1080 replies to this topic

[Dymlos2003]

Sandpit, on 07 January 2014 - 01:42 PM, said:

I run into them on a daily basis actually.

People are so set in the past that they have no idea how other weapons work nowadays

[Cimarb]

dymlos2003, on 07 January 2014 - 01:42 PM, said:

People are so set in the past that they have no idea how other weapons work nowadays

I actually had to go on a treasure finding expedition to even confirm the PPC/ERPPC grouping. It isn't mentioned at all in the pinned "heat scale - maths" post, so I had to find the original thread that announced it was coming, then find the update that mentions they would be grouped two weeks after the heat scale changes were implemented. I'm willing to bet a lot of people missed that post, because I see the build all the time still.

Therein is the whole issue I have with ghost heat - it is extremely confusing and arbitrary and you can't even find the rules unless you go hunting for them in a forum.

This is the same thing you will have with a convergence "fix", as it is based off of the same arbitrary foundation.

[Sandpit]

Cimarb, on 07 January 2014 - 01:50 PM, said:

Therein is the whole issue I have with MWO - it is extremely confusing and arbitrary and you can't even find the rules unless you go hunting for them in a forum.

Fixed that for you. lol
Seriously that statement describes a LOT of the problems. Now drop all of that on a new player? Why would they bother when they can go back to a twitch shooter where all they have to understand is aim and shoot from the best camping spot on the map?
But I digress

[WarHippy]

Cimarb, on 07 January 2014 - 01:32 PM, said:

I see them all the time, actually. Apparently they aren't aware of the grouping either - maybe if the system actually made sense, us dum people would know better...

I just assumed that people did this so they were not completely defenseless inside of 90m. They wanted 4 PPCs so they could stagger fire pairs, but made two of them ERPPCs so they could still fight an enemy that got in close.

[Cimarb]

Sandpit, on 07 January 2014 - 01:55 PM, said:

Fixed that for you. lol
Seriously that statement describes a LOT of the problems. Now drop all of that on a new player? Why would they bother when they can go back to a twitch shooter where all they have to understand is aim and shoot from the best camping spot on the map?
But I digress

Yeah, that is true, but let's not add to the heap with even more garbage, lol. The training tutorial is improved, at least, but yeah, still a very steep learning curve for new people...

[Artgathan]

Khobai, on 07 January 2014 - 12:04 PM, said:

The problem with CoF is that it introduces RNG into the game. Hitting someone in a specific location at long range becomes a dice roll rather than being a testament of skill. Thats why CoF is a poor solution IMO.

I described a system somewhere earlier in this thread that took the RNG out of the CoF:

Change our targeting reticule to a Dot in the center of a Circle. If you chain-fire weapons, they go where the dot is pointing. The magic happens if you fire more than one weapon at once.

If you've got your cross hairs over an enemy mech, it is likely that different components (CT, LT, RT, Arms, Legs) will simultaneously be occupying the Circle [I don't mean to suggest that the Circle should be big enough to fit an entire mech into, but it should be large enough that only getting 1 component inside it takes a high degree of skill]. The Circle does not include empty space. The weapons that you're firing in a group each represent a proportion of the damage being dealt (for instance, if you're firing 2 Medium Lasers, they're each doing 50% of the damage).

Essentially what this system does is try to match up the damage you're doing with the components in the Circle. For Example: if you're firing an AC/10 and 2 ML, while the Circle is 75% filled by CT and 25% filled by LT, the AC/10 and 1 ML (75% of the damage) will be aimed at the CT and 1 ML (25% of the damage) will be aimed at the LT. This example is (obviously) a little too perfect, but it serves to illustrate a point. Rounding will need to occur in the actual game environment, which is why I have the following Rounding Rules:

• If you fire fewer weapons than there are components in the Circle, the components occupying the least amount of space are ignored (So if you were firing 2 weapons at 3 components that occupied 85%, 10% and 5% of the circle, the 5% component would be ignored)
  
• If there are more weapons than there are components, at least two components must be struck

The system can also be set to work slightly differently if the user fires weapons totaling above X amount of damage. So for instance, if there was a 20 damage limit and you fired an AC/10, AC/5 and 2 ML (totaling 25 damage) when the Circle is 75% CT and 25% LT, each of the weapons has a 75% chance to be aimed at the CT and a 25% chance to be aimed at the LT.

