OneEyed Jack, on 06 April 2014 - 02:25 PM, said:
You won't find the issue by looking at missile/SRM updates. Nor is it in the original implementation of HSR. I can't recall at this time the exact patch, but it was post-HSR for missiles. I was using SRMs regularly, as my primary ride was a brawling 733C, so I pretty much knew immediately when they went from working consistently (as much as a spread weapon can) to having serious problems. Looking at the notes for the patch that had just gone up at the time, the only thing mentioned that could possibly be related was some kind of performance boost, though I don't recall the specifics. Maybe one of the improvements to bandwidth load?
This guy is on the right track mostly. It wasnt original HSR. It was the patch they did a little later, because original HSR created the "start of match DISCON bug". When they put in the "fix" for the discon bug, it did completely fix the discon issues. Something about packet loss was involved at map loading or some such. HOWEVER, it also fundamentally F"D HSR code, and the more items it needed to track, like mass SRM or LRM, or lasers/MG/flamer/LBX the worse it was. And is actually.
I have posted several things over the last year about this for them to check. Packet loss issues are one.
Server clock vs client: If packets dont synch with the server clock, it is a tricky wicket to make sure they dont get lost. City of Heroes found this the hard way and had to do a 100% DPS rework something like 4 years into the game for balance. Recently we switched to new server hardware. maybe this was because of clan expected population increase, or maybe it had something to do with new server= different clock speed. We prolly wont know because they havent really said anything other then "cause clans" which could be anything from poulation increase predictions to Paul's weird omni pod clan weapon design issues with the old servers or whatever.
Server unable to cope with fluctuating ping= packet loss or partial packet loss, with BONUS HSR code flubbdubbery. Somtimes my laser hits that light mech, sometimes it hits for half the duration(even though i hold it on target for full, IE mech "ran out" of my laser during duration according to HSR) sometimes it just doesnt count. +50 for LBX(I lose at least 2 pellets per shot, somtimes almost all of them) SRM is the same as LBX, LRM is similar but for some reason tag laser makes it detect better. Probably the difference in amount of locations hit or something.
Duration of lasers too long for packets= split packets(haha, take that HSR) similar for LRM and other stuff that doesnt insta-fire and travel across the map to target in less then a split second.
Now there were some other things too, but you get the idea. IMO, the HSR code was primarily designed to probably prevent hackers, then to try to accomodate cryengine, and finally to try to work for both stable low ping and high ping customers, with little thought given to those poor souls like me that fluctuate from 50-450 ping hundreds of times a match( how I loathe thee, Frontier Communications) I dont think they considered packet loss issues created from server clock synch and packet transmission times vs when a weapon is fired and split packets and how that would go with HSR and moving targets. IE, fire a laser, dmg info gets split into 3 packets for example, but uses one target location(first) for when you fire the weapon, but then uses 3 locations(as target moves) to decide if each packet hits seperatly.
Frankly, I would be amazed if SRM in particular were broken in detection or otherwise by dmg number tweaks. Spread pattern maybe, but IMO still a long shot. Pretty well when you see detection issues across the board, ya gotta go with that first.