66 replies to this topic

[Ian Grahame]

Here, let Grandpa lend a hand, if there remains anyone who has gotten to this point in the thread without understanding about leading a target.

When you were a kid playing in the front yard with your brother in the hot summer, you shoot him with a garden hose. He yells and takes off. You shot him directly, sitting target. No need to figure a lead.

He's hauling *** across the yard, and you watch which way he's running and you swing the stream of cold water out in front of him, adjusting it until there is this lovely arc ending at him. You aim up a little to allow for drop over distance, in front of him a good bit because he was startled and is running fast. If executed correctly a jet of cold water smacks him again.

This is ballistics, in simple form. Country boys know it from shooting dove, but there are a lot of people who have not had exposure to that kind of thing.

As to maneuver, time on the testing grounds can also help... although I should take my own advice there. Lights have eaten me alive too many times. Then again, my Firebrand is now running 2 LB10X and 4 ML. LBX shot is not a light pilot's friend.

[Major Derps]

I'm Mokey Mot, and I approve this message.

[Kmieciu]

Ian Grahame, on 15 October 2013 - 02:55 PM, said:

Here, let Grandpa lend a hand, if there remains anyone who has gotten to this point in the thread without understanding about leading a target.

When you were a kid playing in the front yard with your brother in the hot summer, you shoot him with a garden hose. He yells and takes off. You shot him directly, sitting target. No need to figure a lead.

He's hauling *** across the yard, and you watch which way he's running and you swing the stream of cold water out in front of him, adjusting it until there is this lovely arc ending at him. You aim up a little to allow for drop over distance, in front of him a good bit because he was startled and is running fast. If executed correctly a jet of cold water smacks him again.

This is ballistics, in simple form. Country boys know it from shooting dove, but there are a lot of people who have not had exposure to that kind of thing.

Hey Gramps! But what should I do when I see my brother getting hit with the stream of cold water, but not getting wet?

Does it have anything to do with the fact that he's actually thousand miles away from me and this HSR-thing sometimes does and sometimes doesn't adjust for that?

[Rushin Roulette]

Kmieciu, on 28 October 2013 - 04:50 AM, said:

Hey Gramps! But what should I do when I see my brother getting hit with the stream of cold water, but not getting wet?

Does it have anything to do with the fact that he's actually thousand miles away from me and this HSR-thing sometimes does and sometimes doesn't adjust for that?

Simple... You get him to take off the rain poncho.

What he wrote is a very simplified version of leading your target. The faster it is, the further ahead you should be shooting. One simple method of finding the sweet spot for energy weapons I used to use was to install a TAG laster onto one of the energy slots. The reticule would react to the TAG laser hitting the enemy just the same as any damage dealing weapon. I would then find the lag spot, use that directly for laser weapons and adjust accordingly for SRMs and Balistic weapons before shooting.

[reeds]

...........................

[Mellowseven]

Wascot, on 22 September 2013 - 02:13 PM, said:

...so your wall of text can basically be summed up to "lead your targets." I don't know about you, but this is something any fps player picks up after their first game if they have any modicum of skill or sense. Well maybe not the newer generation of fps gamers with their fancy lag compensation. Back in the day we had to lead hitscan weapons an inch or two from our targets to get a hit...

There's no amount of leading/compensating/etc you can do when hits simply don't register. You know when you hit your target and others do too. Even had my buddy comments on "how did that not hit" when he's spectating me on my mech. So yes when people on the forum complain about "hit detection," chances are their complaints are legitimate as this is a rather common issue.

Sadly this is a case of the simple answer "L2P" being insufficient. Isn't it sad?

After 6 months or so of playing and spectating i can tell you that there is a very large percentage of the population that does not lead their targets. I can't tell you how many times i see people do their best to keep the cross-hairs right on the target and continuously fire behind it. Just saying L2P doesn't help. This type of post does. It spells out exactly how and why you can hit fast moving targets.

[ShinVector]

Mellowseven, on 24 December 2013 - 06:00 PM, said:

After 6 months or so of playing and spectating i can tell you that there is a very large percentage of the population that does not lead their targets. I can't tell you how many times i see people do their best to keep the cross-hairs right on the target and continuously fire behind it. Just saying L2P doesn't help. This type of post does. It spells out exactly how and why you can hit fast moving targets.

