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Compellor wrote:QUOTE (Compellor @ May 20 2010, 10:25 PM) I can field that one with the image I posted on the first page. The auto hitbox generator would take the IC int and give it this hitbox, which is the hitbox currently in use. If you use it on something fairly compact the hitbox ends up being fairly hull-conforming, but if you use it on something with fins and wings, the result is much easier to hit than it looks. It's ideal for something as small as a probe, but unacceptable for something as big as a station, which is what caused the problem with the old Rix Expansion. Small craft are in kind of a sweet spot where the matter is arguable.

Okay thanks. I had just hypothesized to Xere in game that if it this was how it would work then heaven forbid you had any ships that was not a big flying wing. Thanks for clearing this up and there is no way at this time I would ever want to go down the route of auto generating new hitboxes for every small craft.

Edit: Bios is also the very next topic I plan to put up a topic for when this one is semi resolved

As mentioned earlier:

Xeretov wrote:QUOTE (Xeretov @ May 19 2010, 03:01 AM) We may end up increasing the size of their int a bit based on this feedback, but fixing the above issue will make it easier to compare (and balance) them with the other factions.

I'd like to increase the TF int's mass and see if that helps fix it. If you're all dead set on a size increase too then I can go for that, but its not going to be pretty for the reasons spidey summarized above.

I'm also interested to know if the accel GA fix affected the accel faction modifier as well. If it did, then thats another GA and a half worth on top of the ones they buy in exp. And an int with below-standard mass.

im fairly sure it did because the fix applied to how thrust was generated from a ships acceleration and not the ga itself (iirc). And ga's ofc stack on top of the other so youre still going to end up with something that accels much better but is better at ramming =P. on the other hand higher accel is one of tf's perks and would definitely affect their other techpaths (because remember they do have .9 speed)

Yeah I'd prefer to leave the faction's accel bonus, but the individual ships don't need to have less mass on top of that.

spideycw wrote:QUOTE (spideycw @ May 21 2010, 12:39 AM) Can someone explain why all the original factions had bullet dispersion?

Yes, Tkela did a long time ago. I'll do my best to remember what he said (post was on the old forums sadly and I may misremembering and it may not even have been Tkela but hey ho).

Dispersion places hits in a proability cone (note, probability, not random). This means that a perfect player with 0 lag will land say 90% of hits, but if there is lag and the target isn't quite where it appears to be to the player they will still land some hits unless the lag is very high and the difference between apparent and true positions is greater than the probability cone. This will also benefit a bad player with good lag but that's an acceptable compromise as at least you're notpunishing a player experiencing lag.

Xeretov wrote:QUOTE (Xeretov @ May 20 2010, 09:49 PM) The dispersion was also decided upon for the original models, the ones without perfect hitboxes. But you appear to be suggesting that dispersion only helps hit in lag. This seems strange to me, since dispersion will also cause you to miss. Lag only compounds that factor both ways. I would argue the same is true for the hitbox.

But the problem is that, if the hitbox doesn't match the model, a less experienced player with perfect aim will hit less than a vet with poor aim because the vet knows what to aim at (open space). The game should be about skill, you already have lag compensation in bullet dispersion and don't IMO need a belt and braces solution to that problem. Making hitboxes that don't conform to the models supports knowledge over skill.

Xeretov wrote:QUOTE (Xeretov @ May 20 2010, 09:49 PM) I'm not saying that the few ships with silly oversized or off-shape hitboxes (like the Rix fig you mentioned) are a good thing, but the slightly out of shape ones (most of the current ships in my opinion) don't strike me as a big issue. If I line up my shots to hit the ship around its middle, some are going to miss from dispersion and lag, and a few extra will hit because of dispersion and the hitbox. Its not a great system but given how current gameplay works its quite functional.

I'm arguing with you Rav, because here I see complaining that the ship with the conforming hitbox is too hard to hit, and then people telling me all ships should have conforming hitboxes.

