Why isn't weapon convergence a thing yet?

DemiserofD

D
Weapon convergence has existed in real life for near-on a century. The first planes to equip machine guns on the wings angled them in to focus fire at their ideal range.

Weapon convergence has existed in games for decades. Star Wars Battlefront 2 had it in 2005. Starlancer had it in 2000.

Why doesn't Elite have it yet? There are loads of ships which are rendered virtually useless to experts, simply because they can't equip fixed weapons, due to terrible convergence.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 did it the simplest way. Convergence would be automatically determined by the distance to your target. No gimbaling, no; just the bullets going exactly where you aimed, no matter how close or far away that happened to be.

Why can't we have that? Why SHOULDN'T the Clipper, Courier, Mamba, Cutter, and T10 have functional hardpoint convergence?
 

Northpin

Northpin
Gimbals?

Back to original X-Wing, that one has no convergence - but i usually played with all cannons linked and had no problem to oneshot Tie Fighters with either left or right pair of cannons. However, i really liked it's crosshairs and they way they lit in green when a hit was supposed to happen - and that's a thing i'd like to see in ED.
 

Winterwalker

Winterwalker
In a word? Balance, I'd imagine.

If you're in a large ship and you're fighting a large ship, tight convergence is less important because the target is bigger, so you still deliver your DPS. Meanwhile smaller ships don't get one shot 'cheesed' any time they get within 3km of you and can use counter measures.

ps. Don't know what 'experts' are doing in a Cutter anyway. Where's your iEagle? ;)
 
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Kira Mikamy

Kira Mikamy
reasonable question.
balance is surely the answer.
In fact, theres the gimballed version of the fixed weapon but only for the not "overpowered" one, i just try to imagine a plasma or a railgun with this kind of covergence they become the ONLY usable weapon for the best damage (and, in fact, is already like this atm without the convergence but mainly in the pvp situation)

anyway i think weapon and aim system in elite is good but the really problem about unbalanced combat is to found in the ship specific cause someone despite the price and the categori are really underpowered or overpowered
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Its been asked a lot.

Thinking about it, although balance is the most likely reason, if you could select your convergence point (have a slider between min / max distances) it would not disrupt balance because you still have to aim at the target and aim inside that range. So for example, setting guns to 500m will make medium to long range attacks impossible so its self balancing in a way because you have to also have to control the distance in the fight.
 

DemiserofD

D
I don't see how the current status quo is maintaining any balance at all. The ships with wide weapon placement just aren't used for combat nearly as much as the ones with tight weapon placement. The only time the placement can be ignored is when some other factor dramatically outweighs it, like the ridiculous shields on the cutter. (Even then, its only two hardpoints that could count as 'wide' are two mediums, with the rest being quite tightly placed.)

The Clipper, Courier, and T10 don't need their wide hardpoint placement to be kept in check; if anything, they need to be made better. The Mamba is limited to only a select few weapons, and even then, is broadly inferior to the FDL. And the Cutter wouldn't particularly benefit from better weapon convergence one way or another, since it'll have a hard time using fixed weapons regardless.

All the ships with wide hardpoint placement are simply worse than their alternatives. Why balance ships that don't need it?
 

Northpin

Northpin
DemiserofD said:
I don't see how the current status quo is maintaining any balance at all. The ships with wide weapon placement just aren't used for combat nearly as much as the ones with tight weapon placement. The only time the placement can be ignored is when some other factor dramatically outweighs it, like the ridiculous shields on the cutter. (Even then, its only two hardpoints that could count as 'wide' are two mediums, with the rest being quite tightly placed.)
Click to expand...

Well, all rail Cutters do exist.
The outer hardpoints being used for feedback cascade

And people do combine hardpoints based on their location and fire them alternatively for better precision and less heat build-up
Courier: one pod and the middle hardpoints on the same trigger with the other pod hardpoint on the other trigger
Kraits: the two leftmost hardpoints (large+medium) on one trigger and the same for right most hardpoints.
etc

Rubbernuke said:
Thinking about it, although balance is the most likely reason, if you could select your convergence point (have a slider between min / max distances) it would not disrupt balance because you still have to aim at the target and aim inside that range. So for example, setting guns to 500m will make medium to long range attacks impossible so its self balancing in a way because you have to also have to control the distance in the fight.
Click to expand...

Having auto-convergence would seem like a cheat and will make fixed even more powerful as they are
Manual convergence would be a rather pointless self-inflicted pita and i'd say no one will use it
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Northpin said:
Having auto-convergence would seem like a cheat and will make fixed even more powerful as they are
Manual convergence would be a rather pointless self-inflicted pita and i'd say no one will use it
Click to expand...
It would always be manual- you set it in perhaps the side panel per weapon.

And I'd disagree with it being a PITA because ships like the T10 could then actually focus fire and know all or some guns (depending on setting) are reaching that point. Right now you can park in front of a T-10 and never get hit, because it fires out a wide tunnel of munitions as the convergence = 0 (i.e. its infinite / parallel). The skill of pointing is still there, and you also have to then control your range so your focus is on target too.
 
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DemiserofD

D
Frankly, I don't see any issue with having auto-convergence, either. The ships with close hardpoints already have 'auto convergence', by virtue of all their guns just being in the same place, and the ships with wide hardpoints stink. Giving them all auto-convergence would only serve to put them on the same playing field.

That said, this IS elite, where things are often manually controlled even when they don't need to be. It's historically accurate to be able to manually tweak your convergence; many aces in WW2 did so, for example, because the default convergence was set for those with worse accuracy. So I'd be fine with that, if that's the best option available. At least it would be better.
 

aRJay

aRJay
DemiserofD said:
Frankly, I don't see any issue with having auto-convergence, either. The ships with close hardpoints already have 'auto convergence', by virtue of all their guns just being in the same place, and the ships with wide hardpoints stink. Giving them all auto-convergence would only serve to put them on the same playing field.

That said, this IS elite, where things are often manually controlled even when they don't need to be. It's historically accurate to be able to manually tweak your convergence; many aces in WW2 did so, for example, because the default convergence was set for those with worse accuracy. So I'd be fine with that, if that's the best option available. At least it would be better.
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The manual convergence setting would need to be a function of outfitting, not something that could be done in flight.
 

Winterwalker

Winterwalker
DemiserofD said:
Giving them all auto-convergence would only serve to put them on the same playing field.
Click to expand...

You're not really on the same playing field if you've got double the number of hardpoints though are you?

It's a just law of diminsihing returns. Large ships inherently have a lot of advantages - in terms of defences, cargo carrying capacity, AMFU's, SLF's! etc etc - but this convergence issue is just the one drawback of flying a large ship, that just allows medium ships to stay useful within the game.

Or if you like, basic David and Goliath. Goliath was a massive giant who could crush you with one hand if he caught you while David was fast, agile and could still pack a punch by being less lumbering and more accurate.
 

Jukelo

Jukelo
Some ships are designed with better weapon placement than others in mind.
If you don't accept balance as the reason, then it's a matter of flavor.
 

angusmadmac1

angusmadmac1
Rubbernuke said:
Its been asked a lot.

Thinking about it, although balance is the most likely reason, if you could select your convergence point (have a slider between min / max distances) it would not disrupt balance because you still have to aim at the target and aim inside that range. So for example, setting guns to 500m will make medium to long range attacks impossible so its self balancing in a way because you have to also have to control the distance in the fight.
Click to expand...
This is epic ⏫⏫⏫,so you can set your convergance to the startoff damage falloff or your comfortable fighting style . The clipper definitely could do with some love in that respect .
 
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