112 replies to this topic

[Killian]

Mr_Blastman, on 02 November 2011 - 08:55 AM, said:

And, by the way, using macros on a mouse or game are just a lame way to compensate for a lack of skill.

People like to win, so they use whatever advantage they can to do so.

[Woodstock]

killian, on 02 November 2011 - 09:04 AM, said:

Just to weigh in, I've always thought the "cone of fire" concept was a good representation of the tabletop ruleset.

As you move from standing, to walking, to running, to jumping your chance of hitting your target goes down. Tack in target movement and terrain effects and that simulates tracking with your torso and being behind cover.

Tie in the fact that in the table top game you roll individually for each weapon being fired, both for damage and location, and you are essentially firing in a cone.

How many times have you fired when you needed an 11 or 12 and managed to land one of the shots? How many times have you missed on a 3 or 4? Chance always has been a factor in Battletech, I'd like to see that represented more in Mechwarrior.

Yes yes yes fully agree with this guy!

[Mister Blastman]

killian, on 02 November 2011 - 09:05 AM, said:

People like to win, so they use whatever advantage they can to do so.

It doesn't make it any less pathetic. I've competed online for years and never resorted to such spineless, gutless chicanery.

[VYCanis]

I do not like the idea of cone of fire at all. If i group fire 5 hardmounted lasers, it should not come out looking like a shotgun blast

However i do not like pinpoint convergence either, at it encourages constant alphas and boaty loadouts


I'd rather see something along the lines of the following.
Weapons are accurate to the crosshairs, but your aim will sway, bob, ****, and bounce around depending on what you are doing, and what is hitting you.
Weapon convergence meanwhile takes a moment to focus to a given range, almost like a camera lens focusing on something. Getting knocked around by an enemy can unfocus your convergence point, as could damage to sensors, or jumpjetting. And when i say unfocused, i don't mean random. I mean there is more space between those weapon impacts, but its the same pattern.


In this way, long range shots are not careless things you can do easily, but something you have to take careful aim to do effectively. And the system doesn't hinge on any significant amount of randomization.

If damage is still too focused, you could always try to rule it where having too many weapons hitting at once starts to divert portions of the damage to the nearest adjacent locations (other than the head) so that 1 medium laser hitting the RT deals its damage normally, but having 6 hitting the RT spreads some of that damage to the CT and the RA, or if its to the CT, some of that damage gets spread to the LT and RT. and so on.

The harder it is to simply core out your opponent, the more interesting fights will be.

Edited by VYCanis, 02 November 2011 - 09:24 AM.

[Killian]

Mr_Blastman, on 02 November 2011 - 09:20 AM, said:

It doesn't make it any less pathetic. I've competed online for years and never resorted to such spineless, gutless chicanery.

Well good on you for that, but I'm trying to look at things from a perspective of prevention. Knowing what and how people will abuse the system, as well as understanding why goes a long way t'words avoiding the easily exploited methods.

[CaveMan]

Cone of fire is the best approach IMO, because it reflects the way combat is described in the board game and the novels. Your accuracy is impacted by your movement, the type of weapon, your character's skill (it's an RPG after all, don't forget that), and most importantly, the level of heat buildup in your 'Mech. Accuracy should rapidly degrade in overheating 'Mechs as a way to discourage people from running critically hot energy boats and pinpoint-gimping everyone else.

[UncleKulikov]

To fix against macro users, the cycle rate should be set in stone. Also, spamming with the macro would up your heat significantly for all weapons except MGs, which don't do significant damage anyway or would have no cooldown, so macroing that weapon would have no significant effect.

[Killian]

VYCanis, on 02 November 2011 - 09:24 AM, said:

If damage is still too focused, you could always try to rule it where having too many weapons hitting at once starts to divert portions of the damage to the nearest adjacent locations (other than the head) so that 1 medium laser hitting the RT deals its damage normally, but having 6 hitting the RT spreads some of that damage to the CT and the RA, or if its to the CT, some of that damage gets spread to the LT and RT. and so on.

This method was used in MPBT Solaris for awhile if I remember correctly. That's when people went to super fast chain fires to avoid spreading the damage around.

