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Let me begin by making a few points that will set the stage:
In the board game, a turn was a window of time. While it seemed like you would fire X weapons all at once, the truth is you simply were firing them within that window of time. I understand the novels may portray it differently, but when it comes to the rules, that's the truth of the matter.
In MWO, things can actually happen at very small time scales, effectively, all at once. In reality, this wouldn't work very well from a pure physics perspective. More likely is the vehicle would chain fire, but relatively quickly; launching a full salvo in a matter of a couple seconds at most. LRM launchers that have limited numbers of tubes in the game behave this way.
When it comes to hit locations, I'll make two more similar points:
In the board game, when you hit with your huge alpha strike in that one turn, every weapon had a separate hit location roll (baring a few exceptions). This reduced the impact of the alpha strike a little bit compared to how it may have played out.
In MWO, since your cursor was at one place in space when you pulled the trigger, and every weapon fired off at once, all those weapons WILL hit the same spot (baring different flight times). Lasers will drag their damage across the target as things move, of course, and missiles will not all hit at the same time, likewise scattering damage. But most weapons thunk into the same location.
Now, this very point is how you solve the problem: Don't let all the weapons fire at exactly the same time. A weapon group will all fire off in short order with a single button push, but like missile artillery in real life, it won't all fire exactly together. The reasons this should be okay are backed up by the points above. It's still an alpha strike in the scope of the board game's time scale. You're still only hitting one fire button. You're just putting a small delay between each weapon triggering off. This will force weapons to scatter a little. Unless you have awesome aim of course, and keep those crosshairs on that bouncing target. If you do, then your skill is rewarded.
There's a few ways to do this:
You could put an automatic delay between firing each weapon in a group. It only needs to be on the order of 0.1 or 0.2 seconds.
You could implement a power consumption for each weapon. A engine may only put out its power rating in units, and triggering off each weapon consumes a given number of units. These should VERY rapidly regenerate, and would be larger on energy weapons and things like Gauss, but lower on missiles and ballistics. You could also have electronic warfare leach into this to make it a better trade off. Make sure you display this energy bar somewhere so pilots can watch it. But in the end, it should have a similar effect as above; adding only fractions of a second delay between weapons firing off.
I'm sure people can come up with more. I kinda like the latter, but it does add some complexity. And these ideas may have already been thrown out there. Great! I hope others like them or people come up with even better ones.
The keys are:
It doesn't require funky heat scales.
It doesn't artificially screw your aim up.
It matches reality pretty well.
People who're very good aim will still be able to focus their shots.
It rewards people who take time to aim each shot (like a real marksman).
No randomness. Simple. Skill still makes you awesome.
Discuss.
Edit: The latter method also allows for you to add greater flexibility for delays between higher power weapons, like say, PPCs and Gauss having a half second or so delay between triggering each off, while letting a bank of small lasers or AC/2s fire with impunity.
Edited by Snow Drift, 22 August 2013 - 08:04 PM.
