113 replies to this topic

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

KuroNyra, on 16 January 2015 - 02:01 PM, said:

Alpha won't be removed by that, just use your head.

Alpha Strike aren't about shooting everything on the same place. It is just about shooting all your weapons at the same time. Nothing more.

http://www.sarna.net...ke_%28Tactic%29

Right, I'm aware, but I was addressing people who were saying "Remove Alphas"

[Skarlock]

I think a solution like this would create a ton of problems for a very large number of mechs.

Take for example the banshee 3M. It has broad shoulders and energy hard points in the left and right torsos that are fairly widely separated. Without convergence, it would be extremely difficult to hit say, a light mech, because the weapons firing in parallel would basically go on either side of a target that you are looking at. You would have to awkwardly aim each set of hard points one at a time, while the light mech by virtue of it's much smaller frame would have vastly superior weapon concentration, easily able to fire all its guns at once and hit targets in the same spot rather easily. Removing convergence would really cripple a lot of mechs that don't have all their guns in the arms or that have an odd shape compared to other mechs.

Consider the king crab. The arm mounted guns would probably work very well, but the kgc-0000 would be quite weak as any of its torso mounted weapons would fire very high and wide, and firing 4 lasers in an almost purely horizontal line would be terrible for damage concentration. Those hard points would be virtually useless as damage will go into 4 different locations on large targets, and 2 of those lasers will completely miss on smaller targets. On the other hand, the Nova would be amazing due to its ability to boat weapons in the arms. Same for the Dire Wolf. The Timber Wolf would lose some effectiveness but still be pretty viable for a number of builds.

Yes, this solution would do a lot to negate pinpoint alpha, but it would also do so in such an uneven and unfair manner, that you're just shifting the problem to exclusively or heavily arm based setups. For the amount of effort it would take to implement this and the massive re-balancing that would have to come afterwards, I'd personally prefer they just leave the game as is.

[Veev]

I am bumping this thread. IT is a good solution.

[M4rtyr]

Khobai, on 15 January 2015 - 03:13 PM, said:

1) Where does it say in the battletech rulebook that weapons cant pivot?

Umm, the fact that all weapons hit random locations even while fired together?

The only arguement that convergence fits the IP is with a targeting computer, I've seen a number of people say the computer does this or that... But most mechs, especially IS don't have computers for that thats why the a completely seperate peice of equipment called the targeting computer exists.

As for your example that two different weapons can be fired on two different targets, yeah a Btech turn is 10 seconds long. I can fire on 3-4 different mechs if I wanted to during 10 seconds in MWO. But I have to move my arms, torso, or mech to aim at them. That's a terrible example and shows nothing about weapons on a gimble. If you look at the actual designs, it's obvious alot of the weapons don't even have space for a very drastic angle change... Look at the Atlas torso mount, it's not just the barrel it's the whole weapon mechanism that would have to move, so no not a reasonable assumption.

Yes pinpoint damage needs to be changed, it's too seriously impacting TTK, but why the hell can't we have spread based on movement or whatever LIKE EVER OTHER SHOOTER EVER MADE. Other shooters its just, do you hit, in MWO it's extremely more important because the game is based around the fact you can't simple burn through everyones torsos because ever weapon converges perfectly.

This all being said, I don't expect PGI to change it, they've not made any real mechanics/systems changes since I started with the game in the 'open beta'.

[Lugh]

Klatu veratu veritae *mumble mutter muffle* *cough cough*

Edited by Lugh, 05 August 2015 - 09:35 AM.

[bobobobobiy]

I'm all for the improvements in gameplay, but most of us are missing the massive amount of data that'll need to be tracked for this to work properly. Srm's are partially broken because of this problem, for example.

Potato computers would probably melt if this was implemented.