I should clarify slightly that a completely random effect actually is counter intuitive. Players will see a laser firing out at a diagonal one shot, then to the opposite the next shot and be frustrated.

Trying for a nice balance between what we would expect to be realistic, the tabletop rules, and what is "fun" is a big challenge for the developers. I think one thing we can all agree on is that everything auto converging on the crosshair made Laser focused 'Mechs much more viable than mixed weapon systems.

[Jacob]

I believe that cross between multiple crosshairs and cones of fire would work best. It would create non circular field or fields (depending on the size of those) on which hits would be randomly distributed.

[Aleksandr Miuri]

Reposting from another thread, but it fits just as well here.

IMO, the only good way to handle this is to make aiming difficult, but controllable, not random. Ideally, this could get wonderfully complex. Imagine attacking in a Mechwarrior game where dozens of variables affected your aim; variables that you could compensate for, but only with experience, and with time getting to know your mech. Say the mechs arms had weight and could only adjust so quickly; perhaps your mechs heavy arms didn't track well vertically. The mech's position and movement are taken into account; you're trying to make a turn on slippery sand, barely keeping your stumbling mech on its feet and bouncing your arms around; maybe the model of mech you're piloting needs to shift its arms while its turning just to keep balance, offsetting its aim somewhat. The heavy duty autocannon in your particular mech doesn't have a great muzzle velocity; shells drop quickly with distance. Your mech has less than stellar recoil compensation; fire that gauss rifle and it's going to take a little while before it gets everything lined back up again. The ground you're standing on is too soft, damage to your mech affects its balance, your modified weapons don't aim quite where the originals did, the planet's gravity or weather changes your aim. I could list a hundred more variables. The thing is that they aren't purely random though; a player who got to know the game and their machine could take them into account and still pull off some great shots; shots that would be all the more amazing because it wouldn't be "oh look, JimBob17's RNG decided he hit someone in the head, lucky!" but "Wow, that guy knows how to use his weapons, I'm glad he's on our team!"

Obviously that's a lot to ask of a developer, and I don't really expect to see it in any mech game any time soon. It would make for great combat though, where skill really matters, practice would be rewarded, and even little details like being familiar with your own mech would matter. Maybe someday?

Vance Diamond, on 02 November 2011 - 08:55 AM, said:

See: global cool down.

That should stop the rotary auto-cannon effect in its tracks.

Unless, of course, you are firing a rotary auto-cannon.

Not only does this work, but it's something else that could be tweaked to give different mechs more of their own personality. Maybe a mech states in the TROs and fluff as having a top-end weapons computer would be able to cycle weapons faster, where as one with a cheap system would lag quite a bit more. Balanced properly, this sort of thing could give little advantages to some of the mechs that are usually considered underdogs.

[VYCanis]

Something else to consider

when it comes to lasers, if the laser spreads its damage over the duration of the beam, it becomes far less of a insta coring weapon, and actually requires the player to keep their aim on target, because simply sweeping the target from one side to the other and burning into the wall behind it isn't gonna do a whole heck of a lot compared to someone that kept their aim solid on that arm they wanted to mess up.

Laser "accuracy" should really translate into beam duration, shorter= more accurate.

-pulse lasers dump their energy faster (making it more likely that your damage is concentrated to one place) Should still retain rapid strobe effect for the purposes of visual identificaton.
-regular and ER have moderate beam durations.
-heavy lasers (whenever they come out) would have the longest beam durations. (highest damage, but hardest to keep concentrated to one location)

[Icepick]

We need two reticle types: the fixed weapon "boresight" and the free reticle of the arm mounted weapons.

Non-arm weapons should fire in the direction of the torso, and the reticle size should vary according to movement and recoil.

Arm mounts could use the free reticle for aiming, and convergence adjusted automatically depending on the range to whatever is under the pipper.

Fairly simple, and makes using (and protecting) arms more important.

[TheRulesLawyer]

Pinpoint accuracy for any weapon at any time will ruin this game. It will be abused somehow by macros, etc. Dispersion is the only way to go

Single Fire-
Weapons hit within a circle determined by your character skill and base accuracy (Pulse would have a smaller base circle for example.)
Movement would increase the circle
Getting hit would increase the circle
Firing a weapon would increase the circle. (This prevents macros from hitting the same location.)

