There was a group of Itani players killing a Serco HAC in Serco station sector.

So the only solution for Serco players in this situation is to just sit idly and watch enemies kill their HAC and their SF npcs and do nothing?

Ok, fair enough.

Oh for chrissake, seriously? Like I give a rats ass about what guild you're in, or am even aware of that.

Seriously, I was not talking about guilds I was talking about players you very well know by their nicks and whose complaints obviously do carry more weight then anyone else's . They just happen to have the same guild tag... by pure coincidence.

Fun fact: during my brief time as a member of the TGFT, my most shocking discovery was that TGFT leaders think that the devs actively hate them, and structure the game in ways that is detrimental to their play style. Had a good chuckle at that one.

There was a group of Itani players killing a Serco HAC in Serco station sector.

So the only solution for Serco players in this situation is to just sit idly and watch enemies kill their HAC and their SF npcs and do nothing?

Ok, fair enough.

I said I will not be fixing your faction losses. You can either:

1) Take your lumps and "protect" your HAC, and deal with the possibility of a factional loss if you murder a defending law-enforcement character while "helping".

2) Stay out of the battle entirely.

3) Suggest we move the HAC out of a station sector or some other orthogonal solution. You know, on like.. the Suggestions forum.

But NO, IT IS NOT OK TO KILL GUARDS IN STATION SECTORS. There seems to be an expectation that we can derive your "intent", but that is not a reality.

Seriously, I was not talking about guilds I was talking about players you very well know by their nicks and whose complaints obviously do carry more weight then anyone else's .

And I definitely respond to the individual, the quality of the message they're delivering, the way they're trying to make their point, and their history of making points in a good or bad way. There is absolutely no question, if you behave badly.. I will definitely notice. Especially over time.

But you explicitly said it was aligned to players grouped under the "TGFT" tag, so, yes, you were talking about guilds, and trying to make this into a guild-aligned issue of favoritism. But the fact is, Genka and Lecter and Spence also think this thread is idiotic. There is no need for commonality of guild-alignment to find this discussion dumb.

Like, best-case, what is the goal here? To waste my time? To "speak truth to power"? I largely ignore RP, I'm only here because the other thread devolved. If there's a genuine interest in changing Serco border mechanics.. THEN GO WRITE ABOUT THAT (in Suggestions), that would actually be constructive.

But that isn't what's going on here. It's more like a stitch-and-bitch about random "problems", some of which may be imaginary.

And this comes down to why the other thread was locked. People seem to have started to equate RP with "complaining". RP is supposed to be a specific thing about character and the game-context of the VO universe. If you want to change the game, there are far more effective (and constructive) ways to try to do that than complaining on here.

I have warm feelings about this short blooper - reminds me of VO forums sometimes, think everyone will love it.

Knock knock

I've noticed the same thing as Hoban: certain players' incredibly exceptional, if not downright magical aim on a consistent basis. It does make me wonder if they figured out a different way to run the game (or some option that isn't obvious or in the UI, but is accessible via lua), but ever since I discovered my widowmaker valk I can dodge even them so I'm not as bothered.

The other thing I've DEFINITELY noticed is my auto aim completely failing to work at times, sometimes mid battle. The only way I've found to fix it is restarting the game. Pretty sure I put in a ticket on that one at some point.

Less talking more shooting.

With the autoaim: there are certain tricks.

The main issue that newer pilots have with it is they don't think through how it works, autoaim does not consider your own vector (speed and direction) in its calculation. You are more accurate when you stand still, so its up to the pilot to equalise his/her own position to increase accuracy.

The other option is to turn autoaim off and manually aim. With practice you can completely disregard the actual autoaim feature using the reticle only as a guide for where your shots should actually go. This is what I usually do and my combat videos will be illustrative of this.

A lot of people accuse nahin of cheating. And while I will not comment on the truth of those claims, I will comment that nahin is an example of a pilot who religiously synchronises his vector with yours and makes heavy use of chainfire to achieve a perfect stream. He was also a very regular user of scatterfire which used to toggle your autoaim on and off like hoban suggested he would like to do. Incarnate rate limited switching of aa on and off to reduce the utility of this technique (I believe in error as its effectiveness is highly situational).

Greenwalls cwm valk is a great example of a true light configuration, the manuverability makes it possible to change vectors incredibly quickly so you have trouble adjusting and matching them. A more effective setup would be a lenb dual xgx but greenwall isn't that clever.

Anyway, there are definitely remaining lua tricks to assist in combat. They aren't cheating, they are measures of automation that allow the pilot to keep focus on his/her position in the fight which will make you a better pilot overall.

