125 replies to this topic

[Mchawkeye]

You're right. Its my fault. Honestly.

[UncleKulikov]

Ways to not have a cone of fire system:

double or triple the heat that weapons generate.
increase weapon's cycle time
make missile lock-on less effective
add stun and recoil for when the mech moves or jumps, so that the weapons fire where the arms/torso is pointed at the time of trigger pull.
Overheated mechs have distorted HUD systems

Those are what I could think of in place of a cone of fire.

[fearfactory]

You're all forgetting that BattleMechs are NOT pinpoint accurate.

[Mchawkeye]

In what way are we forgetting what?

[Sirisian]

Mchawkeye, on 11 November 2011 - 11:13 AM, said:

Guys, I appreciate all the replies, but as the i stated (and is now clarified) chat about that smegging expanding reticule is for other threads...

I don't understand. The only alternative to expanding reticules for targeting is cursor offset. That doesn't work with multiple weapons as far as I can tell.

So I think someone needs to explain (the OP or someone) how they'd prefer targeting to work with multiple weapons.

UncleKulikov, on 11 November 2011 - 12:15 PM, said:

Ways to not have a cone of fire system:

double or triple the heat that weapons generate.
increase weapon's cycle time
make missile lock-on less effective
add stun and recoil for when the mech moves or jumps, so that the weapons fire where the arms/torso is pointed at the time of trigger pull.
Overheated mechs have distorted HUD systems

You're just suggesting to get rid of accuracy all together and just use heat? That doesn't help with range. The developers need to balance weapons for their effective range. Adding more heat doesn't do that.

If I fire a machine gun for a while on a mech I'd expect my reticule to go up along with my heat. So at medium range the weapon would be amazing for spraying at enemies. At a long range bullets would go around the mech and some would hit reflecting the weapon's accuracy. Controlled bursts might allow me to hit with more accuracy though.

Edited by Sirisian, 11 November 2011 - 01:28 PM.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

Why has everybody been moaning about "nerfing" of energy weapons due to their inherent acuuracy etc when the AC's have been nerfed for range since the beginning - and the answer given is balance - the maximum range for an AC20 is 270m - some versions of which fire a single slug - some multiple. I'm sorry but that is ridiculous .

Edited by Nik Van Rhijn, 11 November 2011 - 01:36 PM.

[Corvus Antaka]

Adding more heat does do this. The AC 20 in mech3 was murderous, but if you missed it was all over for you - too much heat, too little ammo left. For example, we used to run dual uac 20 thors with a MASC and 1 or 2 heatsinks. That thor was murder - but you had 2 shots, and if by then you didnt knock the other guy down, you had to fluid flush, and if you had no fluid you were dead.

Normally a mech alpha striking 6 ER larges should simply explode, same for a mech like the novacat firing 2 erppcs and 3 er larges.

when your fighting another mech, there is a huge difference between alpha striking 6 weapons pinpoint because you can, or trying to link fire 6 er larges into the same location during the course of the battle. your mechs getting hit too, your being knocked around, and thus heat again prevents dumping to much weapons fire into 1 location with 1 shot.

cone of fire would also cause problems with torso twisting to defend your mech while your weapons are recycling, it might very well cripple the use of cover and other tactical movements, and given the battlemech is a huge machine, the systems should be precise in targetting, nevermind that this rewards skill.

rather, LRM's, LBX's, etc etc, all these weapons cause your mech to shuder when your hit. Im not convinced adding any kind of cone is necessary or will improve gameplay, rather concerned itll dumb the gameplay down too much, causing people to be unhappy because unless they aim at the same spot for 5 minutes they cant eve hit what they want to. IF i want to shoot a guys head, i expect to be able to shield my mech with its left arm, plan my shot, let him shoot me with his AC20, rip my left arm off, then turn, aim at his head and blow his cokpit out with some er mediums in link fire mode.

I dont need to then suddenly have to wait/hope that the ingame error system is going to randomly put that LASER shot in a random area of a cone.

heat worked fine in mech3, mech4 had the worst heat management ever, and heat was way to easy to deal with. hence the alpha strikking laser boats. and if you notice in mech3 we had exactly the same problem, because of fluid flushing

In a first person shooter, you never or rarely get affected in your targetting by being hit, because being hit means you die.

in a battlemech, hitting buildings, being shot by lrms/lbx, etc all cause you problems in aiming. a good link fired lrm boat can make the best aiming pilot worthless.

these are things to consider before throwing cone of fire into the mix as the only possible solution to this issue. (trying not to get off topic here

[Creel]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 11 November 2011 - 01:47 PM, said:

Adding more heat does do this. The AC 20 in mech3 was murderous, but if you missed it was all over for you - too much heat, too little ammo left. For example, we used to run dual uac 20 thors with a MASC and 1 or 2 heatsinks. That thor was murder - but you had 2 shots, and if by then you didnt knock the other guy down, you had to fluid flush, and if you had no fluid you were dead.