Group Fire
-Convergence is automatic. They'll all center on your crosshairs. If you track outside of torso arc you'll have two cross hairs, one for the arm in that arc and one for the rest of the weapons.
-Group fire base circle is determined by the worst weapon in the group. (Each weapon could retain its own smaller circle, but only the largest is displayed) plus a percentage of each additional weapon.
-Adds for movement
-Adds for getting hit
-Adds for firing.

Different weapons could have different aiming circle decay rates, Grouped weapons would display the worst one at any moment.

[Gaius Cavadus]

There's more to it than you all think. Often times a mech has multiple parallel barrels on one arm that when aimed at something create multiple impact points for the weapons coming out of them.

Allow me to demonstrate using the arms of a Nova Cats.

Now, arms are very maneuverable. They can go left, right, up, down, rotate at the shoulder at least if not the elbow for most.

Now, the Nova Cat's right arm has two ERPPCs in it. They fire out of two parallel barrels. If these barrels are parallel how could the two ERPPCs ever hit the same point when fired simultaneously?

Here's an image of the Nova Cat's right arm's firing pattern:



Okay, what about the left arm? That's three pulse lasers all in parallel barrels. When fired the firing pattern for the left arm would look like this:



If you had both arms converge onto a single target the two firing patterns in the picture above would overlap and an alpha strike would have this firing pattern:



As you can see if you if you want the most weapons to hit a target at once in an alpha strike you have to sacrifice accuracy due to the firing patterns which are different for every weapon because the origin of fire is a different location for every single weapon.

Now, the next most important question:

What about torso weapons?

Torso weapons don't posses the targeting mobility of arms. As mentioned above, arms move! The autocannon on the Atlas does not.

If the autocannon on the Atlas can't move how can it ever be dynamically aligned with targets at dynamic ranges? Wouldn't it be like WWII warbirds where it's set to converge on the reticle at its optimal range? Or would it be set to fire completely perpendicular to the mech's torso and have it's own independent targeting reticle for more precision?

And let's say you have two gauss rifles on a mech, one in each side torso. The convergence range of these gauss rifles are set to a permanent 900 meters. This means that 900 meters the two projectiles will hit the exact same point.

However, as the target draws closer more and more space will occur between the two projectiles' impact points because the "pinpoint convergence" range is now behind the target. This means that the closer a target is the further apart on the target these projectiles will impact. Eventually, assuming the target is nose to nose with the gauss rifle mech, the furthest away these projectiles' impact point could possibly be is the actual distance between the two barrels firing them.

These are important questions but one thing is for sure: the days of the magic bendy metal B.S. where all weapons can just magically converge on a pinpoint at any and all ranges are behind us. I want some verisimilitude this time around.

Edited by cavadus, 02 November 2011 - 11:05 AM.

[Yeach]

How much convergence with 8 MLaser all in one arm?

[MaddMaxx]

Yeach, on 02 November 2011 - 10:55 AM, said:

How much convergence with 8 MLaser all in one arm?

For arguments sake, not technically doable. Take one of Cavadus' arms, place 8 circle around it, and then figure the tech specs to articulate each and every one of the 8 lasers. Not going to happen simply because the gimbling system required would converge the 8 laser at about 16-24 inches in front of the arm itself. Lasers go in absolute straight lines unless deflected and burn for set duration depending on power output. It may be possible to gimble 2 larger lasers enough to space them for long range convergence but then only a stationary target would see full impact and damage results.

The best solution would be to have true (as best as possible) Hit Boxes on all Mechs. That way, you either hit your target (which shrinks considerably at longer ranges) or requires a Zooming Tech be on-board and any zoomed image, with either end moving, introduces a very hard to control or jittery reticule.

Perhaps have 3 Reticule types. Laser, Ballistic and Missile. If the Pilot selects a 3 weapon groups with 1 of each, they have to deal with that themselves (skill based) Otherwise each selected weapon type would present a Special reticule (easily distinguished) and tighten or widen based on the elements presented (movement/speed/direction) or tech in place (Gyro stabilizers perhaps).

