10 replies to this topic

[Karone]

I'm not sure if there is another forum thread for this topic, but nonetheless, PPC's in general have been quite disappointing as of late. A massive 30 to 50 percent of the time i have found that PPC's will phase through a target im firing at. Alot of the times i will have lined up dead center CT shots and what should be a nice juicy bit of damage or even a kill shot, ends up being nothing but a disappointed sigh.

Another problem with said weapon system, is it phasing partway through a mech, and a perfect frontal shot will do damage to a mech's rear arc in some wild voodoo fashion.

This has been going on for a long time and it would be optimal if the team at PGI could find a fix for this, i hesitate to use any PPC weapons system due to this major flaw.

[LordNothing]

ignore the ppc trails, those do not have collision hulls. only the projectile at the head does. people have posted video where they show the ppc trail going through your torso, but its almost always because the mech walked into it after the projectile passed.

convergence can also be a factor on some mechs, a tight grouping of ppcs is preferred to reduce convergence error. if you are doing a warhawk with 2 on each side, group them by 2s and fire in alternating fashion. if you fire one on each side the error is more.

with lights, lead by 1-2 mech widths and aim about hip level.

Edited by LordNothing, 16 March 2024 - 04:26 PM.

[Bulletsponge0]

Karone, on 16 March 2024 - 03:57 PM, said:

I'm not sure if there is another forum thread for this topic, but nonetheless, PPC's in general have been quite disappointing as of late. A massive 30 to 50 percent of the time i have found that PPC's will phase through a target im firing at. Alot of the times i will have lined up dead center CT shots and what should be a nice juicy bit of damage or even a kill shot, ends up being nothing but a disappointed sigh.

Another problem with said weapon system, is it phasing partway through a mech, and a perfect frontal shot will do damage to a mech's rear arc in some wild voodoo fashion.

This has been going on for a long time and it would be optimal if the team at PGI could find a fix for this, i hesitate to use any PPC weapons system due to this major flaw.

PPCs (of all varieties) also have hit reg issues if the paperdoll is still flashing from one ppc hit as another ppc hits. That is on top of the hit reg issues already present in the game.

[Karone]

LordNothing, on 16 March 2024 - 04:24 PM, said:

ignore the ppc trails, those do not have collision hulls. only the projectile at the head does. people have posted video where they show the ppc trail going through your torso, but its almost always because the mech walked into it after the projectile passed.

convergence can also be a factor on some mechs, a tight grouping of ppcs is preferred to reduce convergence error. if you are doing a warhawk with 2 on each side, group them by 2s and fire in alternating fashion. if you fire one on each side the error is more.

with lights, lead by 1-2 mech widths and aim about hip level.

I understand what your trying to say, but for 1, Im not talking about the PPC trails, they are only visible from a side view, and of course thats just a visual oddity of it seeming to phase thru a mech. Im talking about straight up torso shots from 300m literally phasing thru a mech and not even hitting the terrain behind said mech. Sometimes my crosshair will even go red as if i hit the mech but it does no damage. 2, ballistic weapons have the same convergence at range or even close up shooting a fast mech. My ability to lead shots and compensate for convergence is not the problem. I appreciate your input nonetheless

Bulletsponge0, on 16 March 2024 - 04:40 PM, said:

PPCs (of all varieties) also have hit reg issues if the paperdoll is still flashing from one ppc hit as another ppc hits. That is on top of the hit reg issues already present in the game.

Thats a very good point, ive noticed that aswell trying to chainfire ppc's. Thanks for the input

Edited by Karone, 16 March 2024 - 04:56 PM.

[Alexander of Macedon]

Yep, just last night I had a PPC go straight through my own (near-fresh) CT to hit my cherry-red structure through my open rear armor. Doesn't happen constantly but I've seen it happen occasionally for years. Some of it's questionable hitboxes on some 'mechs, but not all of it.

