So since VS will be the only ones getting Damage Degradation...

[Ailos]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

If you're going to try to use science to justify something, at least don't use bad science. Everything is affected exactly the same by gravity. Including energy. A beam of light is pulled down at 9.8 m/s^2. Its just going so damned fast you don't see it, since its 300,000 km away after a second.

Like Raka Maru mentioned, the effect you are referring to is gravitational lensing. It happens not because photons are pulled towards a each other by gravity or towards a planetary surface by gravity but because of the bend in timespace created by a big mass like a star. Because gravity isn't a force but this bending of time space, objects with mass experience a 'pull' that is several billion times stronger than massless objects like photons do. Both planets and energy are affected through the same mechanism, but the magnitude of the effect is very different. Translation: for all practical purposes energy travels straight on our battlefield.

On the other hand, plasma (cold or hot) IS matter, it DOES have mass and it DOES interact with gravity in a similar fashion.

A light bulb, and general radiation has range degradation proportional to the distance squared. A coherent beam like a laser doesnt radiate in a sphere and is subject to range degradation of a very small constant for distance. Translation: your beamers laser won't have any worse of a damage loss at range than a 9 mm round, for the same reason: it isn't a vacuum.

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by xSlideShow

Although, I'm probably just flaming at this point... Cause I didn't read the post I just read the topic. Already tired of reading this same thing. I get it's a pretty big difference between the empires... but was everyone that excited to have bullet drop or something?!

Frankly, I was always rather disappointed my magrider/lancer/etc didn't have bullet drop. Made things too easy. Point, click, hit. :/

[morf]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Everything is affected exactly the same by gravity. Including energy. A beam of light is pulled down at 9.8 m/s^2. Its just going so damned fast you don't see it, since its 300,000 km away after a second.

Ok so if I'm going to shoot at a vanguard at 300,000k I aim 9.8m higher. Got it. Thanks for the tip.

[Elude]

The only way the weapons of the TR/NC will become superior because they have no damage reduction is if everyone on every empire had 100 percent accuracy which is impossible unless you're cheating. No matter how much practice you put into adjusting to bullet drop you will never have the aiming potential of someone who doesn't have bullet drop like the VS.

[dsi]

Originally Posted by Elude

The only way the weapons of the TR/NC will become superior because they have no damage reduction is if everyone on every empire had 100 percent accuracy which is impossible unless you're cheating. No matter how much practice you put into adjusting to bullet drop you will never have the aiming potential of someone who doesn't have bullet drop like the VS.

But bullets don't fly at a constant speed, they're affected not just by gravity but by drag from the air. (and tons of other things like weapon rifling, production defects, wind outside of the weapon, temperature of the barrel/round, etc) Drag means slower, slower means less kinetic force, less kinetic force means less damage.

[Elude]

Originally Posted by dsi

But bullets don't fly at a constant speed, they're affected not just by gravity but by drag from the air. (and tons of other things like weapon rifling, production defects, wind outside of the weapon, temperature of the barrel/round, etc) Drag means slower, slower means less kinetic force, less kinetic force means less damage.

IN REAL LIFE!

For all we know the ballistic weapons could still be hitscan, it's easy to simulate bullet drop with hitscan. It's unlikely that the game will have physics as accurate as that considering it's not based on the real world or trying to simulate it and it's an mmo with thousands of people to account for.

[dsi]

Originally Posted by Elude

IN REAL LIFE!

For all we know the ballistic weapons could still be hitscan, it's easy to simulate bullet drop with hitscan. It's unlikely that the game will have physics as accurate as that considering it's not based on the real world or trying to simulate it and it's an mmo with thousands of people to account for.

That doesn't mean there shouldn't be damage drop off, as most people seem to expect.

[mefy]

confirmed only VS have damage degrad by Tray via twitter.

[RedKnights]

Originally Posted by morf

Ok so if I'm going to shoot at a vanguard at 300,000k I aim 9.8m higher. Got it. Thanks for the tip.

Only if the travel time over that firing arc is exactly one second, then again I can't tell if you're trolling or not... which scares me most.

In other news the VS Pulsar and Beamer has damage degredation in PS1 so there's no real change. And our CoF was pretty bad, so it's an overall buff i'd say

[Erendil]

Originally Posted by RedKnights

In other news the VS Pulsar and Beamer has damage degredation in PS1 so there's no real change. And our CoF was pretty bad, so it's an overall buff i'd say

Except that the TR & NC firearms won't have DD in PS2, but they did in PS1. Granted most of the time the DD wasn't as bad for them as it was for VS weapons tho...

I dunno, I just don't like the idea of being penalized for being able to make long range shots... Then there are ammo considerations as well, since at long range the Pulsar will most likely need to fire more shots to get a kill than the Cycler/Gauss. But then, maybe the Pulsar will get the same self-charging energy cells that the Beamer has...

[mefy]

accirding to Trays tweet, theoretically the guass/cycler will do full damage at great ranged, provided with less accuracy... so basically it's a crap shoot... you spray a bunch of lead and hope one of them connects in the head and you'll probably have a kill, whereas VS will have to actually hit the target a lot of times which brings up COF issues and ping.

IMO all weapons should have DD when it comes to MA and stuff or have none of them have it.... just giving it to VS will gimp us... just watch how out of wack it will get. Calling it now.

[Blackwolf]

Originally Posted by mefy

Not exactly with COF in place.

Weapons with bullet drop off would also be affected by CoF. If you think trying to hit someone with CoF in place was hard, try hiting them while factoring in gravity in addition to CoF. Twice the compensation involved.

Hitting a moving soldier at long range will be very difficult with even minor bullet drop off, but since Vanu weapons won't have this disadvantage, they are going to have a better range advantage against moving targets, stationary targets are another matter though.

OP: My guess is that VS weapons won't start their damage degradation until much further out then PS1. And the balancing factor is easy. We can shoot moving targets far more accurately then they can, but they can shoot stationary targets with more damage then we can. That's how I see this balancing out anyway.

[Erendil]

Originally Posted by Blackwolf

Weapons with bullet drop off would also be affected by CoF. If you think trying to hit someone with CoF in place was hard, try hiting them while factoring in gravity in addition to CoF. Twice the compensation involved.

Hitting a moving soldier at long range will be very difficult with even minor bullet drop off, but since Vanu weapons won't have this disadvantage, they are going to have a better range advantage against moving targets, stationary targets are another matter though.

OP: My guess is that VS weapons won't start their damage degradation until much further out then PS1. And the balancing factor is easy. We can shoot moving targets far more accurately then they can, but they can shoot stationary targets with more damage then we can. That's how I see this balancing out anyway.

I think you're right on the balance thing. VS weapons will be more accurate so we'll hit more against maneuvering targets, but TR/NC weapons will be able to out-damage us once they've zeroed in on a stationary target. Which is fine by me.

However, I'm curiuos how much bullet drop there's actually going to be. If it's at all realistic it won't be any more than ~5-8cm/100m with an Gauss/Cycler. This seem to be not too far off based on the Cycler's tracers in Higby's gameplay vid. The traces didn't start to drop noticeably until they were quite far off i nthe distance. So I'm suspicious about how much difference bulle drop will actually make.

Of course, a lot depends on the effective and max ranges of our weapons.. I'm hoping for at least a 50% range increase overall. 100+% increase preferred.

I'm also curious about how headshots will be balanced. Are VS weapons going to do less damage on a headshot across the board because they're more accurate?

[ShockFC]

Theoryside

[robocpf1]

EDIT: I was going to rant about science fiction and then I took an arrow to the knee. So here's this smiley face.