113 replies to this topic

[Kjudoon]

I think he means the counter QQ from all the cheese eaters is louder and more favored by PGI and so anything that nerfs "skilled" instagimp alphas will be ignored for twitchy snipetardery.

[Burktross]

Kjudoon, on 15 January 2015 - 07:38 PM, said:

I think he means the counter QQ from all the cheese eaters is louder and more favored by PGI and so anything that nerfs "skilled" instagimp alphas will be ignored for twitchy snipetardery.

oh, okay, wasnt sure if he agreed or disagreed XD

[Errinovar]

I don't know much about the real world physics involved with lasers in a military setting but it seems to me that since all the energy is being focused through a lens, then that lens could be crafted in a was that the mounting could change the angle of the lens based on a targeting system allowing for fairly uniform convergence with minimal loss of energy, because we are talking about a fantasy setting where people have spent a lot of time working on the intricacies of laser weapon technology. The nova arm example seems kind of off if you assume each lens has a motorized mount that can adjust the angle of the beam a small amount to converge at the same exact spot. Again I don't know much about the reality, but I'm not terribly concerned with reality when I am playing a game about mech warfare.

[CocoaJin]

Kjudoon, on 15 January 2015 - 07:38 PM, said:

I think he means the counter QQ from all the cheese eaters is louder and more favored by PGI and so anything that nerfs "skilled" instagimp alphas will be ignored for twitchy snipetardery.

I get a sense the pendulum is beginning to swing the other way. It feels as if PGI is beginning to focus more on the core BT enthusthiasts, I certainly feel the forums beginning to lean that way. I think we may begin feeling the sway of the hard core comp gamer fade a bit. I think they are realizing for the time being that it's going to be the niche BT enthusthiast that pay the bills right now. Casual dabblers will dabble in purchases and come and go. The hard core comp gamer is too small a population in the community it would seem...the stable group is us.

[CocoaJin]

Errinovar, on 15 January 2015 - 08:00 PM, said:

I don't know much about the real world physics involved with lasers in a military setting but it seems to me that since all the energy is being focused through a lens, then that lens could be crafted in a was that the mounting could change the angle of the lens based on a targeting system allowing for fairly uniform convergence with minimal loss of energy, because we are talking about a fantasy setting where people have spent a lot of time working on the intricacies of laser weapon technology. The nova arm example seems kind of off if you assume each lens has a motorized mount that can adjust the angle of the beam a small amount to converge at the same exact spot. Again I don't know much about the reality, but I'm not terribly concerned with reality when I am playing a game about mech warfare.

Focal lenses for aiming/convergence isn't out of the question, it's certainly a reasonable proposal for how they would aim.

[Mercules]

Khobai, on 15 January 2015 - 03:54 PM, said:

battletech supports that idea that torso weapons are gimballed though. in battletech torso weapons fire in a cone not a straight line. torso weapons can also fire at different targets in the same attack phase. how do you explain that? its not torso movement, because torso twisting is done as an entirely seperate phase.

The TT system is an approximation of what happens over 10 seconds. Torso twisting swings the entire torso 60 degrees changing the cone of Fire that way. That could represent focussing on one side but within those 10 seconds the mech makes multiple smaller swings to aim and fire the actual torso weapons.

While I don't doubt that some gimbaling is likely in effect that wouldn't make any sense with a mech such as this:

[Karl Marlow]

mogs01gt, on 15 January 2015 - 01:40 PM, said:

I think removing convergence would make lights even more of a problem to hit.

It would also make it alot harder for Lights to do their pinpoint damage while moving.

[Mercules]

ThomasMarik, on 15 January 2015 - 10:43 PM, said:

It would also make it alot harder for Lights to do their pinpoint damage while moving.

Yep, and this Light Pilot is perfectly fine with that! Firestarter would get a little less potent since it's lasers are scattered across 2 to 3 torsos and both arms.

[Reno Blade]

Alistair Winter, on 15 January 2015 - 03:43 PM, said:

Reno Blade, on 15 January 2015 - 03:02 PM, said:

The explanation was good.
The concept might be flawed because of the reticule.

using the concept of your movement sway:

there should be 3 reticules swaying while moving for torso and each arm as you depicted.
Faster movement and twisting would sway more.
Heat would reduce the speed the reticule would move.

Also the arm reticule could extend to that side only (and leaving torso and opposite side's arm stay) while twisting and aiming to that side.

Convergence then could be used to reduce the swaying strength by a % for the skill.
Example of multi-reticule convergence:

Holy **** this is so awesomesauce!

I really wish this game was harder to play and more complex. One of the things that made me fall in love with MW2 when I was a kid, was the fact that it required a lot of multitasking to play right. Targeting, torso twisting, you had so many buttons to push. It felt like actually piloting a warmachine. And now that I've served in the army as a tank gunner, I still wish I had buttons to push, targetting computers to tinker with, night vision parameters to adjust. I wish the HUD had more information, I wish I had to do more thinking when playing this game.

