17 replies to this topic

[Oznog]

I never realized this until recently... until I nailed it down. Weapon Convergence seriously breaks aimpoints in many situations. Now that I know what I'm looking at, I started to realize how it can ruin accuracy, and often it makes it impossible to hit the target in brawling. Or sniping. And makes it impossible to shoot around corners.

The basic problem is the aimpoint moves to angle the weapons to converge wherever the aimpoint is. But that's likely incorrect for any LEADING fire.

Say you have a slow-moving weapon, like an autocannon or PPC- on your RIGHT arm. You sight an enemy 200M off, moving to the RIGHT. Behind him, the background is >1000M away.

Well putting the crosshair straight on the enemy will miss. You must lead. So you move the crosshair just to the right of the enemy and fire.

This shot simply CANNOT hit in many scenarios. Because the instant your crosshair moves off the 200M target onto the >1000M background, the weapon on the RIGHT arm aims for Convergence at >1000M, which moves the line-of-fire at 200M over to the right, and it leads too far.

So he's RIGHT THERE, but the game interface makes basically NO firing solution. You aim at it, it will fire straight at the crosshair but miss because you didn't lead, but if you lead, Weapon Convergence forces your line-of-fire to a new vector that can't hit. In some very specific (rare) cases you can force the aim to hit by actually aiming the crosshair the wrong way entirely, off the target, forcing convergence at infinity, which makes the right arm move straight not converging, and it can actually hit.

It's a huge thing with brawling. Same thing, but actually WORSE at close range. The convergence angle to make an arm-mounted weapon hit a target in the crosshair is severe at close range. You're getting circled by a light, and he's not even dodging. Your turn rate is enough that you CAN target them.

So he's circling you clockwise, and is only 10M radius from you. For an arm-mounted weapon, the "Convergence" feature may be angling at arm-mounted weapon like 30 deg from your crosshair to hit something so close. You have an AC20 on your right arm, which is slow, so you must lead. But once you move the crosshair off you target to lead, the weapon convergence sees this as a further target, and cancels the 30 deg angle, and your shot lands far to the right of the target... so no, your shot can't hit. Think about that real hard, it's a real thing.

The other thing is shooting around buildings, even with infinite-projectile-speed weapons. As you try to use an obstacle for cover, say your right arm laser is exposed and has a line-of-sight to the enemy. Yes but if your crosshair touches a building, it snaps to that and radically vectors the weapon off to the left to make it hit that, instead of actually shooting, like, forward. You can be shot... your laser can be shot... but the laser can't fire with the wrong range in the crosshair.

I know this was done so that weapons on different places on the Mech will shoot at the same thing. But it doesn't work correctly with weapons with finite projectile speed, and doesn't handle corners correctly even with lasers. There's gotta be a fix for this... just give me a key to turn this awful thing OFF...

[627]

simple solution: fix converged weapons with a key, just like arm lock. press shift and your weapons stay focused on that point (maybe lock the range finder and make it red or so).

But be aware of the convergence-is-evil-brigade that will show up here in no time...

[Corvus Antaka]

you can armlock to overcome, or you can learn to know what feels right to make the shot and get the most out of your arm mounted guns.

Edited by Colonel Pada Vinson, 21 November 2013 - 12:48 AM.

[Appogee]

Devs declared it to be ''too hard''.

Edited by Appogee, 21 November 2013 - 12:50 AM.

[Oznog]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 21 November 2013 - 12:48 AM, said:

you can armlock to overcome, or you can learn to know what feels right to make the shot and get the most out of your arm mounted guns.

You've missed the point. This has nothing to do with arms converging with the torso. Different "convergence". It's weapons automatically vectoring to try to hit whatever's in the crosshair. Arm crosshair for arm weapons, torso crosshair for torso. BOTH auto-vector instantly and fire off-axis. It is less significant the further from the center the weapon is, so the error is greater for arm weapons esp on larger mechs.

I tried moving the PPCs from the arm to the center torso on a Raven. The accuracy is WILDLY better.

[Oznog]

627, on 21 November 2013 - 12:47 AM, said:

simple solution: fix converged weapons with a key, just like arm lock. press shift and your weapons stay focused on that point (maybe lock the range finder and make it red or so).

But be aware of the convergence-is-evil-brigade that will show up here in no time...