[Nastyogre]

Khobai, on 15 January 2015 - 03:13 PM, said:

1) Where does it say in the battletech rulebook that weapons cant pivot? You reached that assumption on your own with zero evidence to back it up. Furthermore pivoting weapons are the norm on all modern military vehicles so it makes perfect sense to assume battlemechs also have pivoting weapons. Battletech may take place during veritable dark age, but the technology is still far more advanced than what we have today. EDIT: To further reinforce that mechs do indeed have pivoting weapons: torso mounted weapons in battletech fire in a cone in front of the mech (you can even fire two different torso weapons at two different targets). If torso mounted weapons couldnt pivot then they would only be able to fire in a straight line rather than in a cone and you wouldnt be able to fire at two different targets. Its obviously the weapons themselves pivoting too, rather than torso twisting, because torso twisting is done as an entirely seperate action. 2) I understand pinpoint damage is a problem. But the solution needs to be both intuitive and elegant. Your solution is neither of those things. It adds unnecessary complexity and steepens the learning curve for a game that already struggles with finding new players. 3) If pinpoint damage is your main concern, I already presented an alternative solution to balancing pinpoint damage which wont upset existing players or discourage new players.

Weapons fire in Tabletop is based over a 10 second timeframe. So torso weapons firing at different targets is not an issue of pivoting weapons but effectively swinging your torso within that cone.

I do agree that there is nothing that says that torso weapons and even arm weapons can't have the ability to converge. You wouldn't have to have each weapon converge as the OP suggests, just by 5 hard points. Left arm, Left torso, Center Torso & Head (together) Right Torso, Right arm. This game doesn't allow leg weapons though it's technically possible in Btech.

5 recticles that come together. Arms fast, torso slower. I get that dynamic convergence broke the system. It will require more system resources to implement. Certainly PGI COULD dedicate enough resources to run the calculations for a reasonable convergence system. Russ' opposition to making it "unshooter" is disturbing. People could and would adapt and if it resulted in longer TTK, I would think it all the better.

I suppose the other idea is the amount of energy each weapon took. It's not so much a problem with autocannons. Most AC's are going to be arm mounted if you have a bunch. If most engines simply couldn't support more than 2 or 3 main guns fired in a short time, then forced weapon cycling happens. Can't boat 2 PPC's and 2 Gauss because if you try to do so, the weapons don't fire or fire at a weaker state.

[Prof RJ Gumby]

So many threads about this, things are really going in circles...

Can't we concentrate on smaller achievable goals, and then together nag pgi into implementing them? Like a fix to the ghost heat system, so it would not ignore some combinations of lasers, while severely penalising other? Huh?

[M4rtyr]

Prof RJ Gumby, on 05 August 2015 - 10:16 AM, said:

So many threads about this, things are really going in circles...

Can't we concentrate on smaller achievable goals, and then together nag pgi into implementing them? Like a fix to the ghost heat system, so it would not ignore some combinations of lasers, while severely penalising other? Huh?

From my understanding (haven't read the specifics of ghost heat) it's just a workaround, a bandaid to a larger problem... heat is borked and unbalanced in so many different ways.

This is the problem with PGI... they don't know how to really fix any of the issues that have been around form day one. As others have said it's like MWO is losttech to them and they are lucky to just keep it juryrigged.

[Prof RJ Gumby]

M4rtyr, on 05 August 2015 - 10:28 AM, said:

From my understanding (haven't read the specifics of ghost heat) it's just a workaround, a bandaid to a larger problem... heat is borked and unbalanced in so many different ways.

This is the problem with PGI... they don't know how to really fix any of the issues that have been around form day one. As others have said it's like MWO is losttech to them and they are lucky to just keep it juryrigged.

Well, if ghost heat worked comprehensively, it wouldn't be a bandaid. Not that I'm a fan of it or anything. Just hate overhauls in places where nobody even tried any proper fixes. Plus, since it's here, why not at least make it work as intended?

IMHO much (not all) of the losttech theories is caused by the fact that balancing anything means nerfing op/meta stuff, which in turn ends up in a rampaging cries of terror from some players. Remember the whine when the tbr & scr laser omnipods were nerfed? This forum was full of some of the most miserable people on this planet. Now imagine a major overhaul.

[M4rtyr]

Prof RJ Gumby, on 05 August 2015 - 11:28 AM, said:

Well, if ghost heat worked comprehensively, it wouldn't be a bandaid. Not that I'm a fan of it or anything. Just hate overhauls in places where nobody even tried any proper fixes. Plus, since it's here, why not at least make it work as intended?

