112 replies to this topic

[Tweaks]

WerewolfX, on 02 November 2011 - 07:52 AM, said:

World of tanks has this down pat. The faster you go the more inaccurate you are should work the same here.

Good point.

[TheForce]

***START RANT***

Here's how AC20's become useless with group fire, concentrated damage and pinpoint accuracy:

1 AC20: range 270 meters, ammo 5, tonnage 15, damage 20, heat 7
4 Med. Lasers: range 270 meters, ammo unlimited, tonnage 4, damage 20, heat 12

So the first thing I'm gonna do with my hunchback is strip the AC20 and add a frak load of med lasers, heat sinks, and armor.

"HBK-4P - Also called the Swayback, the 4P Hunchback is modified to carry only energy weapons. The Autocannon/20 was replaced with six additional Medium Lasers. In order to handle the incredibly high heat load, the 'Mech has twenty three heat sinks. While this may seem like a downgrade to the design, the combined firepower of all eight Medium Lasers can do twice as much damage as the Autocannon they replaced. BV (1.0) = 960, BV (2.0) = 1,138"

But in Btech the med laser damage is distributed all over.

***END RANT***

Edited by theforce, 05 November 2011 - 04:10 PM.

[gregsolidus]

Not having convergence,will unrealistic,sound like a bad idea or even impossible.How am am I supposed to aim a weapon that is Mounted on my shoulder? There aren't any modifiers for it in standard CBT.

[UncleKulikov]

Taking the Nova Cat as an example, the way to maximize accuracy would be to fire each weapon singly, and cycling through them and re-aiming.

[Michael Fury]

I say do 3 reticles.

Left arm. Torso. Right Arm.

Have the focal points for the 3 be based on the radar range you are set for and show the 3 crosshairs. If you're hovering over something that's too far, you see them out of focus. If they're at the right range, they merge into one. If they're too far, they're 3 side by side crossing each other.

If the radar is set to 250 m, then the weapons focus at 200 m. If the radar is set for 750m, then the weapons focus for 500m. If the radar is set to max they they focus for the max range of the weapons.

Till will make it so that if someone is in the midst of a firefight at a range of 100m, they can potentially be snuck up on by someone from further out because they can't use the long range/short range at the same time.

Just an idea.

[gregsolidus]

A horrible,complicated one.

[CaveMan]

Too confusing. I say one reticle with a ring around it, whose size reflects the spread of the weapons involved.

[VYCanis]

i like the triple overlapping crosshairs idea

the focus should be automated, but take a moment or 2 depending on what you are dong, otherwise it'd be too **** cumbersome.

Edited by VYCanis, 05 November 2011 - 06:44 PM.

[Damocles]

i dig the multi crosshairs floating also, say you take a lot of dmg to one of your arms and that crosshair stops moving around and you have to turn the mech itself to get on-target.

[topgun505]

True ... except ... we don't know how the damage model is going to be implemented. What if every weapon is given a penetration rating? Now to do damage to a target the system determines where you hit, if the target area on the mech has been hit before or fresh, and thus what its armor rating is (the armor amount for that body section on that much minus any previous damage). If you do it like that then an AC20 will have a HUGE penetration rating and will be far more likely to penetrate and dish out critical damage. Whereas 4 MLs will possibly hit different areas (depending on how convergence is handled), and each weapon on its own will dish out less damage due to less penetration power of the weapon. Heck, even if all the MLs hit the same spot ... it's possible they would have the system determine damage from each weapon separately one at a time instead of summing all the damage up and the end result will mean less damage due to smaller weapons with less penetration power.

But ... we don't know how the damage model works yet.

theforce, on 05 November 2011 - 04:08 PM, said:

***START RANT***

Here's how AC20's become useless with group fire, concentrated damage and pinpoint accuracy:

1 AC20: range 270 meters, ammo 5, tonnage 15, damage 20, heat 7
4 Med. Lasers: range 270 meters, ammo unlimited, tonnage 4, damage 20, heat 12

So the first thing I'm gonna do with my hunchback is strip the AC20 and add a frak load of med lasers, heat sinks, and armor.

"HBK-4P - Also called the Swayback, the 4P Hunchback is modified to carry only energy weapons. The Autocannon/20 was replaced with six additional Medium Lasers. In order to handle the incredibly high heat load, the 'Mech has twenty three heat sinks. While this may seem like a downgrade to the design, the combined firepower of all eight Medium Lasers can do twice as much damage as the Autocannon they replaced. BV (1.0) = 960, BV (2.0) = 1,138"

But in Btech the med laser damage is distributed all over.

***END RANT***

[azov]

I like the having the multiple crosshairs that will create a cone of fire according to the speed of the 'mech. I would use the three reticle setup mentioned above. I would set a large circle that would represent torso mounted weapons with a center pinpoint. Depending on the movement of the mech, the weapon fire would fall inside the reticle. Coming to a stop it would shrink that outer circle until it matches the pinpoint. This would create the "random" as well as take in the account the modifiers from either no moving or running like in the table top.

Now, the other 2 reticles would represent the arms. They would primarily overlap but when making a sweeping motion you would see one arm playing catch-up to the leading arm. When swinging an arm to an extreme angle the opposing arm should turn it's respective reticle grey.

Missiles that are torso mounted should able to receive a lock within the outer most circle for the torso mounted weapons. while a moving mech had a greater chance of tracking an opposing 'mech, the lock on time should increase. If anyone has used the heat seeker missiles in battlefield 3 you'll understand exactly what this would be like.

I'll try and make a drawing of this when I get to a computer.

Edit: My method described here would also create an advantage of using a targeting computer by reducing the radius of both reticles by 20 - 40 percent as well as displaying selectable hitboxes for possible pinpoint aim.