I'm not sure that would fix it. If you had lasers on both sides (grouped) and ballistic on one arm, you probably want the lasers to converge but NOT the ballistic.

If they're lasers on different arms fired as a GROUP, you'd always want them to converge if there's no obstruction. If there's an obstruction in the crosshair you might not want convergence since it'll lock onto that. Well, ok, a toggle key might do what you want more often than anything else.

You could have converge-on-whatever's-targeted-and-near-the-crosshairs. Awkward. But see what I want is when I'm looking at a mech at 300m, I want the weapons to converge at 300m even if I'm leading him- NOT the background or a building near me.

Edited by Oznog, 21 November 2013 - 02:25 AM.

[Flapdrol]

It'd be cool to have a manual convergance option with the mouse wheel or something.

[JigglyMoobs]

I've suggested a converge-on-lock feature several times. Besides helping with lead fire, it would also make getting sensor locks more meaningful for non-missile users.

Edited by JigglyMoobs, 21 November 2013 - 03:40 AM.

[627]

JigglyMoobs, on 21 November 2013 - 03:39 AM, said:

I've suggested a converge-on-lock feature several times. Besides helping with lead fire, it would also make getting sensor locks more meaningful for non-missile users.

excellent idea, always converge on the distance to the locked on enemy! Would help with lead, with lasers... with everything. And people would start locking more!

[Corvus Antaka]

Oznog, on 21 November 2013 - 01:04 AM, said:

I tried moving the PPCs from the arm to the center torso on a Raven. The accuracy is WILDLY better.

Because you need more practice

I always put my PPC in the arms. I prefer the range of motion, and my accuracy does not suffer.

Working as intended.

[Reitrix]

Just have all weapons converge on their max weapon range permanently. Not the split second on the fly adjustments with no range limitations we currently have.
Like, lets say my Boars Head with 6 Medium Lasers in the hands all the lasers converge at exactly 270 meters. with personal skill, i can chain fire the lasers to hit a target that is outside that range, or a a specific section of my target in a brawl.
But if i alpha them, since the convergence would set to exactly 270 meters, the beams would cross and I'd never hit anything accurately, or in close range, my ability to focus down a specific Section would be very limited, since all my lasers are not converging to a point that is 50 meters in front of me.

It's still my opinion though that weapons should not go more than 50 meters beyond their stated max range anyways. It's really stupid than i can take damaging fire from a Gauss/Ac2/ER PPC from outside my LRM and sensor range. (BAP+Sensor module) or Medium laser damage from 400 meters ...
Convergence is the key to pinpoint alpha damage. Solve that, and we encourage chain firing for accuracy instead of massive heat penalties.

[Oznog]

Reitrix, on 21 November 2013 - 09:04 AM, said:

Just have all weapons converge on their max weapon range permanently. Not the split second on the fly adjustments with no range limitations we currently have.
Like, lets say my Boars Head with 6 Medium Lasers in the hands all the lasers converge at exactly 270 meters. with personal skill, i can chain fire the lasers to hit a target that is outside that range, or a a specific section of my target in a brawl.
But if i alpha them, since the convergence would set to exactly 270 meters, the beams would cross and I'd never hit anything accurately, or in close range, my ability to focus down a specific Section would be very limited, since all my lasers are not converging to a point that is 50 meters in front of me.

It's still my opinion though that weapons should not go more than 50 meters beyond their stated max range anyways. It's really stupid than i can take damaging fire from a Gauss/Ac2/ER PPC from outside my LRM and sensor range. (BAP+Sensor module) or Medium laser damage from 400 meters ...
Convergence is the key to pinpoint alpha damage. Solve that, and we encourage chain firing for accuracy instead of massive heat penalties.

Yeah I agree. If you didn't have WC, Alpha with left and right arms would not ACT as an "pinpoint" so it's not really an Alpha because it cannot hit the same location. That combined-pinpoint would generally only apply to a group of weapons you have mounted in one location, and even then not guaranteed.

So yes I agree this means the ghost heat mechanism is unnecessary. Well we all knew it was unnecessary before.

The thing is, what this means is that you have a crosshair. You have a right-arm weapon and a left-arm weapon and the arms are each say 3m from the mech's center. One will strike 3m to the left of the crosshair and the other 3m to the right. Since you might be aiming at a model like yours, ~6m wide, this is relevant at any range. You must move your crosshair to the left to hit with right-arm-mounted weapons and vice-versa or you will likely miss entirely.

