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Mirumoto Izanami, on 14 January 2015 - 09:10 AM, said:
Actually, TT represents the difficulties of being inside a 15-100+ ton walking machine moving at 45-120+ kph while firing at targets anywhere from several hundred to several thousand meters away that are also moving anywhere from 40-120+ kph, through actual terrain, smoke, and whatnot, while being under stress of actually possibly dying, being fatigued, doing so while manipulating whatever control scheme they had, as opposed to just playing a computer game with a keyboard and mouse.
The fictitious pilots were probably quite good shots at gunnery 3 (step above average).
If anything, MWO does a piss poor job of simulating such factors, and has gone the more arcade route.
Also, Butterbee is easy to beat (unless it gets lucky). It runs hot.
^^^^^This^^^^^
This game was doomed from the moment the dev team opted to create a system where the reticle stays solid and unmoving, no matter WHAT the pilot is doing. In real life, any weapon suffers from a degree of uncertainty as to where the projectile/laser dot is going to go. Hands shake. Calibrations are knocked off by wear and tear. Heat and chaotic situations play havoc with computers and software. Movement compensation systems have real limitations (and will always have real limitations, it's just physics.)
This all adds up to a degree of uncertainty as to where a projectile/laser is going to actually go in real life. As amazing as an Abrams main gun system is, simple math tells us that even with 1 MOA accuracy (which is absurd when considering the nature of a battlemech, but we'll assume tech is pretty amazing in 3050,) a shot from 1000 meters away will land somewhere in a 30cm circle. Anywhere in that circle. however, large bore guns fired from moving platforms that don't involve thousands of tons of stabilization equipment aren't 1 MOA.
They are, however, more like 15 MOA systems -- you can expect a moving Abrams tank, operated by a skilled crew, to hit a 4.3 meter circle at a range of 1000 meters. That's roughly the size of a battlemech torso. In order to hit it reliably, you have to aim center mass, and the shot could go anywhere -- head, CT, LT, RT. Aim left, right, up, or down from center mass, and the shot is more likely to miss than to hit anything.
There is precisely zero interaction with wind, Coriolis effects, platform movement, and ranging discrepancies based on target elevation from you. Sure, computers handle a lot of that, but not all of it.
The devs chose to create 0 MOA weapons, unaffected by anything (with the notable exception of jump jets, for some strange reason.) The outcome is an arcade mode shooter where 'skill' just means you're good at lining your mouse up with a target and clicking. It was a choice driven, no doubt, by the desire to 'get a wider audience.' I certainly can't fault Russ Bullock for making a wise business decision.
As a gaming decision, it's terrible. The TT game these rules draw from represented that kind of uncertainty VERY well. All of those rules are utterly absent from from this poor excuse for Battletech.
What SHOULD happen is that a moving mech has a higher MOA than a stationary mech. Uneven terrain and moving at top speed should cause reticle jitter -- gyroscopes do not compensate for high amplitude, high g impact events -- AKA running in a battlemech. The /pilot's head/ would be jostled around, forget the platform. Want it to be less? Buy a TC, add quirks to specific chassis, etc. the dev team dropped the ball completely.
Edited by Artifact, 14 January 2015 - 10:06 AM.
