gunship zoom

[Kuciwalker]

Confession: whenever people talked about this I dismissed it as probably an irrelevant optimization. Tonight I actually tried it out (zooming out in gunship sniper view). It makes sniping... a lot easier. I think probably too easy.

 

Can we either make the zoomed out view default, or get rid of it? I am kind of leaning towards the latter.

[Verain]

"I didn't know how to gunship before tonight. Nerf gunships."

 

 

It's always been like this SINCE DAY 1.

 

 

Why do you think everyone should get nerfed? This is pretty much the height of "I only care about mmeeeee"

Edited April 16, 2014 by Verain

[Kuciwalker]

I was gunshipping pretty damn well before today too. And, dude? Have you been reading my posts for the past forever? Have I been calling for GS nerfs? I main GS. Edited April 16, 2014 by Kuciwalker

[Verain]

You seriously never bothered to mouseout until tonight and now want to nerf it because you were too lazy to use it until tonight.

 

 

What a joke.

[Kuciwalker]

Having to scroll after right-clicking is the sort of artificial skill-cap booster that this game doesn't need.

[SammyGStatus]

Inlined to disagree here. I like having the scroll - one flick back and it's maxed out zoom. When you're sniping at targets that're flying between structures, being able to zoom in definitely makes for a more accurate shot (I know the indicator changes if you can him them, but I also like to SEE what I'm shooting at). I'm very shocked you're just discovering this now.

[DamascusAdontise]

I think its fine as is, though it is comical how much easier it is to shoot with it unzoomed. There needs to be a stickied post or something for an in game tooltip (something very visible) to tell players about this ability. I played the Gunship for almost 2 months straight before someone told me about this and it was a very big *FACEPALM* moment for me.

 

My .02 keep it as is, a zoom - unzoom functionality is fine. But for the love of god tell people about this, its too good to miss.

[TrinityLyre]

I have it listed in my guide. It's fine as-is. If anything needs adjustment on this front it's hitboxes, and I think they're fine. Edited April 16, 2014 by TrinityLyre

[Zharik]

I mentioned this on the forums before. And it *is* BS that the target's hit box GROWS if you zoom out and SHRINKS if you zoom in. That's backwards and ludicrous! I'd be happy with a minimum detection range of less than 15km if some common sense things on GSs got changed. (still have massive CC power, insta stop with a zoom, hit box size changes with zoom) Turn them into a true sniper - off on their own (or with other snipers) trying to maneuver into position undetected for a snipe shot.

 

Let them have the ability to dampen sensors enough that 14km (or closer, but 12km is my recommendation for min detection) is not detectable without range sensors and/or focus sensors, which would force satellite defenders to be a little more "active" in their defense. (patrols anyone?)

 

Turn their survivability into "cat & mouse", not "I can out-fly you".

[Loc_n_lol]

wtb 120° fov on scouts & strikes cuz "it's fine". Edited April 16, 2014 by Loc_n_lol

[Nemarus]

I mentioned this on the forums before. And it *is* BS that the target's hit box GROWS if you zoom out and SHRINKS if you zoom in.

 

I don't think that's the case.

 

I think it's easier to snipe zoomed out because it is easier to track target movements. When zoomed out, the targets movements relative to the center of your aim are smaller and thus more easy to follow.

 

It's true if you are playing a first person shooter as a sniper. The more you zoom in, the harder it is to follow lateral enemy movements. The big difference, however, is that in a first person shooter, the more you are zoomed in, the larger the enemy hitbox becomes. So sure, the target might be harder to follow, but they become a bigger target.

 

The key thing here is that I don't believe GSF has hitboxes.

 

Let's take a step away from railgun sniping for a minute and consider normal primary weapons.

 

With all primary weapons, you only hit your target if you click the left mouse button when your crosshair is aligned with the cluster of pixels at the center of the lead indicator. If that condition is true, then the game does an RNG Accuracy vs. Evasion check to determine if you actually hit. If the check succeeds, you deal damage instantly--before the lasers even finish traveling to the target.

 

Now here's the trick--that lead indicator, and the cluster of pixels at its center that you are aiming at, does not get any larger or smaller depending on how far away the target is. Whether the enemy ship is barely visible at 6000m or taking up half your screen at 500m, you still have to aim for the small cluster of pixels at the center of the lead indicator. In this respect, GSF is not like X-wing or Wing Commander, in which ships became bigger targets as they filled more of your screen.

 

This means that it's easier to hit targets that are farther away, because it's easier to follow their movements and get sustained fire on them, and you don't suffer a smaller hitbox anyway, because the hitbox is always the same size regardless of range.

