153 replies to this topic

[Naitsirch]

von Bremerhaven, on 06 December 2012 - 06:50 AM, said:

Actually, this is somewhat more in keeping with canon. Autocannons are supposed to fire a 'stocatto stream of shells', which means that, essentially, autocannons are meant to be a DoT weapon that needs to be adjusted while firing to keep all the damage in one panel, similar to lasers. I don't think that the way they have addressed it is right, though. They should have ACs and the UAC5 behaving properly, rather than making the single shot take an accuracy nerf.

I love you for a well put and comprehensive post amongst a sea of non-argumenters, tipping my hat

[LethalKisses]

i dont think this mechanic has been in place for long .. i think something changed last patch.
i wondered why (on gaussapult) i was having a real hard time HSing standing still mechs.. case in point.. a commando was standing still in front of me maybe 80 meters away.. i dual gauss him to the head .. = redhead ... a catapult not more than 100 meters away tryin to cap base.. (standing still agian) took 4 double gauss hits to head AND 4 shots of quad lazer (med).
sommething has felt wrong since last patch.

say what you will about 4 months ago it being implemented .. but since tuesday it has become neigh impossable to HS in one dual gauss hit with a rake of x4 med lasers... a week ago i could kill consistantly with that ..

TBH .. it kinda upsets me a bit.. but hey.. no matter .. im just a player .. what do i know.

[Kommisar]

I'm going to leave a discussion of real world high-energy impact physics out of this and suggest that others do as well. For one, it has never been established what types of rounds these ACs are firing. It has also never been established what the material characteristics of mech armor is. Without that basic starting point, all we can do is guess and spin wheels.

Oh, plus it doesn't matter.

Autocannons are not machine guns. Everyone go that? If not, load up the stock Cataphract Trial mech and go fire the AC/10 on it. Nope, not really a machine gun. Autocannons are named such for the fact that they are auto-loaders. Meaning, you do not have a guy (loader) sitting in your mech somewhere shoving shells from the ammo bins into the breech. Unfortunately, over the years, people have erroniously believed that the "Auto" in Autocannons meant high rate of fire. It simply means that it will self load.

Okay. Got that out of the way.

As for the 0.25 meter value given in the July patch notes. Please note that "meter" in this case does not mean anything specific. That is an in-game unit of measure that the engine uses and is not set in stone to be the equivalent to one meter in real life scale. We do not know at what scale the devs built MWO. They could have built it one to one. Or, for some very valid reason or reasons the scale is something else entirely. Those that have done game development or modding will already know this. In "game scale", you could have an atlas be 1 meter tall.

So, we don't know a lot of things. What we do know is that the projectile weapons are not damaging just one location on impact. I've been playing since day one of the Founders Beta Testing. So, I "grew up" with the 0.25 and didn't notice anything wonky with it. I could direct most of my damage where I wanted it. I suspect that the diameter value for the shells has been bumped up. And this would be far, far, FAR, from the first undocumented patch change. Again, not critizing the devs on this; I can understand their reasons for wanting to keep some tweaks behind the curtain. After all, perception is a very powerful influence on people.

Back when I ran an online tournament that did a LOT of internal modifications for the Forgotten Hope Mod (BF42 & BF2), I did some "experiments". We had one side ranting up and down that their SMG was useless. So, we fixed it and released client code showing the change. But, I slipped the original code back in server side which overrides the client code. Using the same piece of gear they had been using for months, they were all praising how good the weapon was now and use of the kit went way up. To be followed by the other side sending in complaints that I had made the SMG too "uber" now. I did the same thing for a tank and a few other things as well. And these weren't just my whiny, over-reactive kiddie guys. This was from my solid veteran playes as well. Guys that I had hand-picked to be officers and testers. It was really a remarkable experience and epiphany of human behavior.

And you know what. I'm as prone to fall for this trap as anyone else.

What I am not terribly fond of, is if they made the impact radius such that you can not put all of an AC shot into one area at all. That the impact area is such that it will always spread the damage around. That really changes things in a big way. It really changes how I fight. And that is what I would like to know.

[Undead Bane]

Vlad Ward, on 06 December 2012 - 06:51 AM, said:

Depending on your amount of experience with online games, you should know better than to take a Game Master response with anything less than a small mountain of salt.

A few weeks ago, we had a guy get a GM response that told him that Critical Hits do bonus damage to internals.

Tip: They don't, and a Programmer + Developer response later cleared up that mishmash.

Game Masters are just Customer Service representatives that have to play a game of telephone where the questions they get are thrown around between 4-5 different levels of personnel before they get to someone who can answer them, and then sent back through 4-5 more levels of personnel before they get back to the player. Assuming the programmer/Dev was even answering the same question that was being asked, there are no assurances that the answer the GM received is the same as the one that was given at that level.

I've had no problem headshoting people with AC/20 rounds at 500m since the patch, so I'd hold off on the sh*tstorm for a bit.

