339 replies to this topic

[Oderint dum Metuant]

IceSerpent, on 09 January 2012 - 12:33 PM, said:

I really hate quoting myself, but here's the actual idea (just a few posts above):



No randomization at all makes heavy weapons (PPCs, AC20s, etc.) useless - why bother with that when you can pack a bunch of lighter weapons that give the same combined damage and put all shots into a single hit box? I've already seen my share of ERLL boats and the idea of MWO turning into MW3 with better graphics doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling.

Because as above there are other ways to balance laser boats (heat,energy requirement for output) there should be no need for randomization of damage spread, also give LBX,UAC,SRM's that unique feature of being able to find internals (weapons,Heat sinks) that gives them more niche.
This does not need to become another World of Tanks model whereby the players get bent over because of RNG'ing

[VYCanis]

you can avoid concentrating damage via so many interesting ways

ACs- bullet drop, recoil, projectile speed, rate of fire: You make them solid dependable weapons that can sustain fire for prolonged durations or in bursts or something, the ballistic aspects ensure that concentrating damage to one spot is unlikely unless both you and your opponent are stationary.

Lasers- duration, recycle rate, heat, damage divided over duration. Lasers are instant hit, but require some x amount of time held onto an area to deal full damage, otherwise can easily drag across multiple locations or slip off a target spreading their damage around or only dealing a small portion of it.

Gauss rifles- balanced by firing delay, slow rate of fire, can explode, high recoil. Can deal concentrated damage in a single strike but is not suitable for close range due to slow ROF. Projectile is fast, but not hitscan.

PPCs- moderate to slow fire rates,short range penalty, bit of recoil,large amounts of heat, projectile speed, slight damage spread. They are heavy hitting energy weapons. Don't have to stay on target, but do require some leading. Deal a lot of damage, however do less damage at close range due to safety inhibitors, and also divide up some of their damage to adjacent locations (if applicable) due to splash.

aiming is delaying by whatever the mech's traverse speed is, letting you aim faster than your mech if you aim too fast, forcing you to wait as your weapons catch up.

impacts mess with your aim

movement adds a slight bob to your aim, however,the faster you go, the more felt recoil you feel from from your weapons and how much knock you feel from enemy weapons, modified for tonnage.

jumpjetting or falling messes with aim

having busted legs or gyros messes with aim.

having a weapon or location get seriously banged up can make it shoot off target (if it can still shoot at all)

and atop anything else, limit mech customization to be based off of stock configs or notable variants, so you don't get any gausszillas. and even if you did, those gauss rifles explode nicely. and anyone packing enough of any 1 weapon to pose some ludicrous threat beyond their weight class is going to suffer for it through ammo explosions for all the ammo they'd need to have any longevity in a fight, or in not being able to afford getting any heatsinks busted because they are already close to being or already are undersinked.

bingo bango, no RNGs necessary.

Edited by VYCanis, 09 January 2012 - 01:37 PM.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

1) WoT perhaps suffers from bad RNG. More to the point most physical modelling programs use RNG in some form or other because you cannot simulate accurately all the variables, even if known (and this is not RL).
2) PGI will go for whatever system that best uses the Cry3 engine to produce the effect they want while producing the minimum equipment overheads and keeping lag to a minimum. They have already said that they want this game to be playable on reasonably low end systems, with no detals yet available, or expected at this point.
3) We are not simulating a toon carrying a single weapon where your movements control the actual weapon sight. You are controlling a mech where the computer attempts to align multiple weapons in mechanical mounts to the point/target that you designate. There are inherent inaccuracies in such a system that you cannot accurately model.
4) This thread is not originally about using heat or whatever to control boating, it is about the spurious accuracy of previous systems and trying to get this solved in a better way in this game, I have no problem if people want to mount all ERLL's. I'm pretty sure that PGI will come up with other solutions that make it not so attractive. What we are trying to do is get a system that automatically condems any other weapons to second best due to the pinpoint hitscan ability of multiple lasers fired together.