 

Now all weapons suffer a Damage penalty and RNG Accuracy penalty as range increases, so the game does try to steer you toward engaging at closer range. The thing is, if you do close on your target, it gets harder to keep them centered, so you often suffer an even bigger RNG Accuracy penalty for tracking radius than you would be if you kept them centered at a longer range. The exceptions are Burst and Rapid Laser Cannons, which have a very low tracking penalty so that they can be used close up with high tracking angles.

 

Now getting back to railguns, I do not believe railguns work any differently than primary weapons, except that the lead indicator is always exactly overlapping the ship you are targeting. But as for the apparent size of your target--the hittable surface area--I do not believe that changes, regardless of range or zoom factor. This is why zooming out always makes sniping easier--you get the benefit of easier tracking without any loss of real target size. The only benefit I can imagine you get from zooming in is that you could see the ship model of the target more clearly, which might help you predict its movements better. But that's a stretch, and as railguns are instant, predicting their movements isn't tremendously important.

 

Professional Gunship pilots may disagree, and it's possible Gunships follow different rules than primary weapons. Maybe there is some kind of hitbox that changes size as you fly/zoom closer to a target. But I know for certain that is not true for primary weapons, and I honestly doubt railguns work any differently. That would mean there is zero benefit for zooming in.

 

If they wanted to make zooming interesting, they should give an RNG Accuracy bonus for zooming in tighter. They might have to retune base railgun accuracy, of course, but I think it'd create a neat dynamic... do you stay zoomed out to track your target's lateral movement more easily, or do you zoom in to make sure you beat their RNG Evasion?

Edited April 16, 2014 by Nemarus

[Kuciwalker]

Nemarus: your understanding of the hitbox mechanics for both regular blasters and railguns is correct.

[Nemarus]

Nemarus: your understanding of the hitbox mechanics for both regular blasters and railguns is correct.

 

Yup. And honestly it's one of the big reasons I think I dominate in TDM on my server. I always pick the longest range weapon available for a ship, always use a Range Capacitor, and I always try to engage targets at the edge of my range. Yes, my weapons do slightly less damage and suffer a modest accuracy penalty, but I get to keep sustained fire on the enemy and easily track their lateral movement. It also means I don't have to boost so much. Once I've got the target in range (or perhaps a few hundred meters short of my max), I don't have to close on them anymore. In fact it is better if I don't. And having long range weapons makes taking full advantage of Damage Overcharge that much easier. Why run around, trying to chase people and line up a shot at < 4000m, when I can

everything within 5750m instead?

 

ProTip for any pilots on The Ebon Hawk--if you get targeted by me in TDM, your worst move is to try and outrun me. You're better off targeting me and trying to stay as close as possible. As soon as I sense you're in a turning war, I'll abandon you for a different target that is in my 4000-6000m range sweet spot.

 

Second ProTip--don't try to joust me unless your range is greater than 6000m.

 

I've tried to teach this to other pilots in my guild, but even they have a hard time resisting the intuition of "get as close to target as possible so they are easier to hit".

 

Of course, Domination is an entirely different story, what with close satellite fighting and large angles.

 

What I don't understand is why the game works like this ...

 

I mean, I know why there isn't an X-wing/TIE Fighter style collision model for tracking when projectiles impact real 3-dimensional ship models. That would be an entirely different model from the ground game, meaning they couldn't reuse any code. In both the ground game and GSF, all characters and ships are just a single point in a coordinate space, and they are not allowed to pass through static walls/floors/asteroids. I understand all that.

 

But why not just have the lead indicator get bigger or smaller depending on target range? You really wouldn't need to invent any new collision model for that. All it would mean is that, if a target is close, make the "hittable target" (i.e. the lead indicator) have a bigger diameter. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would come closer to approximating the game most people think they are playing (X-wing). And it would incentivize closing/zooming in on targets.

Edited April 16, 2014 by Nemarus

[Zoom_VI]

Seriously Kuci? You didn't know about this?!

 

've known about it and used it, and according to my battlerecord I've used my gunships a whopping 16 times. On the other hand I bet its way easier to hit all those lateral moving scouts you said you couldn't hit before.....

[Nemarus]

Seriously Kuci? You didn't know about this?!

 

've known about it and used it, and according to my battlerecord I've used my gunships a whopping 16 times. On the other hand I bet its way easier to hit all those lateral moving scouts you said you couldn't hit before.....

 

Prior to a recent patch (can't remember which one), your railgun field of view was determined by yout primary weapon firing arc. Since most Gunships were using Burst Laser Cannons (which has a huge firing arc), Gunships were used to having a huge field of view and rarely zoomed.

