1126 replies to this topic

[Almond Brown]

Kuritaclan, on 15 April 2015 - 08:20 AM, said:

humm im curious how you wanna aim with the third - a second mouse?

stuff

That could be our MechLab selectable/locked convergence range value. Only available to the Arm based reticules.

[Kuritaclan]

Dino Might, on 15 April 2015 - 08:42 AM, said:

This type of curve behavior is what I've been advocating for CoF, but the standard deviation is based on a number of factors including movement and heat at the time of firing.

Heat is no isue you have DHS - there should no influence be within. Same for movement - gyro, mymer etc. will active stabalize your weaponsystems, otherwise the whole Mech concept is a fail by start of introduction as a advanced weaponsystem, if nowadays mil tech have measuresystems to equalize heat and movment deplacment from calibrated point to hit.

Dino Might, on 15 April 2015 - 08:42 AM, said:

I would cut off the tails, so that there is no chance of deviating by more than a certain angle (1 degree? 2 degrees? 5 degress? not sure I'd have to give it some thought). And just push the CDF of the tails back into the distribution.

Sure you can bring the curve by a y-axis correxture under the value and cut of in any point you wanna have so the function doesn't go for the limes. The degree for the max deplament if so needs debated, but it would be more like something in arc minute if not seconds.

Dino Might, on 15 April 2015 - 08:42 AM, said:

If you really want to get complex, you can have total angular standard deviation made up of a vertical and horizontal component based on mech movement, and a random direction component based on heat. Then you get the total magnitude of this vector and that's your standard deviation for your curve, you run the RnG to get a number from that curve that gives you the total angular deviation, and you already have the direction. Shot goes based on the calculation of the resulting true weapon direction.

if you wanna create a unneeded dependence - sure.

Dino Might, on 15 April 2015 - 08:42 AM, said:

Again, this would need to have numbers that would get us to a point where a cool mech not jumping/making snap shots/falling off a cliff and hitting the ground at the instant of firing would put pretty much all weapons to the same component (within a few meters at 1000m or so). But, if you start adding in heat, then movement, and maybe weapon condition, you can see where it would make sense to start having some spread.

I see the condition of extreme stress - if i'm correct while jumping the reticula is displaced - it is introduced in the game right now - however this could be made more accurate, depending on conditions which migh influence accuracy.

Dino Might, on 15 April 2015 - 08:42 AM, said:

Lasers are quite often cited for having no realistic spread effect; however, we get heat from lasers that is vented by (what I assume) liquid cooling jackets; but we only get an average measure of heat across the mech based on calculations of total heat balance. We never consider that firing that ER Large Laser made the mech 10% hotter, but that particular laser is now scorching after firing and will take some time to cool down back to ambient, which will be slightly longer than it takes for the average mech heat to get within measurement accuracy of ambient. So, right when you get back to ambient 5% on the heat scale, that ER Large Laser (housing, lenses, cabling, collimator, excitation bank) may still be sufficiently hotter than ambient to result in some deviation from perfect accuracy.

no or at least, the caused deplacement would be compensated by calibrated data of the BattleMechComputer. Also the weapon cooldown is meant to be that time it needs to get the laser for example back into the state of condition to work without failure like a decreased accuracy. If you wanna bring in inacurracy than you need a override routine, what allow you to fire the lasers before cooldown is over. This actually then could be transformed by such a model into simuating a effect on the hitzone.

Dino Might, on 15 April 2015 - 08:42 AM, said:

There are tons of factors that can be incorporated to get us to reasonable numbers that balance the weapons/mechs, and all of this would happen behind the scene resulting in a completely intuitive experience for the user (seeing the effects of firing at high heat/movement rapidly vs. firing when cool and stationary with more time in between shots). If they wanted to, we could open up the black box and show the calculations.

Sure you can get this deep, however it is much effort to put it in, it can break other thing of the line of code, and the question is do you need it, if you assuem you have a T&T computer in a mech, which do compensate for all the conditional influences, for relive of the pilot, so that he can focus on tactial things and so on. Also it is a question of dataflow between server and client, more data more to break /ping?

