8 replies to this topic

[Warge]

This idea appeared due to the "hit registration" problem:

• 1) Lesser boating consequences. There are alot of CT hits, slightly lesser LT/RT hits and almost never Mechs lose arms or been legged. Also boating problem that our dear gamebalance designers tried to solve with "Heat Math" abomination. So that's my idea: in case boating fast moving target or LT/CT/RT boating game registers not all hits but % of them. In general: % of registered hit could be calculated dependently of Mech's targeted part, Mech's speed; lesser % of registered hits to PPC/AC20/Gauss/SRM6/LRMx boats and more to SL/MG/SRM2/AC2; lesser % of registered hits to "Light Mech" targets, bigger to "Heavy/Assault Mech" targets.
  
• 2) Targeting computer emulation. For Clan's Mechs the % of registered hits bigger due to targeting computer.

Also this idea could solve "convergence' problem and should work better if AC/10/20 fire short bursts.

Thoughts about?..

Edited by Warge, 24 July 2013 - 06:05 AM.

[Koniving]

Actually, PGI already does the first one unintentionally. We can't hit the lights half the time even without that, unless we chainfire. SRMs for example, fired all at once at even an Atlas does less damage than fired one at a time. Lights take little damage from SRMs when alpha'd, but if you chain fire and lead just right you can shred an Atlas or Spider in 4 to 6 volleys of SRM-6s with Artemis.

The, uh, second idea needs more information.

But I agree on the last statement. Since my post runs off on that topic loaded with pictures and linked videos rather than the two specific ideas you have I'll spoiler it here.

Spoiler

Aside from the Bulldog Tank, a few other overly sized tanks, the King Crab, there are very few if otherwise no other mechs who use the single shot 203mm Devastator AC/20 variant, and the Cauldron Born (who has a UAC/20 version of it), none of the other mechs were considered stable enough to effectively use the Devastator AC/20 variant (the only singleshot in battletech lore/fluff) without significant loss of balance (falling over). Now you notice the shape of those two mechs? They are very low to the ground, very long, very wide, very stable. Unlike a Jagermech, Atlas, etc., which are kinda wide but not really, very tall, and certainly not the most stable things in the world.

The Atlas and a few others could safely use the next largest variant, the Chemjet Gun which (depending on the version) is either a slow-firing 3 round burst (burst-variant), or a steady firing 1 shot every 1.67 seconds for 6.7 damage ('Auto-fire' variant, no actual cooldown time aside from the space between shots. Accomplishes slightly better dps than the single shot in its current form).

As the mechs got smaller, the AC/20 reduced in caliber.

• The Hunchback is typically depicted as firing 4 (various artwork) to 5 shots (see MechCommander intro) for its AC/20 to deal the full 20 damage. As a note: Typically the Hunchback has the Tomodzuru Autocannon Mount Type 20 (which though not listed on Sarna is fluffed to be a 4 shot AC/20 -- basically a burst or slower auto-firing AC/5 in a 14 ton form - MechCommander gave it a burst form and since it is not listed as having variants of this variant, one can assume it does not have an automatic form [otherwise it'd be a 1 shot per second AC/5 for 14 tons which is slightly faster than the macro-unjammable UAC/5). The one in the MechCommander intro has a Defiance Mech Hunter AC/20 (which is a 5 shot with softer recoil).
  
• A Raven 4X could mount an AC/20, but it would be of the same caliber as the AC/2 in the form of the Crusher Super Heavy Autocannon 20 which is a rapid 10 shot burst or semi-rapid auto-fire (there's 3 different manufacturing companies on 3 different planets of CSHAC/20 listed, which would have theirs varied enough to compete with one another). Higher calibers would not actually be safe to mount due to recoil and the light weight of the battlemech.
  
• It should be noted that in practice, the higher the caliber of cannon mounted on a smaller platform, the more intense the recoil becomes. Braced or not a Raven 4x firing a Devastator single shot AC/20 would find itself flying through the air as its on-ground surface area is far too small and the cannon is far too high (picture firing a destroyer's cannon from on top of a tower supported by two feet each barely half its width and thin legs.) In fluff the Atlas must be braced before attempting to use one, and even then lost its balance, dooming the weapon to never be mounted on the Atlas by any sane engineer again.

​Just to note: This is a 203mm cannon. This is what the Devastator AC/20, and thus the AC/20 we have in MWO, is supposed to be.




In comparison this is an Abrams M1 tank. (which according to Wikipedia, has a 120mm cannon -- the AC/2 in its current form is supposed to have a 150mm cannon).


