1126 replies to this topic

[Burktross]

Telmasa, on 13 April 2015 - 04:28 PM, said:

*giggles*

Honestly I prefer his numbers over yours.

TBH I'm urked by the thought of a Cougar with no cockpit. It's the best part of the Mech!

[Kuritaclan]

Yeonne Greene, on 13 April 2015 - 04:20 PM, said:

First, the guns on the Flakpanzer Gepard are fixed convergence, if they converge at all (it does not look like they do, no joints for lateral movement of each individual gun).

Second, there are some forms of complicated that can't be fixed with new, shiny, unobtainium. Trying to actuate your individual guns in real-time such that they can always provide time-on-target to a single, tiny location is one of them. The weapons are thousands of kilograms. They are going to have a lot of inertia that your system has to fight to re-angle it. Add in the sway and rapid change in direction for the 'Mech, and it's not practical. There's also the issue of space; the mechanisms have to be able to move the gun, and most of these guns are big and bulky, requiring a big and bulky set of gimbals just to be able to wrap around it.

I know someone would come up with the argument, that SPAAGs of modern days only have one axis, while the turret provides the second one. But then again it is the future. 3 axis accuracy need to be reasonable possible to stay true. And humaniod Mech arms is 3 axis. So i just relaxe and smile. I bring the Rifleman into the discussion in first place, because of the Garret 2J target system - capable to serve a purpous!

As i said before it is hard to bring a 12 ton gun in the right angle to fire percice on what you aim with a target system, but non or less this is a fictonal future, so in this case it is absolute possible. As it stands the mechs equipd target systems and they should have a purpouse. And on the other sides there are weapons like laser, you only have to mount them into the mech - the system which leads the beam is rather small and easy to make it precise.

Anhow it isn't hard to look up in sarna how it works (http://www.sarna.net...Mech_Technology - Major Computer Systems & Sensors and Overall 'Mech functionality). I guess the community needs those trolls, who just swear targeting is all about ww II convergence, but ok some need their belive system. Jadaa Jadaa Jadaa.

Yeonne Greene, on 13 April 2015 - 04:20 PM, said:

And why would you bother with convergence? In real life, you design your weapon system to be effective against a target to the point of needing one shot to do the job. The whole sandpaper fighting is just TT rules being translated into a videogame. In the lore, it often took only one or two laser shots to incapacitate a 'Mech. You read of lasers instantly boiling off the armor and piercing the 'Mech surrounding the pilot regularly.

Yeah two laser shots and the mech were gone. They had a deadly aim, while getting cooked in those pressure cookers. - Well the game won't be a pleasure if you run 2 minutes to get into batlle lasting 5 seconds. Ok some do this but it isn't a 1vs1 Situation more like a facing a lance+X problem.

Edited by Kuritaclan, 13 April 2015 - 05:24 PM.

[Yokaiko]

In real life an AC20 would fire a 9 shot volley at varying elevation angles and they would all land at once, removing counter battery because before they saw the report you would already be moving.


.....I've said it a million times, leave RL out of MWO, you would like the results.

[Y E O N N E]

Yokaiko, on 13 April 2015 - 04:36 PM, said:

BT lore is grounded in the fact that it was a TABLE top dice based game, every hex was 33m (100ft), and IRL Battleships had 26 MILE 16" guns, and missiles passed 200miles.


That would take a ******* BIG table.

Alternatively, it would require a re-scaling of the land area represented by a single hex and, possibly, how many 'Mechs a single figure represents.

Also, again, I know my ballistics. I know exactly what I am implying, and BT is still garbage even in the context of being based on a table-top game.

[Crixus316]

I remember reading something about this long ago. I don't feel like going over dozens of threads to find it. It really doesn't matter. PGI chose to remove delayed convergence, and now we have instant.

I understand some people want this game to be a mech sim, but how many of them use a joystick. I realize the current game is better with a M/KB, but I refuse to play a mech sim with a gaming mouse. I don't care if someone can slide a mouse and click alpha strikes all day.