If the ship is hard to hit then perhaps it's the the ship, not the hitbox that's at fault? Scaling the ship may well help a lot but if the model is fundamentally flawed for use in Allegiance then those options will only take you so far.

Xeretov wrote:QUOTE (Xeretov @ May 20 2010, 09:49 PM) So you're suggesting that Sniper, Util, Dis, and all of the TF weapons should have dispersion or AOE added? Not sarcastic here, just curious as its one thats come up before. I'd be interested to know how you think we'd rebalance the SF weapons in particular since they'd have to get closer to do the same damage.

TF weapons should have dispersal yes. They've always been far less effective for people with higher lag than the normal equivalents, and conversely more effective for those with low lag. Again, I think the game should be about skill, not proximity to the server.

There's a special case for dis, galv and util. They are mostly shot at either stationary or low accel targets (bases, drones (which your client should know the exact location of at all times) and capships). Lag shouldn't come into play with these targets at all simply because if they do lagjump it's by such a small amount that you're still hitting them. Sniper is an interesting case because it breaks all the rules. It does seem to work (although sniping scouts in a bomb run can be a massive pain, but at least you have hunters). I'd be tempted to not fix it because it seems to not be broken (high projectile speed helps possibly?) or add a small amount of dispersal and maybe up the firing rate (and reduce energy and damage accordingly). obviously with gat level dispersal at sniper range you'd never hit a damn thing.

Xeretov wrote:QUOTE (Xeretov @ May 20 2010, 09:49 PM) As I mentioned above, the irony of this sort of statement is that we've had far more complaints/issues with these new conforming hitboxes than we have with the more traditional ones. Bear in mind that this is based off the responses I see in this forum. If you all think that the IC and Rix ints, the belters figs, Giga scouts, etc. are all terribly unbalanced and need to be fixed then speak up and I'll be forced to consider otherwise. Hell, even the new OH ships were supposedly made that way and aside from the flat profile on the int there don't appear to have been any major complaints about those.

Here's a quick lesson in human nature: people complain when stuff changes. You get complaints about the new stuff because it's new, not because it's particularly more of a problem than the things that people are used to. IMO that shouldn't be a reason not ot examine the option of changing something that's been left alone for the last decade.

Xeretov wrote:QUOTE (Xeretov @ May 20 2010, 09:49 PM) And as for the workload, it seems silly to me because you'd achieve the exact same effect with all of this perfect-hitbox stuff that you do now. You're changing the hitboxes to conform (which makes them harder to hit) and then making them bigger as balance demands (which makes them as easy/hard to hit as they are now). That said if somebody were to magically PM me tomorrow with a set of new perfect hitboxes for every ship in Allegiance, I don't think I'd turn it down. Would be fun hearing all the complaints about the new ships being too hard to hit though, especially since it would take us several releases to get them anywhere near the level they are now. It'd also be funny seeing these huge ships flying around afterwards, especially if it began to interfere with docking at small doors.

You seem to think that conforming hitboxes would require a substantial scaling up of the model to acheive the same footprint as the current, broken, hitboxes. Do you have any evidence for that or is it just supposition?

Xeretov wrote:QUOTE (Xeretov @ May 20 2010, 09:57 PM) Oh the irony. You're the one putting words into mouths here. You suggested making every hitbox perfect and I gave you an equally retarded suggestion to illustrate your stupidity. I'm sorry I ever thought you could understand such a point Adept, I really should've just berated you right away instead of two posts later.

Xere, you need to think how you respond to people if you're acting as the mouthpiece for the CC team. Being overly aggressive to a perfectly reasonable request that broken stuff gets fixed just makes you look like an imbecile. Attacking without supporting what you're saying doesn't help. Maybe you gain kudos with the dribbling morons in the peanut gallery but you do your team a great disfavour. You replied to me civilly despite me asking for the same thing as Adept in a more provocative way.

Xeretov wrote:QUOTE (Xeretov @ May 20 2010, 09:49 PM) Right, so you don't care if a weapon is programmed to randomly hit or miss, but you also don't want the ship to get randomly hit. Read that again a few times to make sure you understand what I mean. In fact maybe you should contact an adult to help you with this one, its tricky.