Normally a mech alpha striking 6 ER larges should simply explode, same for a mech like the novacat firing 2 erppcs and 3 er larges.

when your fighting another mech, there is a huge difference between alpha striking 6 weapons pinpoint because you can, or trying to link fire 6 er larges into the same location during the course of the battle. your mechs getting hit too, your being knocked around, and thus heat again prevents dumping to much weapons fire into 1 location with 1 shot.

cone of fire would also cause problems with torso twisting to defend your mech while your weapons are recycling, it might very well cripple the use of cover and other tactical movements, and given the battlemech is a huge machine, the systems should be precise in targetting, nevermind that this rewards skill.

rather, LRM's, LBX's, etc etc, all these weapons cause your mech to shuder when your hit. Im not convinced adding any kind of cone is necessary or will improve gameplay, rather concerned itll dumb the gameplay down too much, causing people to be unhappy because unless they aim at the same spot for 5 minutes they cant eve hit what they want to. IF i want to shoot a guys head, i expect to be able to shield my mech with its left arm, plan my shot, let him shoot me with his AC20, rip my left arm off, then turn, aim at his head and blow his cokpit out with some er mediums in link fire mode.

I dont need to then suddenly have to wait/hope that the ingame error system is going to randomly put that LASER shot in a random area of a cone.

heat worked fine in mech3, mech4 had the worst heat management ever, and heat was way to easy to deal with. hence the alpha strikking laser boats. and if you notice in mech3 we had exactly the same problem, because of fluid flushing

In a first person shooter, you never or rarely get affected in your targetting by being hit, because being hit means you die.

in a battlemech, hitting buildings, being shot by lrms/lbx, etc all cause you problems in aiming. a good link fired lrm boat can make the best aiming pilot worthless.

these are things to consider before throwing cone of fire into the mix as the only possible solution to this issue. (trying not to get off topic here

I agree that all of those things are relevant factors, and I think that weapons should suffer a standard deviation from center which is modified by these factors.

[CaveMan]

UncleKulikov, on 11 November 2011 - 12:15 PM, said:

double or triple the heat that weapons generate.

I don't think this is even necessary. Just have heat sinks work at the rate they work in the board game. One heat sink dissipates 1 heat in 10 seconds (thus 10 HS dissipate 1 heat per second, enough to cover your movement with no heat buildup). So if you fire a medium laser it's going to take 3 seconds to soak up the heat generated with 10 SHS. If you fire 6 medium lasers linked together, hold on for dear life because it's going to get hot in that cockpit for the next 18 seconds or so. Alpha striking with lots of energy weapons is a quick ticket to Shutdownsville, possibly changing trains at Ammunition Explosion Junction.

[diana]

Creel, on 11 November 2011 - 02:01 PM, said:

I agree that all of those things are relevant factors, and I think that weapons should suffer a standard deviation from center which is modified by these factors.

I think these factors should be the only ones affecting the accuracy and no 'standard deviation from center' is needed, unless its a burst fire AC, or SRM.

[Creel]

diana, on 11 November 2011 - 02:19 PM, said:

I think these factors should be the only ones affecting the accuracy and no 'standard deviation from center' is needed, unless its a burst fire AC, or SRM.

What confuses me about this viewpoint, is that it's proponents (not necessarily you, diana, I've not noted much of your posting history) are the same people espousing "realism" (something that I'm not generally in favor of in my fantasy worlds).

Some measure of deviation from center is unavoidable with any semi-accurate physics model. This fact was incorporated into the tabletop rules and represented by the base difficulty to hit values. These base difficulty values were further modified by pilot skill, relative movement, cover, and heat. Limited deviation + modifiers is both closer to the TT rules, AND closer to a real world physics model.

[diana]

Well, energy weapons\single shot weapons might not hit exactly the same spot that barrel is pointing at, but its always the same spot, unless weapon is not maintained properly.
In short, if I'm good enough to take care about my weapons durability?, am stationary\used to compensating for walking and not being attacked, I want to be able to hit a stationary target accurately at least with energy weapons, without purely random factors interfering.

