51 replies to this topic

[MustrumRidcully]

I am not opposed to this, but I am not sure if it would be sufficient.

I prefer one of the "F" options:

Enforce chain-fire delays with global cooldowns, figure out good cooldowns for different weapons based on their damage values and projectile type.
The difference between group fire (including alpha strikes) and chain-fire would be that group fire cycles through all weapons and fires each as its chain-fire delay is used up, while the regular chain-fire mode fires only one weapon per key press.

Example:

Very Short Chain-Fire Delay (0.05 seconds): AC/2, Small and Medium Lasers (Pulse and regular), all (S)SRMs and LRMs). => An 8 medium laser mech like the HBK 4P would need 1.4 seconds instead of 1 second to discharge an "alpha" strike.
Short Chain-Fire Delay (0.1 second): Large Laser, Large Pulse Laser, AC/5, Ultra AC/5
Medium Chain-Fire Delay (0.25 seconds): PPC, AC/10
Long Chain-Fire Delay: (0.5 seconds): Gauss, AC/20

Rationale:

Without croup fire, convergence doesn't really matter. You have to aim every weapon seperately, so the only thing convergence does is that the weapon you currently fires hits the spot you're aiming at (plus minus the lead). The next weapon you fire will fire at wherever your crosshair is when you fire that weapon, which is not very likely to be the same exact spot that it was on the previous shot.

It's simpler in that you don't require people to lead for each weapon's position. It's harder in that you are really forced to spend more time on aiming and firing your weapons than just one button press (which also means less time available for torso-twisting and avoiding enemy fire.) And people can boat as much as the ylike, they best positioned hard points cannot stop them from playing around, and if you try to circumvent the drawbacks of having too shoot each weapon separately, you have to deal with longer global cooldowns, so the choices should be roughly equal on that front.

[Vila deVere]

HRR Insanity, on 14 September 2013 - 05:59 AM, said:

Please ignore Imperius. He fails to understand that the reason 'Mech armor seems weak is because of convergence. The Devs already tried to double armor (to the current values) because 'Mechs died 'too quickly' during Beta. The Devs can triple, quadruple, or make armor infinite without changing the fact that groups of weapons will be optimal. Increasing armor forces people to group weapons to punch through armor in a reasonable time and makes individual weapons useless.
Please see reference material.

So, our super 31st century walking robots can't have weapons mounts that are on gimbals?

[zagibu]

SuckyJack, on 14 September 2013 - 05:42 AM, said:

This shouldn't be happening with most places to mount a weapon. Weapon Convergence shouldn't be universal. This is because weapons that are not mounted in the arms are not turrets. They are anchored in a fixed mounting. What this means is these weapons should be firing straight out of the torso. If there is a 1 meter distance between two medium lasers on where they are mounted on the mech itself then there should be a 1 meter distance between where they hit.

1) Never use realism as an argument to balance a game.
2) Even your realism argument is moot, because in the year 3050, it can be expected that they have convergence adjustment mechanisms even for "fixed" weapons.

Edited by zagibu, 14 September 2013 - 10:18 AM.

[Livewyr]

I proposed this same concept last year..

You can see where it went.

[HRR Insanity]

Vila deVere, on 14 September 2013 - 10:16 AM, said:

So, our super 31st century walking robots can't have weapons mounts that are on gimbals?

Doesn't matter. Targetting computers in the dystopian future don't work right. Read BT literature, understand the IP, then realize that game balance matters more than any ridiculous future-physics.

[zagibu]

You don't need a targeting computer to account for convergence. A targeting computer tries to predict movement and calculate the correct lead. No need for that, a simple distance meter, which we already have, is enough.

[Devils Advocate]

I'm personally in love with the idea of making arms more meaningful and severely limiting torso weapon convergence. Arms are wonky as they are and have their own disadvantages even when fully converged on somebody so you'd get a nice risk reward to using a mech with flexible arms to try and capitalize on convergence on the field.

Unfortunately we're too far along for any of this. Even in closed beta they never tried screwing with convergence other than to make it slower or faster. It's a problem and it's going to stay a problem for the duration of the game.

[DocBach]

http://mwomercs.com/...__fromsearch__1

[Foxfire]

Barbaric Soul, on 14 September 2013 - 07:48 AM, said:

Why anyone would want an aiming system that takes away the ability to hit where you want to hit is beyond me.

