1094 replies to this topic

[Hotthedd]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 09 February 2016 - 12:29 PM, said:

When I said pretend, I meant we were pretending that we only have one gun able to fire at any given time like it was a modern FPS where you can only fire one gun at a time (for more obvious reasons), despite carrying multiple guns at once.

I'm not ready to full-out support enforced chain fire. I just wish chain fire was a viable alternative.

[Dagorlad13]

Hotthedd, on 09 February 2016 - 10:50 AM, said:

Nobody can be in cover 100% of the time, unless you are playing in EU prime time.

And no one can hit you 100% of the time with 100% accuracy when you briefly leave cover and therefore there is no good argument to ruin this game with an RNG based COF system. Putting COF in MWO would be as bas as NGE was for Starwars Galaxies.

[Krivvan]

IronClaws, on 09 February 2016 - 12:55 PM, said:

And no one can hit you 100% of the time with 100% accuracy when you briefly leave cover

Correction, they can't do it unless you stand still staring at the enemy before dying and complaining about pinpoint lasers.

[Gas Guzzler]

Dingo Red, on 08 February 2016 - 03:20 PM, said:

That doesn't exactly translate into the cockpit view.



Highly trained individuals might be trained well enough to run and aim in a way allowing them to achieve a decent accuracy, but hardly perfect aim, and blow that up to 'mech scale where there's so many factors working against a pin-point aim... it doesn't make sense to me.

The tiny difference in aim that the OP proposes probably models the accuracy that SF can achieve while running pretty darn well anyway. It's not like that silly picture posted above which puts the laser at a 30 degree offset.

Blown up to a 31st century war machine scale, and your telling me that a computer can't be as accurate as a human can?


This whole realism argument needs to go. The discussion should be about gameplay not about realism.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 09 February 2016 - 11:04 AM, said:

Meant lowest common denominator, sorry. Balancing should be based on team play though, not solo queue, because this is a team game, so it should be expected to balanced around such. PUGs aren't known very well for their team play, that is just part of the PUG life.


ERLL + Gauss at best is 42 damage, (3 ERLL + Gauss), which isn't enough to kill anyone but maybe a standing still light.
ERPPC + Gauss is at best 35 damage, which is decent enough to give fat ERLL spam mechs pause, but is still not enough consistent damage to really be threatening in PUG queue.

The best solo queue mechs have always been around mid-range, so still not really sure where this lolpha sniper thing comes from since the Whale fell from grace.

I heard forumites whining about Dragon Slayers doing 30 PPFLD at 1000 meters back in the day. Figure that one out.

[wanderer]

Quote

What if I were to tell you I have played on a MWO server not owned by PGI

I'd tell you to post Youtube links on Reddit or the like with video proof of said "fixing".

Because at that point you'd cause a nuclear fecal-storm of gamewide proportions.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Hotthedd, on 09 February 2016 - 12:54 PM, said:

I'm not ready to full-out support enforced chain fire. I just wish chain fire was a viable alternative.

Why, I'm just confused on why it needs to be a thing? Any thing you try and do to make it a viable alternative is going to be hamfisted by nature, because there is no real reason to chain fire outside of cockpit shake, which doesn't really work with lasers.

[Hotthedd]

IronClaws, on 09 February 2016 - 12:55 PM, said:

And no one can hit you 100% of the time with 100% accuracy when you briefly leave cover and therefore there is no good argument to ruin this game with an RNG based COF system. Putting COF in MWO would be as bas as NGE was for Starwars Galaxies.

No one can hit you 100% of the time, but ANYONE can hit with 100% accuracy in the second that they leave cover to shoot.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 09 February 2016 - 01:16 PM, said:

Why, I'm just confused on why it needs to be a thing? Any thing you try and do to make it a viable alternative is going to be hamfisted by nature, because there is no real reason to chain fire outside of cockpit shake, which doesn't really work with lasers.

And that is the problem, there is no reason in game to do it because group fire is 100% better. One reason for it would be to make the game more lore-friendly. In lore chain fire was optimal, and alpha strikig/group fire was only used in desperation.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Hotthedd, on 09 February 2016 - 01:21 PM, said:

One reason for it would be to make the game more lore-friendly. In lore chain fire was optimal, and alpha strikig/group fire was only used in desperation.

In the books maybe, TT without special rules never made the distinction, luck had to be on your side to hit the same component yes, but there were no special aim penalties for firing multiple weapons. The question is though what side effects doing this could have.

Let's say we enforce chain-firing by making alphas pretty much worthless because of aim, you allow the engagement range to shorten because the threat of long range fire is lessened. Now, you could counteract that by reducing the amount of armor each mech has (like removing double armor) to make long range a threat, but in the end, what was the point? None of this encourages chain-firing to be a thing outside of maybe trying to spam something like dakka maybe.

[wanderer]

Quote

If TTK was as low as you claim matches would last a couple minutes. Since this is not the case, you are clearly exaggerating.

Did you need more examples? I've got plenty close to hand.

[nehebkau]

wanderer, on 09 February 2016 - 01:28 PM, said:

Did you need more examples? I've got plenty close to hand.

Well I think someone got served -- bet he wasn't expecting that.

[Gas Guzzler]

wanderer, on 09 February 2016 - 01:28 PM, said:

Did you need more examples? I've got plenty close to hand.

That's the group queue for you. Let me guess, both teams played really standoff-ish and whenever someone poked and got shot once by one mech they just instantly died because of how low TTK is. I'm sure the winning team didn't just zerg rush the other team, catching a few of them off guard at a time with 6-8 mechs shooting each one until they died. I'm sure focus fire had nothing to do with it.

