Pilot Archive
Thread: Firing Patterns: Truth or Myth?
LeaphChausew wrote:
quadpers0n wrote:
lol i just got up in a B-wing with an IGI and my intial results make me laugh. more to come...
leaph, i don't understand how anyone who flies in a Z95 couldn't have figured this out already either. i just started rebel pilot 2 weeks ago and i was going nuts hitting imperial ships until this clicked. now it's cake.. not as easy as centerfire IMO, but if i notice myself missing all i have to do is think for a moment where i should be aiming and bam.Message Edited by quadpers0n on 09-15-2005 07:46 PM
Aye. Surely if this is true and I admit, I am ever the skeptic even though the evidence is pretty conclusive it should mean that using the green lead reticle on enemy ships and lining it up with your targetting reticle should ensure accurate hits with any ship? Come to think about it, I'm not sure. I seem to automatically adjust for whatever ship I've tried. One thing I have noticed after flyign a single weapon ship is that it is impossible to miss your target with an X-wing
well keep in mind, i've only used a z95 for this test and i'm only concluding with certainty it applies to z95. i'm fairly certain i'm about to find out an xwing works similarly though, because it's spreading a gun across 2 mounts. the bwing is different and fires 1 bolt from each corresponding gun. so hitting accurately is still going to be different ship to ship, maybe incredibly different. BUT ships where 1 gun is spread between wide mounts you should aim for the middle. off to get an xwing and test it for sure.
Message Edited by LeaphChausew on 09-15-2005 06:06 PM
What I experienced then was probably scoring ano damagehit on the IGI without shield flare grahics. I'm talking to Haly currently who is kind of experimenting for me since I'm not in game (I'm listening to Blackmore's Night. Fun Medievil sounding band. Love it) But yeh, I think I should back down officially and agree, this is correct. Not only does it make sense when I actually consider it, but it explains a few things I was wondering about too.
LeaphChausew wrote:
I have a theory. When En-Ki and myself wen up to see if I could hit and score damage on his IGI, my blasters at one point when I waslining up did fly either side of his solar panel struts (the things attatching the solar panels to the ball cockpit) at one point. Now this is me using a pre-rotw ship. I'm wondering, if it might be a feature of the new ships. I mean, the heavy 95 and the ARC are new additions to the game. I'm not stating this as a conclusion, but I am wondering...
I know too that the standard z-95 was ingame before this and probably works the same as a heavy 95, but...
Somthing to consider I guess.
Additionally, could this be due to hitboxes? I mean, a hitbox doesn't form perfectly to the outside shell of a starship. Maybe try the experiment with two grouped fighters?
Message Edited by LeaphChausew on 09-15-2005 06:06 PM
that's a fantastic question and one of the original reasons i became curious about the pattern on all ships. let's say for instance you have an xwing and 2 stationary targets that you are dueling. you set them up, side by side then shoot so the bolts of the xwing hit each one. you won't do damage to either of them. why? because you are hitting with the center point, not with the bolts. now, do the same thing in a b-wing. you'll hit them both.
reason why i wondered this was my x-wing on the kash space merc cap ships. i was clearly missing with 2 bolts, but them impacting the cap ship next to them was doing no damage. it didn't make sense i thought. now it does. hitboxes don't have anything to do with this, we are testing with an IGI which has the smallest hitbox, so it's really really easy to see where you do and don't score a hit with a ships guns.
i highly recommend you get someone to sit in a stationary IGI so you can do this test with practice guns. if you turn off linked fire test a bit, turn it back on again and test a bit, you'll really see where the damage is being dealt, and it's an eye opener in the x-wing and z95 to be sure.
additionally, i doubt this is a product of rotw ships alone. when you actually think about the logistics of it, it makes sense. you have 1 gun spread across 2 points. how do you code it so each bolt fires and does dmg? isn't it easier to just make it 1 point in the middle of the gun?
as for the actual damage "Box" you are shooting... i dunno my tests are pretty inconclusve when it comes to that. it's certain that the damage box comes nowhere near the edges of the bolts... in fact, it seems to me to be a pinpoint. again, with teh stationary IGI line up a shot at 150m. once you have that shot lined up so you are scoring damage, move slightly to the left/right/up/down. you'll map out the IGI hitbox exactly. now, move slightly past that hitbox you mapped. you miss. imo that tells me that guns don't have variable damage based on where exactly in the damage point you hit, but rather they do a X # of pixels wide point of damage that is fixed. perhaps, hits on different areas of the hitbox register damage differently. kind of hard to be sure considering variable damage.
quadpers0n wrote:
yuppers. center of each bolt on the xwing.interesting thing is gun 3. the hit point is the center of course as well, BUT it's slightly above the two points where the X's cross.so it's pattern is00
Im feeling stupid today, maybe i shoudlnt have given up coffee a week ago, can you re explain that please?
quadpers0n wrote:
yuppers. center of each bolt on the xwing.
interesting thing is gun 3. the hit point is the center of course as well, BUT it's slightly above the two points where the X's cross.
so it's pattern is
0
0
i could not, at any range, get an IGI hitbox to fit inbetween those two points.
aside from proving my point about a gun spread across two firing points (i said mounts earlier, that was a misnomer) it makes a really interesting tactical question. you'd think a b-wing could naturally do more damage, against a ginormous target....it could, but i have to wonder what the advantage of ever using one would be considering the far superior xwing hit points. you practically have to be aiming at a target bigger than a bwing to do full damage. i'd think it would be seriously easy to miss pretty much everything out there with a least 1 bolt.
I'm having a very tough time taking the apparent fact that its only twice as easy to hit with an Xwing vs a chinmount. Are we sure this is a pinpoint and not a damage box?
-Maudee
Ive taken stupid pills to substitute for the caffine at the moment, so im just gonna read whats being written, soak it in and stew on it for awhile.
Ya know... the real question this all brings up is why the hell did they do it like this??? Nothing like negating advantages of various ships 
I mean obviously its less coding to use pinpoint locations. But seriously.... the X's hitbox IS bigger than a JSF's.... why isn't its... uhh... laser attack box? (lol)
Time to rethink ship balancing and aiming.
-Maudee
Maudee wrote:
Ya know... the real question this all brings up is why the hell did they do it like this??? Nothing like negating advantages of various ships
I mean obviously its less coding to use pinpoint locations. But seriously.... the X's hitbox IS bigger than a JSF's.... why isn't its... uhh... laser attack box? (lol)
Time to rethink ship balancing and aiming.
-Maudee
My theory is that the devs had no idea adjust how sophisticated the pilot community would become. I'm not joking either. I am sure we could teach the devs a lot about JTLS they don't know or didn't expect especially when it comes to how pvp works.
Ducimus wrote:
quadpers0n wrote:
yuppers. center of each bolt on the xwing.interesting thing is gun 3. the hit point is the center of course as well, BUT it's slightly above the two points where the X's cross.so it's pattern is00
Im feeling stupid today, maybe i shoudlnt have given up coffee a week ago, can you re explain that please?
kinda hard to explain but think about how the xwing fires. you have an X then you have the center gun which fires along (sorta) the top "V" of the "X". since the actual damage for cannons 1 and 2 lie in the center of the X that's the first O. the middle of the two bolts of gun 3 lie right above that pinpoint. so essentially you have big pinpoint that the xwing scores damage on, bigger than say, a real centerfire ship or the individual bolts of a bwing. i'm re-reading what i just wrote and i'll be damned if it doesn't still sound confusing... so lemme do a diagram and post it on imagedump... it'll be a bit.