictable mechanics to RNG, as if something is predictable then it is an opportunity for skill, while RNG screws people over all too often.

[DarkJaguar]

Mackman, on 13 July 2013 - 07:09 PM, said:

I don't think you can brush it off that easily. Since you can no longer reliably focus damage onto a component with multiple small weapons (as you can in this current system), it makes sense to equip the heaviest weapons you can: Whatever component your Ac/20 hits is going to take 20 damage: But the odds are drastically against you doing the same amount of focused damage with 4 medium lasers (even if it only has a 50/50 chance of missing the target you want, that's .5 x .5 x .5 x.5 for a whopping .0625 chance that they'll all hit the same component).

And in this game, it doesn't matter how much total damage you're doing to the target: It matters how much damage you're doing to each individual location. So while your group of smaller weapons is busy spreading damage out all over the place, and you have to get really lucky just to put 20 damage on one location, you only have to get lucky a couple of times with larger weapons to start putting serious hurt on your opponent.

"Sure, fine," you might say: "Let's just increase the CoF for the larger weapons!" And I'll admit that there might be a place that statistically balances out the focused damage you can output However, there isn't a place that feels good, either for the person firing or the person being fired upon.

You'll have times where the person with the AC/20 misses 5 out of 5 shots on the light circlestrafing him to death, despite the fact that his reticule was on target the whole time: And you'll have times where the the RNG/CoF gods angrily smite the light pilot with two freak hits in a row to wipe him from the map. Even though those two instances balance each other out statistically, neither of them are fun for the participants.

That's the problem, as I see it, with CoF plans. Too small of a CoF, and it accomplishes nothing (or makes it worse): Too large, and randomness begins having real effect on individual matches, to the detriment of the player experience.

Mackman,

I wanted the response to this post to be it's own post because you asked for it. I didn't want to turn this discussion toward the other proposals I have out there, I simply wanted it to be an "at it's core" information post about an important aspect of gameplay that is being neglected by PGI. Now, before I go adn derail my topic, let me state that I don't think CEP/CoF should be used to 'damage tune' a weapon. Damage and RoF should be used to tune the balance of a weapon. If the developers think a weapon is too accurate, then they would address that ("no, we don't want AC2s hitting a mech most of the time at 2000m, we'll tweak it's CEP.").

For my response to balancing the topics mentioned in your post, please read my other post on the matter. I apologize if this seems like a brush off, it's really not, I simply want to keep this thread very focused on CEP/CoF.

Respectfully Submitted,
DarkJaguar

[Ralgas]

As with all these threads atm, we've just been told (in ATD 42) they simply don't have the manpower to build it without throwing EVERYTHING back an age and a bit, if not rewriting netcode or an entirely new firing solution component from the ground up.

TBH i was pleasantry surprised to find 12v12 didn't break current system further than it is already ( the pessimist in me was expecting full rubber banding and a return to pre HSR hit detection)

persisting at the moment is just starting flame wars for what will amount to no appreciable gain for a long time to come. My advice is try again in late Sept

[Felicitatem Parco]

Several posts have been removed form this thread... it would be super awesome if we could please discuss the ideas that are presented in respect to their own merit, instead of discussing the credibility of the person presenting them. Thanks

[Zyllos]

Ralgas, on 13 July 2013 - 07:53 PM, said:

As with all these threads atm, we've just been told (in ATD 42) they simply don't have the manpower to build it without throwing EVERYTHING back an age and a bit, if not rewriting netcode or an entirely new firing solution component from the ground up.

TBH i was pleasantry surprised to find 12v12 didn't break current system further than it is already ( the pessimist in me was expecting full rubber banding and a return to pre HSR hit detection)

persisting at the moment is just starting flame wars for what will amount to no appreciable gain for a long time to come. My advice is try again in late Sept

I think this is a logical fallacy because did they not implement a CoF for jump jetting?

The only additional work that would be needed is different weapons having different CoF. Weapons with longer ranges have smaller CoF but would increase the CoF at a much faster pace than short ranged weapons, but short range weapons have larger CoF.

But, all weapons have the same CoF size at their optimal range. Meaning that if you had a State 1 CoF, you have the same hit chance with a Medium Laser or AC/20 at 270m as a PPC at 510m but that PPC would increase your CoF much faster (when group firing many of them) than the Medium Lasers would. The AC/20 would produce the highest rate of CoF increase, and with it being a short ranged weapon, it requires you to be within that optimal distance if you want to guarantee a hit.

And with all the above, you can still fire your weapons through chain firing or in small weapon groups and maintain a very high degree of accuracy. I would say lasers have pin point accuracy at the lowest level while anything with a projectile, dealing all it's damage at the same time, would have the tiniest CoF at their optimal range.

In fact, I would say the base CoF for projectiles would actually almost guarantee you to hit the section your aiming for unless your aiming close to another adjacent section, for which then you could hit that location instead. But you would never miss unless your either way out of optimal range or aiming at small hit sections (Commando's arms/legs comes to mind).

These CoF are not here to make you miss, they are here to make weapon damage spread. The only time a CoF should make you miss is if you continually alpha strike, and that is only at optimal range. At close ranges, alpha strikes would just most likely spread the damage on the mech, not actually making you miss.