This would bite for people who chain-fire and can't easily tell which weapon's gonna fire next. You'd probably prefer to have left-weapons on left-mouse-button and so on so you can tell for sure what's gonna fire.

The WC is just a WEIRD mechanic. Lasers and cannons are supposed to be rail shooters and fire whichever direction they're pointed, and the arm speed is limited. But then the WC mechanism just vectors off the shot- potentially at like 45 deg off from where the arm or torso is pointing it.

That doesn't make any sense, if it can instantly steer the weapon beam for me, why doesn't it auto-aim lasers at what I have locked on? Of course gamewise we're not going to do auto-aim.

I don't agree about your "stop damage 50m from Long Range". Past Long Range the damage gets pretty small anyways, and hitting with a finite-speed weapon like ERPPC or AC becomes exceedingly difficult. Even a Light can sustain many, many ERPPC hits at long range. It's a token insult, at best.

Edited by Oznog, 21 November 2013 - 12:13 PM.

[Hans Von Lohman]

Arm lock needs to be a toggle, not a key you hold down.

Same for the TAG laser.

[Prezimonto]

Kill auto convergence brigade present and accounted for, SIR!

Seriously, convergence is the reason we have so many small, irritating non-intuitive band aide fixes in this game. Put a targeting computer on every mech and give folks an option for non-convergence and a small delay to convergence and many things will be forced into better balance. Including the total re-work of ECM as direct fire weapon users scream bloody minded murder at anyone who fails to give them a lock for long range convergence of multiple weapons.

[FupDup]

Can we? Probably.

Will we? No.

/Thread.

[Therobomega]

627, on 21 November 2013 - 04:08 AM, said:

Oznog, on 21 November 2013 - 01:12 AM, said:

You could have converge-on-whatever's-targeted-and-near-the-crosshairs. Awkward. But see what I want is when I'm looking at a mech at 300m, I want the weapons to converge at 300m even if I'm leading him- NOT the background or a building near me.

excellent idea, always converge on the distance to the locked on enemy! Would help with lead, with lasers... with everything. And people would start locking more!

Issues would arise for brawlers who would be hitting their targeting key more often than their weapon keys.
Will this convergence data be instantaneous, like it is now, or on a delay? As this could also make snap-shots harder... which could be both a blessing and a curse, all depends on what the convergence reverts to when not targeting or with a lost target.
Which leads into the question: Would this allow for teammate targeting? As in, a friendly mech or UAV has an enemy targeted that, from my point of view, is behind a building or hill; will I still be able to use that targeting data to make my poptart shot with?

Reitrix, on 21 November 2013 - 09:04 AM, said:

Just have all weapons converge on their max weapon range permanently. Not the split second on the fly adjustments with no range limitations we currently have.

Biggest problem with this would be light "huggers". Small mechs that can fit between your weapon mounting locations would be able to run up to your feet and blast them off. While the most you'd be able to do is maybe get a single arm or torso weapon to hit while flailing around like you're being attacked by bees.

Edited by Therobomega, 21 November 2013 - 10:48 PM.

[Reitrix]

Therobomega, on 21 November 2013 - 10:41 PM, said:

Biggest problem with this would be light "huggers". Small mechs that can fit between your weapon mounting locations would be able to run up to your feet and blast them off. While the most you'd be able to do is maybe get a single arm or torso weapon to hit while flailing around like you're being attacked by bees.

Except once Knockdowns come back (Which has been confirmed to happen in the very near future) Lights wont be able to do that, Because a Locust that stands on an Atlas' toes would probably knock himself down trying to get there, or be knocked down when the Atlas points himself in the direction of the Locust and tramples it.

[Oznog]

Reitrix, on 21 November 2013 - 11:55 PM, said:

Except once Knockdowns come back (Which has been confirmed to happen in the very near future) Lights wont be able to do that, Because a Locust that stands on an Atlas' toes would probably knock himself down trying to get there, or be knocked down when the Atlas points himself in the direction of the Locust and tramples it.

I'm not sure I like that. My own teammates do enough leg damage with that paint-exchanging collision feature. Which seems odd, I can body-slam into buildings all the time with no dmg. But touch another light and BAM.

And it's not like we're TRYING to hurt each other. He didn't aim a leg kick at me.

Edited by Oznog, 28 November 2013 - 01:47 PM.