If you would have a better damage model with smaller hitboxes, you may could simulate damage on weapons, for example if a laser mold your ac20 barrel, than this could effect the accuracy. Preassumed you don't have sume hit detection software that automaticly recalibrate to the new conditions. Or you are in in tourmaline and your lasers get peneliced for dust, on the optical system with more distance your mech has run over the terrain.

Or you could create a interdependance between runs you made with weapons and the R&R economy system as it was supposed long ago.

However it all needs developmenttime and someone needs to be payed for the manhours to ipmlement.

Almond Brown, on 15 April 2015 - 09:02 AM, said:

That could be our MechLab selectable/locked convergence range value. Only available to the Arm based reticules.

well you could have a button to make a copy movement of one arm to the other for symmetric reflection in the body axis (or in other words a deconvergance of both arms controlled by the user), however this would not be a independent movement of each arm. but at least you could fire left right and with the torso straight.

Edited by Kuritaclan, 15 April 2015 - 09:20 AM.

[Mystere]

Kuritaclan, on 15 April 2015 - 08:20 AM, said:

humm im curious how you wanna aim with the third - a second mouse?

There are a few ways to do it, depending on what set of abilities you want to have. As such, I'll just give you a grab bag of goodies and let you mix and match using your imagination:

• Razer Hydra
  
• Steel Battalion Controller
  
• Thrustmaster T.16000M x 2
  
• SteelSeries Kana or Sensei x 2
  
• Track-IR
  
• ST1080 HMD
  
• Oculus Rift
  
• Emotiv EPOC/EPOC+

Almond Brown, on 15 April 2015 - 09:02 AM, said:

That could be our MechLab selectable/locked convergence range value. Only available to the Arm based reticules.

WIth separate left and right arm reticles, and independent arms, I will almost have no need for convergence. <maniacal >

Edited by Mystere, 15 April 2015 - 09:51 AM.

[Dino Might]

Kurita,

Thanks for the recent replies. You are providing some very useful and constructive feedback on a system that you don't even necessarily want, and because you're giving good explanations for your counterpoints, I'm finding the dialogue very useful. I'm thinking we might be able to come up with something we both want, and deliver a strong rationale for why it makes sense.

I think that heat should definitely have an impact because heat sinks dissipate heat over time, and conduction/convection takes time. Different parts of the mech will be hotter for various lengths of time dependent on the heat sink cooling capability (how much heat they can dissipate at what rate). When you alpha and hit 80% heat threshhold, I would not assume the weapons themselves and their mounts are immediately cooled to ambient and the 80% is only a measure on the condenser side of the heat sink. Not all the heat could be instantly transferred to the coolant, and the coolant heat couldn't be instantly transferred to the atmosphere, so it would make sense that latent heat effects will impact accuracy based on coefficients of thermal expansion for the various materials present.

Active stabilization systems to prevent the movement impact have limitations. There is a time and magnitude response limit on any feedback control system. Most active stabilization systems work very well when within normal parameters, but outside of those parameters, the corrections will become more significant, and can cause overcorrection/additional instability, and you require a dampening control - this entire process of overcorrecting and dampening results in some unknowns relative to actual weapon point of aim vs. computed point of aim. Given the nature of battlemech movement, there is significant impact shock and inertial effects depending on the terrain, and whatever shock systems and active stabilization systems (mag dampening?) used, there's probably going to be some marginal impact on computed vs. actual point of aim, especially when talking about something like a Locust doing 170kph and dropping itself off a terrace.

[Kuritaclan]

Dino Might, on 15 April 2015 - 09:43 AM, said:

Kurita,

Thanks for the recent replies. You are providing some very useful and constructive feedback on a system that you don't even necessarily want, and because you're giving good explanations for your counterpoints, I'm finding the dialogue very useful. I'm thinking we might be able to come up with something we both want, and deliver a strong rationale for why it makes sense.

thx

Dino Might, on 15 April 2015 - 09:43 AM, said:

I think that heat should definitely have an impact because heat sinks dissipate heat over time, and conduction/convection takes time. Different parts of the mech will be hotter for various lengths of time dependent on the heat sink cooling capability (how much heat they can dissipate at what rate). When you alpha and hit 80% heat threshhold, I would not assume the weapons themselves and their mounts are immediately cooled to ambient and the 80% is only a measure on the condenser side of the heat sink. Not all the heat could be instantly transferred to the coolant, and the coolant heat couldn't be instantly transferred to the atmosphere, so it would make sense that latent heat effects will impact accuracy based on coefficients of thermal expansion for the various materials present.

