62 replies to this topic

[Gamuray]

Solis Obscuri, on 23 August 2016 - 03:57 PM, said:

@davoodoo I think the way arms penalize you (as if they were leg mounted weapons for partial cover purposes in TT) is a problem in and of itself. And it's one I'd like to see addressed, give us some way to move those actuators and fire over things.

But not all mechs areas blessed with their torso hardpoint locations as the Kodiak. Look at an Awesome or an Atlas.

And meanwhile other designs like the Jagermech and Stalker have presented balance issues in the past due to their very high arm mount locations.

Any design solution needs to comprehensively address all mount lotions, not just penalize some to reward others.

Yes, that is something difficult. High vs low torso mounts and lack of tradeoffs. The KDK will certainly be affected by more damage spread and not be as lethal, but so would a direwolf or king crab. We have quirks. This system won't make quirks go away, THAT I never claimed.

[1453 R]

Gamuray, on 23 August 2016 - 04:20 PM, said:

I know about Gimbals. I don't see any on our weapons.. that'd be visible on the model. Besides, Gimbals on weapons that aren't turrets have strict limits due to requiring space to move the whole weapon system (multi-ton in mwo, requires a lot of room). So angles end up limited (an example would be tank destroyers. Quite a limit in weapon angling... Except worse in mwo because the whole mech internal isn't built around the weapon... usually)

We don't see sensor apertures, vents, actuator machinery, battle damage or in fact a lot of other stuff on the models, either. These are big giant mostly-finctional war machines - there's a limit to the small-system detailing Piranha can, or indeed should, put into a 'Mech model.

Your system is bad, Gamuray. It almost completely invalidates torso-mounted weaponry that isn't guided missiles, and it means any 'Mech with widely spaced weapons has to essentially forget those weapons exist due to being almost impossible to properly aim ("point your crosshair twenty degrees off-target and hope you've done your trigonometry correctly for the exact range you're at or your King Krab NEVER HITS ANYTHING AGAIN!").

[cazidin]

Gamuray, on 23 August 2016 - 03:39 PM, said:

Your right, it's counter to intuition (or counter to what instincts would say). Will it, for the first couple shots, confuse people? Yes. But what would you do for aim if you realize your weapon hits to the right of the crosshair? Aim left, and start hitting again. Now, will those addicted to alpha striking adapt? Maybe not, but we don't want alpha striking all day without drawback... so.. they seem to have the short end of the stick there regardless. (I love them, I do, but their alphas aren't healthy. We need some interventions here.)

Oh, I know it'll be a very large affect on gameplay. What I don't believe though is that it'll be some super difficult thing that takes forever to get used to. Will it take longer than just going "Oh, don't fire 6 ppc's and I won't overheat"? Yes, it'll be a skill or experience based adaption rather than a knowledge based adaption. At least for the most part. Energy draw is kind of that way too at the moment, what with learning timings and such.

ED-skill adaption for timed shots (or just don't have an alpha over x damage)
ZC-adaption based on offset shot, experience with a particular mech leads to unconcious corrections.

"Every single FPS has the bullet go where the crosshair goes" Ok, sure. I'll accept that and ignore delayed/random trajectories, because those are silly. But the difference is that they normally carry all weapons in the arms or on rotating turrets. And usually only have one weapon in addition to that. Mechs have numerous weapons in many different locations, and often have them hard mounted to a position, with exception to arm mounts (and even then, numerous, parallel mounted weapons, unlike most FPS).

Also, the reason I used real life examples is more to suggest that it's not as difficult to adapt to offset aiming as one would believe, so long as a few practice shots are taken to get the feel of it. Yes, ranges and such. But getting a new mech should come with time required to get the feel of it, learn how it works. Currently, I can jump in a thunderbolt, warhammer, jester, after being in a black knight or something. Sure they move a bit different and mounts are a bit higher on some (which won't feel any different now, except weapons higher than your cockpit that are torso mounted will be able to shoot people even if your reticle is not quite clear yet... don't panic, no use if you can't see), but jumping from one to the other takes very little adaption (maybe a bit with jester for drastic shape difference). ZC would certainly give advantage to those who stick with it in a mech long enough to naturally correct for weapon locations.. and I don't see how that can be a bad thing, as it's a natural reward of just being better with a mech.

I don't believe it'll take extreme adaption for players. After a few matches I do believe they'll have enough feel for it (assuming they don't act like it doesn't exist... and that can't be help in ANY system) to use it reasonably well. And Tiers, flawed currently as they are, could help mitigate effects of elitists who've mastered it conquering new players who still need to get the feel for it.


Cazidin, your input has been great, in fact, very useful for me to dig into the ins and outs of this. I appreciate that you have continued discussing this with me, I do hope that my attitude originally can be excused, you certainly are making a good analysis of where this idea could falter. Which is a needed thing!

No problem. It was just a misunderstanding originally. I was actually thinking of a work around to the multiple shot placement problem and I came up with a decent solution, I think. Basically, when you lock onto a mech (Press R!) you will get several dynamic targeting reticles that show you roughly where each hit will land in real time. Unfortunately, this may prove far too difficult to code now.

One more problem that I didn't offer before was that this may obsolete or at least indirectly nerf mechs with multiple torso mounts as mechs with more arm mounted weapons may be considered meta, as all their damage will go to one point if I understand you correctly.

Also. You're right that players would adapt, I think I posed the wrong question. Players can and will adapt, even if it takes them some time, the question should be will they want to adapt or would this system become another Ghost Heat or Mini Map Controversy?