FDJustin, on 15 September 2014 - 12:17 AM, said:
... Unless your lasers are shooting through a collidascope, they should be as accurate as a beam of light.
I will tackle, sorta, this post. With lasers you do not have a targeting laser showing you the path the laser will take, agreed? In fact you are not even peering down a barrel with a scope/cross hairs on it, you simply have a cross hair on your display/neurohelmet while the actual weapons are being moved into place.
The pathing of lasers is not the issue, it is the targeting computer which is juggling/calculating everything else, pointing the laser in the right direction then constantly making adjustments due to moment of both mechs as well as setting the laser focus based on range/atmospheric effects/etc. Pilots moved the crosshairs over their targets and did their best to keep them there while the targeting computers made the actual weapon adjustments before giving the green light/ready tone for the pilot to fire. If the pilots pulled the trigger the instant the crosshairs were on their target it was very unlikely anything would hit worthwhile.
During constant combat the weapons themselves may not be dialed in completely, meaning the further away the target it the likelihood the weapon will miss its mark completely or hit the mech anywhere else except for the desired location, more so if both mechs are on the move.
In the game, for a stationary mech, the pilot gained a negative 4 in his gunnery skill cause his mech is NOT moving. The pilot targeting skill is based on him getting on target and keeping it steady while the computer is doing its thing. Remember also that the faster a mech is moving, the higher the pilot had to roll to even hit his target, after that is just deciding what part of the mech was hit.
But we are not advocating complete randomness in the hits, but either convergence timing for weapons to line up with the cross hairs, be it for each weapon, or for torso/arm mounted weapons to converge independently and not for it to be pinpoint but a small area, size based on any criteria, be it the speed of the mech, heat of the mech or a combination both, or some other criteria.
It is not really different from FPS games where the cross hairs either have a jiggle the faster you are moving, or the to hit area changes size based on speed and type of weapon being used. The difference between the games is that you are either taking a head shot, or shooting center mass to take out another person while MWO allows for multiple areas to be targeted that, potential, destroy a mech.
(shrugs) the issue may not be if it should or should not be done but whether or not it is feasible at all for PGi to code.
May be, based on the most popular suggestions/requests that have been asked for since beta, PGI should list those items that are not feasible or even possible to do, listing a few reasons why. Yes, it is based on Cryengine 3 but none of the games out there have been built around server authorization, which likely adds more overhead. Without PGI providing what would not be possible in the game, even if it is the most popular requests, that could make it frustrating for the player base. At least with that information it would help narrow things down and allow the player base/devs focus on what is feasible/possible.
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