The way the rocket launcher is built, it ought to have a lot of recoil (and even if it was supposed to be a recoilless rifle, those still have significant recoil and effects on the operator due to the overpressure wave generated by the round being launched). I don't mind my view shifting due to recoil; I do mind the fact that it's impossible to do precision shots at rest because the BulletSpread parameter is applied at full power on every trigger pull (giving maximum randomization), where instead it should only increase with sustained fire (and if BulletSpread is supposed to represent the intrinsic spread of a weapon, then the current values are way too high). In fact, come to think of it, BulletSpread might not be needed at all on a lot of weapons; we might get ok effects by simply setting it to zero, and only using Recoil.
Good points. I was assuming the target was not mobile. When the target is moving then I can see how my suggestion doesn't help. The DPS rate would only be slower if you allowed time for the correction, kind of the same thing we have now but the player has to do the correction.
Thats plain wrong. Firstly, from the theoretical point of view: With a rocket launcher, what you are holding is basically a tube thats open on both ends with the rocke sticking in it. On firing, the engines of the rocket engage and thrive it out of this tube. The necessary impulse thus is not applied on you, but your surroundings - as a physician you know that. Second, from my concrete, personal experience i can tell you that the theory proves correct. I fired rockets myself an can tell you: there is no recoil. Uhhh... Did you shooting by yourself on occasion? Never missed a target? BulletSpread represents both, the spread of the weapon and the spread of its user. Therefore, it could be modificated by the level of the user, and for sure the values are debatable (i did modify them by myself in the config.ecf out of this reason), but its very existence is to stay with us imo.
Sorry, I should have been more specific: the in-game rocket launcher model doesn't appear to have an open back end. But, you're right that if it's a true recoilless rifle design, there should be minimal recoil (out of curiosity, was the overpressure wave noticeable at all?). Yes, I've certainly missed targets, but that was in large part due to me rather than what I was firing (the difference between standing up with a precision rifle and even just resting it on the bench was marked, as was proper breathing technique (though the recoil when on the bench hurt more, as might be expected)). As built, modern firearms designed for long-range shooting have quite low intrinsic bullet spread, and one can get quite good results under the right circumstances (securely mounted, plenty of time between shots, remote trigger, etc). In any case, I didn't say that I wanted to get rid of BulletSpread, but that it should represent the intrinsic spread of the weapon (and thus be quite small by default), and be modified by the current amount of recoil (which would be a proxy for the effects of rapid firing from an unstable mount). The way I'd formulate it would be ActualBulletSpread = BulletSpread * RecoilFactor, where RecoilFactor is incremented by Recoil/ScopeFactor (as set in the config file for a weapon) when the weapon is fired, and decreased over time by some constant factor. This gives you rapidly decreasing accuracy when continuously firing a something like a minigun, but gives you the possibility for repeated high-accuracy shots with a precision weapon if you wait enough time between shots (and use iron sights/scopes).
Now I have to say 'sorry' - i didn't look at the game model that close at all. But i would say, that this is a error on the model - i suspect a rocket launcher with closed end cannot function properly at all. It would be unreliable and dangerous at least. If the overpressure wave is noticeable strongly depends on the location and position where you fire it. This wave is very hot, so anything behind you gets pretty much grilled. You should fire it standing or squatting, not lying. And a wall in your back is not desireable, too... Apart from this: yes, you can sense the rocket engaging; there is friction of the rocket in the launcher leading to a short vibration. The shock wave is probably part of it. Exactly what i was speaking of. I am with you in the first part, but we should note, that modern assault rifles (like the G36) are neither precise nor designed for long range. The weapon-specific value should reflect this. The modificator of this value now should imo not be the recoil, but some trait of the player, his ability, to handle a - this - weapon. Overall player level would be the simplest possibibily, or one could count the kills with this weapon type, or... something else
Agreed; honestly, the in-game model looks a lot more like an overgrown grenade launcher than anything. Fair enough; certainly most weapons won't have intrinsic spreads as small as a precision weapon. If we want to account for player character skill, then I'd say we could multiply an additional skill factor onto both the recoil increment (higher skill = smaller increase in recoil) and the recoil decrement (higher skill = faster recovery). Then the actual bullet spread is then a combination of the intrinsic spread, the recoil associated with the current firing pattern, and the player character's skill.
