Anyone here ever play the old original MechWarrior and MechWarrior 2 games? I seem to recall that they had the aiming system down pretty nicely.
Accuracy was pinpoint for a center torso mounted weapon, center of the reticule was your hit location while standing still. Weapons mounted off of CT would fire off of that center based on the distance from CT, horizontally and vertically. All weapons mounted on the Mech were 'centered' to hit the same spot at X distance while standing still, exact range usually being set by the weapon loadout involved and based on the shortest ranged weapon/s in the system, set for medium range of said weapon/s.
Sounds like you'd never miss your target doesn't it? Easy to pop heads all day long right? Not so, head shots were a feat of extreme skill, because unless your target was a total *****..and away from the keyboard, you had to factor in movement, heat, range and time to target for all weapons, since even lasers in those weren't instant hit weapons, they had an actual time to target factor at all ranges..and PPCs shot big blue ***** of death that moved incredibly slow and could literally be dodged at even point blank ranges(which wasn't actually point blank, they had a min distance below which they wouldn't fire..they should keep that btw!), here's to PGI getting PPCs done correctly, nice beams of blue lighting that are as close to instant as makes no difference to the human eye or mind..same with lasers. This is ONLY for Direct Fire weaponary mind you, lasers, MGs, ACs, Gauss, PPCs, all of which tend to be rather accurate weapons when mounted on 20+ ton hard points..until you start adding in all the factors that make the aim deviate from center...like movement, heating up of the Mech which directly affects the targetting systems(read your lore folks), and other random factors like damage to the Mech and it's various systems.
Keeping in mind the average distances involved in Mech combat, which tends to take place under 1km, often under 300m, time to target with any of the direct fire weapons should be so close to instant that they human eye and mind can't tell the difference, and only at ranges of 400m+ should you actually have to worry about time to target with some of the ballistic weapons, since Gauss rounds travel so fast that at 1km, they hit the moment you fire the weapon as far as the human eye and mind are concerned. So you'd only have to lead your target at range with the ACs, and that lead time shouldn't be all that much, a few mm's distance off center at long range. It's like shooting an arty piece today directly at a target 1km away that's moving..point, click, BOOM..there's so little lead required that you don't have to factor it in for anything but really fast movers, which would be a Light Mech with MASC and a good downhill run
The old TT gameset has rules that make it so you can't instantly hit and take out another Mech without extreme luck, mainly because of 1 simple factor, fun. It takes time to get everything set up for a good TT game, and it's pretty damn anticlimatic, not to mention annoying as all hells and NOT fun, to have your Mech instantly destroyed with the first shot fired by the enemy..or vice versa I might add. If you played like many of us old BTech fans, you spent hours getting your Mech built and getting your stuff together, then you spent a bit of time getting your scenerio all ready and built and..5 minutes of playing and 1 dice roll..done! Yeah..not fun at all, and it's why most TT games of any flavor aren't designed to play that way, from Dungeons and Dragons to BTech, random chance is tossed in to make the game time extend beyond what it should logically be, the first encounter and the first attack
Computer games in real time where you can just load up the game and go...not so important that you can't be 1 shotted out of the gate, it's not exactly a time consuming thing to respawn and come back into the game after all, hit the button, wait a few seconds and boom, back you go to the carnage, remember to duck this time!
This is where player skill comes into play, unlike the TT games where it's all a matter of pure random chance that you can influence with 'skills' and 'bonuses' to the numbers you roll. In a computer game, we want OUR skills to matter, especially in a game where we face off with another live human opponent. That's the point of gaming online after all, to test yourself against another human being and see who's better..not see who's luckier.
This does mean the casual gamer who can't hit the broadside of an Atlas at 10m with a flamethrower IS going to have problems being a big bad Mech Warrior, but that's rather the point, those with the skills to aim properly, which is a lot more then just 'point and click' will do better and will be the ones to best, and you'll know that it's due to SKILL on the part of the player, not random chance and luck, and hopefully not hacks
As for how the aiming system should work/look..eh..read the old novels, there were various versions of targetting systems written about, and they tended to vary a bit by House and Clan and were definately influenced by the age/type of tech in use. I can recall a great combat scene in one of the novels, a House Kurita Mech Warrior in particular, dodging PPC beams and aiming without thinking, his Mech moving as his body, literally...and I recall other novels, where the Warrior would be fighting his Mech to simply get ANY weapon on target due to the battle conditions making aiming almost impossible due to heat, damage, movement and the general confusion that is a battle to the average human being. Typically though, 2 joysticks were used to aim 1 or more reticules and said reticules would vary based on the weapon type, usually a color change in the ret when 'optimal' conditions were achieved and that's when you fired..gold was the color used in one example that I recall, but I'm sure it would vary from Mech to Mech based on the Warrior's actual preferences..or what his Techs decided was best
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GreenHell, on 14 November 2011 - 03:41 PM, said:
