16 replies to this topic

[1Exitar1]

Hi everyone,

I have been having this problem with my snub PPC shots going THROUGH the target. I'm not talking a distant shot passing through the legs or arm and body. I'm talking about point blank shot passing through the torso of the target. In the past 3 days it has happened 4 times, three of which were today, two of those shots in one match.

WTH?

Is anyone else noticing this? I am in my Spider - 5V with a single snub PPC, so it's located in my lower torso. I've heard one other person that says it has happened to them and he/she said they were in a Raven, so it isn't just a Spider problem.

[crazytimes]

What you see on you screen versus what the server sees are different. Depending on ping and connection quality, you could mbe missing by a lot as far as the server is concerned.

[ScrapIron Prime]

Desync, bad ping on either the firer or the target, clipping over terrain... any of these things are possible.

[Dauntless Blint]

You can shoot through nearly stationary assault mechs front and hit their back armour in this game. Funky things happen.

[Therax]

I have had this occur when I had bad packet loss.

To diagnose if packet is the cause of you missing your shots;

1) Record your games with the in-game ping counter on your screen (press F9 for it to show up).

2) Re-watch your recorded game

3) Note your mechs heat and dissipation rate for when a ppc shot hits and compare that to the heat increase and dissipation for when your ppc shot phases through a target

4) If the heat on the phased shots spikes up normally, but then dissipates abnormally quickly, the game server never received the information packet from your game client that you fired your ppc. There was no shot, so there was no hit.


Packet lose can affect every weapon you attempt to fire, but is most easily noticed on ppcs due to the travel time and highly visible particle affects. Back when I was on a DSL internet connection I could have easily created the conditions to replicated this nearly 100% of the time.

[LordNothing]

an is erppc will move 63.3 meters between server ticks. more than enough space for a mech to slip through. there is no interframe hit detaction that im aware of. in the old days this would have been expensive on the cpus of the day, so they would have capped the velocity or elongated the hitbox for the projectile to compensate.

i remember in the days of quake if you gave something a velocity of over 1000 you risked the projectile doing weird things. this was using the instruction set for the x87 co-processor (a hard system requirement for the game) which could do up to 80-bit float, but was probibly doing fp32 for performance. it would take 2 or 3 ops to fill out the registers with a 32-bit data bus. you would do the operation and have to read out the result. a 32-bit fp operation could be done in 3 cycles vs 5 cycles for 64-bit or 7 for for the 80-bit mode. 64-bit fp can now be done in 3 cycles of 64-bit cpus, and i dont think anyone uses the 80 bit format for games, thats more of a science format. the x87 instruction set got absorbed into x86 in the pentium era and is still what most processors still use.

the constant push for more velocity doesn't help much. probibly causes us to miss more.

Edited by LordNothing, 24 July 2022 - 08:03 PM.

[caravann]

Better to drive through assaults with a flea. they never see that coming.

Can't miss with lasers, it has no velocity. In fact most of the guns could had their velocity removed.

LRM replaced with stream fired missiles, ballistics replaced with instant and target scan. Autocannons fire 5 shots, the 5 shots is a burning time on the target and the projectile is animation.

[PocketYoda]

Not much other players can do if you honestly feel this is happening (it does i've seen it) i'd seek support.. Us players cannot help you.

[Tarteso]

I have seen this also in my marauder a lot, lately, in both different matches and game sessions. These missed shots were made at 100-150 m, so I could see clearly how they pass throught the targets. Very annoying.

[LordNothing]

seems to be worse in mechs with spread out hardpoints. i have a rule where i would never put ppcs on different sides of the mech in the same group. it really messes with convergence especially if you have to lead the target.

guns could go off target if moving the crosshair from the mech to the terrain to the side (in "front" of a sidways moving mech) and further out in case of a leading shot. guns move a bit more outboard in that case, depending on how far you can trace a ray before hitting something.

it would be cool if the game could lock in the convergence range of the targeted mech, but if you are using the erppc you are probibly outside of sensor range in situations where it matters.

Edited by LordNothing, 25 July 2022 - 08:55 AM.

[TheCaptainJZ]

LordNothing, on 24 July 2022 - 07:39 PM, said:

an is erppc will move 63.3 meters between server ticks. more than enough space for a mech to slip through. there is no interframe hit detaction that im aware of. in the old days this would have been expensive on the cpus of the day, so they would have capped the velocity or elongated the hitbox for the projectile to compensate.

i remember in the days of quake if you gave something a velocity of over 1000 you risked the projectile doing weird things. this was using the instruction set for the x87 co-processor (a hard system requirement for the game) which could do up to 80-bit float, but was probibly doing fp32 for performance. it would take 2 or 3 ops to fill out the registers with a 32-bit data bus. you would do the operation and have to read out the result. a 32-bit fp operation could be done in 3 cycles vs 5 cycles for 64-bit or 7 for for the 80-bit mode. 64-bit fp can now be done in 3 cycles of 64-bit cpus, and i dont think anyone uses the 80 bit format for games, thats more of a science format. the x87 instruction set got absorbed into x86 in the pentium era and is still what most processors still use.

the constant push for more velocity doesn't help much. probibly causes us to miss more.

That's really interesting. I hadn't thought of that, but it would explain this kind of behavior. For sure, velocity of all weapons is higher than it used to be. I, myself, seemed to have issues with some PPCs hitting a couple weeks ago. I honestly don't like playing with PPCs a lot. I tend to miss more or it feels off somehow.

[1Exitar1]

TheCaptainJZ, on 25 July 2022 - 10:37 AM, said:

That's really interesting. I hadn't thought of that, but it would explain this kind of behavior. For sure, velocity of all weapons is higher than it used to be. I, myself, seemed to have issues with some PPCs hitting a couple weeks ago. I honestly don't like playing with PPCs a lot. I tend to miss more or it feels off somehow.

I don't like to play with them much either. I too have trouble with hitting targets with them. What's odd is that I am fine with ACs. Maybe it's the different velocities. I dunno. The Spider I'm talking about is fun to play though! Fast, maneuverable and very jumpy! With cooldown maxed, I can shoot the PPC faster than the regen sound takes to indicate the weapon is ready to fire again. Can't do that for very long though, because it starts to heat up fast. With the shots going through opponents and my inability to hit, I might have to give it up for another version.

[Nightbird]

lol @ the server not registering hits due to velocity. That's 100% not the case.

The two cases are 1. you pull the trigger, your client does the shoot animation, but your internet fails to deliver the message that you shot, so from your point of view the shot goes through the target and hits nothing. This case is less visible because you are still receiving messages and all mechs look to be moving normally to you. (But you will appear to be rubberbanding to other players)

2. you pull the trigger, but your internet is having a short break, and the mech that you aimed at isn't there anymore because the messages the server is sending you are not being received. This case is most visible as a "rubberbanding" where all mechs twitch to the correct position instead of moving smoothly

[LordNothing]

Nightbird, on 26 July 2022 - 09:52 AM, said:

lol @ the server not registering hits due to velocity. That's 100% not the case.

The two cases are 1. you pull the trigger, your client does the shoot animation, but your internet fails to deliver the message that you shot, so from your point of view the shot goes through the target and hits nothing. This case is less visible because you are still receiving messages and all mechs look to be moving normally to you. (But you will appear to be rubberbanding to other players)

2. you pull the trigger, but your internet is having a short break, and the mech that you aimed at isn't there anymore because the messages the server is sending you are not being received. This case is most visible as a "rubberbanding" where all mechs twitch to the correct position instead of moving smoothly

there is weirdness in maths libraries, especially game-optimized maths libraries. things like trig functions and square roots are approximate estimations designed to favor speed over accuracy. or where precision is intentionally thrown out to save space in data packets. floats also dont like big number vs little number calculation, useful to know when integrating trajectories. a good example there is the gravitational constant G, which is really big and you might get a nan when trying to figure the gravity between a small ship and a star. when dealing with comparation operations >,<,>=,<= you need to apply sensible epsilon values to the numbers being compared to compensate for small errors, and these are used in most hit detection algorithms. and that is before you introduce the problem of netcode.

granted its probibly netcode in most cases.

[1Exitar1]

I have come to the conclusion that it is a problem with my internet. I was just playing Conquest on the Vitric Station map, I captured a resource spot and was at the center of the map when I suddenly found myself back on the resource point! Talk about rubberbanding! I had left that spot at least 5 seconds earlier!

I have reset my router to no effect. I'm going to have to talk to my provider about this now.

[Nightbird]

1Exitar1, on 27 July 2022 - 09:02 AM, said:

I have come to the conclusion that it is a problem with my internet. I was just playing Conquest on the Vitric Station map, I captured a resource spot and was at the center of the map when I suddenly found myself back on the resource point! Talk about rubberbanding! I had left that spot at least 5 seconds earlier!

I have reset my router to no effect. I'm going to have to talk to my provider about this now.

If you use a wireless router, I highly suggest using a fixed line. Unless you use a very expensive wifi router, many overheat during gaming and shut down briefly to cool. This is fine for Youtube but terrible for gaming.

[1Exitar1]

Nightbird, on 27 July 2022 - 09:46 AM, said:

If you use a wireless router, I highly suggest using a fixed line. Unless you use a very expensive wifi router, many overheat during gaming and shut down briefly to cool. This is fine for Youtube but terrible for gaming.

My router is wired.

Anyways, I just started a match, we hadn't even fired at the enemy yet and I get knocked out of the game. Error message telling me that I have no internet connection. Try restarting the game; no joy. I trying connecting to the internet again; no joy (tells me that my password is wrong.) I finally have to restart my computer. I was able to get back on just in time for the match to finish. It must have been really short since I was only offline for about 3 minutes. Got the penalty timer for not finishing the match. Decided to give up for the night. Calling my provider in the morning.