CoF/lack of convergence would have a negligible effect on the brute force brawl zerg rush. It doesn't matter if the shots are a little inaccurate, 8 mechs are going to drop a mech in seconds no matter what. That's why positioning and teamwork is so important.

I get that you were just proving him wrong about the couple minute match thing, but you could do a zerg rush with nothing but SRMs (weapons that already spread damage) and have exactly the same result.

Edited by Gas Guzzler, 09 February 2016 - 01:34 PM.

[Hotthedd]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 09 February 2016 - 01:26 PM, said:

In the books maybe, TT without special rules never made the distinction, luck had to be on your side to hit the same component yes, but there were no special aim penalties for firing multiple weapons. The question is though what side effects doing this could have.

Let's say we enforce chain-firing by making alphas pretty much worthless because of aim, you allow the engagement range to shorten because the threat of long range fire is lessened. Now, you could counteract that by reducing the amount of armor each mech has (like removing double armor) to make long range a threat, but in the end, what was the point? None of this encourages chain-firing to be a thing outside of maybe trying to spam something like dakka maybe.

Yes, by lore I mean the books, TROs, etc.
Having a player controlled CoF does not make alphas useless.
Long-range fire is still a threat. (If everyone is chain firing, range is still a thing)
The thing that encourages chain firing would be the precision one could only get from it.

[wanderer]

Here's a couple on other maps. Surely, it's hard to kill giant robots in the modern day. It's a little further to walk, so it took an extra minute. Again, here's your TTK at work.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Hotthedd, on 09 February 2016 - 01:34 PM, said:

Yes, by lore I mean the books, TROs, etc.
Having a player controlled CoF does not make alphas useless.
Long-range fire is still a threat. (If everyone is chain firing, range is still a thing)
The thing that encourages chain firing would be the precision one could only get from it.

If everyone is chain firing, focusing down a target is much harder because tracking a target for 4x the time is much harder and gives them more time to dodge/spread the damage. If we are still assuming that heat/movement also play into the CoF penalty, that means you cannot be spreading out and dealing effective damage at the same time, and eventually heat will play into things because the most effective long range weapons are all decently hot, outside of Gauss (which would be the sniper weapon of choice, yet again). So yes, long range would not really be a thing with forced chain-firing thanks to CoF.

[Hotthedd]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 09 February 2016 - 01:40 PM, said:

If everyone is chain firing, focusing down a target is much harder because tracking a target for 4x the time is much harder and gives them more time to dodge/spread the damage. If we are still assuming that heat/movement also play into the CoF penalty, that means you cannot be spreading out and dealing effective damage at the same time, and eventually heat will play into things because the most effective long range weapons are all decently hot, outside of Gauss (which would be the sniper weapon of choice, yet again). So yes, long range would not really be a thing with forced chain-firing thanks to CoF.

Sounds like a fun game. We should try it.

[Gas Guzzler]

wanderer, on 09 February 2016 - 01:36 PM, said:

Here's a couple on other maps. Surely, it's hard to kill giant robots in the modern day. It's a little further to walk, so it took an extra minute. Again, here's your TTK at work.

Focus fire/bad play by the losing team. I remember that first match, it was a disaster. Nerfing accuracy isn't going to change anything. Just look at TTK from 6 Griffins with SRMs shooting a Dire Wolf. No pin point accuracy yet abysmally low TTK. I sense something else at work here.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Hotthedd, on 09 February 2016 - 01:42 PM, said:

Sounds like a fun game. We should try it.

So you mean a game without long range :/

We had that once (era of the Splaturion and Splatcat), while it was fun, it is nice to actually have long range be a thing too.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 09 February 2016 - 01:52 PM.

[Hotthedd]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 09 February 2016 - 01:51 PM, said:

So you mean a game without long range :/

We had that once (era of the Splaturion and Splatcat), while it was fun, it is nice to actually have long range be a thing too.

Not at all, as a matter of fact, good GR snipers would be deadly, and ERLL long range builds would still be viable.

[Gryphorim]

I like the OP's suggestion, even modern tracking hardware has a degree of error in it's locking ability, esp. when utilised from an erratically moving frame. It's also in the spirit of old-school Battletech, where skill didn't mean how fast I can move my cursor onto a specific point, but also how can I mitigate the above degree of error and hit where I'm telling the machine to.

Take a look at gimballed weapons in Elite:Dangerous for more ideas on visualising crosshairs for imprecise weapons. In that, each weapon has it's own crosshair, and they collectively "hunt" a small area over the locked target. Similar effect, different visualisation.

As for the discussion of chainfire, would it work better if we could adjust each weapon group's chainfire properties in Mechlab? For example, adjusting how fast it goes through each weapon, so that AC's or missiles can be fired at a specific cadence, or that lasers overlap burn duration by half or toggling whether it auto-double-taps UACs or whatever suits your playstyle.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

So I'm really just wondering with all this cone of fire stuff, I notice everyone is mostly talking about how lasers are and stuff about high laser alphas, what happens with SRMs, SSRMs, LRMs, and what of burst firing ballistics?

Also why does it even matter so much about the cone of fire on lasers when you are supposed to just spread damage by twisting anyway, which means it takes skill of the enemy to keep the crosshair on a single component and your skill in match to make sure they can't hit it. This whole cone of fire thing mostly makes twisting damage useless since it does it automatically for you either through artificially throwing their enemy's shots into spaces they aren't aiming or by only allowing chain fire to not do that, which leads to excessively easy to spread damage and an enemy who would lose to anyone who can twist and fire something like SRMs.