425 replies to this topic

[MischiefSC]

Bishop Steiner, on 14 June 2016 - 07:58 PM, said:

I prefer to work with elements of what we have than do a Blasterman and what if the perfect world. We already HAVE CoF no matter what BS they feed us, cuz "Machine Guns" thus it's not adding or coding anything new (though I would certainly prefer a lot more refinement than the MG CoF)

Changing their entire business model, no matter how John Lennon "Imagine" Ideal.... is even less likely to happen than Russ admitting pinpoint accurate aim for multiweapons is at the heart of most of this game's balance issues.

I'm game for whatever works and actually happens. We broke the mechanics drastically put of the gate and have aways been trying to shoehorn a half-assed solution while keeping now meaningless weapon values.

I am strongly in favor of a reasonable fix and am very flexible on what that looks like.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Bishop Steiner, on 14 June 2016 - 07:58 PM, said:

I prefer to work with elements of what we have than do a Blasterman and what if the perfect world. We already HAVE CoF no matter what BS they feed us, cuz "Machine Guns" thus it's not adding or coding anything new (though I would certainly prefer a lot more refinement than the MG CoF)

Well there are questions about how that is distributed, because spread is an inherent attribute of most shooter-oriented engines, but not how it is controlled afaik.

[wanderer]

Again, why randomize spread?

Make it predictable but constant deviation based on hardpoints and location. The point is all the damage doesn't go to a single point at the click of a button.

Let's take this fine looking Centurion. His hardpoints as shown form a vertical line, both in the right arm and left torso.



His right arm has three hardpoints (for this, let's say it's a triple AC/2 build). They fire a bit right of center on the arm crosshair. The top AC mount fires a bit high and right, the middle hardpoint straight but still a bit to the right of crosshair, the third hardpoint a bit low and to the right of crosshair. The arm mounted guns will spread hit in a vertical 1-2-3 line that spreads out with distance. If he brings his arm gradually up and fires 1-2-3, he'll even be able put all three shots into the same spot.

His left torso has three SRM launchers. They fire a bit left of center on the torso crosshair. The top SRM rack fires a bit left and up, the center one straight but a bit left, the bottom one a bit low and left of crosshair. Again, it's a vertical spread- SRMs will not only do their usual spread, but also impact high/middle/low. Again, he can bring his crosshairs up and fire his launchers in order to put them into the same spot. Spread on an alpha is predictable, but hardpoint spread can be prevented by shifting the crosshairs after each shot to get them into the same location. This prevents alphas from automatically getting a zero-spread hit.

If he had a Centurion with the dual CT energy hardpoints, they'd fire a bit high of center and a bit low of center if he mounted a pair of lasers. Again, you'd be able to put the crosshair on target, but all weapons wouldn't instantly be able to hit the same precise point. You could even cycle your weapons to do it, shifting your crosshairs to compensate as you fired each weapon in turn and knowing exactly where each gun was going to hit relative to the crosshairs.

You just couldn't fire all of them at once and have every weapon hit the same spot, you'd have to aim them in a predictable pattern of sequenced fire. Fire in bulk and your guns can't all compensate to hit the same spot. Lots of damage quick, but spread further across the target.

Fire in sequence? Less damage at once, but you can place that damage more accurately. Aim will matter.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

wanderer, on 14 June 2016 - 08:42 PM, said:

Make it predictable but constant deviation based on hardpoints and location. The point is all the damage doesn't go to a single point at the click of a button.

Let's take this fine looking Centurion. His hardpoints as shown form a vertical line, both in the right arm and left torso.

As I have said time and time again (three within this thread now), mount based spread/convergence/whatever only exacerbates problems for mechs with bad mounts, this is not a suitable option.

[Bishop Steiner]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 14 June 2016 - 08:45 PM, said:

As I have said time and time again (three within this thread now), mount based spread/convergence/whatever only exacerbates problems for mechs with bad mounts, this is not a suitable option.

and on this I fully agree, as well as making far less sense than the actual factual "random" factors that go into every single shot not taken using a guided missile pretty much ever.

