Home » MODDING HQ 1.13 » v1.13 Idea Incubation Lab » Rebalancing Scope and sight mode mechanics
| Rebalancing Scope and sight mode mechanics[message #354972]
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Wed, 19 September 2018 00:52 
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 Morbo513 |
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Messages:47
Registered:February 2015
Location: West Yorkshire, United Ki... |
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Let me preface by saying I have little clue as to the technical feasibility of any of these ideas.
The main focus of this is going to be on the 2 and 4x scopes against the 7x. In my experience, there's zero incentive to use the former two in place of the latter, ditto with a 2x in place of a 4x. The only situations I've found myself using them in is if a particular weapon is incompatible with the higher magnification scopes - Which its self doesn't make much sense to me; if it's got rails it should be able to mount any compatible scope, but I digress.
How are the scopes currently balanced against one another? Field of view, to my knowledge, is the only diminished aspect for higher-magnification scopes. I imagine there's probably some background stat buggery, but it's never been apparent enough through gameplay to paint the 7x as anything but the optimal choice for assault and battle rifles.
The first and probably easiest idea I've had for changing this is through APs. At the most basic level, scopes could increase the APs-to-ready cost of the weapon it's attached to, by how much depending on its magnification. This would emulate the mechanics of eye relief. If we wanted to get really finnicky, higher marksmanship could reduce (but never eliminate) this malus.
Of course it'd only be incurred if readying the weapon while in scope "mode", which brings us to...
Exacerbating the 7x' superiority is that there's no penalty for swapping optic modes, allowing you to check your mercs' peripheries without spending a single AP and therefore nullifying the disadvantages of higher-power scopes. This should definitely change - however, the player should have to "confirm" the optic mode they're swapping to so as to avoid inadvertently wasted APs. Since it's such a small action the cost could be minor - 1-2 when swapping from scope to reflex/hip, 2-4 swapping back.
Following on from the previous idea, readying the weapon while in reflex mode could reduce APs-to-ready, with ironsights being the true neutral.
Taking inspiration from the Battlefield series, scopes could have "glare" - In effect, making the wielder slightly more visible to anyone in the scope's field of view (Regardless of current sight mode), even marginally increasing the CtH against them. This effect could scale differently with the vision range of each scope. For example, a 2x scope would only have this effect out to 2/3 of its range; with a 4x it'd get up to 90%; For the 7x it would extend 15% or so past its vision range, and 10x 30%. Alternatively, the visibility/CtH effects could vary by intensity.
This next idea is where technical feasibility/work-to-benefit admittedly calls it into question. Assuming such concerns could be addressed, scopes could have dirt values of their own.
When dirty, random segments of their vision cones would be partially or totally obscured, and/or reduced in range, leading to blind spots in the optic. Smaller scopes have less surface area to accrue dirt and so suffer from this less. Alternatively or additionally, scope dirt could reduce the shooter's CtH or increase number of aim clicks.
There could then be a "wipe scope" action which takes one or two APs to perform.
A further option is to remove the 7x' ability to mount a reflex sight, and precluding the mounting of one directly on the weapon - instead giving them an "ironsight" mode, where the shooter looks along the top of the scope to acquire targets in closer quarters. This would be less effective than the weapon's true ironsights. Or, mounting the reflex on the weapon as opposed to on top of the scope has it canted, increasing autofire CtH penalties, something along those lines.
Finally, expanding the content with these ideas in mind would be cool. For example lens caps/sleeves which protect scopes from dirt, are removed/popped when the weapon is first readied at an extra AP cost (Or done manually by the player). A few different models of each scope with their own minor attributes, for example an ACOG with no back-up sights but a glare hider; a SUSAT that's more resilient to dirt and has a back-up sight but produces more glare, you get the picture.
That's just about all I've got off the top of my head, but if any of you have more ideas feel free to throw them in.
Ed: Just had another one; The higher the magnification of the scope, the greater the CtH penalty against a moving target, to emulate the difficulty of tracking them visually and maintaining a lead. Now the maths there doesn't quite do it, but that's the general gist.
Ideally, at the scope's maximum vision range this effect would be minimised, even eliminated. But the closer the moving target is to the shooter, the greater the effect.
[Updated on: Wed, 19 September 2018 01:02] Report message to a moderator
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Corporal
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| Re: Rebalancing Scope and sight mode mechanics[message #354974 is a reply to message #354972]
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Wed, 19 September 2018 01:08 
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| LatZee |
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Messages:185
Registered:December 2015 |
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The scopes are balanced mainly through increasing AP needed to aim and having a minimum effective range, below which they actually make it harder to hit. It is one of main generator of NCTH complaints, because people are kinda used from OCTH that the ideal response to every situation is equiping mercs with the biggest gun they have and attaching fucking Hubble telescope to it 
That means that shooting with 7x scope at enemies at something like 20 tiles away is pretty futile. In fact, without looking at CTHConstants, i think that the minumum range for 7x is normal shooting range (70) times its magnification (7) times 0.7 factor for min effective range which would be around 34 tiles which is pretty large distance. At that point you start accumulating maluses instead of bonuses to hit, so it will quite often not be the ideal scope.
Although honestly, with the way scope vision bonuses break AI, I would really like the game to make scopes even harder to use unless the merc is highly proficient shooter, and replace their role with a line of progressively better non magnifying sights that would give to hit bonuses, bot not bonus vision. But I think that's not really something many people would like...
