33 replies to this topic

[Kaox Veed]

There are still MW SIM pods around. They run MW4 and are at Gen con and Dragon con every year.

[EvilCow]

I like MWO but MW2 was way closer to a "simulator", it has been the most popular MW game ever too.

Isn't strange? all successive MW games increasingly removed "sim" elements and were increasingly not as successful.

I know **** about game design but apparently appealing to casual gamers is not working great for MW, it has its own special kind of fans.

[Johnny Z]

EvilCow, on 03 October 2014 - 09:32 AM, said:

I like MWO but MW2 was way closer to a "simulator", it has been the most popular MW game ever too.

Isn't strange? all successive MW games increasingly removed "sim" elements and were increasingly not as successful.

I know **** about game design but apparently appealing to casual gamers is not working great for MW, it has its own special kind of fans.

Got a point. No question there has been an industry wide push in the video game industry towards WOW type games or worse. I have a few guesses as to why, but anyway it appears that there is a shift back towards quality games on the way. Trying to make this game bad wont make their games better...

[Kaeb Odellas]

Alek Ituin, on 03 October 2014 - 07:57 AM, said:

Well, as it happens, real shells don't magically curve straight out of the barrel in to a magical "cone". When you fire a real auto cannon, those shells go in relatively straight lines. Round deviation is miniscule for high caliber weapons, even kilometers downrange.

And how much more management does heat need? You don't need to pay attention to a heat radiator. They radiate heat regardless of whether you manage them.

On the topic of ECM, I went on a several paragraph rant about it last time. I'll just say that TT ECM is the closest you'll get to IRL ECM, and even then... it's way off.


Point here is that what you want, isn't actually a sim. It would be little more than a bunch of nonsense and arbitrary rules with several layers of unnecessary complexity layered over it. A proper simulator set in the MW universe would be fantastic, however.

The "cone of fire" idea has nothing to do with the accuracy of the guns themselves. It's supposed to reflect the inability of the mech to keep all of its weapons trained on a single point in space while running at 50 to 170 kph. I think we can all agree that a mech shouldn't be able to do that.

As for heat management, heat should have a number of different effects on your mech before you reach the shutdown threshold. Stuff like reduced accuracy, reduced speed, potential for ammo explosions, and so on. Right now we have a very basic heat system that lets you run at full efficiency all the way to 99.999% heat before anything bad happens.

Edited by Kaeb Odellas, 03 October 2014 - 10:01 AM.

[Alek Ituin]

Kaeb Odellas, on 03 October 2014 - 09:58 AM, said:

The "cone of fire" idea has nothing to do with the accuracy of the guns themselves. It's supposed to reflect the inability of the mech to keep all of its weapons trained on a single point in space while running at 50 to 170 kph. I think we can all agree that a mech shouldn't be able to do that.

A modern MBT can keep a several hundred kilogram cannon (generally 100-120mm, or an AC/10 in BT) perfectly steady while driving over car-sized bumps at 70kph+, and nail a target the size of an orange dead center at 4 kilometers.

So no, I don't actually agree that a giant, slow, walking weapons platform built 1000 years in the future would be incapable of steadying a weapon. In a mount that is specifically described as being capable of adjusting weapon aim for convergence purposes.


Even the technological regression of the Dark Ages doesn't explain cone of fire as being anything more than an arbitrary rule meant to nerf an already underwhelming class of weapons (ballistics).

Edited by Alek Ituin, 03 October 2014 - 10:04 AM.

[Metus regem]

Alek Ituin, on 03 October 2014 - 10:04 AM, said:

A modern MBT can keep a several hundred kilogram cannon (generally 100-120mm, or an AC/10 in BT) perfectly steady while driving over car-sized bumps at 70kph+, and nail a target the size of an orange dead center at 4 kilometers.

I wouldn't go so far as to say dead center at 4km... 2 km with the gun off the Leopard 2 (A rifled version of the one on the M1 Abrams) can hit a car sized target with consistency, but not with pin-point accuracy. There are a few too many variables with distance shooting like that.