With tight Hit-Boxes it put the hit or miss ratios with the Pilot and the weapons he/she has selected at the time of firing. Put it on the Pilot to make the shot. Random chance in games simply suck in general.

[VYCanis]

@cavadus

well, there is further complication.

its obvious on some mech designs that their torso mounted weapons are meant to be somewhat mobile. where as others, are clearly fixed.
for example, its obvious that the bloodasp's RT/LT mounted weapons seem to have the ability to pitch
or the turret atop the marauder seems to look like it should be able to adjust.

and there are mechs where the arms seems completely incapable of various angles of movement, if at all. Like the catapult aiming left or right, or the stalker or champion, both of them have arms that seem like fixed protrusions of its torso.

I'd err on the side of simply assuming most torso mounted weapons have a bit of wiggle room inside their housings or at their base to converge a bit, though arms should definitely converge more. and i definitely agree parallel mounted weapons should result in consistent firing patterns.

Edited by VYCanis, 02 November 2011 - 11:29 AM.

[Xaks]

Well, what about a hybrid kind of system? Compromise.

Arm mounted weaps are the easiest to shoot off, but have the best movement range, and when done in conjunction with torso twisting, offer the fullest pattern of possible targeting.

Also, hardpoint mounted weapons have little to no moveability.

Plus, remember, if you're heading 10 o'clock, torso-twisting 2 o'clock, your right arm mounted PPC cannot possibly target an enemy at 9 o'clock, no matter the distance.

Computers are the best at quick, mathematical computations and calculations. I don't forsee a real issue having the PCs track what is pointing in what direction and simply not allowing a 'hit' by a right arm PPC in the above case. He can fire it if he wants, for useless heat and a pretty lightshow. But it cannot hit, even by accident.

So, if the PC correlates the weapons systems mount points, and on the fly calculates that the arms of the Warhammer can align both PPCs on a target ahead left, but the right torso mounted SRM-6 launcher or right torso mounted medium laser will both miss, BUT the left torso medium laser and *just* squeek in a hit, so go for it.

Kind of like a cone, but keeping some real in it.

Same with the direct fire laser Vs. ballistic weapons and autocannons. The delay in travel plus damage spread SHOULD make them not instant and a cone of possibility.

[VYCanis]

i think it'd be easier simply to have 2 overlapping crosshairs, one for the arms and one for the torso.

arms crosshairs move faster, torso plays catchup to attempt to line up. aim too far either left or right and you can only fire whats in that arm.

and have some toggle to lock the arm speed to match torso speed.

Edited by VYCanis, 02 November 2011 - 11:39 AM.

[MookieRah]

Lots of crazy good ideas in this thread. I'm gonna put a lot of them in a blender and add my two cents.

Here is my idea:
One crosshair, multiple indicators for hard points. The idea is that you point your crosshair where you want it, and the weapons will align themselves to the crosshair. Arm weapons would adjust quickly, but other weapons will take longer times to adjust. If a weapon is fixed, then there are static indicators on screen as to where they would hit (these obviously would have the option to turn them off to avoid clutter, but would be good till you got used to the arrangement).

Also the hardpoint indicators would be a cone, and the cone would size up and down based on skills, movement speed, and other variables; however, the spray from these things shouldn't be entirely random. It should, if possible, be based on weapon (guns in several competitive shooters have set patterns for spray, or if it's random tend to shoot one direction more than the other) as well as the movement of the legs. Say when a leg hits the ground there will be a slight jitter and the shot will be placed lower on the cone, etc. Also other variables could be in play, be it environmental, heat based, damage based, etc. In any case, what you are left with is something that is "seemingly" random, but in reality with enough skill you could account for a lot of it.

Add in Cavadus's idea and then each mech will have different patterns of dispersion for their hard points and various perks based on different targeting computers. What you would then have is a really deep, fun, and flavorful combat system that would make each mech less homogenized and more than simply it's load-out, speed, armor, etc.

Edited by MookieRah, 02 November 2011 - 12:52 PM.