1126 replies to this topic

[Dimento Graven]

Deimir, on 08 April 2015 - 12:53 PM, said:

One thing I always wanted to test as a 'fix' for the convergence thing, would be to make all torso/head mounted weapons converge based on their optimal range. So if you fire an unmodified Medium Laser at a target that is 270m away, you'll get pinpoint accuracy. If they are closer or further that that, you have to adjust your aim accordingly to get the beam on a particular spot. Firing an alpha of mixed range weapons at someone that pops out of cover near you is going to pepper them with damage, while aiming and firing each weapon type in turn allows you to focus fire on a particular spot. Arm weapons could continue to function as they do now, since (in theory at least) they are more vulnerable to destruction, and it makes sense for the arms to pivot and aim themselves.

Keep in mind this is just my own weird idea, I have no clue whether it would even be functional.

What you're describing should already be done by the firing computer. You're just there to decide which 'mech you want to hit, where, and when to fire.

[Max Liao]

pwnface, on 20 January 2015 - 02:06 AM, said:

Please no. I want to play a shooter not roll digital dice.

The then BattleTech universe, and a game besed on BattleTech is not the game for you. I signed up for this game, and got bliked out of my Founders cash because, they told me they were making a MechWarrior title based on the BattleTech boardgame. Instead, I got this mess.

Dimento Graven, on 08 April 2015 - 08:47 AM, said:

If you're picking up any 'ire' in my tone, it's from a, "Oh goddamn, not THIS **** again!" frame of mind.

I agree. I haven't posted on a topic like this in well over a year. I can't believe anyone who cares about a BattleTech/MechWarrior game would ever consider anything other than COF/RNG! Pin-point accuracy simply does not belong in a BattleTech/MechWarrior title.

Dimento Graven, on 08 April 2015 - 08:47 AM, said:

Goddamn how f'ing pretentious do you have to be? Any moron can buy a deer rifle, practice for a few months, climb a clock tower and start one shotting the unsuspecting public at a few hundred meters WITHOUT bring tables of trigonometry, and a slide rule up with him.

And yet, that's not how BattleMechs work in the BattleTech/MechWarrior universe. BattleMechs in game and canon have RNG due to lousy, out-dated targeting computers, a non-sensical scientific degridation concept, and other factors that amde the BattleTech universe and game what it is. As silly as they are those are the concepts that made BattleTech.

I don't disagree that pin-point fire can and would be fun in a Giant Stompy Robots Online game, it just doesn't belong in a BattleTech/MechWarrior game.

[Dimento Graven]

Dino Might, on 08 April 2015 - 12:59 PM, said:

First, your invective to associate my examples with acts of murder is shameful rhetoric.

It's not 'shameful rhetoric' it's a reference to historic examples of how it doesn't require a math major to be able to consistently hit a target at a distance.

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I'm pretty darn sure that the Army Marksmanship Manual, which I have read and trained on numerous times RELIES ON mathematics. The engineers of the weapons employed by infantry, vehicles, aircraft, and vessels ALL RELY ON THE MATH. They don't just slap something together without consideration on the impact to accuracy, muzzle velocity (relates to what we call "firepower"), weight, and other factors. Why is the AK-47 inherently less accurate than an M-16? Why is it inherently more robust? Why, when I mount both on an unmoving machine do they not put a round in the exact same spot at the same range every single time? Hint - lots of math. So keep trying to convince everyone that all the "stuff" I'm talking about doesn't matter in real life.

Oh I'm sure that those manuals are based on a lot of math, but I doubt I'll be seeing many soldiers stopping to pull out a pocket calculator before they make their shot.

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By the way, did you know that snipers use slide rules quite frequently in the field? To range a target and then calculate windage and elevation on the scope? Yeah, I know, this is mechs - the targetting computer does that. But do you know how computers actually do math? Computers can only add numbers. They use Taylor Series, which give you an approximation. Usually to 20 or 30 decimal places so it's close enough that it doesn't matter, but the point I'm making here is that all the things you think are perfectly exact are not.

I'm sure they, I'm sure they're dealing with a system that has to include wind and gravity. Something this game doesn't, AND, by the way, doesn't really apply to ENERGY weapons. Bet if we gave a sniper a viable laser rifle, his job would be a crap ton easier not having to worry about how much drop per how many meters the round will do, as there'd be no round.

In MWO the weapon round velocities and mass are, typically, sufficient enough to make ignoring wind and drop moderately reasonable at the ranges most battles are fought.

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The laser, if perfectly collimated, will travel in a straight line - I don't know of a single laser source that can be perfectly collimated, BUT, you're right, the "error" here should be repeatable within accuracy that we couldn't even measure unless we have physical hardware failure or deviation. But, the targeting computer that is moving that arm or torso gimbal to align the weapon will have an expected point of impact different from actual based on all the tolerances of every part responsible for aligning that weapon. Any rotational element that is off by some small angle will have an increasingly magnified error in point of impact with increasing range. Again, if you've ever done any target shooting, you can know that all other things being perfect, an angular error of 1milliradian (that's the angular measure of a circle divided by 6283.185... or 1/1000 of a radian) will result in missing the target by 1 meter at a range of 1000 meters.

An assumption that can generally be agreed upon is that 'mechs are in fact precisely manufactured and maintained machines, with enough feed back going to the targeting computer to detect when gimbal 15 is off by that milliradian and automatically compensate.

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When you make a machine to align a weapon, you have motors, servos, joints, actuators, etc. that will respond to input commands, and you test this machine on its repeatability and reproducability. You want accuracy AND precision. And the random element comes from the fact that when you dial in bearing 150, azimuth 002, your mechs systems aligning that weapon may get to bearing 149.9999, azimuth 002.0001. Then you align things elsewhere, and then go back to that alignement and instead get bearing 150.0003, azimuth 002.0000001. There's a difference in the actual point of impact when you fire after both adjustments. Your perfect machine is not perfect. Depending on the constituent components and the design, aligning weapons at different speeds with inertial effects, thermal expansion/contraction of the metal, etc. will definitely change the actual point of aim from the calculated point of aim.

And neither is it suffering the frailties and inconsistency of a human manually manipulating the weapons.

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This stuff quite certainly DOES matter. For people, for machines, for particles traveling through space, for the entire physical universe. Please don't try to explain this away as a bunch of "math stuff that doesn't matter in the real world." I quite literally did engineering work with extremely precise machines for 5 years and had to deal with this stuff in manufacturing.

It doesn't matter in MWO SPECIFICALLY BECUASE, MWO != REAL WORLD.

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...chest thumping and nerd peen measuring...

I don't think it's any more 'realistic' applying 20th century standards of manufacture to this futuristic game. YES, YES, YES, YES, before all the "IGOTCHAS" start spouting off much of the technology of that 'futuristic' setting is lost: keep in mind the "much of" does not mean ALL. OTHERWISE, how the hell do we have our big stompy robots to argue over whether or not we should toss RNG's at the snipers because we don't think they're having to deal with enough 'reality' or not?

My suggestion is based off of 30+ years of preceding versions of this game and the various TT equivalents where heat was more than an "all or nothing" proposition as it is now.

You strategized HOW you would play, HOW you would stagger your fire, WHEN you would alpha, and the risk v. reward of the heat scale was one of the primary considerations.

That's been taken out of the game and as a result we have endless builds with endless players doing nothing but alpha'ing every time they fire. That's not "realistic" when it comes to the history of the BT universe.

You want to penalize anyone who can aim by effectively allowing a coin flip determine whether or not they were still long enough, the target was still long enough, the computers that controlled the robots that built all the gimbals didn't slip a bit, gravity didn't suddenly reverse, a bird didn't fly in the way, causing them to miss their shot.

Now while in actual REALITY, such is life, in a GAME, it doesn't sound like much fun.

[SolCrusher]

Closed beta with non-instant convergence was great! You didn't hit every time you fired, sometimes your shots would fly off because your guns decided you were aiming at the side of a building instead of the guy 200 ft down range. Other than that it was great. SRMs had more of a use because they spread well for close combat and ACs were fine. But then again at that time I used machine guns to figure out how far I needed to lead with an AC20 to hit my targets.

[Boris The Spider]

Deimir, on 08 April 2015 - 12:53 PM, said:

One thing I always wanted to test as a 'fix' for the convergence thing, would be to make all torso/head mounted weapons converge based on their optimal range. So if you fire an unmodified Medium Laser at a target that is 270m away, you'll get pinpoint accuracy. If they are closer or further that that, you have to adjust your aim accordingly to get the beam on a particular spot. Firing an alpha of mixed range weapons at someone that pops out of cover near you is going to pepper them with damage, while aiming and firing each weapon type in turn allows you to focus fire on a particular spot. Arm weapons could continue to function as they do now, since (in theory at least) they are more vulnerable to destruction, and it makes sense for the arms to pivot and aim themselves.

Keep in mind this is just my own weird idea, I have no clue whether it would even be functional.

That is not a weird idea at all, it is the argument that has been made about convergence since closed beta, echoed by dozens of people in this thread and others, that weapons that do not have articulators do not articulate.

Personally though, I'm more in favour of them going straight forward, beams and projectiles crossing at 270m would IMHO look a bit weird.

Edited by Boris The Spider, 08 April 2015 - 01:57 PM.

[Dimento Graven]

Vyx, on 08 April 2015 - 01:13 PM, said:

@Dimento Graven
The main issue I see contributing to your lack of understanding of my suggestion is your use of "ever escalating" when it comes to armour/ton. It would not be "ever escalating". Just as this value was modified once at the start of the beta testing, it might be tweaked once again - setting it to a ratio more in tune with game balance given the nature of convergence as it stands. Pretty straightforward really.

The arms race you elude to would not happen.

I'm not misunderstanding anything, you seem to be under the delusion of "one more and then we're done", where I can absolutely see it being mandated by all the people lacking the skills/PC power necessary to come away from missile boats having a valid point at demanding that AMMO/ton be increased because by increasing armor/ton YET AGAIN (which the first time doubling armor/ton ALREADY did NOT result in an across the board doubling of ammo/ton), would put them even further behind the min/max curve, allowing pilots of energy builds with their lack of any need for ammo to simply shrug, "Ok, so it now takes me 4 shots, instead of 2, to core out the back of an Atlas I run up behind at 150kph. I can do that. Now that armor is doubled, and we've yet to fix any of the hit reg, HSR, or hit box issues, I'm now TWICE as likely to survive, and heck, even those annoying missiles that COULD reliably hit me are no real threat any more, I don't mind, with doubled armor and the known issues, they'll run out of ammo LONG before I'm at any real risk."