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Staff Sergeant
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| Re: Rebalancing Scope and sight mode mechanics[message #354981 is a reply to message #354975]
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Wed, 19 September 2018 12:43
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| LatZee |
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Messages:185
Registered:December 2015 |
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Morbo513 wrote on Wed, 19 September 2018 05:54The fact that scopes are poor in close quarters is well and fine, until pressing . gets around that in an instant. As you mention, its vision bonus is extremely powerful and in my opinion, needs to come at a greater cost even if its negative tradeoffs weren't subverted by free sight-mode switching.
Well, pressing . with 7x scope leaves you with iron sights, which is ok for closer quarters, let's say up to maybe 15 tiles. That leaves the whole mid range of 15-30 tiles distances where both 7x and iron sights are suboptimal. That is some kind of weakness. It's great if you can constantily spot enemies at 40 plus ranges. On the other hand, if a significant amount of enemies can get a bit closer in, 4x scope (which also allows use of reflex sight as an alternative) might be better. I think that the balance between different scopes works decently, it's all scopes vs enemies who don't use scopes or use them poorly where balance gets problematic.
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Staff Sergeant
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| Re: Rebalancing Scope and sight mode mechanics[message #354990 is a reply to message #354973]
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Wed, 19 September 2018 18:45
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| edmortimer |
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Messages:1533
Registered:January 2015
Location: Home Free |
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I reworked how scope give bonuses and maluses in AV. I also use Sevenfm's executable to base the changes on, so his work on the code is a major factor on how everything with NCTH works. First I took all the integral scope modifiers off of the weapons that have it included, and placed them on the scope. I thought that a scope, as an attachment, should not modify the weapon's modifiers, but it's own. That allows scopes to be taken off and not leave the AP modifier still affecting the performance of the weapon. For an example of what I did to the scopes here are the 2x & 10 x compared. I also added all the missing scope magnifications - 3x, 5x, 8x, 9x.
Toggle Spoiler <AimBonus>5</AimBonus>
<MinRangeForAimBonus>10</MinRangeForAimBonus>
<NightVisionRangeBonus>5</NightVisionRangeBonus>
<DayVisionRangeBonus>10</DayVisionRangeBonus>
<BrightLightVisionRangeBonus>10</BrightLightVisionRangeBonus>
<PercentTunnelVision>20</PercentTunnelVision>
<ScopeMagFactor>2.0</ScopeMagFactor>
<usOverheatingCooldownFactor>100.0</usOverheatingCooldownFactor>
<STAND_MODIFIERS>
<PercentCap>-10</PercentCap>
<PercentTargetTrackingSpeed>-4</PercentTargetTrackingSpeed>
<PercentHandling>12</PercentHandling>
<PercentCounterForceAccuracy>-20</PercentCounterForceAccuracy>
</STAND_MODIFIERS>
<CROUCH_MODIFIERS>
<PercentCap>-5</PercentCap>
<PercentTargetTrackingSpeed>-4</PercentTargetTrackingSpeed>
<PercentHandling>12</PercentHandling>
<PercentCounterForceAccuracy>-20</PercentCounterForceAccuracy>
</CROUCH_MODIFIERS>
<PRONE_MODIFIERS>
<PercentTargetTrackingSpeed>-4</PercentTargetTrackingSpeed>
<PercentHandling>12</PercentHandling>
<PercentCounterForceAccuracy>-20</PercentCounterForceAccuracy>
</PRONE_MODIFIERS>
Toggle Spoiler <AimBonus>20</AimBonus>
<MinRangeForAimBonus>70</MinRangeForAimBonus>
<PercentReadyTimeAPReduction>-10</PercentReadyTimeAPReduction>
<PercentAPReduction>-10</PercentAPReduction>
<DamageBonus>2</DamageBonus>
<VisionRangeBonus>60</VisionRangeBonus>
<NightVisionRangeBonus>45</NightVisionRangeBonus>
<DayVisionRangeBonus>120</DayVisionRangeBonus>
<CaveVisionRangeBonus>15</CaveVisionRangeBonus>
<BrightLightVisionRangeBonus>90</BrightLightVisionRangeBonus>
<PercentTunnelVision>90</PercentTunnelVision>
<ScopeMagFactor>10.0</ScopeMagFactor>
<usOverheatingCooldownFactor>100.0</usOverheatingCooldownFactor>
<STAND_MODIFIERS>
<PercentCap>-10</PercentCap>
<PercentTargetTrackingSpeed>-20</PercentTargetTrackingSpeed>
<PercentHandling>60</PercentHandling>
<PercentCounterForceAccuracy>-95</PercentCounterForceAccuracy>
<AimLevels>3</AimLevels>
</STAND_MODIFIERS>
<CROUCH_MODIFIERS>
<PercentCap>-5</PercentCap>
<PercentTargetTrackingSpeed>-20</PercentTargetTrackingSpeed>
<PercentHandling>60</PercentHandling>
<PercentCounterForceAccuracy>-95</PercentCounterForceAccuracy>
<AimLevels>2</AimLevels>
</CROUCH_MODIFIERS>
<PRONE_MODIFIERS>
<PercentTargetTrackingSpeed>-20</PercentTargetTrackingSpeed>
<PercentHandling>60</PercentHandling>
<PercentCounterForceAccuracy>-95</PercentCounterForceAccuracy>
<AimLevels>1</AimLevels>
</PRONE_MODIFIERS>
In game play with AV the result is close to what I think a balance of real life and game play. But I am always looking to improve it.
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But I understand that you gave this property to the 10x scope for consistency.