I understand some people want a more complicated firing mechanism. Fixed convergence, Mech lab adjusted convergence, COF, RNG, etc. Its pretty clear PGI is not going to remove instant convergence. I choose to play my mechs closer to lore. My weapons groups are set to the weapons position on my mech. Left torso, 1 group, Right torso 2 group, etc.

I guess what I am trying to get across is, I choose to play this game as a mech sim and as close to lore as possible. There is nothing stopping anyone else from doing the same. If someone wants to pay this as a FPS, I still find a way to win.

[FupDup]

Yokaiko, on 13 April 2015 - 04:36 PM, said:

BT lore is grounded in the fact that it was a TABLE top dice based game, every hex was 33m (100ft), and IRL Battleships had 26 MILE 16" guns, and missiles passed 200miles.


That would take a ******* BIG table.

An easy fix for that would be to say that each hex magically represents something like 100m (or more as needed) instead of 30m.

[Burktross]

FupDup, on 13 April 2015 - 04:52 PM, said:

An easy fix for that would be to say that each hex magically represents something like 100m (or more as needed) instead of 30m.

Meh, I'd take ridiculously short range over huge segments of movement anyday. I hate large scale tactics-- lance / fire team based strategy is awesome.

[Yokaiko]

Burktross, on 13 April 2015 - 04:55 PM, said:

Meh, I'd take ridiculously short range over huge segments of movement anyday. I hate large scale tactics-- lance / fire team based strategy is awesome.

Except we don't get that now, do we.

[Khobai]

Quote

they sold the founders snakeoil

i never felt that way at all. I think founders made out well enough. PGI delivered on most if not all their promises to founders, even though the game was sadly only a minimally viable product at launch. PGI didnt really deliver anything above or beyond what they said they would; the game shouldve been A LOT better, and thats why people were so mad.

Quote

Meh, I'd take ridiculously short range over huge segments of movement anyday. I hate large scale tactics-- lance / fire team based strategy is awesome.

Agreed. 8v8 was fine. 12v12 is an atrocious mess.

12v12 needs maps/objectives which force both teams to split up into at least two groups. 12v12 deathballing is not fun at all.

Many games achieve this with gamemodes that force teams to have both an offense and defense. MWO does not have such a gamemode.

Edited by Khobai, 13 April 2015 - 05:19 PM.

[Burktross]

Yokaiko, on 13 April 2015 - 05:11 PM, said:

Except we don't get that now, do we.

I was talking about CBT

[Yokaiko]

Khobai, on 13 April 2015 - 05:12 PM, said:

i never felt that way at all. I think founders made out extremely good. And PGI delivered all their promises, even though the game was only a minimally viable product. They didnt really deliver anything above or beyond what they said they would.

Still waiting for the "information" pillar.

PGI/IGP flat out lied on a number of points.

[Khobai]

Quote

Still waiting for the "information" pillar.

PGI/IGP flat out lied on a number of points.

I dont believe they did. We have information warfare. its just pathetic and minimally viable.

PGI did the absolute minimum for information and role warfare.

[Y E O N N E]

Kuritaclan, on 13 April 2015 - 04:45 PM, said:

I know someone would come up with the argument, that SPAAGs of modern days only have one axis, while the turret provides the second one. But then again it is the future. 3 axis accuracy need to be reasonable possible to stay true. And humaniod Mech arms is 3 axis. So i just relaxe and smile. I bring the Rifleman into the discussion in first place, because of the Garret 2J target system - capable to serve a purpous!

The guns on AAA tanks (or any turreted weapon, really) have two axes. They don't bother to converge the two guns because the wind and recoil and other confounding variables all conspire to scatter the rounds at altitude anyway. It has two guns to increase the rate of fire without increasing the wear on each individual gun. That's it. What's more, the targets they are shooting at go down in one or two hits to pretty much anywhere and they are actually quite big. So, adding a third axis to converge the two guns would grant you nothing.