But for the most part, all you need is WASD, Space and Mouse 1 and 2. Same as Quake and TF2. Point and click. Instant convergence. And they won't even let me have collisions, knockdown or repair & rearm

New and improved Version:


- Torso and head is fixed and does not converge (make it simpler)
- Arms converge as soon as you get closer to the locked target (similar to missiles).
-> this means that target not locked can still be shot, but arms will not converge (with some skill you can still hit a target with one of your arms relyable)
-> this would also give more use and fluff for arm mounted weapons and get closer to the BT Books/Novels description of pilots shooting two targets at the same time.


In this animation you can see:
1. the arms converting towards the locked target if nearby and a solid "lock" (similar to the BT books targeting computer locking) confirmed full conversion.
2. Then the player moves and you can see the arms sway, but the convergence is still locked on the target.
3. The last part shows the conversion lock break and the arms move back to default position.

Warning! 2.5MB size! Open spoiler to load the image.

Spoiler

Edited by Reno Blade, 16 January 2015 - 08:29 AM.

[Lily from animove]

Reno Blade, on 16 January 2015 - 08:28 AM, said:

New and improved Version:


- Torso and head is fixed and does not converge (make it simpler)
- Arms converge as soon as you get closer to the locked target (similar to missiles).
-> this means that target not locked can still be shot, but arms will not converge (with some skill you can still hit a target with one of your arms relyable)
-> this would also give more use and fluff for arm mounted weapons and get closer to the BT Books/Novels description of pilots shooting two targets at the same time.


In this animation you can see:
1. the arms converting towards the locked target if nearby and a solid "lock" (similar to the BT books targeting computer locking) confirmed full conversion.
2. Then the player moves and you can see the arms sway, but the convergence is still locked on the target.
3. The last part shows the conversion lock break and the arms move back to default position.

Warning! 2.5MB size! Open spoiler to load the image.

Spoiler

and how you wanna implement this convergence? make it client sided, and welcome hackers.
make it server sided and good by any 120ms+ gamers.

a dynamic convergence like this is not an answer it would fail with the current way how centralised server fps games work. It would work when you are on a lan directly beign connected to the server, or in a singlepalyer game, but in MWO. welcome 40ms- masterrace.

because now let your little convergence example apply on a ligght runnign in circles and "S" styled movement. A user with higher latency would constantly slip off that mech on the server causing convergence to be totally gone.
And so you would force any user of said latency to adopt the 0 convergence playstyle. and this is goign to cause headache unless you have a MW 3 styled crosshairmovement, because you cockpit would constantly try to follow the curser.

and how much this concept makes the acessability for newbies harder into the game, is probably another side effect.

Edited by Lily from animove, 16 January 2015 - 08:56 AM.

[Impossible Wasabi]

Quote

-> this means that target not locked can still be shot, but arms will not converge (with some skill you can still hit a target with one of your arms relyable)

The Space Pope thinks this part of the idea would be very bad, it would make ECM pretty much a requirement (even more so than it already is). Sure, someone could compensate, but it would essentially remove a significant portion of the potential damage a mech could do to an ECM mech.

The Space Pope can only imagine how people would complain when an ECM light mech alphas them from point blank range while there Assault mech is unable to target with a large number of their weapons.

Essentially, it would be game breaking as in any meaningful way, it would always be better to have an ECM mech and ideally you would want to stack as many ECM mechs on your team as possible (since by having more you would be significantly reducing the amount of accurate enemy fire).

Edited by The True Space Pope, 16 January 2015 - 09:00 AM.

[Reno Blade]

Ofc, Lilly, it would/will be a nightmare for netcode and ping, but I think it's actually more visible for new players that way.
Torso could be just one reticule or one cone of fire (showing the 4 reticules as a single CoF).
Move your mech and see the arm reticule move to instantly see movement having an effect on your aiming.

A quick tutorial can even mention the system and give you two targets to shoot at (target one, aim other, then see the effect).

The True Space Pope, on 16 January 2015 - 08:57 AM, said:

The Space Pope thinks this part of the idea would be very bad, it would make ECM pretty much a requirement (even more so than it already is).

Sure, someone could compensate, but it would essentially remove a significant portion of the potential damage a mech could do to an ECM mech.

The Space Pope can only imagine how people will complain when an ECM light mech alphas them from point blank range while there Assault mech is unable to target with a large number of their weapons.

If ECM would still keep you from targeting mechs you have a point.
Problem of ECM in this case tho

[Mister Blastman]

I posted a thread about this in early July of 2012. Nothing has been done about it. And as far as I can tell, nothing ever will. The real shame in it all is it would fix everything and alleviate this constant need for shifting around weapon values.