So that we can have a game without arbitrary balance systems like 'ghost heat'?

It shouldn't be an RNG based system but pin point damage limits what can be done with this game without overly complicating everything.. which is exactly what is happening now.

Honestly, what is the easier solution.. remove pin point damage... or gimmick up every weapon(guass anyone?) and overly complicate the game with arbitrary systems?

[aniviron]

SuckyJack, on 14 September 2013 - 05:42 AM, said:

Right now we have universal convergence. Every single weapon no matter where it is mounted rather mystically aims itself for the center of the crosshair. This causes a lot of pin point damage which devalues armor and makes the distribution of hitboxes and armor a rather hot topic. This has given problems with a single location on a mech reliably being focus fired.

This shouldn't be happening with most places to mount a weapon. Weapon Convergence shouldn't be universal. This is because weapons that are not mounted in the arms are not turrets. They are anchored in a fixed mounting. What this means is these weapons should be firing straight out of the torso. If there is a 1 meter distance between two medium lasers on where they are mounted on the mech itself then there should be a 1 meter distance between where they hit. The profile of the mech and where it's weapons are should matter in terms of where it's weapons hit instead of bending light and bullets to hit the center of the crosshair.

The BT lore and rulebooks actually explicitly state that weapons in the torso etc are mounted on gimbals and can be aimed like arm-mounted weapons, albeit not with quite as much freedom of movement.

Removing convergence is a terrible idea anyway; there are enough chassis that are bad as is without making even more of them obsolete vis a vis their wide-spread hardpoints. I just want you to imagine trying to ever hit anything with an Awesome ever again if you remove torso convergence; whereas the Stalker would laugh its way to the top of the scoreboards. The mechs that have the slimmest profiles already have a significant advantage, and removing convergence just compounds this. Furthermore, you remove the ability of mechs without horizontally actuated arm weapons to hit any target more than 200m out by anything more than sheer luck, which would be unbelievably frustrating.

If hitboxes were fixed in such a way that every mech had a CT that was as hard to hit as a Cent's or a Stalker, nobody would be complaining about convergence. That's how it should be. You should be able to land accurate weapons fire on your opponent, landing it on the most lethal spots should not be trivial like it is right now; it should take excellent aim or a stationary target. This would also bring the game more back in line with BT where arms, legs, and side torsi tend to come off first.

I mean, it's obvious why it's incredibly hard to hit the cockpit on every mech (except the catapult, sorry) but for similar reasons it should be hard to hit the center torso, though admittedly not nearly as hard as the cockpit given its extra armor. But you shouldn't be aiming at targets 900m out and getting essentially random shots that land on the CT every time as it works now. Given that you are trying to prevent the incredibly fast coring and death that inevitably happen in this game, wouldn't in make more sense to try and make coring harder instead of completely destroying the aiming system?

Edited by aniviron, 14 September 2013 - 06:57 PM.

[SuomiWarder]

Not that it matters but I'm pretty sure that the weapons are mounted in housings attached to and shifted about by myomer so they can be aimed even when in the torso. This was a reason why high heat affected aim. Your weapons were jiggly as the myomer refused to do exactly what it was told.

I still advocate the 'Golden Lock'. A few of the early novels described a gold lock color when the weapons had convereged and the computer had achieved optimum lock. The longer you aim at a target, the tighter the convergance until they all adjust for range to the same spot. Would not waiting for the Golden Lock to place your damage where you want it be "skill". And judging when a little scatter was acceptable for time constraints reasons?

[Erebus Alpha]

Agreed with OP. It's absolutely idiotic that people have guns that are several meters apart on a mech and expect them to focus precisely on the little crosshair.

{Insert generic swearing about over-entitled zero-skill newbies here}

Unless your weapons are mounted on full horizontal/vertical sweeping arms, you don't deserve to have your guns auto-aim at your crosshair for you.

Edited by ABFalcon, 14 September 2013 - 11:35 PM.

[Orkhepaj]

Yeah arms have nearly no advantage just huge disadvantages,like you cant fire from behind hills and near walls as they hit those...