There is a big difference between your average clan of duel jocks that only 1v1 in B-8 and a real, well rounded pilot who can fly lights and heavies and functions well in a team. Those are the kind of pilots we look for in RED, I only personally admit players in whom I see the potential for this kind of combat. All our council members understand this and can fight at this level.

The main issue that newer pilots have with it is they don't think through how it works, autoaim does not consider your own vector (speed and direction) in its calculation. You are more accurate when you stand still, so its up to the pilot to equalise his/her own position to increase accuracy.

AA does consider your velocity. But the accuracy of that estimate can break down pretty quickly when relative velocities get high, with drastic deltas.

He was also a very regular user of scatterfire which used to toggle your autoaim on and off like hoban suggested he would like to do. Incarnate rate limited switching of aa on and off to reduce the utility of this technique (I believe in error as its effectiveness is highly situational).

Hoban appeared to be asking if toggling AA would result in communication with the server (target update). Toggling like you describe only gives you the benefit of basically.. not having AA and then having AA, with the differential in angle being the "shotgun blast" effect that can be achieved. I also doubted the general-purpose value of that technique, but it was easy enough to rate-limit the switching.

Fundamentally, turning off AA and flying like that has a lot of advantages, although it's obviously much harder. A pretty common technique when one is tossing rockets and the like, but holds true across the board.

AA is as good as we could make it.. and we put some serious time into tuning that thing. But, it's always advisory at best, and never as good as a highly skilled pilot.

autoaim does not consider your own vector (speed and direction) in its calculation.
u trollin, rite?

What a conceited, egotistical remark. Please, just because you can code, it doesn't mean you're a god and know everything there is to know.

You've won Top Quote of the Thread, I think.

I don't think I'm a god, I just have a particularly helpful education and experience for this particular discussion. Lots of people know how to code, but not everyone gets to design applications that span multiple servers and client computers. Lucky me. I appreciate the difficulty the devs have of getting and keeping this space sim immersive.

When the discussion is about something you can lend your experience or expertise to, I hope I would not try to minimize your contribution with accusations of displaying a god complex for stating that you have relevant experience or expertise. If I do, I'm sure you'll point it out for me.

I would just like to point out, without flaming anyone, that although he has become a better pilot I would not consider Wash to be anywhere near the level of even myself. And I consider myself a pretty low skill levelled pilot.

Sure, I can hold my own against most pilots, but there are a more than a few that constantly beat me. I do not think they are cheating. Sure I did kick up a stink in the past about ram hacking, but this was more due to discussion about it while I was in a guild with some people who didn't know I was in a guild with them, than any perceived combat ability.

But yeah, Wash, sorry to break it to you mate; but the reason you eat strings of energy fire, is cos you still suck dude.

Yah Wash mate, I get those strings on you, and I'm not even that great. Better pilots than me get those strings on me. And yah, sometimes I stop and think "wtf are these hacks!!" But then I come to my senses and remember that all the problems in the universe is because of one thing. "Fucking Lag!" (TM)

Conclusions:

Wash needs to work on becoming a better pilot and Deneb is still broken.

Case closed.

Yes, Wash needs to work on his skills, and have a little more faith in the game.

Deneb is broken, as it has been for years, and that the best way to affect change is not to complain a forum that developers rarely ever read.

At any given time we have like 5,000 different broken things to work on. Much of the priority goes to catastrophic crashes that are causing people to not be able to play at all.. or to development that actively keeps us in business (or, god forbid, something that actually works towards our longer-term goals, like 1.9).

In between, there is contention for what time remains. The best way to have that time go to a particular project, is to raise the issue on Suggestions. Even if it has been raised before, just re-link the old threads and bump the concept.

This is especially true if it has some new relevance, like our choosing to revive BP when we fixed grouped Advance Combat.. which we didn't actually realize was broken. I'm sure bringing back BP had all kinds of un-intended ramifications. So bring those up, don't flip out about them. We're trying to make stuff better here.

But at the end of the day, I also expect better from our community. My patience with the grumpy, self-righteous forum situation that has become kind of the norm has.. grown thin. I would rather ban troublesome people from the forums entirely, or not have forums at all, than burn time on melodramatic BS that has no positive value.

In case it isn't clear, we're moving to a far more locked-down model here; if people want to go yell at one another on a guild forum, more power to them.

I really don't have a problem with game criticism itself, there's a whole lot that's.. flawed and worthy of criticism, heh. But it needs to be reasonably constructive criticism.. and if you genuinely can't find a way to manage your own frustrations and anger, then perhaps go play something else?

Finally, if you just want to make personal attacks on other people (or guilds) and call each other cheaters and evil, please just stay off these forums entirely (or perhaps, the game?). There's a way to handle actual cheating, and it doesn't involve finger-pointing and grandstanding on a forum.