[-Vompo-]

Ah the daily cof topic...

[wanderer]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 14 June 2016 - 08:45 PM, said:

As I have said time and time again (three within this thread now), mount based spread/convergence/whatever only exacerbates problems for mechs with bad mounts, this is not a suitable option.

You either put some kind of spread into weapons fire, or you can keep eating maximum alpha to a single location without fail in MWO. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Power draw? Doesn't stop the alpha blast, it just makes ghost heat generic.

And this actually gives you the option for tweaking hardpoints, so it's a potential CURE for badmountitis as you can give crappier hardpoint locations lower divergence, both relative to each other in a single location and for a 'Mech overall.

If a Vindicator was better at putting it's guns into a smaller cluster than a Blackjack, would that compensate somewhat for the Blackjacks higher weapon mounts? Would a Jenner IIC be as terrifying if it's six SRM launchers had significant divergence from each other, meaning alphas would scatter wider and be less effective than they are now?

[Quicksilver Aberration]

wanderer, on 14 June 2016 - 09:26 PM, said:

Power draw? Doesn't stop the alpha blast, it just makes ghost heat generic.

If you are worried about massive one shot but worthless afterward machines like the Dire Star, you are worried about the entirely wrong thing. If you don't think heat plays into what are acceptable alphas then you are already on shaky foundations because it absolutely does, the largest alphas are only able to shoot twice before being heat capped, lower the heat cap and that changes.

[MischiefSC]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 14 June 2016 - 09:29 PM, said:

If you are worried about massive one shot but worthless afterward machines like the Dire Star, you are worried about the entirely wrong thing. If you don't think heat plays into what are acceptable alphas then you are already on shaky foundations because it absolutely does, the largest alphas are only able to shoot twice before being heat capped, lower the heat cap and that changes.

Hence why you want a simple circle 'non-convergence' set of reticles that draw up to the central one in, to throw out random numbers, 2 seconds without a lock (converging at reticle distance) or 0.5 seconds at target range with a target lock. If you want to snap-shot you can shoot from the off-convergent reticles and scatter a bit or just shoot a weapon or two that will be on target.

Different weapons can even have different convergence modifiers; only a fraction of a second is necessary.

Then add a very, very tiny CoF effect based on movement. At full speed it should be a few meters deviation at 350m but enough to throw shots wide at long range, even with convergence. Have it almost eliminated by a target lock.

There's a few great ways to go about it. Again, the weapon damage, heat, armor, hit locations, etc. were built on the idea of at best, everyone standing still you're at 50/50 to hit someone with a single ML anywhere on their mech at 135m. If I shoot 2 LPLs and 5 MPLs at you they're going to hit 4-6 different locations and most likely I'll land 1 LPL and 2 MLs, all in 3 different spots.

The other option is massive rework of weapon heat, damage, range, etc. Based on the idea of using them to make single super-guns like what we do now and having perfect precision. Right now we've got a bad mix of the two and it creates a ton of issues.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

All a CoF does to Mechwarrior is turn it into a slow paced game of camping peekaboo.

That doesn't really sound like a good thing.

[Aresye]

Going back to what I said earlier on being a fan of controllable recoil, it sort of dawned on me that simply having impact and recoil in the first place would go a LONGGGG way to addressing this issue, even if perfect convergence stayed.

Lasers are kind of the odd ball though, as light isn't generally powerful enough to produce recoil, however they could have some form of "reverse" accuracy penalties as a solution.

In the lore, mechs would often reel from the impact and hits from lasers, due to the mechs gyroscopes having to compensate for losing large amounts of weight as armor slagged off.

Basically, what I mean by saying "reverse accuracy penalty," I'm talking about other players using lasers, which causes your own aim to suffer, and your lasers causes their aim to suffer.