Why do you want to tie the recoil to the player skill? It is characteristic for the weapon alone, no skill in handling the weapon can alter it to the least bit. Oh, and there you tie the spread to the recoil... Hmm, i dont think this is a good idea. While the recoil surely has an effect on the spread in a sequence of shots, this effect diminishes with the time between the shots, and a single shot is not influenced at all. This effect is modeled quite good by moving the picture proportional to the recoils strength; i dont think we should tie the spread to this in addition. Instead i propose to exchange "recoil" in your first sentece by "BulletSpread": I think, this would do the job nicely.
You have to stand the same impulse as the rocket. Impulse means the product from mass and velocity. If your mass is 90 kg and the rocket, that has 4 kg, leaves the launcher with 40 m/s (that is, roughly, 150km/h), it throws you back with 1.77 m/s, that is 6,4 km/h. That is, if you and the launcher are one solid block. Now lets assume, thats not the case. The launcher has a mass of 8 kg. So this 5kg will hit your shoulder with a velocity of 6.4 m/s, that is 23 km/h. Ouch...
Let me take another shot at this. I'm not certain I've thought everything through, but maybe. Assume the game places a "dot" on the center of the screen. This is the player's and avatar's focus. It is what you're looking at and determines what you interact with. Assume that when you're holding a weapon the game places a target sight on the screen. This is a circle with cross-hairs. This indicates where the weapon is pointing. The target sight starts perfectly imposed over the focus dot, so you see cross-hairs surrounding a dot. When you fire the weapon, the target sight (cross-hairs) move representing recoil, but the focus dot remains in place. As time passes, thee target sight moves back towards the focus dot. If you fire quickly, before the avatar has brought the weapon's target sight back to center, then the bullet's target is wherever the target sight happens to be pointing. You can use the mouse to attempt to control that and fire faster and more accurately in a manner similar to what we do today. You would pay attention to the target sight instead of the focus. When your target is moving, or you're moving, you'll probably pay more attention to the focus dot. In this way, I don't think we are required to use the mouse to adjust our aim unless we want to fire faster with more accuracy. If you choose to fire at a measured speed, the avatar would do all the work to correct the aim. Recoil wouldn't change the perspective of the player, just the position of the target sight, temporarily.
@zztong I am excited about this idea. Traditionaly the focus dot and the crosshair are the same thing. By splitting them you gain not only a more realistic implementation of recoil, but it completely removes the "shaking" of the screen, causing nausea to some people. The return of the weapons focus to the target, that was a problem in your further proposal, is changed to the return to the focus point - wherever in the world that may be, obliterating named problem. And on top you get more options for actions: You can decide, if the accuracy is good enough and fire again. Or you can wait. A seemingly simple, but ingenious idea! I am just sorry i can like that only once.
It was Virtual Reality and Fallout 4 that got me thinking this way. Anecdote... In normal Fallout 4, you shoot where you're looking. When I started playing the VR version of Fallout 4, during the intro, I was getting clobbered by the bugs at the beginning. I was looking at the bug and pulling the trigger, but the bugs wouldn't die. It turns out, in VR, you have to actually point the gun at your target. And by that, I mean to aim you have to look down the iron sights just like a real gun. Otherwise, where you're looking makes no difference at all to where the gun is pointing. I was basically shooting the floor while looking at the bugs. ... anyways, this occurred to me last night while thinking about Empyrion. Where the gun points and where you look aren't the same place, always. Its a nice convention/convenience for PC play, but not actually what is happening.
Right, this the way most modern FPS games represent the effects of recoil. Which would definitely work for our purposes and would be less complicated than my proposal (which was itself a possibly poorly abstracted model of reality). EDIT: I like how we've solved the issue of recoil in the range thread .
Apart from trying to weed through posts about <Recoil> in a 'Weapon Range' thread, and the fact this thread is an older one, I noticed people leaving out a key factor. While range variables CAN be changed in the configs, this is only small part of it. Most of the (Weapon) ranges are also decided by the Atmospheric Density of a planet...which is why there are max ranges listed in the tool tip of weapons, and a smaller "Current" range. Just a little FYI tidbit on an older thread.