IMHO much (not all) of the losttech theories is caused by the fact that balancing anything means nerfing op/meta stuff, which in turn ends up in a rampaging cries of terror from some players. Remember the whine when the tbr & scr laser omnipods were nerfed? This forum was full of some of the most miserable people on this planet. Now imagine a major overhaul.

True, there is always the 'I lost my OP'ness' whining when balances are made. But for the most part that doesn't cause people to leave they just move to the next meta or min/max. But having very broken mechanics does make people leave.

This isn't the thread for it but since I reinstalled last week I've really noticed just how bad heat is when my Atlas kept a neutral heat profile from ONLY firing 2 UAC5's, my heat didn't decrease or increase overall. If that doesn't show how bad off balistics are compared to lasers and LRM's I don't know what will.

But is does lead into, for MWO to truely work they need to have some sort of targeting divergence, heat needs to be done right, LRM's and ECM need to be balanced with the rest of the game instead of one being used to nerf the other, etc So many core elements are just plain wrong.

Edited by M4rtyr, 05 August 2015 - 11:37 AM.

[Khobai]

Quote

Weapons fire in Tabletop is based over a 10 second timeframe. So torso weapons firing at different targets is not an issue of pivoting weapons but effectively swinging your torso within that cone.

Nope. Completely wrong. Mechs only torso twist ONCE during the turn, during the torso twist phase. If what you were saying was true then torso twisting wouldnt need its own phase because mechs could torso twist whenever they wanted. The rules make that clear thats not the case, you get to torso twist one time during those 10 seconds, and thats it.

Quote

Umm, the fact that all weapons hit random locations even while fired together?

Uh what? The fact weapons hit random hit locations is hardly proof that weapons cant pivot. Its just proof that weapons arnt that accurate, which battletech supports, since it specifically says in the rulebook that mechs have very powerful electronic countermeasures which limits the majority of weapons to visual ranges. The vast majority of weapons in battletech are aimed using gunsights, so of course theyre not accurate.

Again theres tons of evidence to support pivoting torso weapons. And very little evidence to support the contrary. And like I said before, most modern combat vehicles have pivoting weapons, so why would to assume battlemechs dont? Thats a flawed assumption. of course they having pivoting weapons, theres no reason for them not to, because all militaries design combat vehicles that way.

Edited by Khobai, 06 August 2015 - 08:53 AM.

[Veev]

Cavadus, on 15 January 2015 - 01:06 PM, said:

I posted this three years ago here. PGI ignored all of it and moved it to the archives. Figured it was time to repost since, like all other MW games that came before it, PPFLD does much to damage balance in a myriad of ways.

Enjoy!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is one of the largest topics of debate on the forum but what's generally missing from the dicussions are visual **** which quickly and easily demonstrate logical weapon spread concepts.

I have created the (crappy) arts needed to demonstrate a few principles. Let's jump right in.

► 1. Parallel Barrels
This is an issue that is invariably overlooked. Parallel barrels are the barrels of multiple direct fire weapons which cannot converge with one another because they are either mounted in the torso, in which weapons cannot pivot or adjust their aim outside of orienting the entire torso, or are mounted next to one another in the same arm.

Here's a quick demonstration using the arms of a Nova Cat.



The Nova Cat's left arm is a triple grouping of medium pulse lasers. Since they are all located in the same section the lasers can never converge to hit the exact same point. The barrels are parallel to one another. Parallel things can never intersect which means the lasers can never occupy the same points while traveling.

Firing all medium pulse lasers in a group would leave a hit pattern as illustrated above.

Now, the right arm:



The right arm demonstrates the same concept. The two PPCs are mounted parallel to one another and can never intersect to hit the same point in space.

▼ 1.1 Convergence

Convergence is simply collapsing trajectories so that they overlap onto a target. The Nova Cat has it's weapons in the arms. Arms are very dexterous.

If you look at the two shot groupings above it's not hard to imagine what it would look like if the Nova Cat was targeting a mech for an alpha strike. The two shot groupings would be overlaid onto one another for a composite shot group. It would look like this:



The shot groupings for each individual arm can never change. The space between the points where the weapons strike is the same amount of space between the barrels the weapon's fire is leaving. For instance, if the two PPC barrels in the Nova Cat's right arm are separated by 1 meter then the two PPCs will always strike a target in two locations 1 meter apart from one another and in the same geometric pattern.