As for the arms, they also can't mount the heaviest weapons without losing their lateral axis. Some weapons just flat-out can't be mounted in the arms at all. The Rifleman itself doesn't have a lower actuator in its arms, so it can only elevate and depress while rotating with the torso. The Garet D2j is also just a standard tracking computer, and every 'Mech has one. It's necessary to even target and fire on an enemy unit. It does not, however, grant it any special accuracy or component-level precision. All it is doing, by best approximation, is running a calculation and telling the MechWarrior what direction to shoot in to have the best chance at hitting the target.

Quote

As i said before it is hard to bring a 12 ton gun in the right angle to fire percice on what you aim with a target system. But as it stands the mechs equipd target systems and they should have a purpouse. And on the other sides there are weapons like laser, you only have to mount them the mech - thje system which leads the beam is rather small and easy to make it precise.

The pilots have a neural connection to the 'Mech and they can, more or less, feel what it is doing. That makes positioning the torso at the appropriate angle to make the shot an intuitive thing, but like aiming a pistol, there is still user error involved.

Quote

Yeah two laser shots and the mech were gone. They had a deadly aim, while getting cooked in those pressure cookers. - Well the game won't be a pleasure if you run 2 minutes to get into batlle lasting 5 seconds. Ok some do this but it isn't a 1vs1 Situation more like a facing a lance+X problem.

No, it wouldn't be fun if the game were like that and I don't think anybody is saying it would be. In fact, this very thread is here precisely because it is getting closer to playing that way, with a really low average time-to-kill (TTK).

[Artgathan]

Yeonne Greene, on 13 April 2015 - 05:22 PM, said:

All it is doing, by best approximation, is running a calculation and telling the MechWarrior what direction to shoot in to have the best chance at hitting the target.

I believe you have the responsibilities flipped - the Mechwarrior tells the mech which direction to shoot in and the battlemech handles the computations to make the shot. I also get the impression that the mech's Targeting Computer only serves to integrate information for the pilot, and that each weapon actually has it's own on-board CPU handling the calculations for that weapon (or else why would two weapons mounted in parallel ever strike drastically different components, such as the left and right arms of a target facing them)?

[Yokaiko]

Khobai, on 13 April 2015 - 05:21 PM, said:

I dont believe they did. We have information warfare. its just pathetic and minimally viable.

PGI did the absolute minimum for information and role warfare.

No really, they flat lied.

[Burktross]

Yokaiko, on 13 April 2015 - 05:47 PM, said:

No really, they flat lied.

Randomly generated maps, man, I'm telling you!

[Y E O N N E]

Artgathan, on 13 April 2015 - 05:40 PM, said:

I believe you have the responsibilities flipped - the Mechwarrior tells the mech which direction to shoot in and the battlemech handles the computations to make the shot. I also get the impression that the mech's Targeting Computer only serves to integrate information for the pilot, and that each weapon actually has it's own on-board CPU handling the calculations for that weapon (or else why would two weapons mounted in parallel ever strike drastically different components, such as the left and right arms of a target facing them)?

That...would not make any form of sense. If the computers can do that, then the 'Mech doesn't need the pilot for anything because it can detect the target. If that's how it works, then that only reinforces how bass-ackwards the lore is...

As for your question, a number of reasons including but not limited to: recoil, terrain, wind, single computer coming up with a best-fit solution for multiple and different weapons, or space separating weapons that aren't aligned to converge or are aligned to converge at a range other than the current engagement distance.

[Burktross]

Yeonne Greene, on 13 April 2015 - 05:51 PM, said:

That...would not make any form of sense. If the computers can do that, then the 'Mech doesn't need the pilot for anything because it can detect the target. If that's how it works, then that only reinforces how bass-ackwards the lore is...

As for your question, a number of reasons including but not limited to: recoil, terrain, wind, single computer coming up with a best-fit solution for multiple and different weapons, or space separating weapons that aren't aligned to converge or are aligned to converge at a range other than the current engagement distance.

