12 replies to this topic

[RandomLurker]

*updated thread title*
------*UPDATE AT BOTTOM*-----

The Gauss/2 ERPPC fad that was just brutally murdered was preceded by another fad. It will be followed by yet another (LLAS or UAC/5 is my guess). You can't keep nerfing weapons that become dominant in the meta. The cycle will be endless. What's needed is a solution for the core mechanic that is causing this cycle in the first place: pinpoint aiming.

Pinpoint accuracy (ie weapon convergence) needs to have a tactical trade off of some kind. That tradeoff should be mobility. This comes straight from the tabletop, and older MW games as well. As your mech moves, your aim should shift with each footsep. The faster you move, the more severe and more frequent the shift. This would need to be adjusted according to mech tonnage/speed ratio, to keep lighter mechs competitive at their higher speeds. It should also tie into cockpit shake, which currently doesn't affect aim at all (it just affects your visuals- if you were lined up, the shot still hits).

The great advantage of this is that it's under the pilot's control. A skilled pilot can adapt to their mech's rythm for increased performace. The second great thing is that it forces the meta to naturally evolve around it, without unintuitive, undocumented features like Ghost Heat. Balanced correctly, it will allow snipers to continue to have their place on the battlefield, but stop them from retaining their pinpoint accuracy at close range. At long range, a mech at full speed should still be able to hit a target, but not be able to reliably aim at one section. This would make brawlers, and light and medium mechs the natural counters to snipers. Tying it to cockpit shake enhances the effect of suppressing fire and boosts the teamwork game.

Summary:
-Snipers are balanced without being nerfed.
-No cumbersome, undocumented mechanics.
-The player skill curve is enhanced.
-Creates a new tactical decision that must be evaluated from moment to moment, enhancing gameplay in general.
-Brawlers are indirectly buffed, by making their role clearer and more necessary.
-Fast mechs (light, medium) are indirectly buffed.
-LBX/SRMs are indirectly buffed, with their spread becoming an asset rather then a weakness.
-Pulse Lasers are indirectly buffed.
-The fix applies to all weapons, current and future, including Clan Tech.
-It holds to classic tabletop concepts.
-It just FEELS like being in a walking tank more.


----*UPDATE*----


I figured out how to implement this. Add a small amount of motion-sensitive drag to each hardpoint. As your mech moves, the physics system makes your aim drag slightly behind it. That's it. The faster you move, the more the drag. Make sure that movement from footsteps are included (think about your cockpit bounce as you walk). Nothing is hardcoded, it's all done in real time by the games physics. That means there's no RNG, and because you are in control of your own movements, you are in control of your aim as well. Because it's done per-hardpoint, massed weapon focus fire is addressed. Could even make it different between different hardpoint types, like arms/torso. Arms could drag smoothly but more slowly, and torso mounts would be jerky and bouncy but update fast. Or something like that. Could add a recoil effect as well, so things like UAC/5 are no longer OP without needing to nerf them. This would add a massive amount of gameplay options, and balance the game as well.

So, summary. Again. : no cone of fire. No RNG. Everything is directly controlled by you, the pilot. Pinpoint aiming still exists as you've always known and loved (or hated) it, but it becomes much more dependent on pilot skill. And nothing needs to be nerfed! What's not to like?

Edited by RandomLurker, 15 September 2013 - 11:43 AM.

[Stingray Productions]

you know it's ineresting because your suggestion makes perfect sense to physics. i watch other mechs when they run and their arms are bobbing up and down and going all kinds of directions, the only time the are still to shoot straight is when the mech stops moving completely. So you should think that your mech moving would cause your aim to move with it. The unfortunate thing though, as correct as you are, I have a feeling that there would be a huge outrage in the community if this were implemented. I would think it best not to do this. But then again, I really like your post, it's very thought provoking.....hmmm, i wonder if there just might be a solution somewhere along these lines?........

[Corvus Antaka]

might be nice. highly unlikely it'll ever happen though.

[Clint Steel]

Well said

You could add things like arm mounted weapons are better able to counteract the shake based on the amount of actuators, making it an advantage, rather than the disadvantage it is now.

[Shae Starfyre]

My perspective is different.