Temperature at your location
Temperature at the locations between you and the target
Temperature at the target's location
Humidity at all of the above
Specific gravity
Wind conditions
Rotational speed of the planet....

Just to name a few of the issues....

[CygnusX7]

AUSwarrior24, on 03 October 2014 - 07:04 AM, said:

No, it is not. MWO is an online shooter with MechWarrior mechanics wrapped over it. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is not a simulator. MWLL was the last MW simulator, really.

And yeah, as much as I'd personally love to see another sim based MechWarrior, it's not going to work commercially and I doubt there's much drive left in the community to develop yet another fan made game... MWLL was the best attempt yet, but we all know where that went. I think the line between 'sim' and ''Mech shooter' has been blurred somewhat, though.

MWO Hitboxes?

[Alek Ituin]

Metus regem, on 03 October 2014 - 10:18 AM, said:

I wouldn't go so far as to say dead center at 4km... 2 km with the gun off the Leopard 2 (A rifled version of the one on the M1 Abrams) can hit a car sized target with consistency, but not with pin-point accuracy. There are a few too many variables with distance shooting like that.

Temperature at your location
Temperature at the locations between you and the target
Temperature at the target's location
Humidity at all of the above
Specific gravity
Wind conditions
Rotational speed of the planet....

Just to name a few of the issues....

Fair enough, but my point was that MBT's can hit things with consistency using modern barrel stabilization technology, even at extreme speeds and while doing things generally counter-intuitive to aiming. Hell, even today you can use a simple set of rather compact sensors to lower the impact of environmental factors on a projectiles accuracy to near zero. If the targeting computer knows the variables, it can correct for them.

1000 years in to the space future, and I don't see how Mechs wouldn't be able to hit a target at 4km with ease, even going 150kph+.


Side Note: The Leopard 2 uses a smooth bore 120mm, not a rifled. The M1 Abrams is the one using a copy of that sweet piece of Rhienmetall engineering. Also, the American copy is still a 12cm L44, whereas the German original is using an L55 barrel IIRC. Just saying.

Edited by Alek Ituin, 03 October 2014 - 10:27 AM.

[DaZur]

While I appreciate the premise as I'm a dyed-in-the-wool flight-sim nut...

Taking a niche IP and extrapolating it's learning curve via complex mechanics, physics and play mechanics would only further deepen the niche rift...

Sadly we live in a A.D.D. society and anything that would require taking more than 30 seconds to learn would die a quick and painful death.

[Metus regem]

Alek Ituin, on 03 October 2014 - 10:24 AM, said:

Fair enough, but my point was that MBT's can hit things with consistency using modern barrel stabilization technology, even at extreme speeds and while doing things generally counter-intuitive to aiming. Hell, even today you can use a simple set of rather compact sensors to lower the impact of environmental factors on a projectiles accuracy to near zero. If the targeting computer knows the variables, it can correct for them.

1000 years in to the space future, and I don't see how Mechs wouldn't be able to hit a target at 4km with ease, even going 150kph+.


Side Note: The Leopard 2 uses a smooth bore 120mm, not a rifled. The M1 Abrams is the one using a copy of that sweet piece of Rhienmetall engineering. Also, the American copy is still a 12cm L44, whereas the German original is using an L55 barrel IIRC. Just saying.

Thanks for the correction, I'll have to update our data base here, some how we got the wrong information into it...

You have to remember about the BT universe, battles are fought at horrendously short ranges, a LRM has a range of about 1km... There are missiles that are mounted for anti-tank work on gunships that will hit consistently out to 6km, so some where between now and 3049 people forgot how to make missiles that could track and hit targets even that short distance away.

I see most of the tech of battle tech, read 3049, as little better than iron sights, and rough tracking algorithms. I mean most of the combat level tech in the game are build at automated factories, and the amount of people that know how to fix them are in short supply in the IS.

Edited by Metus regem, 03 October 2014 - 10:36 AM.