No one on this board so far as I;m aware has moaned about the Gauss Rifle, which in the "hands" of some of the pilots on this board stands a good chance of killing you, because it has drawbacks.
The previous systems have made it, why would you mount an AC20 at 14 tons & 10 crits with a ton of ammo having 5 shots producing 10 heat with all the drawbacks of targeting and ammo explosions..You can mount 4ML's plus 2 ordinary heatsinks (reducing heat to 10) for 6 crits and 6 tons. Leaving room for more armour/heatsinks etc. The ML's are instant hit at the same point when you press the trigger.
this is the sort of maths that everyone does. It's why previous multi players were a minmax fest.

[Tilley]

I disagree with a cone of fire aiming system. I understand that the "one shot" is a worry to all, but there were ways of countering that back in MW:4. If you fired your lasers in succession, one every second or so, it would rock the other pilots mech at intervals that made targeting difficult. Managing your heat and timing the lasers at perfect intervals took skill, but it was a good tactic against the alpha strike. I'm sure the developers will impliment certain aiming equalizers to make the battles as fair as possible. What those will be, I'm not sure. I do believe that movement and especially recoil will have a greater effect than previous games. I think there are so many topics about this one subject because it could be a game breaker if they screw it up. I have confidence in you Piranha!

[Nik Van Rhijn]

@VYCanis - I think that everything you have suggested could well go a long way to removing the problems. Despite what it may seem I do not particularly want a CoF. Only playing will show what course PGI has chosen.

[MaddMaxx]

IceSerpent, on 09 January 2012 - 12:18 PM, said:

@MaddMaxx: it won't work - if packing a lot of medium lasers (or PPCs, or whatever else) gives an advantage, people would simply pick a mech that comes with a lot of energy weapons to begin with and therefore has sufficient engine rating.

@DV^McKenna: you might want to actually read what I suggested...hint - damage spread as I outlined it (as opposed to the spread in classic BT) has very little to do with aiming/targeting skill.

So you mean come Stock with those weapons? Fine, a Stock mech also has those "other" things (hs, armor etc) and weapons no one wants or thinks work well. Want to change it to more weapons? Add engine weight to compensate.

Speculating is fun though.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 10 January 2012 - 02:30 PM.

[Undead]

People seem to want CoF just because they got owned too many times in MW4 by jump-snipers and boats. MW4 had some hideous implementation, yes, but the problem with both was not the accuracy of the weapons.
The only reason jump-sniping was a viable tactic was because of the 3rd-person camera. If you can't see around the mountain you're hiding behind, you're just cowardly wasting your time while your teammates do all the work. I'm confident w/ PGI's seemingly heavy focus on group strategy, this will not be an issue.
The problem w/ boating was that there were absolutely no consequences for overheating your mech. Flush some coolant and you're good to go. Also confident this will be a non-issue, and PGI will have actual consequences (some dire I hope) for overheating your mech.
With those two problems adressed, I see absolutely no reason for CoF. If, despite running, shaking, and being shot, someone is skilled enough to shoot your cockpit at 800 meters w/ a Gauss rifle, too freaking bad. Try improving your own skills instead of crying that a superior pilot beat you. I'm sorry, but CoF penalizes skilled players and gives sucky players an extra helping of luck. No CoF please.

[Fooooo]

To solve the problem of "all lasers hitting the exact same spot" you can have it so weapons on the opposite side of your mech will never be "exactly" ontop of the side your aiming on.

So for example there would be 2 recticles (one for left weapons one for right, both react to the same inputs so aiming is the same as normal you just have 2 recticles), If i was aiming with my recticle to the right side of my cockpit, I would have the left weapon recticle placed a little off to the side of the right recticle effectivly making that side hit the torso of my target instead of the arm unless up real close.

However, if I was to turn my torso and aim almost dead on in the cockpit (recticles in centre of my cockpit) they would "converge" so to speak....

