Posted 13 October 2015 - 11:18 PM
A quick thought on weapon convergence, quirks, and balancing...
Consider the CPLT-K2. It had two VERY widely-spaced energy hard points (LA, RA), two closely-spaced ones (torso), and two kinda medium-spaced ones for ballistics (LT, RT). Now, what WAS the stock loadout on that thing? PPCs (LONG range) in the arms, MGs (SHORT range) and MLs (MEDIUM-ish range) in the torsos. SO, if you run a custom K2 build with, say, UAC/5s in the side torso points, and MLs in the 4 E points, you get something pretty interesting with convergence. The arm MLs are in points ORIGINALLY intended for LONG-range weapons. Maybe the K2's arms can only converge so far (lacking lower arm actuators, as they do). Say they're unable to converge on a target within the PPC's minimum range of 90m. So, regardless of the weapon you mount there, it simply CAN NOT converge to pinpoint on a target within 90m. From 90m to infinity, though, it can converge to pinpoint. And that convergence speed is set (and affected by the elite skill PINPOINT, of course). The side torso ballistic points are another matter entirely. They were made for MGs, and MGs are point-blank weapons. So as long as you're sporting MGs there, they can converge quickly to virtually 0.01m (1cm) if need be. Call it 5m MINIMUM for ALL weapons systems, no matter what. Cool. But then you remove the .5t MG and replace it with a 9t UAC/5. Bigger, heavier. Takes a LOT more space, thus limiting the usefulness of that hard point's convergence capabilities. So, we limit any OTHER ballistic weapon in that hard point to a minimum convergence range of at least 120m. Make it 180 for Gauss, because WEIGHT AND BULK! And those arm-mounted E weapons? Well, again, set to converge at as close at 90m. Same applies for MLs, LLs, LPLs, SLs, and so on. Inside that range, their convergence is inversely proportional to the proportion of that minimum convergence range. That is, if a target is 30 meters off, then any weapon mounted there will only converge to 2/3 the actual distance between the muzzle and the center of Line of Sight. Call it a 6-meter distance from center line, for sake of argument. So, at 30m, the RA weapon would be, AT BEST, 4m off-center of the reticle. At 60m, that's 2m off-center to the right. And at 90m and beyond, it's dead-on. The further out from that range, of course, the more quickly it can converge from its previous range.
Take that K2 into battle. It's being harassed by a rather hot ACH-B build. That poor Arctic Cheetah pilot just overheated his mech RIGHT IN FRONT OF that K2 Cat, at about 60m. The K2 driver has cooled off enough to drop an alpha strike on the poor kitty. But at THAT range, he knows his convergence is crap. He just conveniently forgets in the heat of the moment. SO, his two torso MLs hit dead-center. His two UAC/5s each hit off-center by about 50% of their center-line-to-muzzle distance, and the arm-mounted MLs hit off-center by 67% of their center-line-to-muzzle distance, barely catching the shoulders of the poor, poor kitty. In all, the ACH loses 10 CT armor, and 5 armor each LT, LA, RT, RA, assuming perfect center-mass aim. His mech fires back up, and he proceeds with the facehugging.
Consider then, that there could be a convergence bonus quirk for certain weapon systems for that mech, such as PPCs in the arms having a higher convergence speed, and MGs as well. Why? Those are the weapons it was DESIGNED for, and deviating from the original design should have its little drawbacks.
Another example. A TBR with both of the 2E arm omnipods has some significant distance between them. WITHOUT the lower arm actuators, the convergence is still limited to 90m or beyond. WITH the lower arm actuators, there's a somewhat slow convergence within that range to the virtual 5m point-blank. Whatever. Hell, call it 30m. Now, there's some reason to WANT lower arm actuators in a mech that has them as no-weight optional equipment.
And then consider the HBK-4P Swayback. Used to be THE knife-fighting medium to fear. That RT has 6 E hard points. And when you look at the mech, they're right there next to one another. Convergence on THOSE should be ridiculously quick, because GEOMETRY REASONS! Assuming MPL or smaller weapons, of course. It could fall off a bit for LLs and LPLs, and back to the full normal (or maybe a tad longer even) for PPCs and ERPPCs. Call it a quirk. MAKE it a quirk.
JR7 chassis (Oxide excluded for obvious reasons)? Add a 10m nerf to the minimum convergence range for arm-mounted E weapons, because they're so far apart AND there's a long torso ahead of (and between) them. Call it a build-in safety measure by the manufacturer. Whatever. No lower arm actuators anyhow. Maybe offset it with a better cooldown for MPL and smaller E weapons in the arms, because there's so little else IN those arms to draw primary DC and AC power anyhow.
Convergence for large ( >AC/2) ballistics in torsos might get range/speed nerfed, too, to help balance out the ballistic boats.
JM6 chassis gets an across-the-board quirk for arm-weapon convergence speed and range, mostly because the arms are odd in geometry, the torso doesn't protrude forward, etc. Same for Blackjack. And HBR, and WHM (when it finally releases in February, just in time to compete with DooM for my playing time).
Anyhow, those are some examples. See where I'm going with this?
Also, convergence should be a non-issue with LRMs and SSRMs, since they're guided missiles. That said, swapping unguided missiles into their hard points (say, SRM-6s to replace the stock LRMs in a CPLT-A1) would incur a penalty to convergence within 180m (the original minimum range of the LRM for IS mechs). Maybe just a negative quirk for all SRMs for convergence in such builds. Couldn't make as much difference in a STK, of course, as narrow a chassis as that is.
Are ya followin' what I'm suggesting here?