How do you figure? Does not make sense that a mechwarrior would "say" "ok computer, get that guy's center torso" and the computer would try to target with said parameters? Why would you try to replace a human's intuition for threat assessment with a computer, and then delegate computational targeting to a human?

[Kuritaclan]

Yeonne Greene, on 13 April 2015 - 05:22 PM, said:

The guns on AAA tanks (or any turreted weapon, really) have two axes. They don't bother to converge the two guns because the wind and recoil and other confounding variables all conspire to scatter the rounds at altitude anyway. It has two guns to increase the rate of fire without increasing the wear on each individual gun. That's it. What's more, the targets they are shooting at go down in one or two hits to pretty much anywhere and they are actually quite big. So, adding a third axis to converge the two guns would grant you nothing.

The ROF on a real SPAAG is much higher as cooldowns are for the mwo weapons - compared to the the rate of fire for a gepard which is empty after 40 seconds direct fire with a cadence of 550 Bullets per Minute, recoil is no influence on the slow cooldown of ac5s if a target system provide the information to readjust. Yeah in real world the third axis do not score something, it would be needed to converge the weapons. But then again real life 550 bullets per minute. AC5 in Battle tech is something around 35 bullets per minute - you do not get a aircraft without a good target system.

Yeonne Greene, on 13 April 2015 - 05:22 PM, said:

As for the arms, they also can't mount the heaviest weapons without losing their lateral axis. Some weapons just flat-out can't be mounted in the arms at all. The Rifleman itself doesn't have a lower actuator in its arms, so it can only elevate and depress while rotating with the torso. The Garet D2j is also just a standard tracking computer, and every 'Mech has one. It's necessary to even target and fire on an enemy unit. It does not, however, grant it any special accuracy or component-level precision. All it is doing, by best approximation, is running a calculation and telling the MechWarrior what direction to shoot in to have the best chance at hitting the target.

1st. By mechlab construction rules in mwo you can lateraly dont use balistics (beside MG), what in the end is plain stupid since clan uac2 for example weight less than a ppc or large pulse laser, if the weight is the problem
2nd. lateraly movment is possible for all e and m weapons in arms. And they could again said easly converge.
3rd. you are wrong about about targeting&tracking computers beside the battle computers. I edited it in the post you quted from, but if i post it into this too, its ok so you have the time to read it: (http://www.sarna.net...ems_.26_Sensors - Major Computer Systems & Sensors and Overall 'Mech functionality)

Yeonne Greene, on 13 April 2015 - 05:22 PM, said:

The pilots have a neural connection to the 'Mech and they can, more or less, feel what it is doing. That makes positioning the torso at the appropriate angle to make the shot an intuitive thing, but like aiming a pistol, there is still user error involved.

Yeah, but this is acutally happening by the input you provide with your mouse/jostick too. Non or less it is nothing the mech has to do with, it is the pilot who fails for example because of to much heat short pass out or at least longer reactions times.

Yeonne Greene, on 13 April 2015 - 05:51 PM, said:

Quote

I believe you have the responsibilities flipped - the Mechwarrior tells the mech which direction to shoot in and the battlemech handles the computations to make the shot. I also get the impression that the mech's Targeting Computer only serves to integrate information for the pilot, and that each weapon actually has it's own on-board CPU handling the calculations for that weapon (or else why would two weapons mounted in parallel ever strike drastically different components, such as the left and right arms of a target facing them)?

That...would not make any form of sense. If the computers can do that, then the 'Mech doesn't need the pilot for anything because it can detect the target. If that's how it works, then that only reinforces how bass-ackwards the lore is...

As for your question, a number of reasons including but not limited to: recoil, terrain, wind, single computer coming up with a best-fit solution for multiple and different weapons, or space separating weapons that aren't aligned to converge or are aligned to converge at a range other than the current engagement distance.