Of course, much of the meta right now is based on the fact that if you do not hit a maim or kill location, you missed. This mind set needs to be quelled.

Edited by Zyllos, 13 July 2013 - 08:57 PM.

[Mongoose Trueborn]

http://en.wikipedia....93Kruger_effect

The Forum Police apparently love this idea. They are in the same boat so I get it.

Edited by Mongoose Trueborn, 13 July 2013 - 08:52 PM.

[Roland]

Adding randomness into our shots is not a good idea, and merely lowers the skill cap on the game.

There are numerous mechanisms by which convergence could be altered, without resorting to any randomization of your shoot location.

Adding a simple cone of fire is probably the worst possible solution, as it could easily result in the same kind of large alpha damage, only it would be the result of a lucky convergence of random shot locations. This adds nothing of value to the game.

I believe we can have a more complex convergence system without random chance being introduced, but if I have to choose between the current system and dice rolling, I choose the current system.

[MisterFiveSeven]

Roland, on 13 July 2013 - 09:02 PM, said:

Adding randomness into our shots is not a good idea, and merely lowers the skill cap on the game.

Tired of hearing this.

Did you play cs 1.2? Ever hear of bunny hopping deagles?

Then see a guy do it in 1.5 and **** your pants as he dismantles 7 of your teammates with 7 shots?

CoF doesn't mean less skill. It means another variable for you to control. =more skill to do well.

Edited by MisterFiveSeven, 13 July 2013 - 09:24 PM.

[Ralgas]

Zyllos, on 13 July 2013 - 08:46 PM, said:

I think this is a logical fallacy because did they not implement a CoF for jump jetting?

that recticle shake is not a cof anyone is asking for, and still keeps all weapons firing at the one component, which is not the aim.

quoted from ATD 42

Quote

Answer from Paul: Weapon convergence is a tough nut to crack. We want to keep the number of random “dice rolls” to a minimum, and network synchronization can become unpredictable when trying to determine a convergence point that may or may not be moving. It will be necessary to make the convergence point calculation server authoritive and that can cause a desync due to the fact that the simulation runs at different frequencies on the server and client.

While this is something we’ve wanted for a while, it’s becoming more and more apparent that it is going to take some serious engineering time to address. Currently, the engineers who would be working on this are already tasked with other high priority features and investigations. Pulling them off their current schedule will have both short and long term negative effects on the game as a whole, so the chances are very low that they will be able to address convergence any time soon. Convergence will always be something we will keep on the drawing board but as to when it can be tackled is not known at this time.

Regarding the weapon convergence skill in the Pilot Tree, we will be implementing something else in that spot in the near future.

Not my words mate, the departments

Edit: basically the best they can do without a rewrite atm is a fixed convergence or offset convergence 100% (say add X% on current reticule range) and have nothing hit the same spot together, although once again that just either over penalizes mechs with larger silhouettes or gives far too much survivability to lights.

I'm not against the idea long term, i am against the forums melting down and animosity being created that is detrimental to the community over something that's out of everybody's control right now

Edited by Ralgas, 13 July 2013 - 09:34 PM.

[Roland]

MisterFiveSeven, on 13 July 2013 - 09:10 PM, said:

CoF doesn't mean less skill. It means another variable for you to control. =more skill to do well.

CoF means adding randomness to your shots, which inherently does in fact mean less skill in your marksmanship.

Now, while it could be implemented within a system that gave the player some control over how much randomness was added based on his actions, such a system could easily result in unintended consequences. Essentially, you are attempting to associate accuracy with certain behavior within the game.

An example of a potential unintended consequence in this case could be associating weapons spread with movement. This is fairly common.

The result though, in this game, would be to punish mobile mechs, while rewarding fairly slow, stationary mechs.

For instance, a PPC stalker doesn't really move much. Thus, any penalties associated with movement would do very little to him. He would still be able to fire just as accurately.

However, a light mech would be penalized because he MUST move. He simply does not have the option to stand still, because doing so will result in his death.

This is an aspect of this game which I think, often, escapes many players.

In most games that use a spreading CoF based on things like movement, ALL players are essentially the same. That is, the health across players is generally equal. In mechwarrior, this is not the case. Light mechs have far less "health" than assault mechs. Their only saving grace (one which is somewhat muted currently, due to high alpha strikes) is their ability to move and make themselves hard to hit. Requiring that they slow themselves down to be precise, while an assault mech is generally not using his movement as a defensive measure anyway, is not something which will work well in this game.

It's these types of things which I think folks need to be very careful of, if they are going to propose attaching inaccuracy to certain behaviors in the game.

[MisterFiveSeven]

Roland, on 13 July 2013 - 09:27 PM, said:

It's these types of things which I think folks need to be very careful of, if they are going to propose attaching inaccuracy to certain behaviors in the game.

No one disagrees. Carte blanche CoF is the last thing anyone wants (from what I can tell).

It just can't be dismissed because of boogeyman randomness, that's all.

Edited by MisterFiveSeven, 13 July 2013 - 09:39 PM.