Try to understand what random means and how it's not what happens with dispersion in alleg.

Xeretov wrote:QUOTE (Xeretov @ May 20 2010, 09:49 PM) Despite the fact that the conforming hitbox is pretty much the reason for this. Maybe psych was right and we should scale every ship up to the point where anyone can hit them. At least then you'd stop complaining about how hard they are to hit.

Maybe you were right and we should give every ship a massive spherical hitbox to the point where anyone can hit them? Because that seems to be what you're arguing for.

spideycw wrote:QUOTE (spideycw @ May 21 2010, 05:03 AM) @Adept - Xere was commenting that shots already miss even when you are dead on target

Does anybody have a problem with that? We can see the bullets, and we see when they miss. Spread is not a problem, it has always been a part of Allegiance.

Spread making some shots miss, especially at long range is a feature not a bug. I don't really see why the hitbox conforming to the ship would suddenly make spread a problem. I also don't think most Allegiance hitboxes are bad. There just a few ships that are worse than they look since the hitbox is drawn around every extremity. The IC fighter is probably the prime example.

This is probably not worth all the arguing. It would be interesting to hear how many other people think the new TF int is too hard to hit. I haven't noticed it mysef, but I've only flown a small handful of games vs. TF lately. The fat Y shaped hitbox shouldnt' be any harder to balance. If the int really is too small, it can just be scaled up a bit.

Let's just all chill down a bit.

/edit frack. I didn't see Raveen saying the exact same thing but better formed. I suppose I missed the refresh button and thus the last post. Sorry.

Rav, the ships like IC fighter would get much harder to hit. The ships with lots of fins and wings suffer the biggest nerf form the simple hitboxes. Lentil shaped ships like the IC int do pretty well. The reason I'd like to have the IC fig hitbox fixed is because it is huge, and makes a by-the-numbers very nice fighter into a crappy SUV in an actual fight. So yes, using Raingriffins fixed IC fig hitbox would be a significant perk to the IC fig. Since they are very unpopular it would probably go to the right place.

Why in a thread originally about why hull conforming hitboxes are utter @#(!e is everyone suggesting that we make every ship in alleg a hull conforming hitbox?

look, if TF ints are really too good give them above-standard mass for an int like 22-26 or something like that, they'd still handle just fine but wouldn't be so ridiculous with acceleration, and maybe TF HTTs wouldn't suck as much, either. there's no need to have a giant cluster$#@! argument about model editing and hitboxes and blah blah blah

Xeretov wrote:QUOTE (Xeretov @ May 21 2010, 06:49 AM) I'm not saying that the few ships with silly oversized or off-shape hitboxes (like the Rix fig you mentioned) are a good thing, but the slightly out of shape ones (most of the current ships in my opinion) don't strike me as a big issue.

That's pretty much it. The tf int is fairly rectangular from the front and sides, so an autogenerated hitbox wouldn't make a whole lot of difference in that situation, it's only the top profile that causes problems. One could argue that it's not worth manually building a hitbox for this particular ship due to the sheer number of things that can go wrong.

It's sad when spidey is the most rational person in a thread.

Raveen wrote:QUOTE (Raveen @ May 21 2010, 05:58 AM) You seem to think that conforming hitboxes would require a substantial scaling up of the model to acheive the same footprint as the current, broken, hitboxes. Do you have any evidence for that or is it just supposition?

This very thread? As I've already mentioned its an issue because of the oddly shaped model, which makes the conforming hitbox compared to what it would be if it was a traditional one much more apparent. And because of that shape its hard to justify using either type of hitbox.