Well you only look @ DHS as a Heat Dissipation what is true, but not the real deal. Look to your computer and the mainboard - the cooler on the cpu is a dhs, however the fan rotate faster or slower depending on the set temperature lvl in your setting. This system is called air conditioning - Any reasonable military weapon what needs to be cooed to stay within tolerance is cooled by a air conditioning. I hope you get the point. It does not matter, that the laser heat up the surrounding components while he fire - the cooldown is the time the whole weapon including its subsystems are ready to fire back within the optimal settings - the heat is dissipated correctly. And if the system not longer could provide stable ac you are in such a heat lvl that DHS doesn't could compensate anymore, your heatbar goes up and you shut down. This is the logic behind the heat managmentsystem of a BattleMech.

Dino Might, on 15 April 2015 - 09:43 AM, said:

Active stabilization systems to prevent the movement impact have limitations. There is a time and magnitude response limit on any feedback control system. Most active stabilization systems work very well when within normal parameters, but outside of those parameters, the corrections will become more significant, and can cause overcorrection/additional instability, and you require a dampening control - this entire process of overcorrecting and dampening results in some unknowns relative to actual weapon point of aim vs. computed point of aim. Given the nature of battlemech movement, there is significant impact shock and inertial effects depending on the terrain, and whatever shock systems and active stabilization systems (mag dampening?) used, there's probably going to be some marginal impact on computed vs. actual point of aim, especially when talking about something like a Locust doing 170kph and dropping itself off a terrace.

I understand your point, this terrace issue seams reasonable, but it would only cause a short time window of no accurate fire, this could be managed by such a simulation. However if you know that this would happen you may adapt your playstyle, i'm ok with such an impact. However it wouldnt be ok for if normal movment would cause accuracy issues (assumed it would depend on bad stabilization) since, it is a BattleMech designd to Battle in all Terrain and Situations - common sense would say a mech who can't fire while walking within his restrictions is failed weapon plattform. If we introduce MASC - i would be ok if the mech got penelized using it to aquire higher speed above his normal capacity. I hope this make you understand what viewpoint i take on such things. For me there is everytime a green zone where you have optimal results, and a red zone which could affect your performance. This is how design works. IF you do not do it that way you have can give no warranty for your product to fullfill the task, and since BattleMechs are very expensive, nobody wil buy bad products for war. You know.

Mystere, on 15 April 2015 - 09:38 AM, said:

There are a few ways to do it, depending on what set of abilities you want to have. As such, I'll just give you a grab bag of goodies and let you mix and match using your imagination:

• Razer Hydra
  
• Steel Battalion Controller
  
• Thrustmaster T.16000M x 2
  
• SteelSeries Kana or Sensei x 2
  
• Track-IR
  
• ST1080 HMD
  
• Oculus Rift
  
• Emotiv EPOC/EPOC+

For the sim it would be much more realistic. However if you need a special interface in a "customer computer game" going in a reasonable time on steam it might be a bit overadvantagous for those who can fit those conditions over a normal user with a keyboard and a mouse. But non or less it would be very .

[Mystere]

Kuritaclan, on 15 April 2015 - 10:16 AM, said:

[/list]For the sim it would be much more realistic. However if you need a special interface in a "customer computer game" going in a reasonable time on steam it might be a bit overadvantagous for those who can fit those conditions over a normal user with a keyboard and a mouse. But non or less it would be very .

What can I say?

• High resolution head-mounted displays with head tracking are OP.
  
• Nitrogen-cooled and overclocked CPUs are OP.
  
• Water-cooled and overclocked GPUs are OP.
  
• Ambidextrous, specialized, and programmable gaming controllers are OP.
  
• Voice-control software are OP.
  
• Neural interfaces are OP.