Then everyone stops bringing ammo based builds, the game becomes boring, and dies.

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The designers, once identifying that a balance was found by making this or similar changes, would not adjust those ratios again. End of story. No escalation.

Which is what PGI has effectively already done, YOU just happen to not agree with them and are campaigning for a change, and the counter part, increasing ammo/ton, is also in full swing, and when mentioned that people would want an increase in armor/ton, they too said we could ignore those cries.

Who is right?

Neither of you as far as I'm concerned. The armor/ton and ammo/ton values took about 2 years to work out to where they are now. Damage per round landed has ALSO been adjusted, as well as the damage vs. distance meter if I'm not mistaken.

The fact that the forums could support, simultaneously, two 100 percent opposite view points seems to be a fairly good indication that when it comes to how much, how hard, and how far everything hits, and how long armor lasts, these are probably as good as they can get.

We are at the phase of the grand compromise where no one is truly happy, all pointing to a completely fair and balanced solution.

[Dino Might]

Dimento Graven, on 08 April 2015 - 01:39 PM, said:

It's not 'shameful rhetoric' it's a reference to historic examples of how it doesn't require a math major to be able to consistently hit a target at a distance.

Oh I'm sure that those manuals are based on a lot of math, but I doubt I'll be seeing many soldiers stopping to pull out a pocket calculator before they make their shot.

And the mechwarriors won't be using those sliderules for every shot either. They'll learn the natural behavior of their weapons systems over time with practice and make intuitive responses based on the situation. But the actual physics of what's going on is based in the mathematics. It doesn't mean they have to know all the math involved.

I can't decide that I'm going to flap my arms and suddenly take off just because I don't understand Newton's Laws. These physical realities are the rationale for the proposed solution. They are an underpinning not necessary to calculate for the use of the systems. But they are necessary to understand why the systems work the way they do.

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I'm sure they, I'm sure they're dealing with a system that has to include wind and gravity. Something this game doesn't, AND, by the way, doesn't really apply to ENERGY weapons. Bet if we gave a sniper a viable laser rifle, his job would be a crap ton easier not having to worry about how much drop per how many meters the round will do, as there'd be no round.

In MWO the weapon round velocities and mass are, typically, sufficient enough to make ignoring wind and drop moderately reasonable at the ranges most battles are fought.

If we gave a sniper a laser rifle, and mounted it on a precison machined aiming device, and then we had him shoot 5000 shots downrange, we would see a pattern of hits that can be easily modeled with COF. The RNG is not the reason that stuff happens, it's just the way to model it. Again, see what I posted above about why we use stochastic models.

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An assumption that can generally be agreed upon is that 'mechs are in fact precisely manufactured and maintained machines, with enough feed back going to the targeting computer to detect when gimbal 15 is off by that milliradian and automatically compensate.

How much experience do you have with measuring tools and machines? Why do our measuring devices need to be calibrated on a routine basis? Why do we do gage R&R studies? You are asking, "why can't the computer systems automatically compensate for something they don't know?" The computer will assume that the weapon is aligned precisely, and the feedback system will tell it that it is within the error band, and it will STILL not be perfectly the same every time. I'm not talking about the different in hitting and missing here. I'm saying that there is naturally cone of fire randomness in EVERY precision aiming machine no matter how much space magic you want to throw at it. If it's made of physical stuff, there are going to be tolerances that will affect precision. It won't be perfect. Now we can argue all day as to whether the degree of precision should get us within 0.01m of point of aim or 10m of point of aim, but my statement is that the imprecision exists. The degree to which it impacts resultant point of impact is something that is up for debate in another time if we ever do see COF implemented.

Also, do you know what the thermal expansion coefficient is? That precisely machined actuator that is built to 0.000000001 inch tolerance (magically). If it has metal parts, guess what's going to happen when it's at 70F vs. 200F vs. -40F. Your 0.000000001 inch tolerance goes bye bye.

Moving parts cause friction, friction causes heat. So even if you recalibrated to the ambient temperature everytime, you'd still have some small variation (probably not enough to even notice, maybe not enough to even measure), but it'd be there, and COF would model the results really darn well.

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And neither is it suffering the frailties and inconsistency of a human manually manipulating the weapons.

It doesn't matter in MWO SPECIFICALLY BECUASE, MWO != REAL WORLD.

You want to penalize anyone who can aim by effectively allowing a coin flip determine whether or not they were still long enough, the target was still long enough, the computers that controlled the robots that built all the gimbals didn't slip a bit, gravity didn't suddenly reverse, a bird didn't fly in the way, causing them to miss their shot.

Now while in actual REALITY, such is life, in a GAME, it doesn't sound like much fun.

You began by arguing that COF is not realistic, and now we finally get to why you are arguing with the mechanic - you don't like it. As I said, that's totally fine!

You still aren't understanding what COF actually means in a target shooting scenario, and I'm going to presume you've never done any target shooting yourself, looked at data for weapons used on target ranges (with machine precision mounts), studied metrology, or bothered to look up anything I've typed. Otherwise, you'd not be continuing to try and deliberately obfuscate what I've been saying.

Let me pose this challenge to you. Find the most accurate measuring device you can (you can even use sci-fi stuff not yet invented as long as there is some sort of explanation of how it works). Then convince anyone that it has perfect precision.

Edited by Dino Might, 08 April 2015 - 02:02 PM.