When I move across the battlefield, all kinds of bobbing happens due to terrain, and then there is the shake that occurs from various weapons systems hitting me, and I turn off Arm lock so I have to use skill to achieve aim for all weapon systems.

Personally, if they removed arm lock mechanics, I think things would even out some. This is the most widely used tactic to gain advantage for pin-point accuracy.

When it is not used, only patience and timing are your friend.

I am also surprised no one else comments on this arm lock thing more often.

[Zyllos]

Well, with the new animations matching the engine rating speed, it would make more sense because I see some of these animations making mechs really bounce around when running full speed.

The interesting thing, most mechs really don't move that much when your moving ~66% throttle or lower but once you break that threshold, they start really stomping, which would shake your ridicule a lot.

The only problem with this idea is that weapons are still pin point when fired together. Yes, your aim bounces around but if you fire 4 Medium Lasers from the arms, all those lasers still hit the bouncing point and I think this is the culprit. Each individual weapon tied to a ridicule needs to not always perfectly hit that single point but around that point.

Another issue is that if the penalties are too great for moving and firing, for Assaults, what's the point of moving? Moving with Assaults hardly effects hitting the mech but your own firing back is effected. Of course, this is just a guess. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad if every weapon hit various locations and thus, when moving, even slowly, the other player firing at the Assault would have issues trying to land shots on the location they want unless they individually fire weapons.

But, as I question this, I do think your right. We need something to balance out all weapons hitting a single location. It's really hurting the gameplay. It breaks the armor system, which was built around the fact that weapon fire is random.

Aphoticus, on 06 September 2013 - 07:00 AM, said:

My perspective is different.

When I move across the battlefield, all kinds of bobbing happens due to terrain, and then there is the shake that occurs from various weapons systems hitting me, and I turn off Arm lock so I have to use skill to achieve aim for all weapon systems.

Personally, if they removed arm lock mechanics, I think things would even out some. This is the most widely used tactic to gain advantage for pin-point accuracy.

When it is not used, only patience and timing are your friend.

I am also surprised no one else comments on this arm lock thing more often.

Oh, I complained about it when first introduced. But my view point wasn't shared by the community or PGI so...

[DreadDjinn]

Great idea, but might get a little stale without an extra element. It needs a rock in addition to the paper and scissors.

The mech gyroscope is supposed to be the 'balance' of the mech and could conceivably grant pinpoint accuracy at any speed. However, this creates stress on the gyro, so that a big enough hit can topple a mech (which I believe is cannonical).

So you would have a choice of:

high manueverability, high accuracy, poor balance
low maneuverability, high accuracy, good balance
high maneuverability, inaccurate, good balance

Which could be like different 'gears' the mech could have.

I don't know how feasible this would be within X amount of time though. Probably more of a long-term thing.

[Lightfoot]

Did you know if you use a joystick, you already have the basics of this feature? Unless the ground is relatively smooth the reticles bob up and down and rarely converge unless you stop or enter smooth ground. Not sure you want this to happen with every footstep though, players will just stop to shoot and in doing so lose all deflection from speed and be cored even easier. They would also need to remove armlocking option.

Strange they would add the Arm Locking feature if they wanted less convergence. The two reticles were added so we would have to struggle for convergence of weapons. MechWarrior 4 had better purely Arm-Swing features, it allowed you to fire the weapons in the facing arm 90 degrees to the side, a great mech saving feature for after your mech is cored. Saved my mech thousands of times.

[Raghnall]

I this it is worth testing out.

What about torso weapons? Would bounce be a certain type? Like just up and down? Would arm bounce perhaps have more left or right bounce along with a lower up down?

Speed should also be a factor, with mechs stationary offering stable precision aim.

[RandomLurker]

Bumping, and also adding that I recently discovered that this is already in the game!!!!

Yes, that's right. It has exclamation points in-game as well (ok, no it doesn't). It's crappy and not tuned yet, but it's there. Already coded. Already functional. It's what you get when you play in 3pv. Yeah, I know, 3pv is terrible and has arm lock and all that. But your aim bounces with your mech, goes up when you climb a hill, down when you fall in a hole, and all the goodies. It would be so easy to implement that it's completely mind boggling. Just add this function to 1pv, adjust it for arm lock (perhaps arms don't bounce as much? perhaps the arm reflex efficiency affects this? many options), and then fine tune the level of bounce. The balance level to aim for is already in the OP: A full speed mech can hit a target at max range, but not accurately enough to target specific components. A stationary or very low-throttle mech will have 100% of the accuracy that they do in the game right now.