So this system has three "firing modes":

• Pinpoint Accuracy for Single Fired / Chain Fired Weapons
  
• Controlled Accuracy for Multiple Weapons under X Damage
  
• Random Accuracy for Multiple Weapons above X Damage

A few extra notes:

• If the Dot is on an enemy mech, you're guaranteed a hit. There's not "there was empty space in the circle so the game decided to fire a shot that misses". The Circle discounts empty space before calculating what proportion each component takes up inside of it.
  
• If the Dot is not over a target then all weapons fire converges instantly on the Dot when the trigger is pulled
  
• LBX, SRM and LRM weapons are exempt from this system
  
• The system resets every 0.5 seconds. This means that if you fire a weapon and then immediately fire another, the system will distribute the second shot according as described above.

I would suggest putting the damage cap at 20. This lets the AC/20 retain its status as the king of pinpoint damage.

The advantages of this system are that players can know where their shots will be aimed before they pull the trigger (if they know their weapons and their targets hitboxes and they're firing weapons that total less than X damage).

There's ways to modify this system as well: the circle could grow / shrink in size depending on what you're targeting (so it's a smaller circle when targeting lights and larger when targeting assaults), if you're moving / if they're moving, jump jet use, heat levels, range, etc...

It would even allow us to add C3 in a meaningful way (IE: if you have an ally who has C3 and currently has a smaller Circle than you, you get to use their Circle when firing at their target).

TL,DR: When you put a CoF over a target, different parts of the target fill up different amounts of the circle. Make the weapons you're firing spread their damage to match the components. Firing 6 ML at a circle that's 50% CT, 25% LT, 25% RT? 2 ML for each side torso, 4 for the center.

[Cimarb]

WarHippy, on 07 January 2014 - 02:01 PM, said:

I just assumed that people did this so they were not completely defenseless inside of 90m. They wanted 4 PPCs so they could stagger fire pairs, but made two of them ERPPCs so they could still fight an enemy that got in close.

Well, technically, if they stagger fire pairs of them, they are never affected by ghost heat anyways, as they are never exceeding the max alpha of 2. Therein is another reason ghost heat is junk and convergence would be less than ideal - you can easily bypass it by shooting the max alphas 0.52 apart. Burst fire isn't handled like that, and you can't abuse the system by macro firing groups.

[Cimarb]

Artgathan, on 07 January 2014 - 02:05 PM, said:

I described a system somewhere earlier in this thread that took the RNG out of the CoF:

"A lot of great thought and effort"

I applaud the thought that went into this, but it is way too complicated even if they wanted to redo targeting from the ground up, which they would likely have to do. It is convergence on steroids.

[Sandpit]

Artgathan, on 07 January 2014 - 02:05 PM, said:

only snipped for length

There was another idea suggested by Joe a page or two back that was similar.

You have perfect convergence as long as you're chain firing or firing one weapon at a time. If you fire more than one weapon at once (when dealing with ballistics) then you have to deal with a slight loss of convergence. So essentially (to try to put it in BT terms) you would be overloading your gyro a bit so it can't calculate fast enough to converge perfectly.

With this kind of implementation you could actually make pinpoint piloting skill, targeting computers, etc. useful and meaningful as they could help reduce the loss of that convergence. Couple this with a reduction in the effective range of ballistics and I think it would really placate, appease, and otherwise make happy the majority of players at odds when it comes to ballistics.

[WarHippy]

Cimarb, on 07 January 2014 - 02:05 PM, said:

Well, technically, if they stagger fire pairs of them, they are never affected by ghost heat anyways, as they are never exceeding the max alpha of 2. Therein is another reason ghost heat is junk and convergence would be less than ideal - you can easily bypass it by shooting the max alphas 0.52 apart. Burst fire isn't handled like that, and you can't abuse the system by macro firing groups.