Ok, I will post complete mail history. The reason for that is that GM, at first, though it was a bug, then ammo explosion. He actually contacted devs and sent the issue as a bug there. Later, however, he was told, that it is a feature he did not know about, so he transfered this to me.
So, this was not something a GM made up, the answer is the result of quite long conversation.

[Joseph Mallan]

Naitsirch, on 06 December 2012 - 06:50 AM, said:

I thought depleted uranium is just heavier and has a higher density and therefore is better than let's say Wolfram. Am I wrong?

You are not wrong in as much as you are not completely correct. it is high density but it also has these qualities:

Quote

Depleted uranium is favored for the penetrator because it is self-sharpening and pyrophoric. On impact with a hard target, such as an armored vehicle, the nose of the rod fractures in such a way that it remains sharp. The impact and subsequent release of heat energy causes it to disintegrate to dust and burn when it reaches air because of its pyrophoric properties.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 06 December 2012 - 06:58 AM.

[Viper69]

von Bremerhaven, on 06 December 2012 - 06:50 AM, said:

Actually, this is somewhat more in keeping with canon. Autocannons are supposed to fire a 'stocatto stream of shells', which means that, essentially, autocannons are meant to be a DoT weapon that needs to be adjusted while firing to keep all the damage in one panel, similar to lasers. I don't think that the way they have addressed it is right, though. They should have ACs and the UAC5 behaving properly, rather than making the single shot take an accuracy nerf.

Caveat: I realize that this isn't TT rules, but read any of the novels and this is the way it is presented. I was disappointed when the AC's didn't behave this way. At least the old MW4 had the visuals right with the stream of slugs, even if the damage was concentrated on the hit panel, just like the lasers did, which was wrong.

Thats the thing, in the books people shot railroad ties out of gauss rifles, carved mechs in half with auto-canon fire and so on. The problem lies in the books are for dramatic effect. TT has rules and the only AC that spreads its damage in a single shot is an LBX. Right now my ac20 is acting like an lbx at close range and the farther out it acts like an AC. So its doung a reverse cone if effect in essense widening its spread of damage the closer you are. What weapon even in your books did that?

Edited by Viper69, 06 December 2012 - 07:02 AM.

[Vlad Ward]

Undead Bane, on 06 December 2012 - 06:56 AM, said:

Ok, I will post complete mail history. The reason for that is that GM, at first, though it was a bug, then ammo explosion. He actually contacted devs and sent the issue as a bug there. Later, however, he was told, that it is a feature he did not know about, so he transfered this to me.
So, this was not something a GM made up, the answer is the result of quite long conversation.

I think you missed the point of that post.

It's not that the GM is making things up. It's the fact that any information they send up the chain goes through 4-5 different people before finally hitting someone who can answer it, and then goes back down through 4-5 different people before reaching the player. It's like the children's game, "Telephone". Things get modified, paraphrased, misunderstood, and all sorts of other junk along the way.

In the email you put in the OP, the GM specifically said they got their answer from the QA team, which are themselves just a bunch of dudes who play the game and look for bugs - they're not Devs, they're not programmers, they're just guys who can make a telephone call to another guy who can send an email to a Dev.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 06 December 2012 - 07:01 AM.

[Naitsirch]

Thontor, on 06 December 2012 - 06:54 AM, said:

im not implying anything, just offering up a possible explanation.

Ballistic convergence can be pretty wonky, especially at close range.

He didn't mention if the catapult was stationary or not. If not then be had to lead the target, which means his AC/20s were set to converge at whatever distance was behind the reticle, farther away than the Catapult. so when they hit the mech they wouldn't have converged to a single point yet.

The possibility is there, I agree.
That said, everyone can think of anything to explain everything as long as it does not involve actual natural laws, which is impossible in a fictional environment. To assume that the, up until now, only statement from someone in PGI is closer to the actual explanation is hence the easiest way to work with it.
Hope that explains why I am so furious about it, as there allready IS the explanation until some dev says something alse.

[Naitsirch]

Joseph Mallan, on 06 December 2012 - 06:57 AM, said:

You are not wrong in as much as you are not completely correct. it is high density but it also has these qualities:

Thanks for the clarification. So APUD-ammo is basically a built-in shapecharge with high kinetic energy added, nice o7

[Undead Bane]

Important update:
I eventually decided to post complete letter history, so you could find out info on how the dialogue went, what mech loadout I had during tests, how to reproduce situations, described in the first letter.

Also, point about QA not knowing something is valid, so we really need someone from the devs here to clarify. I hope, we are discussing adequately enough for that.

[Apoc1138]

Undead Bane, on 06 December 2012 - 07:06 AM, said:

Important update:
I eventually decided to post complete letter history, so you could find out info on how the dialogue went, what mech loadout I had during tests, how to reproduce situations, described in the first letter.