That doesnt stop people stacking all their lasers on 1 arm or 1 side of their torso, but

1. not all mechs will have room for that

2. Doing so means losing 1 arm and your screwed, or getting 1 side of your torso shotup and your screwed.

3. If heat generated is locational then that side of your mech will get extremely hot and possibly explode / fail.


Theres plenty more ways to help stop that problem without resorting to gimping player skill.


Now that I think about my 3rd example, locational heat can add a lot to the game...... a little off topic but.....

Heat from weapons could possibly cause actuator failure / seizure in those locations as my 3rd example b4.

Enemys could take advantage of knowing where you have your high heat weapons, aiming for those locations to "cause" heat in that location, making the enemy think about weither he should actually fire that weapon now as doing so will create more heat than normal & may ruin the weapon or degrade it in someway. etc etc.

You could have the auto shutdown work for only 1 side of a mech if the core isnt at critical heat, ie all energy weapons at the high heat location get shutdown and unable to use for X amount of time while they cool and reset.

You could balance lasers with it, making small lasers create more heat on a target than large ones if thats what was needed. Yes they can do that with without locational heat, but it would make small lasers OP imo as they would cause total shutdown constantly from hitting your arms.

(also , small lasers have higher RoF meaning more time on target although weither or not that would realistically heat faster than 1 large burst every 5 seconds or so I dont know, but this is a game anways, some libertys must be taken )

I think you get the idea

Edited by Foòóoo, 10 January 2012 - 11:53 PM.

[wolf74]

Ok We all have gone over this Poor Beaten Zombified Horse. To sum it up we have a few trains of the Though All with Good & Bad points.

There are the Thought as best as I can sum them.

• Pin Point Fire (MW1-4): All weapon Coverage perfectly on whatever is under the crosshair. (Twitchy the Mouse always wins)
  
• Pin-Point Accuracy with reticle movement: Pinpoint accuracy, BUT 'mech movement, especially when moving faster, throws off the reticle, as does being hit. This means you have to have better timing and fight the reticle to keep it on target in the middle of a battle, especially while moving (lighter 'mechs would probably have less of an issue firing while moving than heavy 'mechs, though). Bonus points for having the effect are amplified by heat. This is basically a sort of 'mech variation on the way recoil is done in many shooters. (Melissia Here you go) (Not to be confused with CoF-E)
  
• Cone of Fire Random (CoF-R): All weapon Fire in a Cone out to Long or Extreme Range of the weapon and will land anywhere in the Cone Randomly. (The Cone normally about Mech height at Long or Extreme range going down to pin point at 1m or Minimal Range whichever comes 1st)
  
• Cone of Fire Effect (CoF-E): All weapon Fire in a Cone out to Long or Extreme Range of the weapon and can land anywhere in the Cone Being thrown off Target due movement being Hit, Slow Realignment due to Heat. Each weapon has its own Aliment (The Max the weapon can be thrown off would be about mech height at Long or Extreme range) (My 2nd Choice)
  
• Manual Convergence: This is where the Player Picks a Basic Range for the weapon to converge at. Minor Correction can be done when locked on a target or with Targeting Computer Upgrade (My personal favorite option right now)
  
• Placement Spread: Weapon Cannot Converge to a pinpoint but have a splash area. The weapons will hit based on where there installed on the Mech firing.
  
• Pin Point fire w/Random Damage (RNG?): (Saw it didn’t really understand it) Sorry IceSerpent I just didn’t get it.

You can also see my post back on page 9 with links to other thread that talked about weapon convergence VS Damage VS Armor
http://mwomercs.com/...9310#entry39310

We don’t know which system the Programmers are going to use so right now. So we are just barking at each other over the empty Food Dish. Let us wait at least until they throw us a bone on this topic before we get all up in a Puff over it(If we have not already). And Yes; I went through all 17 Page again as I was typing this post.