So, yeah.

This 155mm artillery cannon is 5mm larger than the Crusher Super Heavy Autocannon's caliber, and thus 5mm larger than the AC/2.

This is 10 mm "less" cannon than the Chemjet Gun AC/20. Notice the massive rear brace, and the very low profile of the cannon. If mounted on two legs and hung as high as a Jagermech the Jager might actually have to slow down slightly while firing the Chemjet Gun.

Think about this for a minute... Shouldn't these be suffering somewhat stronger recoil, particularly the 203mm AC/20 which has a barrel more commonly mounted on destroyers and battleships? Granted, the Devastator in MWO's current form is severely snub-nosed significantly reducing recoil and thus its range, it should still not be 'non-existent.'

-------------------

That said, since most of what I've said here is about autocannon variants, I made a video demonstrating the Crusher SHAC/20 and two versions of a Burst Fire variant Chemjet Gun.

Anyway... Another way to address convergence is to simply make walking less steady in regards to the perfectly stationary reticle and camera while moving. This would require you to completely halt to have pinpoint accuracy as while moving you would not have any form of steadily on target weapon. After all, watch the Highlander walk from the outside (sorry about the music the urge to record just hit me). Focus on the arms in the Highlander video.

Edited by Koniving, 24 July 2013 - 10:13 AM.

[Homeless Bill]

While it seems simple and effective on-face, I don't like primarily it because it's arbitrary, counter-intuitive, and extremely difficult to communicate to the player. I just don't see people being okay with damage randomly disappearing (especially since that's almost impossible to communicate; how do you tell the player their last shot did 30% of the damage it looked like it did?). Why not just force the damage to be spread instead of stealing it (for clarification, I don't like the spread-damage-to-adjacent-components approach either)?

I think high-damage alphas are totally a valid tactic. I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to pound them with everything in your arsenal - I just see no reason it should all be able to go to one spot.

Basically, it boils down to this: every time I'm fighting a Spider, I want to quit life. Their hit registration sucks, and despite the fact that I'm clearly hitting them, I often do no damage. Your proposal essentially turns everything into a Spider. I'd rather see a global cooldown or an accuracy skew than arbitrarily making damage disappear.

As far as Clans go, I don't think they need any extra help =P

[Mackman]

I spent some time discussing a similar idea with another player extensively in private messages. He advocated for simply randomly assigning where the damage went on a mech, regardless of where you actually aimed (and regardless of where the weapons are visually hitting).

This idea, like that one, is incredibly frustrating and incredibly non-intuitive. I'm against almost any implementation of CoF, but even that would be better than "I don't care if it looks like you hit with all your weapons: 50% of your damage doesn't get applied."

EDIT: You are willing to sacrifice far too much of what makes this game awesome: Clarity, visual fidelity, and the sheer visceral joy of being in control of so much firepower. What you gain will not outweigh what you lose.

Edited by Mackman, 24 July 2013 - 10:12 AM.

[Koniving]

Mackman, on 24 July 2013 - 10:10 AM, said:

I spent some time discussing a similar idea with another player extensively in private messages. He advocated for simply randomly assigning where the damage went on a mech, regardless of where you actually aimed (and regardless of where the weapons are visually hitting).

I think I know the guy you're talking about. The one made popular for the Craven build right? It reminds me of Paul's inconsistent penalty solution when the guy said: "You shoot him in the CT and it'll put the damage to his arm or leg." It's an idea that gets people face-palmed...with an iron skillet.

How about the very simple idea at the end of "Anyway" that I posted which would use your basic headbob while moving to move your reticle? That way so long as you're moving you'll never have pinpoint accuracy, even if you have 'close to' it and your shots will still always go to the crosshair. The two vids (interior, demonstrating the problem and the difference), and the exterior, should help clarify my meaning there.

[Warge]

Homeless Bill, on 24 July 2013 - 09:47 AM, said:

...every time I'm fighting a Spider, I want to quit life.

This could be motto of MWO's "hit detection" problems.

Koniving, on 24 July 2013 - 10:21 AM, said:

How about the very simple idea at the end of "Anyway" that I posted which would use your basic headbob while moving to move your reticle? That way so long as you're moving you'll never have pinpoint accuracy, even if you have 'close to' it and your shots will still always go to the crosshair. The two vids (interior, demonstrating the problem and the difference), and the exterior, should help clarify my meaning there.

Sounds good.

Edited by Warge, 24 July 2013 - 10:33 AM.