So, worst case scenario, if everyone goes by, "Lasers are better because they have no recoil," and everybody takes lasers, then everybody is throwing each other's aim off with every hit (sometimes in the middle of a burn) due to the weight imbalance caused by the loss of armor plating, and in the end, we have longer TTK as a result.

[MischiefSC]

Aresye, on 15 June 2016 - 12:26 AM, said:

Going back to what I said earlier on being a fan of controllable recoil, it sort of dawned on me that simply having impact and recoil in the first place would go a LONGGGG way to addressing this issue, even if perfect convergence stayed.

Lasers are kind of the odd ball though, as light isn't generally powerful enough to produce recoil, however they could have some form of "reverse" accuracy penalties as a solution.

In the lore, mechs would often reel from the impact and hits from lasers, due to the mechs gyroscopes having to compensate for losing large amounts of weight as armor slagged off.

Basically, what I mean by saying "reverse accuracy penalty," I'm talking about other players using lasers, which causes your own aim to suffer, and your lasers causes their aim to suffer.

So, worst case scenario, if everyone goes by, "Lasers are better because they have no recoil," and everybody takes lasers, then everybody is throwing each other's aim off with every hit (sometimes in the middle of a burn) due to the weight imbalance caused by the loss of armor plating, and in the end, we have longer TTK as a result.

I get the logic but being hit is different from giving hits. It also pushes strongly to PPFLD.

The problem comes back to building superweapons. We build mechs by building a single superweapon. a SRM36 or a 55pt laser or a UAC40. The power of synergy to produce a single big weapon that delivers all its damage to a single pixel point.

That breaks the BT mechanics. You want to do that we need to completely re-evaluate damage, heat, etc. The TT values we've ported over and slightly tweaked don't work. If you want to use TT based values you need to in some way emulate the lack of accuracy built into it.

[GreyNovember]

Has anyone answered how this would behave when applied to LBXs and SRMs? Weapons that, yknow, spread by themselves already?

Secondary.

What about different calibers of weapons? Would the spread from an AC2 and a PPC be more or less the same? What about the spread from an SPL to an ERLL? What about dual gauss?

[Gryphorim]

Looking at this from the perspective of what would be easier to code, I think movement induced reticule sway is probably the easiest, and should work fine so long as it's not as violent as the shake induced by MASC. Making it follow a predictable infinitron shape, angled to whatever terrain the mech is traversing should be possible too.

Randomised cone/circular CoF is also possible, but should probably only be caused by ballistic/PPC recoil.
Maybe from missiles too, but that'd be somewhat pointless.
Lasers aren't going to generate recoil, so justifying CoF from laser fire isn't going to work.
Having a small amount of CoF for firing at an enemy without having them targetted, could work, though

I just hope PGI get the heat-induced longer duration idea working. Longer duration also cuts precision damage.

[Gryphorim]

GreyNovember, on 15 June 2016 - 03:07 AM, said:

Has anyone answered how this would behave when applied to LBXs and SRMs? Weapons that, yknow, spread by themselves already?

Secondary.

What about different calibers of weapons? Would the spread from an AC2 and a PPC be more or less the same? What about the spread from an SPL to an ERLL? What about dual gauss?

The total CoF effect being discussed here is a narrower cone than an LB10X spread, so effect would be minimal for LBX10/20, SRMs.
Effect on LB2/5X, minimal effect, as the scatter effect of the pellets would mean even if the center of spread would miss due to CoF, some pellets still likely to hit. So these would have higher hit probability at range.

I think CoF being discussed here would be same for all weapons on the mech, because it's more about simulating the inaccuracies in the fire-control hardware on the mech, and things like windage.
But mostly because it'd be easier to code.

Edited by Gryphorim, 15 June 2016 - 03:18 AM.