The downside to this would bring a huge learning curve but in a game that rewards you on skill, this method would be best at determining that skill. It really rewards those faster mechs, and makes the slow assault mechs easier targets.

Edited by azov, 05 November 2011 - 10:45 PM.

[Hanged Man]

I can't express my support for a cone of fire strongly enough. It gives us more room for character advancement and neatly avoids the problem of instant death and crippling for mechs with lighter armor.

[Razor Kotovsky]

One aiming reticule depicting your accumulated accuracy (based on torso weapons) and two secondaries (simple crosses) showing where arms point as they converge on the genral crosshair.
Separate aiming mode for arms.

Strong dependence on mech speed and aiming skills is essential.

Edited by Razor Kotovsky, 05 November 2011 - 10:23 PM.

[walkingraven]

I support the variable crosshair cone, and also the 'swarm of crosshairs' method. Using them both would make and easy gauge for the pilot to determine how uncertain the shot really is.
A heavy mech may have a field day spraying fire everywhere and laughing manically while a lighter machine has the agility to line up each volley. Both systems can celebrate their strengths, and benefit from the 'aiming cone reduction' properties.
As for fast cycling weapons, would it not be appropriate for a slight lag, perhaps half a second, between weapons or weapon groups?
This would make macroing useless, allow a quick-fingered pilot the benefit of the weapon he wants when he needs it, and balance massive weapon banks of small weapons with equivalent arrays of heavier weapons.
A canny pilot would group his weapons to match his full cycle speed to the cooldown of the computer and his weapons.

[Kalunta]

Perhaps fixed-mounted weapons have a aim that you can tweak in the mechlab, but with a default. If you have a gauss on each shoulder, then perhaps the default is to converge at their optimal range or focus straight, but the user can tweak this if the wish within the physical limits of the mounting hardware. As the target moves away from that conversion point, the convergence of those weapons would separate --- perhaps visually with individual reticules while in range so you can see if you are converging on an enemy an enemy target or not -- It would take very good skill or just luck to actually hit the target at the same point. This would mean that at a certain point your fixed lasers in the arm of your Nova will cross if you had them set to converge on a point at some distance ( of course, you could always have them set to just point straight and perhaps that would be the default for arm-mounted energy weapons). So, you could move the arms for dynamic in-game aiming, but the way and at what distance the weapons in that arm converge (or not) would be something you tweak in the mechlab. Similar for torso and torso twist.

I don't mind spending a lot of time in the mechlab tweaking my mech and a challenging learning curve. I think as long as they have usable defaults that behave as expected out of the box for new users, they can allow more experienced users to tweak in the mechlab if they want to readjust the focus of fixed-mounted weapons if we want.

Just a thought...

[Woodstock]

CaveMan, on 05 November 2011 - 05:38 PM, said:

Too confusing. I say one reticle with a ring around it, whose size reflects the spread of the weapons involved.

Agreed. Then have hits spread randomly throughout that zone. Maybe with some bias to where they are mounted on your mech.

This will also make lights more viable as heavies will find it harder to focus all their huge damage on one point and overwhelm the armour of the target instantly.

[AlfalphaCat]

And people said that F2P would make this game WoT!! Hehe, some cool ideas in here, but I see it being far too overdone, turning the game into run, stop, shoot, walk/jump, stop, shoot. IDK, I would like to see something much different than what previous titles have used.

[GreenHell]

I like "cone of fire" idea. I also think that a good idea would be to unlock arm aiming from torso aiming, and have 2 reticules. One reticule would represent the players movement, and the other would represent the mechs actual aiming placement. In Steel Battalion, you had to aim carefully because you could move your reticule faster than the mech could move the weapons systems. Thus, it had two reticules, the mechs being slower and following yours. I think a similar system (including the cone of fire, and perhaps having a third crosshair where the mechs torso weapons would be aimed) would be a good way to implement unlocked arm movement, while still covering the issue of "coring" mechs to death with a single alpha strike.

Edited by GreenHell, 06 November 2011 - 02:12 PM.

[Pipsin]

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

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.

Right up until that very last line I figured what you were describing was "cone of fire" by another name. I can see some reasoning behind your idea. Four lasers statically placed around a central arm will have the same spacing if set to "infinite" range.
However mech weapon targeting doesn't work like that. For a start not all your weapons are going to be in the same body part, so there will be tracking differences. Secondly even on weapons of same type in same body part, range is a factor. (even in lasers)
Each laser hit vapourises an amount of armour, this vapour reduces the effectiveness of nearby strikes by other laser weaponry.
So you either want your lasers to all strike the same point at the same time or you want them to strike quite different points in order to be most effective.
Most mech targeting systems go with the first idea ( since its easier, and more likely to render a critical hit). But to do that each laser has to be individually focused and converged on a moving target which is difficult.
What you therefore obtain - whether you like it or not - should be a semi random series of strikes around a central targeting point which vary in radius from that point depending on a series of factors - such as movement, target movement, heat, terrain, and even weather.
Or to put it another way (a cone of fire)
What you have to realise however is that every weapon

[Gaius Cavadus]

Having a RNG or even semi-RNG based cone of fire to avoid instant death sounds horrible. This is a simulation; get your dice rolls out of here.

You get rid of "instant-death" by trashing the traditional mech locations and going with true pinpoint locational damage which can be easily done in this day and age.

As for convergence, I explained that in detail with pictures on page two or three. Arms can converge, torso weapons can't, and neither can grouped parallel barrels (i.e. the three pulse lasers in the Nova Cat's left arm cannot converge, they are parallel to one another and will strike three entirely separate locations every time they hit).

Torso weapons are mounted into the super structure of the mech's frame and usually aren't gymbalized so their convergence point is 100% static and set to a specific range.