[Mackman]

Koniving, on 24 July 2013 - 10:21 AM, said:

I think I know the guy you're talking about. The one made popular for the Craven build right? It reminds me of Paul's inconsistent penalty solution when the guy said: "You shoot him in the CT and it'll put the damage to his arm or leg." It's an idea that gets people face-palmed...with an iron skillet.

How about the very simple idea at the end of "Anyway" that I posted which would use your basic headbob while moving to move your reticle? That way so long as you're moving you'll never have pinpoint accuracy, even if you have 'close to' it and your shots will still always go to the crosshair. The two vids (interior, demonstrating the problem and the difference), and the exterior, should help clarify my meaning there.

I think that this would only make All-in Alpha Strikes more prevalent, since Chain Fire is taking an even bigger hit to accuracy. Right?

That said, I don't have a problem with it: It raises the skill-cap, makes it a bit harder to land precision strikes on the move, and doesn't resort to any sort of randomness. (Not to mention the fact that it's completely intuitive and very easy to understand: No tutorial needed, people will figure it out in the first couple seconds of playing).

Edited by Mackman, 24 July 2013 - 10:51 AM.

[Koniving]

The goal was more to address convergence with that tidbit.

And yes alpha striking would definitely more prevalent when stationary. I suppose you could alpha while moving but since you'd be bouncing all the same anyway I don't think it'd make that much of a difference if you chainfired or alpha.

But to address that we have to look at the root of that issue. Alpha striking is defined as a high risk move that's meant to be a final resort. Part of that issue though is our threshold -- we're supposed to have a maximum safe heat generation value of 30. Hit 30, you shut down. Hit 45 it's instant death. ER PPCs in MW3 generated 15 heat each, and no matter how many heatsinks you have if you fired 3 ER PPCs at the same time you died instantly.

With 18 DHS and without the pilot efficiencies to increase that by another 20%, we have 66 threshold. After the 20% you get a total of 79.2 threshold to use since PGI's taking 30 as a base, and then adding to the threshold with every heatsink we tack on.

So, genuinely, the only way to cut down on alpha strikes is to reduce the maximum heat spike / threshold we're allowed to have without a shutdown or risk. (Think about it this way: Any trial mech has no upgrades to DHS, no efficiencies. With 10 heatsinks they get the base 30 + 10 threshold. Typically you can't alpha strike much at all, period.) We may not need to cut it down to 30, but if we cut it down a bit, remove all that raises it, and then set this to be the same for SHS and DHS, with DHS only cooling twice as fast.

The other idea is to use PGI's penalty system. Honestly I don't like that because it's inconsistent in what's allowed and what isn't.

[Blue Footed Booby]

I have no problem with reticule sway, I think it'd actually improve a number of things, but headbob consistently gives me motion sickness. I know I'm not alone, and this is why most games that have headbob provide a way to disable it.

Really, I'd argue that reticule sway is the best representation of what you'd get in real life. Your head moves up and down a ton when walking, but you instinctively fix your eyes on whatever you're looking at and your brain filters the "video" so you really don't notice. I'm a big fan of simulating the experience rather than the physical reality, to the extent that you can when talking about stompy robots.

I think advocates of randomly assigned damage locations want this game to be more of a direct adaptation of tabletop. There's nothing wrong with that preference, but they need to realize that the preference isn't universal (ie that this isn't a no-downside solution PGI is blind not to use) and that it's absolutely mutually exclusive with the direction PGI is obviously trying to take. Yeah, it'd be great if there were a decent direct TT adaptation, but that isn't MWO, and adding random TT features isn't going to produce a game that pleases either camp.

Koniving, on 24 July 2013 - 11:26 AM, said:

.....

The other idea is to use PGI's penalty system. Honestly I don't like that because it's inconsistent in what's allowed and what isn't.

Being inconsistent is wayyy less of a problem than being arbitrary and totally opaque. PGI has spent a lot of time talking about new players and specifically catering towards them (eg arm lock and throttle decay defaulting to on) yet they introduce a mechanic that takes multiple charts and paragraphs of text to explain, is totally unintuitive even when laid out in plain english* and doesn't actually have a dramatic effect on the specific builds it was intended to counter while gimping stuff that wasn't a problem (like the 4p).

* Wherever it's discussed there are oodles of posts with "Edit: wait, my math was wrong. It isn't a negligible effect, turns out it's totally crippling." This is not a good sign.

Sidenote: has anyone explained why the chart goes up to 9 when literally the only mech with 9 hardpoints of the same type is the hunchback 4P?

Edited by Blue Footed Booby, 24 July 2013 - 11:43 AM.