People are suppose to keep their cross hairs right on target for hit-scan weapons aka. lasers.
The problem being that now that is a gamble on whether HSR decides to work or not.

Sometimes HSR works and see these people who supposed don't lead their target kill mechs, even though from spectator view you see it as a miss.

Edited by ShinVector, 25 December 2013 - 12:39 AM.

[Pht]

ShinVector, on 25 December 2013 - 12:39 AM, said:

People are suppose to keep their cross hairs right on target for hit-scan weapons aka. lasers.
The problem being that now that is a gamble on whether HSR decides to work or not.

Sometimes HSR works and see these people who supposed don't lead their target kill mechs, even though from spectator view you see it as a miss.

Which would be fodder for another thread. We all know things aren't perfect; and this thread is about teaching best practices that apply regardless of ping or netcode.

[The Schwartz]

Something else I've not read (maybe i'm blind idk) are ultra cool weapons called pulse lasers. Since it's not always possible to hold your lasers on target before it runs out of visual range or due to torso twist limitations, then the principle is to do as much dmg as possible before that happens. Take the Medium pulse laser... it pulses 3 times and deals 6 dmg. Each one of those pulses does 2 dmg. If you have 3 then you'll deal 6 dmg with 1 set of pulses using that faning technique someone posted earlier. Pulse lasers also deliver their damage faster and require less time on target while firing. These things are brutal vs lights. Yes, they are hotter and you'll overheat more quickly if you're not paying attention but, as long as you're not boating them it's typically not horrible.

The other thing I see a ton of is people try to turn quickly with armlock on. This is especially bad on atlas which has a sweet range of arm movement. Even if you can't out turn a light, pop it into reverse, and swing with those arms. Typically, people will try to circle with the enemy mech which is bad. What you want to do is swing to the point that you're about to use your lower torso to turn, then swing to the other direction and catch the enemy as it's coming around the other side. This really only works with atlas & awesome though because of their incredible arm swing but, works okay with highlander as well. My 2 cents at anyrate

[Motroid]

Mak54291, on 22 September 2013 - 03:51 PM, said:

I played like 100 hours so far and I never saw anybody lagging. Call your isp.

Thats because you don't SEE lag anymore. But you can still feel it when your commands just don't reach the server ending up in packet losses and weapons not registering. Your screen shows weapon impact and red crosshairs but only your computer does. Infact none of these results leave your computer. Fancy Lag compensation. Younger players can be fooled so easily with this mechanic. HSR should compensate for this but requires stable ping for working properly.
Tripledigit pings are ridiculous anyhow in the first place. Didn't they promise EU servers with "release"?
OPs tips are valueable anyhow.
Edit: Typo

Edited by Motroid, 28 December 2013 - 06:37 AM.

[Grayblue]

I've hit many light mechs. I do not find lead necessary for lasers, but seen so many players miss with ballistics because they do not know the principle of leading. May be a slight lead would help with lasers though.

The key point for me was to develop dexterity to keep the reticle stable on target when the lights are circling me. Another technique is to place the aim where they are predicted to be then firing, as opposed to continiously calculated lead point.

-Adjust your mouse sensitivity. Too high sensitivity is not good since it will make the reticle lead or lag too far with little movement.

-Mix in some high power laser to make whatever few hits more devastating. Although not impossibe, it is a really bad idea to have just 2 medium laser or less to counter lights.

-Mix in a Streak SRM or two. Helps buy some time for laser cool down and 5~10 damage per volly is a great discouragement for lights.

I usually use a Catapult C1. Players in lights see me and rush in, thinking it is an LRM boat. Then they get greeted with two ER large lasers. When the get closer, they also get greeted with addtional medium lasers and a pair of Streak SRM2s.

When use a Catapult K2, when I see light mech turning, I aim at the apex of their turn then fire an AC10 where their angular movement would briefly stop. Also good for when they shut down.

Pulse lasers can have mixed result. The short bursst duration would mean concentrated damage when the reticle is on target. However, it also makes it likely for a total miss if the reticle was slightly off target then brought on target while firing. Regular laser can still be brought on target and inflict some damege in that scenario. Pulse lasers are out for me because I like to keep distance, since I am not piloting a brawler.

