Nightbird, on 17 June 2018 - 09:44 AM, said:
The non-pinpoint I'm imagining is one where if you chain fire weapons one at a time, you'll hit the same point, but if you fire two, the targeting computer will place the end points 0.5 (or X.X) meters apart, so that you will not see destructive interference between weapon systems. For example, for two gauss shots to hit the same point means that at some distance from the target, the gauss rounds are colliding in mid-air. Lasers also have a width and overlapping would cause interference. The more weapons you alpha, because each weapon will be aimed at a slightly different point, the spread gets larger. It should not be random though, whatever the most space efficient way to arrange the points are should be used in a predictable manner. A weapon on the left shouldn't be hitting the right side of the spread, and vice versa. X.X spacing can also vary by weapon, an AC20 needs more space than AC2 etc... therefore it can be CPU taxing on both client and server. The end result is that big alphas are punished with spread.
As much as I love this concept... HSR makes it very difficult to do, if not impossible. We one time had delayed non-pinpoint convergence in this game. It was great. But the power of the Lag Shield was even more powerful. So thus we got HSR.
However, I do wonder if we could do a "targeting CPU" concept, where each weapon would "take up" so much targeting CPU when fired. Fire over the CPU and accuracy is lost. Want more CPU for your targeting? Get a targeting computer installed. The very weight of it would counter overly high damage. (Then we can lose the current advantages of the targeting computer, which didn't make much sense to me.)
However, once again, I don't think it could work.
However balancing could fall down to "how much CPU does your individual mech have", and "how much CPU does shooting a weapon take when it shoots" could be adjusted. A poorer running mech could have better CPUs to offset their performance. Another mech might have better CPU for specific weapons, such as for LRMs, meaning it could shoot larger alphas of that weapon system without having issues/accuracy.
Though, I do presume that homing missiles would have to be reworked, maybe having worse tracking (accuracy) if too many missiles are fired at once? Hard to really say...
Needless to say, I'd love to have convergence being a balancing factor. But I do also believe that the term "skill" with aiming would come up in complaints if it did...