Chicken mechs can just push out their high top where their weapons are and fire showing only maybe 20% of the mech.
Human type mechs have to show 50-60% of them to able to fire over those obstacles. Huge disadvantage no gain.
Something has to be done to make arms viable.

[zagibu]

Orkhepaj, on 15 September 2013 - 06:44 AM, said:

Yeah arms have nearly no advantage just huge disadvantages,like you cant fire from behind hills and near walls as they hit those...

Chicken mechs can just push out their high top where their weapons are and fire showing only maybe 20% of the mech.
Human type mechs have to show 50-60% of them to able to fire over those obstacles. Huge disadvantage no gain.
Something has to be done to make arms viable.

Maybe you shouldn't snipe with brawler mechs, just a tip for you. In a brawl, arms can be very valuable, especially against lights.

[vv3k70r]

Todays guns are already equipped with servos that adjust them all the time.
It could not be an issue for such advanced weapon as mech armed with tons of servos. Just few small more to focus all weapons by pilot view isnt an issue with todays technology.

[Kassatsu]

Didn't read past the second or third paragraph but I most likely agree with everything you just said. Mechs that don't have lower arm actuators should not have their UAC5s (I'm looking at you jagermechs) fire 45 degrees left/right to hit their crosshairs at point-blank range. Ilya Muromets should not be able to do the same either with their torso weapons (minus the arm one). Being directly in the face of an atlas should not have all of your weapons hitting the center of your crosshairs on the exact same part of its torso - It should be realistically spread out based on where your weapons are physically located, not where they're breaking the laws of physics to aim 45 degrees away from their fixed points.

Edited by Kassatsu, 15 September 2013 - 10:44 AM.

[Imperius]

Convergence < Armor + Hit Box balancing. Honestly if I see another TT thread pop up I'll scream. From day one they said this game is an INTERPRETATION of TT and BT lore, but will not follow it because it doesn't make a good FPS/3RD MECH STOMPING VIDEO GAME. Go play Mechwarrior Tactics for TT rules. I want this game to succeed not be run into the ground by a bunch of old TT players unable to embrace the future cause they are trying to grasp on the past.

Keep saying I don't know nothing and ignore me but I've been video gaming since I could hold a controller/mouse. I know what's fun I know what people gravitate to in a video game.

The only way this game will make it is if it's. EASY TO PLAY, HARD TO MASTER. Cores are too big they should be broken up into 3-4 smaller sections. Which would making aiming a little more skill based then it is ATM. Next thing I'll see you guys complain about is cockpit shooting mechs with my Gausspult, which I have no issue with the added charge mechanic, and I can now brawl with it a bit more since the gauss health went back up.

Focus on better things then trying to turn our mechs into cheap firework tanks. It's funny I only see people try to quote "lore" when it only suits their arguments. It gets old! Please quit going lore police on {Scrap} until they try to put a gundam in the game. Then call lore and I'll back you up.

[Vassago Rain]

ITT: we expect PGI to change major gameplay feature two days before launch.

[Foxfire]

Imperius, on 15 September 2013 - 11:33 AM, said:

The only way this game will make it is if it's. EASY TO PLAY, HARD TO MASTER. Cores are too big they should be broken up into 3-4 smaller sections. Which would making aiming a little more skill based then it is ATM. Next thing I'll see you guys complain about is cockpit shooting mechs with my Gausspult, which I have no issue with the added charge mechanic, and I can now brawl with it a bit more since the gauss health went back up.

Which is exactly why they need to limit pin point damage(with a non RNG method) so that they don't have to complicate the game with balancing schemes that only serve to complicate the game.

The changes to Guass complicate the game. The ghost heat system complicate the game. Keep it simple and fix the one issue that makes those changes a necessity will eliminate the need for complication AND it can be done in a way that still allows skill to trump all.

Edited by Foxfire, 15 September 2013 - 12:01 PM.

[RandomLurker]

Convergence fix, with no RNG and no cones of fire:

http://mwomercs.com/...-with-no-cones/

Yes, I'm self plugging, but this forum gets more traffic and double posting is rude.

So, as I pointed out somewhere else, the pinpoint aim, massed direct-fire weapons has been the Mechwarrior metagame for 15 years. 6 games have all tried to fix it by rebalancing the weapon stats, and it has never worked. The aiming method itself must be addressed.