1063 replies to this topic

[Vapor Trail]

Cone of fire, properly implemented, would help fix some of what isn't right, and make the game more challenging for everyone.

I run a Cicada from time to time, and usually I'm just on single chain fire with four MLs... my heat really doesn't go up fast and I can generally keep it under 10-15%. But every so often I irritate someone into shutting down in front of me.

What do I do? Slam to a stop, carefully line up a shot on their cockpit, and cut loose with the six medium lasers that I have on the mech.

How much would the proposed CoF changes impact this style of play?

Quite a bit. I couldn't be sure of being able to punch all six shots into the cockpit, except maybe at point blank range, so I would have to QUICKLY line up a shot, and cut loose with shots in a rapid but measured fashion, so as to keep the CoF small enough that all the shots hit where intended.

CoF, as outlined, would make it harder for me to pull off the cockpit shot, requiring more skill (not less) to do sucessfully, while not affecting my aim while running around one little bit. This would make successfully pulling it of that much more satisfying.

Fully in favor, let it be done.

[Josef Nader]

And if the silly ****** heat shuts down in front of you, why -shouldn't- you be rewarded with an easy headcap? I know that going into heat shutdown is lethal, so I carefully manage heat. Why should we reward players who can't manage heat by making it harder to punish them for it?

[MavRCK]

RNG in any game reduces the skill-level and frustrates players looking to improve.

[Vapor Trail]

Josef Nader, on 21 January 2013 - 10:31 PM, said:

And if the silly ****** heat shuts down in front of you, why -shouldn't- you be rewarded with an easy headcap? I know that going into heat shutdown is lethal, so I carefully manage heat. Why should we reward players who can't manage heat by making it harder to punish them for it?

Because the easy head-cap isn't BattleTech? In TT you couldn't intentionally head-cap under most circumstances. Making it difficult, but not impossible seems to me to be the best way to keep the spirit of TT.

And "free easy backshot" is generally punishment enough, or would be if the critical system was fully implemented, I think.

[KinLuu]

Let this thread die.

[twibs]

I think the OPs idea would be worth a test.

Afaik in TT (never played it) you rolled for hit location for every weapon, creating the 'cone of fire' so to speak. Now in TT (again afaik) one turn is 10 secs so all the weapon fired in that time once.

So How the MOW has implemented that. At the start of the 10 seconds you fire all the weapons and just roll once for the hit location.

Thinking of TT I think the hit location rolling means that the weapons fire once during the 10 second interval, not at the start of it, so instead of (like it is now in MWO)

|--------- 10 secs ---------||---------- 10 secs---------|
|wpn1,2,3,4----------------||wpn1,2,3,4----------------|
it would be more like

|--------- 10 secs ---------||---------- 10 secs---------|
|wpn1-wpn2-wpn3-wpn4||wpn1-wpn2-wpn3-wpn4|

[MustrumRidcully]

Josef Nader, on 21 January 2013 - 09:45 PM, said:

Because some of us can actually aim, unlike you lobster-clawed stroke victims who want to rely on some RNG telling you whether you hit or not. I don't -play- any other modern "competitive" FPS games precicely BECAUSE of the huge lowering of the skill ceiling done by drunken reticule waving and huge cones of fire that mean your assault rifle isn't worth the pixels it's made of outside of 15m.

But it takes skill to compensate for a "drunken reticule waving". You have to learn to time your shot until your reticule is at the correct spot to fire precisely. That takes a lot more skill than pointing your mouse cursor at a target. The difficulty of hitting an Awesome at 200m in its Center Torso is about as high as pressing a button. If you had a system that would "shake" your reticule due to your mech's movement, it would actually be a bit more difficult, and require more skill.

[machine]

Straight up... i dont want to play a game that actively alters the shot i made because you think its not good i spent tonnage on two of the same.

[Vapor Trail]

Someone doesn't understand, I think...