[Johnny Z]

Aresye, on 15 June 2016 - 12:26 AM, said:

Going back to what I said earlier on being a fan of controllable recoil, it sort of dawned on me that simply having impact and recoil in the first place would go a LONGGGG way to addressing this issue, even if perfect convergence stayed.

Lasers are kind of the odd ball though, as light isn't generally powerful enough to produce recoil, however they could have some form of "reverse" accuracy penalties as a solution.

In the lore, mechs would often reel from the impact and hits from lasers, due to the mechs gyroscopes having to compensate for losing large amounts of weight as armor slagged off.

Basically, what I mean by saying "reverse accuracy penalty," I'm talking about other players using lasers, which causes your own aim to suffer, and your lasers causes their aim to suffer.

So, worst case scenario, if everyone goes by, "Lasers are better because they have no recoil," and everybody takes lasers, then everybody is throwing each other's aim off with every hit (sometimes in the middle of a burn) due to the weight imbalance caused by the loss of armor plating, and in the end, we have longer TTK as a result.

If I am not mistaken a laser that does as much damage as an AC 10 would generate about as much recoil as an AC 10. Maybe because duration it wouldn't be a sudden recoil though. I don't know exactly but there would be a recoil in some form.

Edited by Johnny Z, 15 June 2016 - 03:53 AM.

[Hotthedd]

I would be fine with a compromise solution.
To appease the "aiming skillz" crowd, single chain fired shots while not too hot should remain perfectly precise, but a reticle bloom affected by movement, high heat, and group fired weapons would push this game more towards a BattleTech sim, and raise TTK.

[Bishop Steiner]

Johnny Z, on 15 June 2016 - 03:51 AM, said:

If I am not mistaken a laser that does as much damage as an AC 10 would generate about as much recoil as an AC 10. Maybe because duration it wouldn't be a sudden recoil though. I don't know exactly but there would be a recoil in some form.

Recoil (is what the shooter feels)? None. There is no kinetic force to a laser. On the receiving end, the very rapid lost of half a ton of armor (well in MWO a quarter ton, tops) could shift balance. After all 20 or more damage by any means required a piloting roll to stay standing. In MWO that would be 40 or more dmg, but still implies the loss of over a ton of armor causes inherent imbalance that can stagger a mech.

[Bishop Steiner]

MischiefSC, on 15 June 2016 - 02:15 AM, said:

The problem comes back to building superweapons. We build mechs by building a single superweapon. a SRM36 or a 55pt laser or a UAC40. The power of synergy to produce a single big weapon that delivers all its damage to a single pixel point.

That breaks the BT mechanics. You want to do that we need to completely re-evaluate damage, heat, etc. The TT values we've ported over and slightly tweaked don't work. If you want to use TT based values you need to in some way emulate the lack of accuracy built into it.

well summarized.

I mean I would love a game that could replicate the mechanics that Misterblastman wants.

Penetration, sloped armor, over individual sections, etc. Guess what game does that? Oh...and it still uses an aiming circle.

(Funnily enough I also found that if I actually pay attention to armor and weapon specs and not shoot the red parts of enemy tanks, my shots seldom bounce...)

But it's not Battletech, for better or worse. And it would take basically starting from the ground up and redoing everything..which ain't gonna happen.

[Metus regem]

Bishop Steiner, on 15 June 2016 - 07:04 AM, said:

well summarized.

I mean I would love a game that could replicate the mechanics that Misterblastman wants.

Penetration, sloped armor, over individual sections, etc. Guess what game does that? Oh...and it still uses an aiming circle.

(Funnily enough I also found that if I actually pay attention to armor and weapon specs and not shoot the red parts of enemy tanks, my shots seldom bounce...)

But it's not Battletech, for better or worse. And it would take basically starting from the ground up and redoing everything..which ain't gonna happen.

I know the feeling Bishop, in WOWs, by knowing armour thickness and power of my weapons on my Cruiser, I can use AP rounds to full effect and safely ignore the HE spam meta.