[Kaeb Odellas]

Alek Ituin, on 03 October 2014 - 10:04 AM, said:

A modern MBT can keep a several hundred kilogram cannon (generally 100-120mm, or an AC/10 in BT) perfectly steady while driving over car-sized bumps at 70kph+, and nail a target the size of an orange dead center at 4 kilometers.

So no, I don't actually agree that a giant, slow, walking weapons platform built 1000 years in the future would be incapable of steadying a weapon. In a mount that is specifically described as being capable of adjusting weapon aim for convergence purposes.


Even the technological regression of the Dark Ages doesn't explain cone of fire as being anything more than an arbitrary rule meant to nerf an already underwhelming class of weapons (ballistics).

Don't make the mistake of comparing BT's technology to the real world. Absolutely nothing makes sense in BT when viewed from that lens. We're talking about a universe where 1 km is considered "long range" for a missile. Modern day weapons have a greater effective range than anything you see mounted on a mech. Heck, a modern infantryman's rifle has a greater effective range than half the weapons in the game. I'd consider that a considerable regression in technological prowess.

Movement-based accuracy penalties are even present in the tabletop game, so it's not like we'd be adding some crazy new unjustifiable system like ghost heat.

[Alek Ituin]

Metus regem, on 03 October 2014 - 10:36 AM, said:

Thanks for the correction, I'll have to update our data base here, some how we got the wrong information into it...

You have to remember about the BT universe, battles are fought at horrendously short ranges, a LRM has a range of about 1km... There are missiles that are mounted for anti-tank work on gunships that will hit consistently out to 6km, so some where between now and 3049 people forgot how to make missiles that could track and hit targets even that short distance away.

I see most of the tech of battle tech, read 3049, as little better than iron sights, and rough tracking algorithms. I mean most of the combat level tech in the game are build at automated factories, and the amount of people that know how to fix them are in short supply in the IS.

Again, true. I seem to have forgotten how utterly incompetent the IS was protrayed as being in lore... On second thought, the IS not being able to do these things makes sense. But the Clans? Not so much. They didn't lose anything, it just got better. So where have they screwed up along the line?

But it's BT, lore plot holes be damned. GIANT STOMPY SPACE ROBOTS!


(I think this kind of drives my point home though: a BT simulator is something of an oxymoron. You can't simulate the impossible or arbitrary with any degree of accuracy)

Edited by Alek Ituin, 03 October 2014 - 10:44 AM.

[Josef Nader]

Alek Ituin, on 03 October 2014 - 10:04 AM, said:

A modern MBT can keep a several hundred kilogram cannon (generally 100-120mm, or an AC/10 in BT) perfectly steady while driving over car-sized bumps at 70kph+, and nail a target the size of an orange dead center at 4 kilometers.

So no, I don't actually agree that a giant, slow, walking weapons platform built 1000 years in the future would be incapable of steadying a weapon. In a mount that is specifically described as being capable of adjusting weapon aim for convergence purposes.


Even the technological regression of the Dark Ages doesn't explain cone of fire as being anything more than an arbitrary rule meant to nerf an already underwhelming class of weapons (ballistics).

My dad used to tell me stories about setting a full coffee cup at the end of the Abrams' barrel and driving the tank at 45kph over rough terrain without the coffee spilling. Modern tech is more than capable of ridiculously precise shots at high speeds and long ranges. There's a reason wars are fought the way there are nowadays.

[Mercules]

Kaeb Odellas, on 03 October 2014 - 10:41 AM, said:

We're talking about a universe where 1 km is considered "long range" for a missile. Modern day weapons have a greater effective range than anything you see mounted on a mech.

We are talking about a universe where the battle field is filled with constant EMF that messes with Mech Sensors and missile guidance. ECM is a 1 ton package of... well... ECM but every mech has some countermeasures to make it less "trackable" we just don't ever see them actually in use. They are not offscreen, but basically just always there so no one would think about them. At least that was the reason the books gave for missile inaccuracy.