It wouldn't just be multiples of the same weapon. Fire any combination of weapons, either as group, or chained in a short time, and there would be CoF consequences.

[DegeneratePervert]

A single AC/20 isn't dangerous? What game are YOU playing?

[Mike Townsend]

My first experience with BT was the old Crescent Hawks' Inception game, and I still remember all of the mech modifications made sense. In particular, one of them was to take an SRM 6 and yank the ammo and plug each tube of the missile rack with a small laser. That made some sense. I always envisioned those six lasers firing parallel to each other with no convergence at all.

To me, the hunchback with a bunch of lasers in the torso looks goofy when it fires because all the lasers converge. Leaving aside how goofy it looks:

1) I agree with the OP that weapons should not always automatically converge at the crosshairs. Convergence with radar range detection is not technically difficult, but if mechs were built that way they'd also have some sort of minimal angle to target detection and relative motion calculation for automatic deflection calculation. Then you'd just need to get the crosshairs close and fire and you'd always get a hit. That would be dumb. There'd be no game.

2) I don't agree with his solution of cone of fire, because it makes no sense either. I prefer a later poster's suggestion that torso based weapons all fire parallel to each other, all weapons on each arm fire parallel to each other (or in some cases converge at a fixed distance, probably the weapon's maximum effective range) and the only convergence is between the two arms. That would yield both a more tabletop experience (in a typical alpha, only some weapons would hit) and provide a non-luck based game experience (chain fire plus group selection would allow accurate placement of any given weapon, or all of them if you were good enough.)

[twibs]

DegeneratePervert, on 22 January 2013 - 12:34 AM, said:

A single AC/20 isn't dangerous? What game are YOU playing?

MWO, last I checked. How about you go and do a single AC/20 Hunhcie build for example and tell me how competitive you feel.

[Critical Fumble]

Josef Nader, on 21 January 2013 - 10:13 PM, said:

Spoiler

No, but I'm definitely someone who enjoys a genre that is long since dead. As a certain internet critic puts it, I love shooters, I hate spunkgargleweewee games. Everyone loves spunkgargleweewee nowadays, and shooters are dead.
God forbid that there were people who liked those fast, skillful shooters and who desperately want to see them come back.

God forbid there are those of us that hate how dumbed down and oversimplified modern games are, removing all depth in order to cater to people who want to pick up the game and be good at it within half an hour.

Spoiler

I'm sorry that makes me an "elitist", but it's the truth. If I can score a headshot while moving at 89 kph with a ballistic weapon that needs to be led to compensate for lagshield, the enemy mech's erratic movement, and all of the other factors on the battlefield, I should be rewarded with that achievement.
Also, ET:Q and Brink failed because they were awful games, not because they were "too hardcore" for modern audiences. Also, if nobody wants to play "hardcore" games anymore because they aren't any fun, explain the resurgence of old franchises built around being freaking difficult, like X-Com. The simple answer is, you're wrong. Hardcore games have died because developers see more money in catering to the unwashed masses, not because nobody wants to play them anymore. If Joe Blow with 10 hours a week to devote to gaming can't pick up your game and see everything there is to see, Publishers won't give you a second glance nowadays.
Plus, there's already been a mech game that was made accessable to everyone with things like third person, fire cones, and zero mechlab access. We don't talk about it.

I fail to understand your argument that CoF mechanics reduce the influence of skill in the game. Tracking a giant robot with your mouse counts as skill, but trigger discipline doesn't? Point and shoot is deep gameplay, but managing your weapons spray is shallow?

[Juicebox12]

If current tanks can counter all recoil and movement to pinpoint fire from incredible distances as it stands today, don't you think mechanized robots from the future could do a better job at it?

Cone of fire is a bad idea. Aim better.

[MustrumRidcully]

Juicebox12, on 22 January 2013 - 01:06 AM, said:

If current tanks can counter all recoil and movement to pinpoint fire from incredible distances as it stands today, don't you think mechanized robots from the future could do a better job at it?