[Dimento Graven]

Max Liao, on 08 April 2015 - 01:26 PM, said:

The then BattleTech universe, and a game besed on BattleTech is not the game for you. I signed up for this game, and got bliked out of my Founders cash because, they told me they were making a MechWarrior title based on the BattleTech boardgame. Instead, I got this mess.

No, that's not what they said they were doing for MWO, I think you're thinking of MWTactics.

For this it was to be a thinking man's shooter, role based warfare, yadda, yadda, yadda.

While still not exactly as promised, it's close enough I no longer begrudge the Founder's cash I paid.

Maybe it's perspective thing, but I really won't argue what you understood, if they missed the mark and you have issues with the money spent, I can understand some frustration on your part.

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I agree. I haven't posted on a topic like this in well over a year. I can't believe anyone who cares about a BattleTech/MechWarrior game would ever consider anything other than COF/RNG! Pin-point accuracy simply does not belong in a BattleTech/MechWarrior title.

I disagree, the very first PC version of BattleTech had pin point accuracy in it. It being maintained in quite a few of the later titles, and coincidentally being maintained in MWO feels 'par for the course' for me.

Taking 'aimed shots' in a TT top down shooter really isn't possible without a lot of extra measuring, mechanics, etc., that take completing a turn in said TT game rather a pain in the butt. There's been quite a few other titles that supposedly supported sniping that, it was such a pain in the ass to get a single turn completed I'd lost interest before the end of the night.

The die roll in BT is a very effective compromise to 'aim' vs. 'battle round time'.

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And yet, that's not how BattleMechs work in the BattleTech/MechWarrior universe. BattleMechs in game and canon have RNG due to lousy, out-dated targeting computers, a non-sensical scientific degridation concept, and other factors that amde the BattleTech universe and game what it is. As silly as they are those are the concepts that made BattleTech.

I don't disagree that pin-point fire can and would be fun in a Giant Stompy Robots Online game, it just doesn't belong in a BattleTech/MechWarrior game.

And that's where we disagree. Not only because we had pin point aim in previous version, but also because it's more fun with pin point than without.

Believe me, if I had to depend on getting "lucky" every time I took an aimed shot at a stationary target, or a target silly enough to move in one direction out in the open, I'd have LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG left this game behind.

The broken hit reg, hsr, and craptastic hit boxes already make getting your shots register where you want them, hard enough as it is. No sense in letting a coin flip ALSO screw over effort and negate actual skill.

[Dino Might]

Edit: I'm trying to relax.

Seriously, stop calling it a coin flip. If you would read and understand, you'd understand that there is a higher skill cap involved. You are not playing roulette with the aim in a COF system. Just because it's stochastic does not mean your inputs are negligible. Your inputs are actually more important if we implemented a COF system.

Edited by Dino Might, 08 April 2015 - 02:28 PM.

[ROSS-128]

Regarding the ammo/armor argument:

I am against doubling armor again because I believe TTK is fine as-is. If you did double it though, yes, doubling ammo would be necessary.

Because we'd go from carrying 75 ED/T (Effective Damage per Ton) to 36.5 ED/T. That is a huge nerf to ballistics. You'd need three to four tons of ammo to core a single assault mech with 100% CT hits. That's just dumb.

However, the objection that doubling ammo would negate the doubled armor is wrong. It would not change DPS at all. EDPS would still be cut in half, TTK would still be doubled accordingly. The only thing doubling ammo would do is preserve the current level of ammo endurance, so that ballistic builds don't run dry after a single kill.

Regarding CoF, I like my weapons landing where I point them TYVM. If it really would make people feel better though I'd be willing to accept a small margin of error, enough to occaisionally make a shot hit the wrong component ( missing the mech entirely is too much, it's a target bigger than my house!).

However, I would like to also be able to take measures in-game to improve the accuracy of my weapons if CoF is implemented. For example, maybe your mech gradually refines its targeting solutions while you keep an enemy targeted, eventually becoming pinpoint. Might even see people start pressing R.

Regarding heat scale, that's a tough one to tackle because most mechs in this game run really hot, and slamming their heat cap all the way down to 30 would make playing them a painful experience. Plus as mentioned I don't consider TTK to be too short, so I really don't see the appeal of throwing the book at any mech carrying more than a single PPC (poor Awesome).

I suppose substantially faster cooling might be a good tradeoff for reduced cap, but it'd have to be fast enough that you can be heat neutral or close to it with most builds (for example, my HBK-4P build would be heat neutral in TT thanks to DHS, in MWO it's around 30% heat efficient).

So I'd rather not nerf my heat capacity into oblivion. If it happens anyway, I would at least want a 10 second "grace period" to cool down after hitting heat cap, so that I can get away with redlining my heat as long as my heat sinks can pull me back down in time.

Because shutting down or Stackpoling the instant you hit 30 heat would suck for a lot of mechs. Adder and Warhawk come to mind.

Edit: oh, and regarding the pedantic argument about "precision" above, we're not trying to hit flies here. We're aiming at targets the size of three story buildings from just a couple hundred meters away. I believe the phrase "broad side of a barn" would accurately reflect our target profile. We don't need sub-millimeter precision for our weapons to effectively be "pinpoint" for our purpose.

Edited by E Rommel, 08 April 2015 - 02:41 PM.