And if, in theory, any ships don't require a scale adjustment after reducing their hitbox (because lets face it, making it conform is a reduction compared to the current convex bubble) then I'd argue you haven't accomplished anything in creating that hitbox, be it good or bad. I also imagine (and again as I've mentioned) that this applies to many or even most of the ships with only slightly off-shape hitboxes; You wouldn't notice a difference. Hence my much earlier comment that I don't think it'd be worth the effort and the traditional hitboxes on most of said ships are fine. Edit: If we had a team of two dozen .cvh experts on hand I'd be quite happy to see them off on crazy projects just to test the results and see if there'd be a minute improvement. But at the moment we have one (possibly two) and I'd prefer to keep said projects to what needs to happen and more importantly, what he's willing to work on.

I'm quite happy to consider differently with a convincing enough opinion, but so far the only argument I've heard is that scoring hits on empty space = bad. Ok it looks a bit sloppy but I believe that the other factors in scoring hits (lag, dispersion) are significant enough that the overall effect of the imperfect hitbox for those same ships has been blown out of proportion by the WYSIWYG crowd. Edit: Especially because of all the problems we've had with the new TF ships with conforming hitboxes, compared to the seemingly less numerous complaints with the more traditional ships. Or even the OH ships which were done with that method.

QUOTE Xere, you need to think how you respond to people if you're acting as the mouthpiece for the CC team. Being overly aggressive to a perfectly reasonable request that broken stuff gets fixed just makes you look like an imbecile. Attacking without supporting what you're saying doesn't help. Maybe you gain kudos with the dribbling morons in the peanut gallery but you do your team a great disfavour. You replied to me civilly despite me asking for the same thing as Adept in a more provocative way.[/quote]The CC team doesn't need a mouthpiece as they're all quite capable of posting on their own. My role here is to keep the sillyness to a minimum, which I prefer to do by making an example of silly posts. The difference I see between you and Adept is that you appear to think about your suggestions before you post them. This leads towards, in your own words, a more provocative way to discuss the issue. I'd much prefer that people did the considerations of the pros & cons of their suggestions before posting them, rather than my (or others on the CC team) having to do those considerations for them. Especially since the community vastly outnumbers this team!

QUOTE Try to understand what random means and how it's not what happens with dispersion in alleg.[/quote]
This just seems like semantics. So long as the point of dispersion being less controlled (more random-like perhaps) compared to no dispersion gets across then you can call it whatever you like. I brought it up as relevant to Adept's original complaint about hitboxes giving "feel good hits" when they are shooting at space. We already have what I consider a "feel good hits" system with dispersion which he doesn't appear to have any problems with. Edit: And neither do I, hence my suggestion otherwise being a sarcastic mockery. And again returning to my opinion above that many/most current models work fine as-is due to the other factors involved.

QUOTE Maybe you were right and we should give every ship a massive spherical hitbox to the point where anyone can hit them? Because that seems to be what you're arguing for.[/quote]Not sure where the spherical idea came from, aside from sarcastic comments that others have posted in this forum before. As for the size increase, please refer to Psych's original request for that here. I merely find the idea to be hilarious, but it'd take a lot to convince me to implement it. Such as the whole community.

SpkWill wrote:QUOTE (SpkWill @ May 21 2010, 07:53 AM) Why in a thread originally about why hull conforming hitboxes are utter @#(!e is everyone suggesting that we make every ship in alleg a hull conforming hitbox?

I'm still waiting for that answer myself!

TurkeyXIII wrote:QUOTE (TurkeyXIII @ May 21 2010, 09:37 AM) That's pretty much it. The tf int is fairly rectangular from the front and sides, so an autogenerated hitbox wouldn't make a whole lot of difference in that situation, it's only the top profile that causes problems. One could argue that it's not worth manually building a hitbox for this particular ship due to the sheer number of things that can go wrong.

Yes, and even Psych has agreed that the front and sides aren't the problem, its the top. The auto-gen hitbox would be simple and quick to make, but I imagine it'd fill in the empty spaces around the wings in the hitbox. It'd be a lot more simpler to consider for balance as far as gameplay goes - and easier to work with - but for this particular model I agree that the sheer amount of hittable empty space would be very confusing to aim at.

There's no perfect fix for this problem, with the possible exception of using a different model for the int.