 

This became a problem when the second Gunship came out and was using Heavy Laser Cannons, which have a very narrow fire-arc.

 

BioWare then fixed the issue (recenlty), giving railgun its own field of view. But this by default is much narrower than BLC's firing arc, which is why most Gunship pilots zoom out to get closer to the original BLC field of view.

[Kuciwalker]

Seriously Kuci? You didn't know about this?!

 

've known about it and used it, and according to my battlerecord I've used my gunships a whopping 16 times. On the other hand I bet its way easier to hit all those lateral moving scouts you said you couldn't hit before.....

 

I knew about it, I just hadn't actually bothered to try it out.

[Zharik]

To all the non-believers about scoping back making the hit box bigger... any of you ever use a real life scope on a rifle before? Heck, binoculars would work too, or even a zoom on your cell phone camera.

 

Let's use your cell phone camera as an example:

 

Reality - you are filming something, let's call this your target. Say the target is a person, but you are kinda far away. The person is small on your screen so you zoom in. That person gets MUCH larger on your screen! Recap... zoom out =small on screen, zoom in = big on screen.

 

Game - you scope with your railgun at a scout, let's call this your target. Say this target is just flying around minding his own business at 12km. That's far, can't be seen by the naked eye, right? So you activate your scope and whamo, there is a circle on him, that IS HIS HIT BOX for the railgun (just as the lead target circle IS THE HIT BOX for a primary weapon) If you zoom back to 0% zoom, that is the same as naked eye, right? Then how come the circle is still as big as it was when zoomed in at 62% (iirc)? Because it GREW in game, that's how. You now have a larger target area to hit now that it is proportionally larger than before. Zoom all the way in to 100% and you would expect the circle to GROW, but alas, it does NOT. The ship's image grows, but that is not the hit box, the circle is!

 

You folks are confusing how they designed the game's hit mechanism with how it would work if space ships, shields, lasers, etc would act if they actually existed.

 

Recap, if you zoom in with a scope, everything would appear larger to you, and if you zoomed out everything would appear smaller. Since the target circle never changes, it is the inverse of this regarding hit box size.

[Nemarus]

To all the non-believers about scoping back making the hit box bigger... any of you ever use a real life scope on a rifle before? Heck, binoculars would work too, or even a zoom on your cell phone camera.

 

Let's use your cell phone camera as an example:

 

Reality - you are filming something, let's call this your target. Say the target is a person, but you are kinda far away. The person is small on your screen so you zoom in. That person gets MUCH larger on your screen! Recap... zoom out =small on screen, zoom in = big on screen.

 

Game - you scope with your railgun at a scout, let's call this your target. Say this target is just flying around minding his own business at 12km. That's far, can't be seen by the naked eye, right? So you activate your scope and whamo, there is a circle on him, that IS HIS HIT BOX for the railgun (just as the lead target circle IS THE HIT BOX for a primary weapon) If you zoom back to 0% zoom, that is the same as naked eye, right? Then how come the circle is still as big as it was when zoomed in at 62% (iirc)? Because it GREW in game, that's how. You now have a larger target area to hit now that it is proportionally larger than before. Zoom all the way in to 100% and you would expect the circle to GROW, but alas, it does NOT. The ship's image grows, but that is not the hit box, the circle is!

 

You folks are confusing how they designed the game's hit mechanism with how it would work if space ships, shields, lasers, etc would act if they actually existed.

 

Recap, if you zoom in with a scope, everything would appear larger to you, and if you zoomed out everything would appear smaller. Since the target circle never changes, it is the inverse of this regarding hit box size.

 

You essentially described what I did, but please stop using the term hitbox, as the game simply doesn't have them.

 

Regardless of zoom level (or range for primary weapons), you are always aiming at a small cluster of pixels representing about 1% the width of your screen. It doesn't matter how big the ship model is, because the ship model isn't real, and the game never does any kind of check to see if the vector of your slug intercepts it. All the game checks is whether your reticle is hovering over the target region when you pull the trigger, and that target region is always 1% of your screen.

 

The way it SHOULD work, if the game wants to better approximate the physical world, is for the target region to get bigger as you get closer and/or zoom in. So for example, if it's 1% of my screen width when I'm zoomed all the way out (i.e. my camera is 15000m away from it), then when I'm zoomed in by a factor of x6 (so that my camera is effectively 2500m away from the target), the target region (hitbox, if you will) should be larger.

 

Using the formula for angular diameter (apparent size from distance), it should take up to just about 6% of my screen.