[Krashbox]

I sometimes noticed that I can shoot er-ppcs between the legs of a light mech standing still facing me (spider for instance) without the orb hitting either leg. I wish I was that good in hitting the head

[LordNothing]

its also time for my usual speech that hit detection is an imperfect science. made less scientific by the fact that they are using floating point vectors. you cant even assume that float means 32-bit and double means 64-bit float because c++ (what cryengine uses) is very ambiguous about this. so i prefer explicitly sized types over float and int in my own code. ive seen sizeof(float) return both 32 and 64 on 64 bit systems. i do know that in quake velocities higher than 2000 m/s were problematic and that was 32 bit math. and things may be rounded down to 16-bit float for serialization into network packets to save space. pushing for higher velocities may be an issue that leads to poor quality hit detection if the datatype used is in fact 32 bit.

i personally do not see a whole lot of phase through and i have ping times from alaska. maybe its intrinsic of low ping or low ping vs high ping. the crosshair turning red may be client side and the server can disagree with that. server's word is final.

some mechs do have rear hitboxes you can reliably hit from the front with sufficient elevation, king crabs come to mind, which is why i will never run an xl engine in one.

Edited by LordNothing, 16 March 2024 - 07:51 PM.

[MarcinT1981]

LordNothing, on 16 March 2024 - 07:47 PM, said:

king crabs come to mind, which is why i will never run an xl engine in one.

You're doing it very wrong. King Crab is a walking CT that lacks the hitpoints of a Marauder or Annihilator, or the speed of an Atlas or Fafnir's ECM. Try this, but unfortunately it won't work without XL
kgc-000b

[Gasboy]

MarcinT1981, on 16 March 2024 - 11:49 PM, said:

You're doing it very wrong. King Crab is a walking CT that lacks the hitpoints of a Marauder or Annihilator, or the speed of an Atlas or Fafnir's ECM. Try this, but unfortunately it won't work without XL
kgc-000b

Did you read what he wrote? Try it.

He basically said he won't do XL in the King Crabs BECAUSE YOU CAN RELIABLY HIT REAR ARMOR FROM THE FRONT. Assuming what he said is true, that KC you linked is dead on arrival due to having 1 armor on all the rear armor locations.

[LordNothing]

MarcinT1981, on 16 March 2024 - 11:49 PM, said:

You're doing it very wrong. King Crab is a walking CT that lacks the hitpoints of a Marauder or Annihilator, or the speed of an Atlas or Fafnir's ECM. Try this, but unfortunately it won't work without XL
kgc-000b

you can go for ct kills if you want, most fold quite readily to front rst shots.and since a lot of people put xls in them, its usually a kill and not a cleaving. im alaskan i know my crabs.

Edited by LordNothing, 17 March 2024 - 04:50 PM.

[Arnetheus]

Karone, on 16 March 2024 - 03:57 PM, said:

A massive 30 to 50 percent of the time i have found that PPC's will phase through a target im firing at.

An arbitrary overexaggerated number, one that has nothing to do with what others experience normally.
Yes, this game does have the occasional hitreg issues.
If you think it happens more often to you than normal, might wanna investigate if there's some issues between your ISP and PGI servers.

Quote

...i hesitate to use any PPC weapons system due to this major flaw.

You might as well stop using all the other direct-fire projectile weapons then, cause there's basically no difference between ballistics and PPCs, as far as hitreg goes.

Due to HSR being both a blessing and a curse, plenty of "funny" things can happen.
Like 2 mechs with hitscan weapons killing each other at the same time, something simply impossible in a lagless/LAN scenario. That one is an extremely rare case though.

Bulletsponge0, on 16 March 2024 - 04:40 PM, said:

PPCs (of all varieties) also have hit reg issues if the paperdoll is still flashing from one ppc hit as another ppc hits.

That makes no sense.
Paperdoll flashes faster on hitreg after one semi-recent change. Either you're not paying attention or expecting the colour to change on every hit somehow. Plenty of mechs have enough armor and/or structure nowdays for their paperdoll colour to swap slowly, depending on your damage output.