That make perfectly sense, because the pilot is the only one who can stabalize the movment thx to the neuro helmet brain interface. As i said read sarna http://www.sarna.net...ems_.26_Sensors

Yeonne Greene, on 13 April 2015 - 05:51 PM, said:

As for your question, a number of reasons including but not limited to: recoil, terrain, wind, single computer coming up with a best-fit solution for multiple and different weapons, or space separating weapons that aren't aligned to converge or are aligned to converge at a range other than the current engagement distance.

All this problems are solved by tech. Wind - sensor system, heat - velocity massurment sensor system, direction - laser measurment system, stability - myomer, accuracy - mymorer, recoil -gyro+myomer+pilot neuro feedback - if you do not belive that this is absolutly possible read the german wikipedia article of the Gepard Fire Target controll. As i said, the Battletech universe is layed in the near past, this all was adn is possible and was introduced for the mechs.

Yeonne Greene, on 13 April 2015 - 05:22 PM, said:

No, it wouldn't be fun if the game were like that and I don't think anybody is saying it would be. In fact, this very thread is here precisely because it is getting closer to playing that way, with a really low average time-to-kill (TTK).

Since armor quirks were introduced TTK has prolonged - however with some high dps quirks like the DRG-1N has this is also countered. In a 1 vs 1 Situation the TTK did go up. If some people think that the TTK has lowered they are wrong. However getting into situations where you get fokusd down has increased, since weapons who are harder to aim, like ppc, gauss and acs got nerfed. All what we have is now 12 players with 100 lasers ******* you at 500 to 1000m range - even if one did only do 10 damage to a specific torso part, because of spread multiple times or by multiple forces you be toast.

Edited by Kuritaclan, 13 April 2015 - 06:09 PM.

[Artgathan]

Yeonne Greene, on 13 April 2015 - 05:51 PM, said:

That...would not make any form of sense. If the computers can do that, then the 'Mech doesn't need the pilot for anything because it can detect the target. If that's how it works, then that only reinforces how bass-ackwards the lore is...

Well lore states that the mech's can't actually move around without a pilot, so it's probably a system where the pilot takes control of the 'macro' aiming (target selection, gross motor alignment to target) and the Targeting Computer and Weapon CPUs handle the 'micro' aiming (the actual movement of the weapons on the gimbals to track the pilot's target). Consider how fighter jets work with missiles as a RL parallel - the pilot selects a target, the Jet/Missile handle the actual tracking of the target.

Yeonne Greene, on 13 April 2015 - 05:51 PM, said:

As for your question, a number of reasons including but not limited to: recoil, terrain, wind, single computer coming up with a best-fit solution for multiple and different weapons, or space separating weapons that aren't aligned to converge or are aligned to converge at a range other than the current engagement distance.

Aye, under those conditions I would expect some deviance. However, (and my apologies for not making this clear), I was referring more to when mechs are standing next to one another - not moving - and they alpha and it lands everywhere. I've not actually played TT, but I know that (based on the mechanics of the game) it is perfectly possible for a HBK-4P to alpha a target from 1 Hex away and hit every component on the target (even though 6 of those MLs are ostensibly mounted in parallel, firing at a short range, and grouped close together).

EDIT: To build on this, consider the presence of pilots making simultaneous attacks against multiple targets (for instance, firing weapons in your mech's left hand at a target to your left, and weapons in your mech's right hand against targets on your right, or engaging targets infront of and behind you at the same tie). As a human you can't do this accurately - your brain physically cannot handle that kind of information input (certainly not against targets to your front and rear). However, a mech can! You need only indicate that you'd like to shoot those two things. The mech's computer cranks through an algorithm to make it happen, gives you the green light, and you pull the trigger. Viola! Accurate hits against multiple targets simultaneously.

Also consider C3 Netowrks - if the battlemechs weapons were all directly controlled by a human there's no way C3 could work.

Edited by Artgathan, 13 April 2015 - 06:11 PM.