Purely, because things like wind\heated air\smoke\magnetic fields and such won't be here because they will make battles overcomplicated .

[Mchawkeye]

I'm not sure why "some measure of deviation"? could you tell me what that represents? an inherent inaccuracy in the gun? Even lasers?

Pilot skill, relative movement, cover and heat will all be present in the game as factors we will be physically dealing with and don't need to be applied as a further modification to gun accuracy, do they?

Someone, somewhere mentioned the idea that, as a weapon becomes damaged, it should become inaccurate. I really dig this idea; i would love more complex damage issues beyond 'reverse disabled, weapon destroyed.'

Also I thought I had run out of biscuits. Turns out, I have not. Party. Bonus.

Edited by Mchawkeye, 11 November 2011 - 03:17 PM.

[Kudzu]

Mchawkeye, on 11 November 2011 - 03:14 PM, said:

I'm not sure why "some measure of deviation"? could you tell me what that represents? an inherent inaccuracy in the gun? Even lasers?

It's actually representing the state of technology in the battletech universe. The lore reasoning behind the inaccuracy and very short ranges is that mechs don't have very good targeting systems. Keep in mind that for 300 or so years the Inner Sphere was in repeat of the dark ages-- technology not only ceased to advance but had actually been declining due to the constant warfare. 3028 and the discovery/distribution of the Helm memory core had started a neo-renessance period, humanity was starting to claw it's way back to the former tech level of the Star League. (Feel free to debate how realistic this idea is all you want, but that's the way the designers decided to handwave it-- much like Jedi using the force to have their nifty powers.)

Edited by Kudzu, 11 November 2011 - 03:33 PM.

[MaddMaxx]

How "in game" weapons aiming will be handled does warrant as much discussion as possible. The # of threads on this single topic so far bears this out.

I just installed the F2P MW4 game to prep for MWO. I use a Joystick and pin point accuracy at any distance is difficult and requires practice. I have played MW with a Mouse, and having the Gun(s) directly (or very closely) attached to its movement provide a Pin Point accuracy that is almost to easy to achieved.

When comparing the 2 methods, the Mouses "frozen rope" (while ignoring obvious firing angle issues) firing solution quickly becomes boring quite simply because there is no need to actually "aim" you just "point and click."

Elsewhere I have stated my preference about aiming reticule types. But after reading so many more posts I am getting the feeling that because there will be more than one Aiming device type used (Mouse & Stick) how can the Dev's make them both behave in the same, or a very similar fashion?

Many of the proposed expanding reticule ideas will help alleviate the Point and Shoot directness of the Mouse while it does not detract from the Stick method. Thus it may allow all pilots the same base accuracy and have the aiming precision left to the individual pointing the device.

As for the fine art shown in this thread I would say the first is a over dramatization of what most who like that theory would see. The reticules base size would be dependent on many factors, Range being paramount but would likely never exceed a circle the size of the shoulder width of the target in question and shots would land in that circle based on firing location of the attacking Mech. Arm mounts would be very accurate while chassis based hard mounts would need to follow set paths set up when mounted, convergence range or straight ahead trajectories (lasers) hitting anything they intersect with when fired.

Cluster weapons operate in a similar manner. For example: a group of 4 SL's in an Arm mount could be directed to hit 4 separate locations (grouped in the exact shape as they were mounted) on anything they hit.

What I can't see as feasible is having a weapon hard mounted in the lower section of a 10 meter Mech, while having no independent articulation, hitting something 4 meters taller, 350m down range.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 11 November 2011 - 04:00 PM.

[Draco Argentum]

diana, on 11 November 2011 - 03:13 PM, said:

Well, energy weapons\single shot weapons might not hit exactly the same spot that barrel is pointing at, but its always the same spot, unless weapon is not maintained properly.

Not true, even if you mount a cannon to a 100ton block of steel the shells will land in a spread.

More importantly you aren't mounting guns on inert lumps of steel. Mechs are humming and vibrating constantly because of the reactor and the coolant system. Even lasers will experience some random jitter from that.

[guardiandashi]

I know I am repeating myself on other threads so I will try again.

I see 2 issues and schools of thought and there seems to be a disconnect between them.