Edited by wolf74, 11 January 2012 - 12:40 AM.

[Elizander]

I'll just state outside of my own preference that the growing crosshair system (with RNG) will be less visually frustrating to the average player compared to a crosshair that is skittering non-stop across their screen.

[Pht]

... Um. Wolf.


*points down at sig link*

You missed one.

Baselining

Edited by Pht, 11 January 2012 - 11:24 AM.

[Phades]

Kudzu, on 09 January 2012 - 12:20 AM, said:

I didn't say "rip it out and put in a bank of weapons", I said that smaller weapons short range balance out vs the larger weapons in different ways.

There is no balance when one person can do damage while the other can not. The implied mechanic biases towards hitscan mechanics (if used) and cuts down the engagement range of all weapons. You can achieve the same thing by just dropping the base firing range for all weapons.

Kudzu, on 09 January 2012 - 12:20 AM, said:

And the close range guys need to use speed and cover of their own to close the gap. If you have a sniper hiding in such perfect cover it means that he's got plenty of blind spots to exploit as well.

Positioning is a player skill as well. Do you want to eliminate that one through random deployment options? The guy with the longer ranged and more accurate gun isn't automatically going to be in a slower/bigger machine. Chase him around all you like, but you won't be able to make up for several rounds of fire that land where he wants it to due to the COF system proposed.

The faster machine does get to where he wants to be first, but the guy with the longer gun always picks where the engagement occurs; otherwise you are talking about pilot error.

Kudzu, on 09 January 2012 - 12:20 AM, said:

That's where you shift away from the TT. Adjusting for target speed and angle should be handled by where you put your cone, perhaps with plenty of testing to find a good balance between torso rotation speeds and how hard it is to hit a fast moving target.

Now you are thinking. Turreting and motion should be the first factors considered followed by distance and cover for pilot based aiming considerations. Keep thinking in this direction and you will end up with a better system than an arbitrary one that randomly chooses a winner at its core.

Kudzu, on 09 January 2012 - 12:20 AM, said:

Anything will be better than "point, click, kill" of the old games.

As others mentioned, being a FPS game that is the basic game mechanic involved in all of them.

[Vulpesveritas]

Phades, on 11 January 2012 - 05:50 PM, said:

There is no balance when one person can do damage while the other can not. The implied mechanic biases towards hitscan mechanics (if used) and cuts down the engagement range of all weapons. You can achieve the same thing by just dropping the base firing range for all weapons.

Positioning is a player skill as well. Do you want to eliminate that one through random deployment options? The guy with the longer ranged and more accurate gun isn't automatically going to be in a slower/bigger machine. Chase him around all you like, but you won't be able to make up for several rounds of fire that land where he wants it to due to the COF system proposed.

The faster machine does get to where he wants to be first, but the guy with the longer gun always picks where the engagement occurs; otherwise you are talking about pilot error.


Now you are thinking. Turreting and motion should be the first factors considered followed by distance and cover for pilot based aiming considerations. Keep thinking in this direction and you will end up with a better system than an arbitrary one that randomly chooses a winner at its core.


As others mentioned, being a FPS game that is the basic game mechanic involved in all of them.

I vote against a CoF system all together. I vote for pure physics utilization w/ recoil, air resistance, crosswinds, and light diffraction

[Zervziel]

Why the heck would anyone want their shot landed to be determined by RNG? A cone of fire is completely useless. I'm all for accuracy to the material, but this is one bit of lore that can go die in a ditch somewhere if the OP idea is the only conceivable solution. We already get shots that fly pretty far off mark due to mechs running, getting hit during firing and environmental factors. Those are prefectly good reasons for shots to go off mark. I'd be pretty peeved if I'm carefully lining up a kill shot on a cored mech with my autocannon and I take my shot only to have my round veer off to the left or right, either missing entirely or hitting a part that still has armor. That is pure BS.