Cone of fire is a bad idea. Aim better.

If current missiles can strike over several kilometers, wouldn't you expect missiles employed by mechanized robots from the future to do a better job at it?

Forget realism. This is Battletech. Think, however, game balance.

[PapajIGC]

While I'm not familiar with essentially any of the TT/BT universe, asking to put in bouncing/expanding reticules like this is some sort of MLG FPS is dumb and here's why: Humans cannot fine tune their aim and auto adjust super quickly when charging head first into combat, but giant stompy death machines can. That is why infantrymen never sprint and fire down on a target, they do a brisk walk and roll their feet so as to minimize the impact and thus the shake of their firearm. Technology makes it such that giant metal machines of death don't need to do that. M1 Abrams can fire at full speed even while strafing a moving target and still nail the kill shot every time.

Why in 3050 can't a souped up walking version of a modern day tank be able to do the same thing? It's a simple computing calculation, your speed, the target's speed (and relative bearing to you - which can be determined by distance as well), and distance from the target. It's not simple vector mathematics by any means....but it's not exactly high-level theoretical computation either. No reason a computer or some sort of technological piece of equipment in a walking death machine couldnt do that job of auto-adjusting like our tanks do.

[Vapor Trail]

DegeneratePervert, on 22 January 2013 - 12:34 AM, said:

A single AC/20 isn't dangerous? What game are YOU playing?

Might be better to say "Single AC/20 round isn't very dangerous."

Let's face it, a single shot of of anything isn't.

An AC/10 round in TT has a (slight) chance to kill a mech outright. It's tiny, because you have to hit the head and then register at least one crit... then hit the cockpit or blow the section off.

Even with doubled armor an AC/20 should be able to do the same thing... but it can't, because AFAIK a cockpit critical doesn't kill you, or have any effect at all.

A single AC/20 round in TT, if it hits, can absolutely RUIN a light mech. Rip off a leg, blow through a rear torso and core it, things like that.

In MWO? Most lights would take the AC/20 round in stride, even on a leg or in the rear.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Last I looked this still wasn't a TT re-design..that's a different project.

[Frostiken]

Josef Nader, on 21 January 2013 - 10:13 PM, said:

Also, if nobody wants to play "hardcore" games anymore because they aren't any fun, explain the resurgence of old franchises built around being freaking difficult, like X-Com.

Probably because X-Com was super dumbed-down and easy as sin? So easy, in fact, that I had to download a pile of mods for it to stop it from being such a total joke.

Seriously, that was your best example?

[Frostiken]

PapajIGC, on 22 January 2013 - 01:20 AM, said:

Why in 3050 can't a souped up walking version of a modern day tank be able to do the same thing? It's a simple computing calculation, your speed, the target's speed (and relative bearing to you - which can be determined by distance as well), and distance from the target. It's not simple vector mathematics by any means....but it's not exactly high-level theoretical computation either. No reason a computer or some sort of technological piece of equipment in a walking death machine couldnt do that job of auto-adjusting like our tanks do.

Because a modern day tank doesn't have its primary weapon system mounted on the end of two flimsy-*** arms that are getting torn to pieces by incoming fire, nor is it stomping around precariously on two FEET with a high center of gravity, and is instead solidly anchored to the ground, nor is it simply stepping on everything in its way be it boulders or buildings, and performs its combat in flat, open environments. But mostly because it's not attached to two flimsy-*** arms being rocked by 40 missiles at a time.

Juicebox12, on 22 January 2013 - 01:06 AM, said:

If current tanks can counter all recoil and movement to pinpoint fire from incredible distances as it stands today, don't you think mechanized robots from the future could do a better job at it?

You are vastly overestimating the accuracy of a modern tank. Even when stationary it's damn hard to get solid hits. There's some documentary out there featuring tanker training, and they manage to score a whopping 33% accuracy.

Edited by Frostiken, 22 January 2013 - 03:56 AM.