[R Razor]

Dimento Graven, on 08 April 2015 - 06:33 AM, said:

Yeah, the concept of someone who actually knows how to aim to actually wanting what he's got targeted to NOT be hit...

That's just... Stupid.

As opposed to the group of people who fall under one of these categories:

1. Lacks the skill to aim/doesn't care about aiming.
2. SSRM/LRM user, who is used to putting little circle in big box, waiting for big circle, and pulling trigger for "magic" to happen.
3. Those who would LOVE to aim, but actually lack the computer power to effectively play this game at that level.

First off, "instant-pin-point" convergence is a myth. ANYONE who has played this game at an appropriate level knows this. Quickly change targets from near to far, or vice versa, and fire and see what happens. About 90% of the time not all the weapons converge on the same point. Many is the time I've had weapons converge behind the target, passing the rounds on either side, not touching the 'mech.

Convergence IS fast. It's NOT instantaneous.

Please dissuade yourself of that myth.

Considering your sentence structure makes it kind of difficult to figure out what you're trying to say here, I dunno... Anyway, should we allow players on the lower end of the scale to dictate how game mechanics work?

Um... No.

We have enough real life examples of the lowest common denominator setting bars and the results there of to know how much of an actual travesty that sort of silliness is.

See, this is why have absolutely NO respect for the anti-convergence crowd, you're not even really conceptually aware of what you're REALLY angry at.

What are you REALLY angry at, you might ask?

It should be very obvious, it is to anyone who understands how the game functions and has been consciously aware of the power creep.

THIS, is what you're REALLY angry at:

The absolute lack of any real consequences for multiple alphas of just about every weapon system in this game, be it PPFLD or gobs and gobs of missiles spewed all at once.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY back before the introduction of "ghost heat" we had lots of builds with 6 PPCs, 8 large pulse lasers, etc, and people were able to fire as many as 3 alphas as quick as the weapons would reset, and not have to worry about any of the heat effects we all grew up with in other variations of this game.

They added some damage occurring AFTER shutdown, later, and "ghost heat", and now power creep with "quirks" is eliminating "ghost heat" in a lot of builds.

If, instead a 'mech that shot an alpha that generated 50% of his total capacity of heat, there's a possibility of shut down, loss of movement, and maybe some 'cockpit shake' to simulate the pilot/gunnery modifiers of an actual heat scale, this wouldn't be so much of a problem.

As it is we've got a majority of builds where people just vomit lasers, ballistics, and missiles with little repercussion.

The fact that lasers and ballistics can be aimed only exacerbates the issue of zero heat penalties.

You make an excellent point (RE the heat scale and effects) however since PGI has proven themselves unable to program anything overly complex, the much simpler solution would be to remove pinpoint convergence via a cone of fire for each weapon or some other easily programmed change that they could possibly write that would work.

[Dimento Graven]

Dino Might, on 08 April 2015 - 01:58 PM, said:

And the mechwarriors won't be using those sliderules for every shot either. They'll learn the natural behavior of their weapons systems over time with practice and make intuitive responses based on the situation. But the actual physics of what's going on is based in the mathematics. It doesn't mean they have to know all the math involved.

I can't decide that I'm going to flap my arms and suddenly take off just because I don't understand Newton's Laws. These physical realities are the rationale for the proposed solution. They are an underpinning not necessary to calculate for the use of the systems. But they are necessary to understand why the systems work the way they do.

No they're not, as we've established, 'mechs have targeting computers for all that. As far as 'learning the natural behavior', yeah, upwards of 4 years of game play, lots of us have done that already.

It's a well established fact that this game ALREADY has a VERY steep learning curve, now you want to toss RNG into the mix to add more confusion to those starting out?

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If we gave a sniper a laser rifle, and mounted it on a precison machined aiming device, and then we had him shoot 5000 shots downrange, we would see a pattern of hits that can be easily modeled with COF. The RNG is not the reason that stuff happens, it's just the way to model it. Again, see what I posted above about why we use stochastic models.

With zero recoil, zero deviation in the weight/balance of a physical round, zero effect of wind, no sudden earth tremors, no sudden violent increase in heat or extremely intense magnetic or gravitic anomalies, once a laser is placed and fired it will always hit that same spot unless something disturbs the system. My understanding is that the "near miss" would still be hitting the circle of the last shot.

I mean heck, we're currently good enough aim to bounce lasers off little mirrors we've left at Apollo landing sites, I'm unaware of our missing them, even through the soup of our atmosphere...

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How much experience do you have with measuring tools and machines? Why do our measuring devices need to be calibrated on a routine basis? Why do we do gage R@R studies? You are asking, "why can't the computer systems automatically compensate for something they don't know?" The computer will assume that the weapon is aligned precisely, and the feedback system will tell it that it is within the error band, and it will STILL not be perfectly the same every time. I'm not talking about the different in hitting and missing here. I'm saying that there is naturally cone of fire randomness in EVERY precision aiming machine no matter how much space magic you want to throw at it. If it's made of physical stuff, there are going to be tolerances that will affect precision. It won't be perfect. Now we can argue all day as to whether the degree of precision should get us within 0.01m of point of aim or 10m of point of aim, but my statement is that the imprecision exists. The degree to which it impacts resultant point of impact is something that is up for debate in another time if we ever do see COF implemented.

As I understand it many systems aren't designed with sufficient feed back mechanisms to autocorrect themselves, there's an ever increasing number, but absolutely there is a maximum tolerance where an error is registered and someone has to come in and 'kick' the machine back into functioning.