[Pht]

Zervziel, on 11 January 2012 - 06:51 PM, said:

Why the heck would anyone want their shot landed to be determined by RNG? A cone of fire is completely useless. I'm all for accuracy to the material, but this is one bit of lore that can go die in a ditch somewhere if the OP idea is the only conceivable solution.

COF is not the only way to simulate how capable a BattleMech is of controlling the weapon(s) mounted onto it in order to hit what's being shot at by the pilot.

Quote

We already get shots that fly pretty far off mark due to mechs running, getting hit during firing and environmental factors. Those are prefectly good reasons for shots to go off mark.

Uh, no, we get shots missing in MW4 at least, from the player not putting the reticule over the target and clicking at the right time for the velocity of the given weapons fired. Players miscalculate weapons travel times; there's no simulation of environmental and 'Mech conditions in aiming in the past mw games to my knowledge...

Quote

I'd be pretty peeved if I'm carefully lining up a kill shot on a cored mech with my autocannon and I take my shot only to have my round veer off to the left or right, either missing entirely or hitting a part that still has armor. That is pure BS.

Cored? .... If you mean you're shooting at an Immobile target, than I agree. The overwhelming majority of your shots should hit whatever you want.

Against mobile targets... that's another animal.

Edited by Pht, 11 January 2012 - 07:12 PM.

[UncleKulikov]

Vulpesveritas, on 11 January 2012 - 05:57 PM, said:

I vote against a CoF system all together. I vote for pure physics utilization w/ recoil, air resistance, crosswinds, and light diffraction

That's a lot of back end calculation that will result in ballistics being significantly hampered in comparison to energy weapons, let alone the disadvantage that lag would cause ballooning way out of proportion than a simpler system would provide. If you insist on ballistics having time to target, only include bullet drop over distance. The other factors add more randomness than a cone could ever hope to replicate, and without any indication of the crosswinds.

[Zervziel]

Pht, on 11 January 2012 - 07:10 PM, said:

Uh, no, we get shots missing in MW4 at least, from the player not putting the reticule over the target and clicking at the right time for the velocity of the given weapons fired. Players miscalculate weapons travel times; there's no simulation of environmental and 'Mech conditions in aiming in the past mw games to my knowledge...

I guess elevation would have been a better choice of words than environmental, but my brain promptly derped. I was referring to fighting on different levels of elevation which can also screw up your aim.

Quote

Cored? .... If you mean you're shooting at an Immobile target, than I agree. The overwhelming majority of your shots should hit whatever you want.

Against mobile targets... that's another animal.

That's kind of what i was talking about. Which is way i don't want some artificial thing like the CoF the original poster suggested. if I'm aiming at something I want to hit it. I know to lead when firing at moving targets, but even then it's still rather hard to get very precise if you have the wrong angle.

[Vulpesveritas]

UncleKulikov, on 11 January 2012 - 07:40 PM, said:

That's a lot of back end calculation that will result in ballistics being significantly hampered in comparison to energy weapons, let alone the disadvantage that lag would cause ballooning way out of proportion than a simpler system would provide. If you insist on ballistics having time to target, only include bullet drop over distance. The other factors add more randomness than a cone could ever hope to replicate, and without any indication of the crosswinds.

Yes but you have to remember light diffraction and that CryENGINE 3 has weather effects- lasers aren't much good in the rain. at all. Should they decide to have random weather effects you should take it into account. Oh and having actual real penalties like exploding for overheating.

makes things quite fair in my mind. And it won't be random. merely give it on your sensors the airspeed and direction. then if you know how to compensate for it you'll do fine.

[VYCanis]

i dunno about winds, considering the usual battletech spitting distance ranges, i'm not sure wind even has time to factor in.

but i do like the idea of different gravities and air densities messing with projectile speed, range, and drop

[Foster Bondroff]

A system similar to the one used in WoT seems a good idea to me. It doesnt remove the skill element, while at the same time avoids pin point accuracy about extrem ranges.