PGI can try to ban them all, assuming they can even detect them.



And by the way, keyboards and mice are so 20th Century. I myself haven't used a mouse in ages.

Edited by Mystere, 15 April 2015 - 10:49 AM.

[Kuritaclan]

Mystere, on 15 April 2015 - 10:46 AM, said:

What can I say? ....
PGI can try to ban them all, assuming they can even detect them.

Well nice stuff. I would consider my computer at the top end of hardware (while it could be better), when i take a look in the sub forum for the rig discussion, and when you know what is going on in the common pc - it is headshaking. Since most players do not have such good hardware, but wanna play too, all need to be satisfied. I'm ok with people using stuff like triple monitor and other things, like you do. Quite impressive. So yeah if you have the money to do so, go for it and enjoy it.

[Gorgo7]

No!
The Majority of players do not want to get rid of convergence.

[pbiggz]

Gorgo7, on 15 April 2015 - 11:24 AM, said:

No!
The Majority of players do not want to get rid of convergence.

Once again, I have no idea where you get off thinking you can make such a broad statement. Did you take a survey? Did you interview a representative sample size? I doubt it.

Next time say that YOU dont want to get rid of convergence. I think you're wrong, and if you were well informed about what people actually mean when they talk about cone of fire you would want it, but I do respect opinions.

Edited by pbiggz, 15 April 2015 - 12:16 PM.

[Gorgo7]

Link to your "Survey" please.
perhaps instead of trying to fiddle the game mechanics you might fiddle with your Mechs as intended.
*Note that no survey was made concerning fiddling with Mechs. None was required.

Edited by Gorgo7, 15 April 2015 - 12:21 PM.

[LordMelvin]

They best suggestion I saw was to give weapons the same bounce you see when running around in third person. It wouldn't do much, but you'd need to come to a complete stop to get 100% perfect accuracy or be able to compensate for the sway of your mech at high speeds.

The other thing I'd like to see if weapons draw their firing arcs in a straight line from the weapon mount to infinity rather than trying to aim the beam/round toward the crosshair. I've seen some wonky stuff like lasers at a 45 degree angle to the emitter.

[Burktross]

Ed Steele, on 14 April 2015 - 11:05 PM, said:

This is the cop out of a weakminded fool who is losing an argument on a game forum.

I'm losing an argument?
You mean to say it was a joke, because we're all angry neckbeards.

[Gorgo7]

Yeah, LordMelvin I kinda like what you are saying. Walking speed in this game is considered to be 6/10 on the keyboard. You use one heatsink to keep cool and the mech is stable. A speed of 7/10 or higher uses two heatsinks to keep cool. You are considered to be running.
Following this pattern introduce a swaying feature into the reticule as per 3rd person view.
Pull the trigger while out of reticule you miss. Fire a laser while its is swinging into the reticule and some will land.
Slower more accurate, faster less so. Can be tuned.
Having said all that though there is no pinpoint problem to my mind. just a missile weakness that needs addressing.

G7

[pbiggz]

Gorgo7, on 15 April 2015 - 12:19 PM, said:

Link to your "Survey" please.
perhaps instead of trying to fiddle the game mechanics you might fiddle with your Mechs as intended.
*Note that no survey was made concerning fiddling with Mechs. None was required.

I never took a survey, and I never proposed that "a majority" of ANYONE had any opinion. Iv presented MY opinions and MY designs and defended them when people came forward not with honest criticism, but rambling dogmatic opposition. Perhaps instead of blindly clinging to a game that could be better, you stop being part of the problem and start pushing for real changes and real improvements.

[Mystere]

LordMelvin, on 15 April 2015 - 12:28 PM, said:

They best suggestion I saw was to give weapons the same bounce you see when running around in third person. It wouldn't do much, but you'd need to come to a complete stop to get 100% perfect accuracy or be able to compensate for the sway of your mech at high speeds.

The other thing I'd like to see if weapons draw their firing arcs in a straight line from the weapon mount to infinity rather than trying to aim the beam/round toward the crosshair. I've seen some wonky stuff like lasers at a 45 degree angle to the emitter.

I prefer a reticle bloom rather than bounce. It's aesthetically more pleasing.