Also, point about QA not knowing something is valid, so we really need someone from the devs here to clarify. I hope, we are discussing adequately enough for that.

the main point of interest for me, is whether the projectile size was changed in the last patch or 2... anything from July is unimportant as it's what we've been playing with for nearly 5-6 months... for me, it seems that splash damage has gotten worse in the last 2 weeks, so if it has been changed recently I'd like to know

[Viper69]

This is the place to discuss this issue. My experiences were not a controlled test , so tonight i appologize to my teammates for testing on you. Cant get the enemy to hold still.

I am also getting an interesting graphical anomaly with the ac20. If it passes over interveining terrain the shell starts this wobbly bobbling motion. Anyone spot this as well?

[Undead Bane]

Viper69, on 06 December 2012 - 07:11 AM, said:

This is the place to discuss this issue. My experiences were not a controlled test , so tonight i appologize to my teammates for testing on you. Cant get the enemy to hold still.

You can't see friendlies paperdoll

But what we actually CAN try to do is to get 8 vs 8 DHB vs DHB and test it with FRAPS on.

[Viper69]

That we can do undead. I will be on around 5pm est i will look for you. We should all drop in trial mechs to save cash while testing.

[Solis Obscuri]

Joseph Mallan, on 06 December 2012 - 06:31 AM, said:

I would like to point out that those pictures are both showing single round penetrations sir. The first picture is 4 through armor hits and one deflection(#2). Again reinforcing what I am saying, Concentrated damage.

But the damage is concentrated in an area relative to the diameter of the projectile, yes?

From the description of the 7/12 change, it sounds like an AC/20 or Gauss round was, at the time, being treated as though it were only the size of a single particle, and this was creating some gameplay issues, so the system was modified to treat the projectile as though it were roughly the size of a medicine ball or a watermelon - which doesn't sound too far off from canon for the cannon, if you'll excuse the pun.

[Darth JarJar]

Undead Bane, on 06 December 2012 - 06:52 AM, said:

Agreed. But then, they should be displayed like that, like it was made, say, in MW3. Then it would be fine.
Implicit spread, however, is not fine, as it is unpredictable and unaccountable.

Exactly. That's what disappointed me, the visuals, sound and damage placement were not what I would have expected. And yes, the variable is something of a band-aid to cover the poor initial design, and somewhat unfair.

Caveat: Not that I am losing sleep over not being one-shotted as much

Edited by von Bremerhaven, 06 December 2012 - 07:27 AM.

[Darth JarJar]

Viper69, on 06 December 2012 - 06:59 AM, said:

Thats the thing, in the books people shot railroad ties out of gauss rifles, carved mechs in half with auto-canon fire and so on. The problem lies in the books are for dramatic effect. TT has rules and the only AC that spreads its damage in a single shot is an LBX. Right now my ac20 is acting like an lbx at close range and the farther out it acts like an AC. So its doung a reverse cone if effect in essense widening its spread of damage the closer you are. What weapon even in your books did that?

I know that is all for dramatic effect BUT, every book I've read (around 20 or so), without fail, describes the AC as firing a burst of shells. All I am saying is that it would have been nice to have had that.

[Viper69]

Perhaps if the lasers were the instant damage and the acs were the dots instead of the reverse? Sounds fine to me. We just need some consistency here is all.

[Bitslizer]

Quote

[color=#CCCCCC]Gave the "bullets" used for the autocannons, gauss rifle, and PPCs a 0.25 m collision radius (it was previously 0, a single point)[/color]

You guys are understanding this wrong.

This was put in because Projectile have a problem of not landing hits correctly(ie shot would clip/pass through target in closed beta), increasing the collison radius make the hit register correctly.


This doesnt "SPREAD" damage from a SINGLE PROJECTILE. it just make it more likely when you are shooting multiple ballistics in an alpha strike that the multiple projectiles end up hitting different location instead of all projectiles landing pin point damage on one location. Each individual projectiles still do all the damage to the location it hit, just that not all projectiles may hitting the same location

Edited by Bitslizer, 06 December 2012 - 07:33 AM.

[Viper69]

Bitslizer, on 06 December 2012 - 07:31 AM, said:

You guys are understanding this wrong.

This was put in because Projectile have a problem of not landing hits correctly(ie shot would clip/pass through target in closed beta), increasing the collison radius make the hit register correctly.


This doesnt "SPREAD" damage from a single projectile, it just make it more likely when you are shooting multiple ballistics in an alpha strike that the projectiles end up hitting different location instead of all projectiles landing pin point damage on one location. Each individual projectiles still do all the damage to the location it hit, just that not all projectiles may hitting the same location

Would not appear the case from his tests. We are going to test tonight on single shot to static targets.

Perhaps their wire frames need their collisions reworked not the projectile. If i hit the CT dead center it should only register CT. That is what we will test. Hopefully we have documentation tonight on range incrimination and slug size. Lets not get too worked up until we have some results please.

Edited by Viper69, 06 December 2012 - 07:38 AM.