What I was getting at was that the people running 2xPPC 2xERPPC I assumed was to give them options for fighting at different ranges not so much them trying to get around ghost heat. I still like Joseph's idea and I think it would work rather well. Burst fire could work as well, but I would be leery of the amount screen shake and blinding that could occur with multiple burst fire weapons being fired in a chain. It would be like and endless stream of LRMs on steroids.

[Artgathan]

Cimarb, on 07 January 2014 - 02:14 PM, said:

I applaud the thought that went into this, but it is way too complicated even if they wanted to redo targeting from the ground up, which they would likely have to do. It is convergence on steroids.

Thanks, though ultimately I agree that this would be a complicated solution (and would probably decrease performance for everyone across the board as the system would need to make many new running calculation to determine where things were going to shoot when you decided to pull the trigger).

Sandpit, on 07 January 2014 - 02:15 PM, said:

There was another idea suggested by Joe a page or two back that was similar.

You have perfect convergence as long as you're chain firing or firing one weapon at a time. If you fire more than one weapon at once (when dealing with ballistics) then you have to deal with a slight loss of convergence. So essentially (to try to put it in BT terms) you would be overloading your gyro a bit so it can't calculate fast enough to converge perfectly.

With this kind of implementation you could actually make pinpoint piloting skill, targeting computers, etc. useful and meaningful as they could help reduce the loss of that convergence. Couple this with a reduction in the effective range of ballistics and I think it would really placate, appease, and otherwise make happy the majority of players at odds when it comes to ballistics.

I like this solution as well. I was partial to Homeless Bill's suggestion (way back when), but I feared that there would be ways to exploit it and it was another complicated system for new players to learn.

[Cimarb]

Sandpit, on 07 January 2014 - 02:15 PM, said:

There was another idea suggested by Joe a page or two back that was similar.

You have perfect convergence as long as you're chain firing or firing one weapon at a time. If you fire more than one weapon at once (when dealing with ballistics) then you have to deal with a slight loss of convergence. So essentially (to try to put it in BT terms) you would be overloading your gyro a bit so it can't calculate fast enough to converge perfectly.

With this kind of implementation you could actually make pinpoint piloting skill, targeting computers, etc. useful and meaningful as they could help reduce the loss of that convergence. Couple this with a reduction in the effective range of ballistics and I think it would really placate, appease, and otherwise make happy the majority of players at odds when it comes to ballistics.

It wouldn't, since it hurts all weapon systems "equally", even those that don't need adjusting, only to add an inexorably complicated system on top of another complicated system (ghost heat), which is on top of a steep learning curve already. Let's not add complication, please.

[stjobe]

Cimarb, on 07 January 2014 - 01:50 PM, said:

I actually had to go on a treasure finding expedition to even confirm the PPC/ERPPC grouping. It isn't mentioned at all in the pinned "heat scale - maths" post, so I had to find the original thread that announced it was coming, then find the update that mentions they would be grouped two weeks after the heat scale changes were implemented. I'm willing to bet a lot of people missed that post, because I see the build all the time still.

Therein is the whole issue I have with ghost heat - it is extremely confusing and arbitrary and you can't even find the rules unless you go hunting for them in a forum.

This is the same thing you will have with a convergence "fix", as it is based off of the same arbitrary foundation.

You could have saved yourself some time by going to smurfy's: http://mwo.smurfy-ne...eapon_heatscale. It really is the comprehensive source of information this website should have been.

But they've promised (once again!) to "double down on community interaction", so perhaps they'll get their scrap together this time.

Edited by stjobe, 07 January 2014 - 02:39 PM.

[Sandpit]

Cimarb, on 07 January 2014 - 02:33 PM, said:

It wouldn't, since it hurts all weapon systems "equally", even those that don't need adjusting, only to add an inexorably complicated system on top of another complicated system (ghost heat), which is on top of a steep learning curve already. Let's not add complication, please.