The above composite shot grouping demonstrates that arms, because they are independent from one another and dexterous, possess the ability to dynamically converge their weapons' fire trajectories for overlapping fire. This means more weapons can be brought to be bear to hit a smaller portion of a mech.

This leads to an interesting trade off in mech design. Arms can be lost easily but they also provide the most accurate weapon mounts. This is a great unintended balance.


► 2. Torso Weapons
The issue of torso weapons is very complex. Arms can move so they can converge their fire dynamically to match the range of their target.

But so too can torsos move. They can rotate in both directions and pitch themselves up and down. Think of it a bit like a tank's turret. Sure, in a modern turret the gun can be elevated and depressed inside of the turret but that's because the turret itself can't do that.

Torsos can do that.

For this demonstration I'm going to suppose that torso weapons are 100% fixed and not gymbalized. They possess no independent movement from the torso. Aiming a torso weapon means aiming your torso.

Using an AS7-D as my illustration firing the four MLs and AC-20 simultaneously would create a hit pattern something like this:



As you can see the two medium lasers in the center torso and the AC-20 located in the right torso are all parallel to one another and therefore cannot converge. The two arm mounted MLs can converge. But what would this shot grouping actually look like on the poor Zeus?

Something like this:



The two upper red dots indicate where the AS7-D's center torso mounted MLs struck the Zeus. The lower single red dot indicates where the two arm-mounted MLs struck the Zeus. Remember, arms can converge to produce overlapping fire patterns at dynamic ranges!

Here's the same image except with a Cone of Fire based meta-reticle:



As you can see grouping the MLs and the AC-20 into a single fire group produces a large cone of fire which is inaccurate. The AC-20's ballistic trajectory and origin of fire makes this grouping inaccurate. The two CT mounted MLs are close to one another and mounted centrally on the mech. The arms can converge. Those four MLs combined could provide a relatively accurate and tight cone of fire by themselves.

The AC-20's barrel, or "origin of fire", is located at forearm level but it's off-center on the right side. Since the AC-20 is mounted perpendicular to the torso it's trajectory skews the cone-of-fire reticle to be larger because it's aim cannot be adjusted inwards to better match the reticle's center pip.

But what would the cone-of-fire look like if you subtracted the AC-20?



As you can see the cone-of-fire is much smaller because the four ML grouping corresponds much better to a centrally located targeting reticle. You could even go one further with the accuracy and assume that the arms can dynamically converge based on the locations of other weapons in their grouping which means the targeting and tracking system of the AS7-D could tell the arms to move their aim up so that the two arm mounted MLs strike inbetween the two torso mounted MLs. This would create a very accurate and tight shot grouping.

Another factor to consider is that the arm mounted MLs could possibly compensate their shot grouping to account for the center torso mounted MLs and the AC-20. This means the arms could, in theory, orient their point of convergence BETWEEN the CT's MLs and the AC-20 so the arms would actually be aiming slightly offset and to the right to help tighten it up.

I reckon automatic adjustments like that could get pretty complex and I'm not sure how a firing solution could account for them.


► 3. Other Factors Which Influence the Size of the Cone-of-Fire
In addition to the physical locations the weapons are mounted in and the basics of parallel barrels there other factors which can influence where a weapon shot is placed.

▼ 3.1 Movement

Movement is huge. The faster a mech travels the more the arms oscillate to maintain balance during movement. This would create a predictable sway to the path the reticle would travel on for arm and torso mounted weapons.

Using the AS7-D's the four ML weapon group a sway pattern would look something like this:



The lines above indicate the paths of travel the weapons mounted on the corresponding location would take during movement. For a practical exercise stand up and lift your forearms so your elbows are bent 90 degrees much like an Atlas' arms.

Now start walking forward and take notice of how your torso twists correspond to which leg you have extended in front of you and the natural movement in your arms that is used to maintain balance.