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Also, do you know what the thermal expansion coefficient is? That precisely machined actuator that is built to 0.000000001 inch tolerance (magically). If it has metal parts, guess what's going to happen when it's at 70F vs. 200F vs. -40F. Your 0.000000001 inch tolerance goes bye bye.

Moving parts cause friction, friction causes heat. So even if you recalibrated to the ambient temperature everytime, you'd still have some small variation (probably not enough to even notice, maybe not enough to even measure), but it'd be there, and COF would model the results really darn well.

I can explain how all that is handled metalurgicaly and will do so as soon as we have our room sized fusion generators.

"We CAN HAZ fusion engines, but NOT HAZ pin points aim!"

Just like we apparently can't have a backup camera or rearview mirror in our 'mechs, but that's a whole other subject.

We have pin point aiming because the game, as a whole is more fun with it, than without. There's quite a few inconsolable trolls that want to practice 18th century infantry tactics with their 31st century big stompy robot, without getting sniped to death as they do so that aren't happy with the situation and those poor schlubs I can only shake my head and continue to cockpit shot 'em...

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You began by arguing that COF is not realistic, and now we finally get to why you are arguing with the mechanic - you don't like it. As I said, that's totally fine!

It's not realistic.

Hence my, "We CAN HAZ fusion engines, but NOT HAZ pin points aim!", comment.

And no I don't like it. It punishes people who can aim, and excuses the 'spray and pray' methodology of play so many of lazy and/or lesser skilled employ in this game.

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You still aren't understanding what COF actually means in a target shooting scenario, and I'm going to presume you've never done any target shooting yourself, looked at data for weapons used on target ranges (with machine precision mounts), studied metrology, or bothered to look up anything I've typed. Otherwise, you'd not be continuing to try and deliberately obfuscate what I've been saying.

That would be an incorrect assumption. I've done quite a bit of target shooting in my youth, and was considered quite the marksman.

I once saw either an "That's in Incredible" or "Ripley's Believe it Or Not" where some guy had trained some lady to shoot asprin out of the air with a bee-bee gun. I practiced until I could do the same, emptying a 500 shot chamber with no misses. It was easier to learn how to do it than you'd think, but it was still damn hard to do as no one else who hadn't spent the prior 4 months practicing couldn't do it.

Once I got the feel of the gun I could do it with a daisy rifle, or the hand gun, my dad got drunk and even let me try it with his remake of the colt peace maker (.22 caliber). Once I got used to a gun that actually made a loud BANG and kind of kicked a bit (bee-bee guns don't kick) I was able to do the same no problem, after about 15 tries.

And there are plenty more crack shots out there like that.

Now I'll grant you the 1000's of asprin I decimated with BB's and bullets probably weren't 100% dead on shots, but the "near misses" close enough as to still hit enough of the asprin as to not matter.

Quote

Let me pose this challenge to you. Find the most accurate measuring device you can (you can even use sci-fi stuff not yet invented as long as there is some sort of explanation of how it works). Then convince anyone that it has perfect precision.

Yet another red herring...

Dino Might, on 08 April 2015 - 02:25 PM, said:

Edit: I'm trying to relax.

Seriously, stop calling it a coin flip. If you would read and understand, you'd understand that there is a higher skill cap involved. You are not playing roulette with the aim in a COF system. Just because it's stochastic does not mean your inputs are negligible. Your inputs are actually more important if we implemented a COF system.

Bullshit, it's a coin flip when stuck in a MechWarrior sim.

There's already enough randomness built into the system when it comes to my ping vs target ping, vs server load, vs. packet loss, vs. flawed hit detection, vs. flawed HSR, vs. flawed hit box implementation.

We don't need to pile on a coin flip.

[Dimento Graven]

R Razor, on 08 April 2015 - 02:31 PM, said:

You make an excellent point (RE the heat scale and effects) however since PGI has proven themselves unable to program anything overly complex, the much simpler solution would be to remove pinpoint convergence via a cone of fire for each weapon or some other easily programmed change that they could possibly write that would work.

I don't know why it would be "simpler" to remove pinpoint. We don't know that actually, if I think back I think we've been told the exact opposite actually, that the Crysis engine itself wouldn't be capable of handling upwards of 12 different "CoF"s for all the various builds out there.

I think it's actually simpler to expand on what's already here, namely the 'toggle switch' of a heat effects table we have now by changing it from "on vs off" to a graduated scale of effects, all of which already exist in game but would be triggered at various percentages.

Take the pieces parts we have now and build something, as opposed to ripping the guts out of what we have now.

[Wildstreak]

Apocryph0n, on 20 January 2015 - 02:01 AM, said:

A lot of players would be "butthurt" tho, if the skill based component of MWO, as far from lore as it is, got taken away, probably me as well. (In lore you could not hit a skyscraper with lasers beyond 500meters because that's how ****** mech hardware actually is).

Skill? What skill?