No this one in particular would simply be applied to ballistics (MAYBE missiles) but lasers and PPCs produce no recoil. So this would simply apply to ballistics and adjust them accordingly to caliber size
2 AC20s firing off? slightly more divergence
2 AC10s? not so much
2 AC5s? minimal at best
2 AC2s negligible at best
Now you could also add in if you fire THREE AC2s or AC5s (I don't think LBX and possibly UAC? would apply here) then they add to the divergence a bit. It takes care of large pinpoint damage outside of a singular shot (or 2 or 3 in the case of smaller calibers) which I think would handle a lot of the complaints. The largest pinpoint frontloaded damage without any divergence would be 20.

To reduce those effects players could actually invest in pinpoint, fast firing, etc.

[Dock Steward]

Could nerf the ammo.

[Sandpit]

Dock Steward, on 07 January 2014 - 02:41 PM, said:

Could nerf the ammo.

eh, ammo doesn't change damage or function though. Ammo isn't a HUGE factor (although it IS a trade-off to energy weapons) simply because matches aren't long enough at this point to be a big enough factor in my opinion.

The only thing it really affects IMHO are the number of times mechs are willing to take riskier shots on lights and such. Meaning they're still doing the same damage the same way against other mechs in brawls

[Dock Steward]

Sandpit, on 07 January 2014 - 02:46 PM, said:

eh, ammo doesn't change damage or function though. Ammo isn't a HUGE factor (although it IS a trade-off to energy weapons) simply because matches aren't long enough at this point to be a big enough factor in my opinion.

The only thing it really affects IMHO are the number of times mechs are willing to take riskier shots on lights and such. Meaning they're still doing the same damage the same way against other mechs in brawls

No, ammo isn't a huge factor, but ammo SHOULD BE a huge factor. Balance is risk versus Reward, right? Every weapon system should have multiple risks and multiple rewards, but IMHO the number one risk to Ballistics should be running out of ammo. Ballistics and Lasers differ in 2 major ways: Ammo/Lack thereof and Front-loaded Damage/Hit-Scan. Let's leave that alone and make it so running out of ammo ACTUALLY HAPPENS!

Edited by Dock Steward, 07 January 2014 - 02:56 PM.

[WarHippy]

Sandpit, on 07 January 2014 - 02:40 PM, said:

No this one in particular would simply be applied to ballistics (MAYBE missiles) but lasers and PPCs produce no recoil. So this would simply apply to ballistics and adjust them accordingly to caliber size
2 AC20s firing off? slightly more divergence
2 AC10s? not so much
2 AC5s? minimal at best
2 AC2s negligible at best
Now you could also add in if you fire THREE AC2s or AC5s (I don't think LBX and possibly UAC? would apply here) then they add to the divergence a bit. It takes care of large pinpoint damage outside of a singular shot (or 2 or 3 in the case of smaller calibers) which I think would handle a lot of the complaints. The largest pinpoint frontloaded damage without any divergence would be 20.

To reduce those effects players could actually invest in pinpoint, fast firing, etc.

I really do like this idea, and the more I think about it and the more you talk about it the more I like it. It addresses some of the issues with pinpoint damage, and at the same time makes strides at improving other problems like the pinpoint talent in the pilot tree and actually gives targeting computers a place in this game.

Edited by WarHippy, 07 January 2014 - 02:51 PM.

[stjobe]

Dock Steward, on 07 January 2014 - 02:41 PM, said:

Could nerf the ammo.

I very rarely run out of ammo, although I did in the match I just exited - but that was in a dual-AC/2 HBK-4G with just 4 tons of ammo and me scoring 3 kills, 7 assists, 596 damage done, and 1001 XP.

And in related news, that was the first match I did in my Founder 4G in about half a year, with an all-new loadout (changed it from the standard AC/20+2ML I used to run just to test it out). Either I'm a better MechWarrior than I thought, or there's something off about ballistic weapon balance...

Edited by stjobe, 07 January 2014 - 02:54 PM.

[Dock Steward]

stjobe, on 07 January 2014 - 02:53 PM, said:

I very rarely run out of ammo...

Exactly my point. People using Ballistics should be running out of ammo all the time. You should have little or no ammo left by the end of a match.