That would put it right between a cone of fire and what we've got now, doesn't take anything away from the game as it stands now, and leaves everything under player control. Aim tied to movement, movement is controlled by pilot. Skill curve is intact.

Raghnall, on 14 September 2013 - 09:51 PM, said:

Speed should also be a factor, with mechs stationary offering stable precision aim.

Actually, that's pretty much the whole point of the OP

[RandomLurker]

Ok, so, oops. I went and looked more closely at the 3pv thing. The mechanic as I imagine ISN'T already in the game the way I thought it was. Not quite, anyway. Your aim bouncing in 3pv is simply due to the entire mech (and thus the weapons) moving up and down. This effect is less obvious in 1pv because your perspective goes up and down with them, so it only seems like 3pv is different. It's still a useful illusion though, it gives a good demonstration of the basic concept.

It gave me an idea of how to implement this system though. It's very simple actually. Just put a small amount of drift into each weapon hardpoint. As your mech moves, the physics system makes your aim drag slightly behind it. That's it. The faster you move, the more the drag. Nothing is hardcoded, it's all done in real time by the games physics. Because it's done per-hardpoint, massed weapon focus fire is addressed. Could even make it different between different hardpoint types, like arms/torso. Arms could drag smoothly but more slowly, and torso mounts would be jerky and bouncy but update fast. Or something like that. Could add a recoil effect as well, so things like UAC/5 are no longer OP without needing to nerf them. This would add a massive amount of gameplay options, and balance the game as well.

So, summary. Again. : no cone of fire. No RNG. Everything is directly controlled by you, the pilot. Pinpoint aiming still exists as you've always known and loved (or hated) it, but it becomes much more dependent on pilot skill and limited by mech movement. What's not to like?

[RighteousDude]

First off... no, lots and lots of no... Modern M1A1 Abrams tanks can maintain 60k/h over EXTREMELY ROUGH terrain and can hold a pinpoint bead on a target; strafing, head on, uphill, downhill, doesn't matter. Year 2400, 2500, 2600 Battlemechs, and 2970+ (clans) should be infinately more advanced than this. now, that's not to say they can compensate for everything. I would believe heavy incoming fire would distort the gyroscope and velocemeters (which are all over a mech to communicate the the drop can and the neuro helmet) enough to cause a lack of accuracy. but other than that, the mechs own movements are and should be compensated for by the very basic targeting computer technology that we have even today. Which leads me to jumpjets. There's no compensating for the rattle caused by the massive jet packs in a battlemech. What's more, increasing the shake and aim loss while jetting (along with disabling any fire from your arm weapons, since they're spread outward to help maintian gyroscopic balance in flight) would A: Nerf ANYONE and EVERYONE trying to "Jump Snipe" and return the useage of JumpJets to their original intent: added mobility. Because really, My Victor is supposed to handle like a Centurion with 138M jump distance, but instead, it handles like an Atlas and has a 19M jump distance.... Make the game behave in a way that at least some physics were taken into account, and all the glitches and exploits will solve themselves.

On top of all this (on the subject of jumpjets and targeting computers compensating for expected motion) Try to imagine for a minute, being strapped into a 30 foot tall bulldozer, being launched (any distance) into the air at (any rate) then suddenly dropped. You're a person, sitting in the seat of something 30 feet tall, and you expect to survive a 30-50 foot drop? you would shatter your teeth and see red for 10 minutes after each jump. Jump sniping is physically impossible.

In sum, I suppose I'm agreeing with at least some of the points made here. But you've only given me more reason to bring up my own points. *Like if you agree.

[Jaeger Gonzo]

uhm... first dont argue about reality. BT is not our future, is not reality.
All ranges are off by our standards.
Even so show me on you tube abrams that pinpoint 0.5 m2 target at 1000m range multiple times exact same point in Robin Hood style. Damn it can be even stationary.