[Nick86]

Lily from animove, on 20 January 2015 - 02:29 AM, said:

people want the instant high alpha PP gone. there are many ways to achieve this. Two that I think can do it: make it impossible to fire X weapons within the same timeframe. this would cause people fire in sequences ---> PP gone. make a cone of fire other possibilities seem hardly be feasable with the client server architecture and the engine we have atm. I would choose the first one, because then pilot aim keeps a skill parameter in the game, especially when you fight heavily downsized light mechs a cone of fire will already untouchable lighs be able to tank 2x the firepower an assault can tank. A big issue. The cone of fire in general would again favor specific mechs over others by the geometry and hitboxes they have. so limiting the amount of possible PP weapons is probably the most faires way to go. Can be done with limiting the amount of weapons fired, or limiting heat.

But is the idea that you should only be able to fire 'x' amount of 'y' weapons class, a little arbitrary? After all, this is one of the reasons for having Ghost Heat; All you'd have to do is add insane ghost heat for firing the same 'x' amount of 'y' weapons and you're doing effectively the same thing. As crummy as GH is when it's not well implemented, surely it's better than an arbitrary cap on the amount of weapons that can be fired simultaneously. Not saying GH isn't also an arbitrary oddity, but... it nearly makes sense.

If PGI removes the core FPS/Skill component of the game (convergence) I fear we'll end up with closer to 24 players at one time than a healthy 2400.. I mean, less convergence/pinpoint would just be annoying, right?

[Lightfoot]

Dimento Graven, on 08 April 2015 - 09:57 AM, said:

I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

I've successfully used gauss in:

Urbies
Firestarters
Cicadas
Hunchbacks
Jaegers
Catapults
Cataphracts
Atlas

and many, MANY others.

While I agree the charge mechanic was created ass backwards (should have gone on the PPC, not the gauss), and if it did JUST ABSOLUTELY HAVE to go on the gauss, it should have come with a corresponding decrease to reload time, it's not an insurmountable difficulty.

In fact it's a weapon that requires some effort to get the hang of, unlike lasers and ACs, which are truly point and click, and LRMs and Streaks which are "put little circle in big box, wait for big circle, pull trigger, magic happens" kind of effort to use.

The only weapon with a charge mechanic in Battle-Tech is the Bombast Laser and it fires and does normal damage on a single trigger pull, but you can overcharge it for bonus damage by holding the trigger for 3 seconds.

So I want MWO to respect Battle Tech canon and the charge mechanic on the Gauss or anything is pandering, not balancing, because Battle Tech has all the basic weapons balanced within reasonable limits. The PPC does less DPS per ton/heat than the Large Laser and much less than the Medium Laser and so it is balanced. Anyone can hit with Lasers, but it takes aim and timing to hit with a PPC. Balanced. Also PPCs are too hot to run more than two (unless your mech is Quirked for PPCs) and do only one more damage point than Lasers so if anything should be nerfed it's Lasers not PPCs. How about a de-sync charge-up for medium lasers? They are the DPS/ton kings and have perfect Convergence. See how stupid that would be?

And I said 2xGauss is being turned into a super sniper cannon by Dire-Wolves and King Crabs. You twisted it into any mechs that carry just one, but no matter. It is unbalancing to make a super sniper weapon for just two mechs, especially when those two mechs also carry lots of other weapons so they are not impaired much if at all by the Gauss de-sync charging.

Edited by Lightfoot, 08 April 2015 - 03:21 PM.

[Dimento Graven]

Nick86, on 08 April 2015 - 03:13 PM, said:

But is the idea that you should only be able to fire 'x' amount of 'y' weapons class, a little arbitrary? After all, this is one of the reasons for having Ghost Heat; All you'd have to do is add insane ghost heat for firing the same 'x' amount of 'y' weapons and you're doing effectively the same thing. As crummy as GH is when it's not well implemented, surely it's better than an arbitrary cap on the amount of weapons that can be fired simultaneously. Not saying GH isn't also an arbitrary oddity, but... it nearly makes sense.

If PGI removes the core FPS/Skill component of the game (convergence) I fear we'll end up with closer to 24 players at one time than a healthy 2400.. I mean, less convergence/pinpoint would just be annoying, right?

Which is where implementing a fleshed out heat affects table comes into play.

Sure you COULD fire all those weapons on your 'mech all at once, AND take certain risks and suffer some temporary affects, OR, you could fire more deliberately and make better use of your 'mech, reserving that alpha blast for a more opportune moment.

[Dimento Graven]

Lightfoot, on 08 April 2015 - 03:19 PM, said:

...

And I said 2xGauss is being turned into a super sniper cannon by Dire-Wolves and King Crabs. You twisted it into any mechs that carry just one, but no matter. It is unbalancing to make a super sniper weapon for just two mechs, especially when those two mechs also carry lots of other weapons so they are not impaired much if at all by the Gauss de-sync charging.

And I also mentioned other 'mechs that can and do, dual wield gauss, other than the Crab and Direwhale:

Catapult
Cataphract
Jaeger

At least 5 builds can do it, and I still play my Jaeger when I'm in the mood...

[Dino Might]

Dimento Graven, on 08 April 2015 - 02:51 PM, said:

No they're not, as we've established, 'mechs have targeting computers for all that. As far as 'learning the natural behavior', yeah, upwards of 4 years of game play, lots of us have done that already.

It's a well established fact that this game ALREADY has a VERY steep learning curve, now you want to toss RNG into the mix to add more confusion to those starting out?

With zero recoil, zero deviation in the weight/balance of a physical round, zero effect of wind, no sudden earth tremors, no sudden violent increase in heat or extremely intense magnetic or gravitic anomalies, once a laser is placed and fired it will always hit that same spot unless something disturbs the system. My understanding is that the "near miss" would still be hitting the circle of the last shot.