[Altheran]

To all the non-believers about scoping back making the hit box bigger... any of you ever use a real life scope on a rifle before? Heck, binoculars would work too, or even a zoom on your cell phone camera.

 

Let's use your cell phone camera as an example:

 

Reality - you are filming something, let's call this your target. Say the target is a person, but you are kinda far away. The person is small on your screen so you zoom in. That person gets MUCH larger on your screen! Recap... zoom out =small on screen, zoom in = big on screen.

 

Game - you scope with your railgun at a scout, let's call this your target. Say this target is just flying around minding his own business at 12km. That's far, can't be seen by the naked eye, right? So you activate your scope and whamo, there is a circle on him, that IS HIS HIT BOX for the railgun (just as the lead target circle IS THE HIT BOX for a primary weapon) If you zoom back to 0% zoom, that is the same as naked eye, right? Then how come the circle is still as big as it was when zoomed in at 62% (iirc)? Because it GREW in game, that's how. You now have a larger target area to hit now that it is proportionally larger than before. Zoom all the way in to 100% and you would expect the circle to GROW, but alas, it does NOT. The ship's image grows, but that is not the hit box, the circle is!

 

You folks are confusing how they designed the game's hit mechanism with how it would work if space ships, shields, lasers, etc would act if they actually existed.

 

Recap, if you zoom in with a scope, everything would appear larger to you, and if you zoomed out everything would appear smaller. Since the target circle never changes, it is the inverse of this regarding hit box size.

 

While it's true that it becomes bigger "from the ship perspective" (bigger absolute target) when zooming out, people understand "becomes bigger" as "becomes bigger on the screen" (bigger relative target).

 

And as you said yourself, the target keep the same size on screen...

So they'll say you're wrong because for them "it keeps the same size" as they take the screen as referential, and you'll say they're wrong because "it becomes bigger" in absolute referential.

 

But in the end you all see the same thing, but you interpreted it with different words, making you misunderstand each other.

 

There aren't non-believers... just misunderstanding people.

Edited April 16, 2014 by Altheran

[Zharik]

You essentially described what I did, but please stop using the term hitbox, as the game simply doesn't have them.

 

You have got to be kidding me... You don't think that the lead target indicator is the hit box? Hint, you click on that to make the game reward you with a hit...

 

PS, I know that you know this is the case, but why argue that it is not a "hit box", when it obviously is.

[Kuciwalker]

To all the non-believers about scoping back making the hit box bigger... (stuff)

 

Fallacy of equivocation.

 

The "hit box" in the sense of the set of pixels on the screen that your cursor has to be inside for the shot to register as a "hit" has a constant size (area) on your screen. The radius of this circle, denominated in pixels, does not change when you zoom out. Against a stationary target, it would be equally easy to place your cursor within this area at any zoom level. The size of this area is called the "apparent size" in optics.

 

If you, instead, use "hit box" in this case to describe a "physical" object within the 3D volume of GSF space, and you perceive that object to be located on the targeted ship, then the constant apparent size implies a variable true size.

 

However, that latter interpretation is utterly pointless because apparent size is what determines the difficulty of placing the cursor within the hit box, not true size.

 

The reason that zooming out makes things easier is not because the true size of the hit box grows, but because the angular velocity of the target falls. The hit box's "apparent speed" falls. Thus it is easier to track a moving target when zoomed out.

[Kuciwalker]

You have got to be kidding me... You don't think that the lead target indicator is the hit box? Hint, you click on that to make the game reward you with a hit...

 

PS, I know that you know this is the case, but why argue that it is not a "hit box", when it obviously is.

 

You're wrong. Our use of the term "hit box" to describe the reticle is incorrect (though I've used it as such above for the purpose of this discussion). A "hit box" properly refers to a volume of space surrounding an object used to test whether some other object or ray intersects it. GSF does not do collision detection (for blasters at least). See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitbox.

 

(Properly speaking GSF does have hitboxes, but only for collisions between ships and terrain.)

Edited April 16, 2014 by Kuciwalker

[-Streven-]

Gunship zoom is pretty weak with hitboxes being what they are. Snipers should be fixed at maximum zoom.

[Nemarus]

You're wrong. Our use of the term "hit box" to describe the reticle is incorrect (though I've used it as such above for the purpose of this discussion). A "hit box" properly refers to a volume of space surrounding an object used to test whether some other object or ray intersects it. GSF does not do collision detection (for blasters at least). See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitbox.

 

(Properly speaking GSF does have hitboxes, but only for collisions between ships and terrain.)

 

This^