8 replies to this topic

[Flocus]

Hello fellow Mechwarriors and beta testers,
as I am a pretty new mech pilot I am not sure if the following issue is a bug or if I am too stupid to steer my YEN-LO-WANG Centurion mech.

It happens quite often (more than 50%) in brawls to me that my AC/20 (right arm) does not fire to where the crosshair and the arms are pointing to, even if my torso is not twisted. Instead my AC bullet flies about 30 - 45 degrees beside the crosshair. With that behaviour it is not possible to hit any target and to play that mech. What makes that even worse is, that I payed real money to play that mech ...
The M-Lasers (CT) never showed that problem.

Am I doing something wrong or is this a bug? I am really despaired ...

Cheers,
Flocus

[Buckminster]

There are some known problems with the way weapons converge. A little practice makes it a non-issue.

Part of it is what your crosshairs are aiming at. The game measures distance based on that, and fires to land the projectile based on that. So if your crosshairs are pointing past a mech, it may be getting the wrong reading and doing the wrong math.

Another part of it is the location of the AC/20. Arm mounted weapons are fairly wide of where the pilot sits, so the shots are originating way off to one side. This gets even nastier up close, because it really ends up trying to point your weapon across the chest to try and get the aim right. My Catapult A1 has a similar issue - all of my weapons are in the arms, which are mounted high and wide of the torso. So if I aim center torso at a mech, the weapons in my left arm hit left of center and the weapons in my right arm hit right of center. I've found that to get good solid hits with my 3 SRM6 (in my left arm) I need to make sure that the target is offset to the left of my crosshairs. It's even more exaggerated at short ranges, or if you are moving.

[Egomane]

Its the conversion of the weapons that plays a prank on you.

Your weapons will converge at the distance indicated next to your crosshair. This takes a while. So if you looked at a near wall close before you aim at an enemy further aways, the convergence might be off, causing your weapon to missfire, like you described.

Give your weapon a second or two to adjust to the new range and it shouldn't happen anymore.

[Loc Nar]

Willkommen, Flocus. I don't have a Yen lo, so can't say for sure but it really sounds like a bug. Best would be to use FRAPS or something like it to capture vid of it and submit it to support, who are really good about looking into issues and resolving them in a timely fashion. Even without video proof they can likely help, but be sure to post the resolution once it's found!

Edited by Loc Nar, 09 January 2013 - 11:47 AM.

[Bullvyne]

I've noticed this on my Dual Gauss Cataphract. I have to wait before I fire, and I have noticed that lasers don't have the problem. I guess differant weapon types use differant equations when calculating the hit.

[Flocus]

Thank you all for your good answers! I will try to understand the behaviour better and to experiment with weapon conversion time and post my findings here again. But I will need a significant number of matches ...

[IceSerpent]

Flocus, on 09 January 2013 - 11:20 AM, said:

Hello fellow Mechwarriors and beta testers,
as I am a pretty new mech pilot I am not sure if the following issue is a bug or if I am too stupid to steer my YEN-LO-WANG Centurion mech.

It happens quite often (more than 50%) in brawls to me that my AC/20 (right arm) does not fire to where the crosshair and the arms are pointing to, even if my torso is not twisted. Instead my AC bullet flies about 30 - 45 degrees beside the crosshair. With that behaviour it is not possible to hit any target and to play that mech. What makes that even worse is, that I payed real money to play that mech ...
The M-Lasers (CT) never showed that problem.

Am I doing something wrong or is this a bug? I am really despaired ...

Cheers,
Flocus

A known problem with all ballistic weapons and PPC/ERPPC - weapon convergence is messed up. There have been a ton of complaints abotu it since the start of OBT (you can search for "convergence" on the forums, if you are interested), yet it remains broken.

Edit:

Egomane, on 09 January 2013 - 11:31 AM, said:

Give your weapon a second or two to adjust to the new range and it shouldn't happen anymore.

Won't work at all - when using ballistic weapons you have to lead the target, which means that object under the crosshairs is never the mech you are trying to hit, which in turn means that convergence is guaranteed to be off unless your target doesn't move laterally.

Edited by IceSerpent, 09 January 2013 - 01:04 PM.

[Kargarok]

I'm not sure how much of a noob you are. So also be aware that your arm weapons fire at the "O" crosshair while your body weapons fire at the "+" crosshair. In the Wang, the arms only move up and down not left and right, but you can get a little wiggle left and right with them. And yes convergance can be an issue since the arm is a bit further down and to the right of the lasers. Keep that in mind when firing and don't forget to lead your target.

[Flocus]

So, i have come to some intermediate results: thanks to all the answers I can confirm or have the strong feeling that most of the "odd" behaviour is caused by weapon conversion and maybe changed for the worse by some netcode bugs. What I basically cannot handle is that when I lead a transversally, fast moving target the conversion is set to the wrong distance because the crosshair does not point at the target. So for a given range interval it is just impossible to hit an enemy that way. And your own velocity does further increase the problems!

For (sharp)shooting slow targets ballistics/PPCs are useable. But for the dogfight I am not skilled enough to use them effectively. With lasers I have far more success than with ACs. That is very sad because PPCs and ACs are my favorite weapons (coming from the BT tabeltop and books - yes I am a Marauder fan ;-) And one last comment: regarding the short range of the AC/20 and the conversion/aiming issues it is more or less useless, at least in a fast medium mech with less armor than an Atlas.

So that's how I fit my CN9-D now:

2 machine guns
1 LLaser
2 SRM6 Artemis

For my YEN-LO-WANG I have replaced the AC/20 with a gauss rifle so that I can fire from long range and have the 2 MLasers and a machine gun for brawling. But my favourite Centurion is now the CN9-AL - with no ballistik hardpoint at all (what is depressing thinking of its role in the BT universe outside MWO).

Edited by Flocus, 20 January 2013 - 03:11 AM.