I mean heck, we're currently good enough aim to bounce lasers off little mirrors we've left at Apollo landing sites, I'm unaware of our missing them, even through the soup of our atmosphere...

As I understand it many systems aren't designed with sufficient feed back mechanisms to autocorrect themselves, there's an ever increasing number, but absolutely there is a maximum tolerance where an error is registered and someone has to come in and 'kick' the machine back into functioning.

I can explain how all that is handled metalurgicaly and will do so as soon as we have our room sized fusion generators.

"We CAN HAZ fusion engines, but NOT HAZ pin points aim!"

Just like we apparently can't have a backup camera or rearview mirror in our 'mechs, but that's a whole other subject.

We have pin point aiming because the game, as a whole is more fun with it, than without. There's quite a few inconsolable trolls that want to practice 18th century infantry tactics with their 31st century big stompy robot, without getting sniped to death as they do so that aren't happy with the situation and those poor schlubs I can only shake my head and continue to cockpit shot 'em...

It's not realistic.

Hence my, "We CAN HAZ fusion engines, but NOT HAZ pin points aim!", comment.

And no I don't like it. It punishes people who can aim, and excuses the 'spray and pray' methodology of play so many of lazy and/or lesser skilled employ in this game.

That would be an incorrect assumption. I've done quite a bit of target shooting in my youth, and was considered quite the marksman.

I once saw either an "That's in Incredible" or "Ripley's Believe it Or Not" where some guy had trained some lady to shoot asprin out of the air with a bee-bee gun. I practiced until I could do the same, emptying a 500 shot chamber with no misses. It was easier to learn how to do it than you'd think, but it was still damn hard to do as no one else who hadn't spent the prior 4 months practicing couldn't do it.

Once I got the feel of the gun I could do it with a daisy rifle, or the hand gun, my dad got drunk and even let me try it with his remake of the colt peace maker (.22 caliber). Once I got used to a gun that actually made a loud BANG and kind of kicked a bit (bee-bee guns don't kick) I was able to do the same no problem, after about 15 tries.

And there are plenty more crack shots out there like that.

Now I'll grant you the 1000's of asprin I decimated with BB's and bullets probably weren't 100% dead on shots, but the "near misses" close enough as to still hit enough of the asprin as to not matter.

Yet another red herring...

Bullshit, it's a coin flip when stuck in a MechWarrior sim.

There's already enough randomness built into the system when it comes to my ping vs target ping, vs server load, vs. packet loss, vs. flawed hit detection, vs. flawed HSR, vs. flawed hit box implementation.

We don't need to pile on a coin flip.

I lost my entire response to this because of auto-logout. Sigh*

Okay, I call BS on your anecdote. I've met hundreds of "scout snipers" at the range that can shoot 1MOA at 1K all day long. You also presume that this bogus, hyper-exaggeration is proof that you are correct, when you are trying to argue with real world math/physics and the proven models we use to represent them.

Your continual coin flip diatribe is so misguided I don't know where to start. If you knew anything about marksmanship, you'd be understanding my use of it as an example for how a COF RNG model works and does not make MWO encounters a "coin flip."

Your idea that spray and pray will be disproportionately rewarded with a COF system only has a chance of being true once in a blue moon IF we are playing a one shot one kill game. And then COF still models the actual behavior very well, but because of the nature of the game, it just makes more sense to spray and pray than take careful aim. It's called volume of fire, and it matters in the real world in that sort of scenario. You and I both agree, that sucks - we don't want that to be the meta in MWO. Fine. But this isn't a one shot one kill game.

If you read up on the normal distribution, look at the central limit theorem, and take a crack at learning how we use stochastic models to represent real world stuff, and why those models are useful for things like nuclear physics (precision much?), then you might back off your simple dismissal of the proposed solution and understand that a COF system will regularly reward someone who takes careful aim more than someone who goes with "spray and pray."

Edited by Dino Might, 08 April 2015 - 03:49 PM.

[Dino Might]

I forgot to include my discussion on your mirror laser bounce systems. Yeah, we do that today, and would you like to take a crack at the precision necessary for such an aiming device to do that, repeatedly on command? Do you think someone pushes a button and the laser aligns perfectly on the mirror each and every time and every photon hits the exact same spot?

"The Challenge
Technically, the required accuracy for the Apollo test is very challenging. The type of laser used can produce high-energy pulses that are less than 100 picoseconds in duration, giving a pulse length of about 2.5 cm. Each pulse contains about 30 million million photons. Due to slight divergence of the laser beam and the small size of the reflectors, roughly one photon per pulse returns to the telescope after reflection from the retro-reflectors on the Moon. In previous experiments, only one photon per 100 pulses was detected.

Since it is not known where in the 2.5 cm long pulse the detected photon was, ranging errors are brought down to the sub-millimeter level by means of standard statistical techniques over many outgoing pulses and returning photons. Hence the importance of ‘catching’ as many photons per pulse as is possible."

Now consider these carefully controlled, telescopically aligned systems, and add shock and vibe, heat, and inertial effects. Good luck with that level of accuracy. You are space magicking again. If we want literally magic weapons, fine. But if these are physical entities creating particle interactions in our universe, your idea of these things being perfectly precise is totally bogus.

Edited by Dino Might, 08 April 2015 - 03:59 PM.