Edited by Grayblue, 28 December 2013 - 05:00 PM.

[orsonic]

To Follow from Grayblue .... on the subject of leading targets .

I started on ballistics so i had to learn how they handle , a simple tip i can offer is this , and it only really applies if you have torso ballistic or have the arms locked if that's where your guns are....

On the Hud , on either side of the centre reticule is the weapon ready icons , 3 small pips ... whichever way your target is moving use these marks as your holdover points .. if your target moves left to right , use the left icon ... right to left use right

, you will have to adjust for different speed mechs .. but in close to medium ..thats 0 - 250 they are fair dead on .... i found they are useful even out to 1000m on slower targets .

This works with advanced or normal zoom modes , its not an exact science , but it will get you in the ball park .

Edited by orsonic, 29 December 2013 - 01:45 PM.

[Throe]

McKillynu, on 01 October 2013 - 02:12 PM, said:

There's probably about half a dozen ... ... one I call the Jackknife which ...
Step 1. As the target is moving outside your viewport(to you right) do the following:

• Hit full reverse
  
• Turn left(reverse makes you turn right)
  
• Torso twist left

So, first off, I'd like to just tell you that it would help me win matches immensely if you would kindly stop attempting to teach people how to fight me.

Secondly, I have to mention that the part about, "Turn left(reverse makes you turn right)", only really applies when one is controlling something with front steering, like a car. In a 'Mech, turning *right* makes you turn *right*, it doesn't matter whether you're moving forward or backward(case in point, in a 'Mech, you can turn side to side without moving at all, try doing that in a car). So... it may be best to update this little guide to reflect that, to avoid confusing people.

[Arasirsul]

Kjudoon, on 03 October 2013 - 12:22 PM, said:

3.2 Ghz duo core 6gb ram. No clue on the graphics card but it wasn't a bottom of the barrel card. I'm going to definitely try to reduce the graphics and see what happens. Without the explosions and spinning, I do pretty fine (20-40fps).

That's probably the issue, then. 3ish GHz Core 2 Duos were usually in the E8000 series, which are about five and a half years old right now. (There are "dual core" processors around that speed that are more recent; I'm not entirely sure if you mean "dual core" in general or "Core 2 Duo" as a specific processor line.)

If your graphics card's contemporary with the rest of the machine, that'd mean that it may not have been bottom of the barrel then, but it probably can be outrun by a modern bottom of the barrel card. When you add to that that Crysis's engine (which is what MWO's built on) was never known for being polite to hardware, it's very likely that your older video card can't keep up.

Your best bet to improve framerates is to reduce resolution on the monitor (well, the best bet is new hardware, but that's not always an option. ). Unfortunately, in our modern world of flat-panels, that's not necessarily an optimal solution for image quality. If you can, choose a resolution that's evenly divisible into what you're currently running-- if you're running 1920x1080 (fairly common these days), see if a 960x540 resolution is available (the original numbers divided by two.) In the Options, push graphics settings down, as well. It won't be as pretty as it used to be, but it'll help the machine keep up.

[daedalus0813]

Thanks for the advice, some people may just be awesome, but they forget that others may have to try to get better

[Intruder]

An important fix would be making the Light Mechs closer to their intended size: they are not meant to be ankle-biters they are in many cases at least 50% larger than the models used in game.

[DonGardenio]

You won't get exploited as a target if you always have a few friendly eyes and guns on you. No matter how good a light pilot is, if he makes such a horrible decision of picking such a target - he's gonna get hurt. And with the current high alpha meta, these mistakes are bloody costly.

Also turn that silly armlock off.

[Kapre]

I try to locked my target and check if there is a blinking parts whenever I hit them. =p

[Colonel Fubar]

So basically lead the target and shoot at the critical areas of the target.

[Pht]

Danny Fubar Col 21C RHG, on 08 March 2014 - 12:05 PM, said:

So basically lead the target...

Some people apparently seem to think that "lead the target" means chasing with the reticule *in front of the target,* i.e. leading the target with the reticle instead of putting the reticle at a fixed point where you think the target will be and timing the shot.

Edited by Pht, 16 March 2014 - 08:50 AM.