[KuroNyra]

Gorgo7, on 15 April 2015 - 11:24 AM, said:

No!
The Majority of players do not want to get rid of convergence.

Sorry, I don't think you qualify has "the Majority" by yourself.

Grea argument your place on your post by the way.

Really, why make constructive debate when you can simply say "no" with no explanation whatsoever?

Edited by KuroNyra, 15 April 2015 - 01:40 PM.

[Telmasa]

Dino Might, on 14 April 2015 - 03:55 PM, said:

Probably not, but if the coils weren't sufficiently shielded, they could heat up from conduction from surround parts of the chassis. Then, you get the whole issue of resistance changing with temperature, and that would throw a wrench or two in your coil timing, me guesses. I usually think of 90% heat in a mech meaning the thing is pretty much hot all over - why else does it show up white hot in thermals?

Because thermal vision as seen ingame doesn't accurately reflect how thermal vision actually works?
I dunno, to me, it's like computers: they overheat and if you really screw up can start melting plastic...but odds are it's not going to be burning up your CD/R player anytime soon even in worst-case scenarios.
So I don't see overheating as something that would ever affect a gauss rifle, unless it were practically mounted inside the fusion engine.

Frostiken, on 15 April 2015 - 12:00 AM, said:

Seriously there's people saying 'NO THANKS I WANT TO PLAY A SHOOTER NOT A DICE ROLLING SIMULATOR'. Really find me one FPS game that doesn't have a gun with some sort of spread to it. The closest you're going to get is Unreal Tournament Instagib Shock Rifles rounds, but almost nobody plays those games for a reason. Every single popular shooter in the last ten years uses cones of fire for a reason.

Okay, there's your mistake in bold. It's not that games don't have *a* gun that has some sort of spread.

It's that it sucks when a game has *all* of the guns forced to have some sort of spread.
Thankfully most games don't actually have *all* guns forced to have some sort of spread. And that's the point.

World of Tanks is the absolute worst offender that I know about, that's why I bring it up as the prime example of What Not To Do when it comes to resorting to CoF.

Making everything behave like shotguns with varying kinds of choked barrels - except that you only get to have 1 pellet - isn't realistic or fun, it's just a cause for needless frustration.

Mystere, on 15 April 2015 - 10:46 AM, said:

And by the way, keyboards and mice are so 20th Century. I myself haven't used a mouse in ages.

You callin' me 20th century?

[Dino Might]

Telmasa, on 15 April 2015 - 02:49 PM, said:

Because thermal vision as seen ingame doesn't accurately reflect how thermal vision actually works?
I dunno, to me, it's like computers: they overheat and if you really screw up can start melting plastic...but odds are it's not going to be burning up your CD/R player anytime soon even in worst-case scenarios.
So I don't see overheating as something that would ever affect a gauss rifle, unless it were practically mounted inside the fusion engine.

Totally agree that MWO's thermals are completely wonked. I'm just considering a possible explanation for having some bloom for gauss rifles based on heat. I think many people really don't understand how critical the timing would be on a coil gun like we have in the game. To get the projectile going that fast with that accuracy would be tough...

[Ratpoison]

KuroNyra, on 15 April 2015 - 01:39 PM, said:

Sorry, I don't think you qualify has "the Majority" by yourself.

Grea argument your place on your post by the way.

Really, why make constructive debate when you can simply say "no" with no explanation whatsoever?

Only a small segment of the small portion of the community that visits the forums even mention wanting something like this, so it's safe to assume the majority of players are good with how it is.

And stop referring to "other shooters" as if that's some sort of reference for how this game should be. Among the many reasons why it's idiotic to compare them, most importantly is the fact that you're talking about CoF on guns that are firing 10+ rounds a second, and trying to apply the logic to guns that fire once every four seconds. Additionally, the time to kill in those games is less than a second, compared to this game where a kill requires repeated well aimed shots on specific components. You wouldn't be able to use hardly anything effectively outside of 200m. You can't just do that, you are literally turning the game into dice roll warrior and a large portion of the community would quit within days.

[cSand]

What if the torso weapons didn't converge (just at optimal range) but the arms did?