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What about the idea of preventing perfectly simultaneous weapons fire, and then depending on the relative motion of the mechs to spread the shots around? In other words, when you fire weapons group 1, all weapons in that group will fire, but not all EXACTLY at the same time. There would be some very teeny tiny delay between each weapon, like maybe only tens of milliseconds. So when you fire weapons group 1, instead of one loud BANG from all the weapons firing exactly at the same time, you would get a bit of a crackle as all the weapons sound off in quick succession.
How does this reduce the problem of pinpoint accuracy? Most of the time you are firing while on the move, or while your target is moving. If every weapon fires at a slightly different time, the chances of all shots hitting EXACTLY the same spot is reduced. The chances are not eliminated, just reduced. And the effect could be easily tuned by the devs (different delays for different weapons).
It just seems like the idea does the following:
(1) It reduces pinpoint accuracy for moving targets.
(2) It placates the players who demand the shot go where they're aiming whenever it fires, because the shot would, in fact, go exactly where you are aiming. There would just be a very small latency between the time you pull the trigger and the time the weapon goes off. I'm not talking about a big annoying latency like we saw in closed beta on some weapons, I'm talking about tens of milliseconds.
(3) It placates the "immersion" players because it wouldn't be hard to invent an explanation for the mechanic in real world terms if that's important to you (ie: not hard to imagine there are limitations in the firing mechanisms or variations from weapon to weapon that prevent them ALL from firing at EXACTLY the same time). By way of comparison, it's real hard to invent a real world explanation for ghost heat.
(4) It both helps and hurts snipers. If you can afford to stay still while you shoot, then your shots would be slightly more accurate (only your enemy's motion would cause the shots to spread out, and this would be mitigated by how well you can track the target and keep them tracked). However, when you stand still to take your shot, then you are more susceptible to pinpoint accuracy because your own motion isn't hurting your enemy's accuracy.
Anyway, like I said at the top, I'm not sure I love this idea, and I'm not trying to sell it to anyone. I'm just wondering if it would be a simple alternative without the inherent weaknesses of ghost heat and cone of fire. Seems simple to implement, simple to understand for new players, simple to tune for the devs, and effective for moving targets.
I dunno. Thoughts?
Edited by EJT, 19 February 2014 - 10:22 PM.