[kapusta11]

Reno Blade, on 16 January 2015 - 08:28 AM, said:

New and improved Version:


- Torso and head is fixed and does not converge (make it simpler)
- Arms converge as soon as you get closer to the locked target (similar to missiles).
-> this means that target not locked can still be shot, but arms will not converge (with some skill you can still hit a target with one of your arms relyable)
-> this would also give more use and fluff for arm mounted weapons and get closer to the BT Books/Novels description of pilots shooting two targets at the same time.


In this animation you can see:
1. the arms converting towards the locked target if nearby and a solid "lock" (similar to the BT books targeting computer locking) confirmed full conversion.
2. Then the player moves and you can see the arms sway, but the convergence is still locked on the target.
3. The last part shows the conversion lock break and the arms move back to default position.

Warning! 2.5MB size! Open spoiler to load the image.

Spoiler

So basically you have a Gauss charge on your arm weapons (delay) that only starts charging when your crosshair is on the target, what happens when you try to lead? I get it is supposed to work like missile lock but leading a light would be harder than leading a moving heavy. The situation with torso mounted weapons is slightly better, you're basically forced to chainfire since your weapons won't hit same spot anyways. The end result: people use chassis with hardpoints in torsos i.e. Banshee and the like. The fact that aplhas will most likely be split in several shots is nice but it might be too frustrating in practice and too many mechs will be useless.

Not trying to be an аss or something, it's just looks like you haven't thought it through enough.

Edited by kapusta11, 16 January 2015 - 09:25 AM.

[Bobzilla]

PGI isn't capable of changing anything from how it is now. It's like the game was created by an advanced alien race whos tech they don't fully understand, so they can't change anything without breaking it, all they can do is add on different things. So while this idea is great, and many others that have been proposed, the answer is always, "We (pgi) can't handle that.".

[Burktross]

Bobzilla, on 16 January 2015 - 09:25 AM, said:

PGI isn't capable of changing anything from how it is now. It's like the game was created by an advanced alien race whos tech they don't fully understand, so they can't change anything without breaking it, all they can do is add on different things. So while this idea is great, and many others that have been proposed, the answer is always, "We (pgi) can't handle that.".

weapon convergence
lostech

[Blacksoul1987]

how does this solution address 2 gauss 2 ppc direwolfs with all the weapons in the arms?

[Reno Blade]

kapusta11, on 16 January 2015 - 09:10 AM, said:

So basically you have a Gauss charge on your arm weapons (delay) that only starts charging when your crosshair is on the target, what happens when you try to lead? I get it is supposed to work like missile lock but leading a light would be harder than leading a moving heavy. The situation with torso mounted weapons is slightly better, you're basically forced to chainfire since your weapons won't hit same spot anyways. The end result: people use chassis with hardpoints in torsos i.e. Banshee and the like. The fact that aplhas will most likely be split in several shots is nice but it might be too frustrating in practice and too many mechs will be useless.

Not trying to be an аss or something, it's just looks like you haven't thought it through enough.

This is a fair point.

In Mechwarrior 3 you could equip a targeting computer to gain a lead-indicator.
Missile locks could be achived by beeing inside the target triangle OR inside the lead indicator.
The size was very small compared to MWO too, so it was fairly hard to lock your LRM on a fast target in MW3.

This could be used here too.

I think the manual no-lock targeting with arms would work pretty well for hitting lights, but you would need to shoot one arm at a time without trying to lock.

The idea of torso weapons beeing parallel and limiting torso-based alpha strikes is one of the big points here too.
Ofc, the whole system can be improved by reducing torso movement and increasing arm movement/arc.

[Demuder]

PPFLD has caused the introduction of Ghost heat, Gauss trigger delay, excessive weapon tinkering and possibly double armor to be set into place, trying to solve the low TTK problem and mechs boating otherwise not that dangerous weapons. It is somewhat of a forum consensus that PPFLD is really just a problem of instant convergence; taking the instant, PinPoint accuracy out of the FrontLoadedDamage solves the problem altogether.

PGI's reluctance to even acknowledge the problem, let alone try and solve it instead of issuing band ****, has never been outright explained to the community. Was it IGP's interference that feared estranging the COD, twitch sniper crowd ? Is it PGI's inability to code things correctly ? Noone knows for certain.

It will be a very interesting day to see PGI address instant, pinpoint convergence, even if it's just explaining why they are so reluctant to touch it.

[Sarlic]

Felio, on 15 January 2015 - 02:04 PM, said:

I wasn't in closed beta, but I suspect convergence time was removed because it made shots go where new players did not expect them to go. For that reason, I think convergence variation of any kind is unlikely to return.

Also take note that if the game is too hard. Why should any new player bothered to play it.
The weapon does not hit where they want it to hit.

I think the reason is also the make the game more open for the more other inexperienced crowd, but still want to have a blast.