Using the above sway patterns we can deduce that if the Atlas was running at top speed and you took a snap shot at where the weapons would be aimed on their sway paths when the Atlas' left leg was fully extended forward it would look like this (note that the large DoTs indicate where the weapons inside of the corresponding section would be pointed at inside of the cone-of-fire):



With the left foot fully extended forward at max run speed the torso would be twisted clockwise to some degree so that the right arm comes forward and the left arm is pulled back. This would also move the trajectories of the CT mounted MLs to the right as the torso is twisted that way.

Obviously if the right foot was fully extended the dots would be on the opposite side.

As the speed of the Atlas decreases the length of the sway travel paths would also decrease. If the Atlas was at a dead stop most of the points would be completely center or as near as centered as would be allowed taking parallel barrels into consideration.

▼ 3.2 Standard Deviation

Standard deviation would be the innate dispersal of a weapons' fire. Obviously some weapons would logically have larger "standard deviation" than some.

Basically, if you have a weapon 100% zeroed to the HUD's reticle standard deviation would allow for the weapon's fire to offset from that reticle's center pip by X amount of distance. Think of it like the radius of a circle.

This deviation can be measured in either units of distance or in degrees.

For instance, over 500 meters the "standard deviation" of a Large Laser might be something incredibly minute like 50 centimeters. This means that if the LL is perfectly zeroed to its HUD's reticle at 500 meters the laser could strike up to 50 centimeters off the reticle's center pip in any given direction.

Conversely, weapons such as the AC-20 would have a larger "standard deviation" due to the ballistic nature of the weapon.

The deviation I used for the LL above was completely arbitrary.

All that being said the fire spread caused by "standard deviation" would be measured in centimeters at best. In context of the scale of battlemechs the deviation would be minimal if not unnoticeable.

▼ 3.3 Heat & Damage

Other factor's which would obviously influence a non-RNG CoF would be heat and damage. Personally, I don't feel that heat should have influence over standard deviation though damage absolutely should.

Heat should influence the mech's "Targeting & Tracking System" to a small degree but greatly influence the speed and precision of the myomers and actuators used to control and stabilize arms, legs, and the pelvis.

I'd represent heat's influence on weapons' precision by allowing the reticle to "float" a bit due to reduced arm movement and torso stabilization.


► 4. Conclusion
For a semi-realistic and non-RNG based cone-of-fire the only things which really need to be factored into weapons' spread are parallel barrels, torso weapons which are mounted off-center, and the sway paths caused by movement. This creates a predictable weapons spread pattern without introducing any Random Number Generator tomfoolery into the game.

If Piranha included a sensible cone-of-fire system as demonstrated above into MWO along with more detailed and localized damage (imagine breaking each classic BT armor section into three smaller sections each with the full armor value of the original section) one to two shot kills would be a thing of the past.

This also puts the balance of power back towards larger weapons which do more damage as opposed to boating smaller weapons and hoping for the same effect.

I like the premise.

I am going to go out on a limb here and propose something crazy. Make the mechwarriors choose a weapon convergence range in the mechlab. Lets say you are a brawler, your weapons are set to properly converge at 200 range. Anything too far beyond that makes your weapons insanely inaccurate.
For those that want an auto adjustment feature, create a new system or hardware that will allow it to auto adjust on the fly. But it takes tonnage and a critical slot to implement and it takes some time to adjust down.

[Veev]

Cavadus, on 15 January 2015 - 01:06 PM, said:

I posted this three years ago here. PGI ignored all of it and moved it to the archives. Figured it was time to repost since, like all other MW games that came before it, PPFLD does much to damage balance in a myriad of ways.

Enjoy!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is one of the largest topics of debate on the forum but what's generally missing from the dicussions are visual **** which quickly and easily demonstrate logical weapon spread concepts.

I have created the (crappy) arts needed to demonstrate a few principles. Let's jump right in.

► 1. Parallel Barrels
This is an issue that is invariably overlooked. Parallel barrels are the barrels of multiple direct fire weapons which cannot converge with one another because they are either mounted in the torso, in which weapons cannot pivot or adjust their aim outside of orienting the entire torso, or are mounted next to one another in the same arm.

Here's a quick demonstration using the arms of a Nova Cat.