1 school says where I point my gun/guns is where they should hit no deviation is acceptable

the second school of thought points out that this idea is what is responsable for or contributes to the issues that made previous versions of mechwarrior have to do things like increase armor levels to the point that it takes 4 ppc direct hits to take the head off a mech and similar.

the fact is that in the table top game (horrors) mech weapons are powerful and mechs are frankly in some ways fragile

in another thread I mentioned the fact that in the table top game 1 ppc hit in the arm of a dasher will rip it off and tear up or destroy the side torso in addition. and someone immediately freeked out.

what I am getting at is I think the weapons should have individual "aimpoint trackers" that attempt to follow a "master crosshair" the "master crosshair" is the only one the pilot has direct control over, and represents where you want the guns to fire. the aimpoint trackers are a representation of (in general) where the weapons are supposed to be aiming. now a small laser or a machine gun because they are light weapons (0.25-0.5 tons each) that only have an ~90 meter effective range should have a relatively rapidly expanding angle of probability on where they are going to strike, weather you define this as they have high speed low accuracy mounts low quality manufacturing short barrel or whatever there is a reason they are only effective to ~90m.

medium lasers srms and ac20's are accurate to ~270meters now they in theory be as accurate at 270 meters as the light weapons are at 90 m

other heavier weapons have longer ranges 450m, 540m etc etc

one thing I think we should NOT have is too precise of targeting capability for "sniping" and "massed barrage" firing ie it your targeting reticule, brackets etc are bigger than the entire enemy unit you should not be able to put your attack in the right lower corner of the atlas's right eye so to speak but you should be able to get the weapons to converge (mostly) on the atlas to generate a "hit"

if the developers choose to include some kind of direct hit, glancing blow mechanism they need to be careful (IMO) to not make it too easy, but also not wildly hard to get solid hits.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

An excellent summarisation of the multiple threads IMO guardiandashi and something that most people will probably agree on. A further suggestion elswhere is the use of the Solaris system which perhaps could be further "modified" to take into account that we are operating in "real time" not turns of a discrete length.ir everything would still be operating in "turns" but small enough that we (not operating at anything like the speed of a computer) would not notice. Such "real world" physics calculations are routinely carried out in flight sims and FPS.
Proper heat management under this system would I believe be true to the original ethos. Something that I'm sure the dev's are probable more aware of than we are. Give the length of time until the game comes out I'm not too worried - after all they have a much bigger stake in seeing it succeed than we have.

[Mchawkeye]

Kudzu, on 11 November 2011 - 03:32 PM, said:

It's actually representing the state of technology in the battletech universe. The lore reasoning behind the inaccuracy and very short ranges is that mechs don't have very good targeting systems. Keep in mind that for 300 or so years the Inner Sphere was in repeat of the dark ages-- technology not only ceased to advance but had actually been declining due to the constant warfare. 3028 and the discovery/distribution of the Helm memory core had started a neo-renessance period, humanity was starting to claw it's way back to the former tech level of the Star League. (Feel free to debate how realistic this idea is all you want, but that's the way the designers decided to handwave it-- much like Jedi using the force to have their nifty powers.)

That's fair enough. But I think it's one of those occasions where The Lore has to take a back-seat to gameplay. That aspect of the lore was written in, possibly even retconned, to let the TT game devs expand the length of their games and attribute for the classic TT (that's pretty much any war games rules) exceptional miss.

I just don't think that should apply because this isn't the TT, and unlike the TT (where missing is all too frequent thanks to dice) random missing just because is deeply frustraiting...

[Kudzu]

Mchawkeye, on 12 November 2011 - 03:17 AM, said:

That's fair enough. But I think it's one of those occasions where The Lore has to take a back-seat to gameplay. That aspect of the lore was written in, possibly even retconned, to let the TT game devs expand the length of their games and attribute for the classic TT (that's pretty much any war games rules) exceptional miss.

I just don't think that should apply because this isn't the TT, and unlike the TT (where missing is all too frequent thanks to dice) random missing just because is deeply frustraiting...

The thing is, it's not written in just because, without misses it turns into a one hit kill kind of game.

If you make it harder to hit than in previous games it promotes teamwork and maneuvering instead of who can alpha strike first-- you need to focus fire if you want to finish someone off fast otherwise one on one duels turn into slugging matches (which are fun too, in all honesty).

The thing is, with CoF, you can adjust what you do in order to hit better; either get in closer or slow down (or both!) No one is saying that the cones have to be bigger than the mech when you're standing still and right next to someone, just that if your moving full out at max range it should be a lot harder. There's still a lot of twitch involved but it's blended with more tactical awareness-- do you slow down to give yourself a better shot while making it easier to hit you or do you keep moving and take your chances?