The Nova Cat's left arm is a triple grouping of medium pulse lasers. Since they are all located in the same section the lasers can never converge to hit the exact same point. The barrels are parallel to one another. Parallel things can never intersect which means the lasers can never occupy the same points while traveling.

Firing all medium pulse lasers in a group would leave a hit pattern as illustrated above.

Now, the right arm:



The right arm demonstrates the same concept. The two PPCs are mounted parallel to one another and can never intersect to hit the same point in space.

▼ 1.1 Convergence

Convergence is simply collapsing trajectories so that they overlap onto a target. The Nova Cat has it's weapons in the arms. Arms are very dexterous.

If you look at the two shot groupings above it's not hard to imagine what it would look like if the Nova Cat was targeting a mech for an alpha strike. The two shot groupings would be overlaid onto one another for a composite shot group. It would look like this:



The shot groupings for each individual arm can never change. The space between the points where the weapons strike is the same amount of space between the barrels the weapon's fire is leaving. For instance, if the two PPC barrels in the Nova Cat's right arm are separated by 1 meter then the two PPCs will always strike a target in two locations 1 meter apart from one another and in the same geometric pattern.

The above composite shot grouping demonstrates that arms, because they are independent from one another and dexterous, possess the ability to dynamically converge their weapons' fire trajectories for overlapping fire. This means more weapons can be brought to be bear to hit a smaller portion of a mech.

This leads to an interesting trade off in mech design. Arms can be lost easily but they also provide the most accurate weapon mounts. This is a great unintended balance.


► 2. Torso Weapons
The issue of torso weapons is very complex. Arms can move so they can converge their fire dynamically to match the range of their target.

But so too can torsos move. They can rotate in both directions and pitch themselves up and down. Think of it a bit like a tank's turret. Sure, in a modern turret the gun can be elevated and depressed inside of the turret but that's because the turret itself can't do that.

Torsos can do that.

For this demonstration I'm going to suppose that torso weapons are 100% fixed and not gymbalized. They possess no independent movement from the torso. Aiming a torso weapon means aiming your torso.

Using an AS7-D as my illustration firing the four MLs and AC-20 simultaneously would create a hit pattern something like this:



As you can see the two medium lasers in the center torso and the AC-20 located in the right torso are all parallel to one another and therefore cannot converge. The two arm mounted MLs can converge. But what would this shot grouping actually look like on the poor Zeus?

Something like this:



The two upper red dots indicate where the AS7-D's center torso mounted MLs struck the Zeus. The lower single red dot indicates where the two arm-mounted MLs struck the Zeus. Remember, arms can converge to produce overlapping fire patterns at dynamic ranges!

Here's the same image except with a Cone of Fire based meta-reticle:



As you can see grouping the MLs and the AC-20 into a single fire group produces a large cone of fire which is inaccurate. The AC-20's ballistic trajectory and origin of fire makes this grouping inaccurate. The two CT mounted MLs are close to one another and mounted centrally on the mech. The arms can converge. Those four MLs combined could provide a relatively accurate and tight cone of fire by themselves.

The AC-20's barrel, or "origin of fire", is located at forearm level but it's off-center on the right side. Since the AC-20 is mounted perpendicular to the torso it's trajectory skews the cone-of-fire reticle to be larger because it's aim cannot be adjusted inwards to better match the reticle's center pip.

But what would the cone-of-fire look like if you subtracted the AC-20?



As you can see the cone-of-fire is much smaller because the four ML grouping corresponds much better to a centrally located targeting reticle. You could even go one further with the accuracy and assume that the arms can dynamically converge based on the locations of other weapons in their grouping which means the targeting and tracking system of the AS7-D could tell the arms to move their aim up so that the two arm mounted MLs strike inbetween the two torso mounted MLs. This would create a very accurate and tight shot grouping.

Another factor to consider is that the arm mounted MLs could possibly compensate their shot grouping to account for the center torso mounted MLs and the AC-20. This means the arms could, in theory, orient their point of convergence BETWEEN the CT's MLs and the AC-20 so the arms would actually be aiming slightly offset and to the right to help tighten it up.

I reckon automatic adjustments like that could get pretty complex and I'm not sure how a firing solution could account for them.


► 3. Other Factors Which Influence the Size of the Cone-of-Fire
In addition to the physical locations the weapons are mounted in and the basics of parallel barrels there other factors which can influence where a weapon shot is placed.

▼ 3.1 Movement

Movement is huge. The faster a mech travels the more the arms oscillate to maintain balance during movement. This would create a predictable sway to the path the reticle would travel on for arm and torso mounted weapons.

Using the AS7-D's the four ML weapon group a sway pattern would look something like this:



The lines above indicate the paths of travel the weapons mounted on the corresponding location would take during movement. For a practical exercise stand up and lift your forearms so your elbows are bent 90 degrees much like an Atlas' arms.

Now start walking forward and take notice of how your torso twists correspond to which leg you have extended in front of you and the natural movement in your arms that is used to maintain balance.

Using the above sway patterns we can deduce that if the Atlas was running at top speed and you took a snap shot at where the weapons would be aimed on their sway paths when the Atlas' left leg was fully extended forward it would look like this (note that the large DoTs indicate where the weapons inside of the corresponding section would be pointed at inside of the cone-of-fire):



With the left foot fully extended forward at max run speed the torso would be twisted clockwise to some degree so that the right arm comes forward and the left arm is pulled back. This would also move the trajectories of the CT mounted MLs to the right as the torso is twisted that way.

Obviously if the right foot was fully extended the dots would be on the opposite side.

As the speed of the Atlas decreases the length of the sway travel paths would also decrease. If the Atlas was at a dead stop most of the points would be completely center or as near as centered as would be allowed taking parallel barrels into consideration.

▼ 3.2 Standard Deviation

Standard deviation would be the innate dispersal of a weapons' fire. Obviously some weapons would logically have larger "standard deviation" than some.

Basically, if you have a weapon 100% zeroed to the HUD's reticle standard deviation would allow for the weapon's fire to offset from that reticle's center pip by X amount of distance. Think of it like the radius of a circle.

This deviation can be measured in either units of distance or in degrees.

For instance, over 500 meters the "standard deviation" of a Large Laser might be something incredibly minute like 50 centimeters. This means that if the LL is perfectly zeroed to its HUD's reticle at 500 meters the laser could strike up to 50 centimeters off the reticle's center pip in any given direction.

Conversely, weapons such as the AC-20 would have a larger "standard deviation" due to the ballistic nature of the weapon.

The deviation I used for the LL above was completely arbitrary.

All that being said the fire spread caused by "standard deviation" would be measured in centimeters at best. In context of the scale of battlemechs the deviation would be minimal if not unnoticeable.

▼ 3.3 Heat & Damage

Other factor's which would obviously influence a non-RNG CoF would be heat and damage. Personally, I don't feel that heat should have influence over standard deviation though damage absolutely should.

Heat should influence the mech's "Targeting & Tracking System" to a small degree but greatly influence the speed and precision of the myomers and actuators used to control and stabilize arms, legs, and the pelvis.

I'd represent heat's influence on weapons' precision by allowing the reticle to "float" a bit due to reduced arm movement and torso stabilization.


► 4. Conclusion
For a semi-realistic and non-RNG based cone-of-fire the only things which really need to be factored into weapons' spread are parallel barrels, torso weapons which are mounted off-center, and the sway paths caused by movement. This creates a predictable weapons spread pattern without introducing any Random Number Generator tomfoolery into the game.

If Piranha included a sensible cone-of-fire system as demonstrated above into MWO along with more detailed and localized damage (imagine breaking each classic BT armor section into three smaller sections each with the full armor value of the original section) one to two shot kills would be a thing of the past.

This also puts the balance of power back towards larger weapons which do more damage as opposed to boating smaller weapons and hoping for the same effect.

I like the premise.

I am going to go out on a limb here and propose something crazy. Make the mechwarriors choose a weapon convergence range in the mechlab. Lets say you are a brawler, your weapons are set to properly converge at 200 range. Anything too far beyond that makes your weapons insanely inaccurate.
For those that want an auto adjustment feature, create a new system or hardware that will allow it to auto adjust on the fly. But it takes tonnage and a critical slot to implement and it takes some time to adjust down.