Tracking is a big fat yuss, also collisions. Make it a non issue by having no gunfire on the highway.

Would also like a travel mode that disabled your guns and doubled your speed or sommat. Deactivated by demobs of course. Would give people a way to disengage.

play supreme commander 2 for a few times, and you would see that collision between 200 player would be a really really bad idea.

(its already an issue to bring 20 units through a chokepoint in that game)

Thats the point, its a great anti-blob mechanic.

I'm pretty sure the increased packet load resulting from implementing this would bring the dreaded Lag Monster to show it's ugly head. Unless Devs can somehow magically make lag a non-issue then yes please implement. Otherwise no.

Wouldn't implementing tracking be a nerf to turrets compared to missiles ?

You make it look bad but the server already has all this.

It already has to check if theres an obstackle (a robot is nothing else), and its ofc a annoyance if you cant walk or shoot without hurting someone on your own team. (smaller groups ftw)

And afaik .. this is what many people are asking for (anti blob mechanics).
But unlike interference (which is even more annoying) this would work.

I can only think back to the fact that another fairly successful MMO, City of Heroes, had collision detection between superheroes who were whizzing about at ultra fast speeds (with ultra-fast PvP in the PvP zones), not just on ground but in the air; some of the missions were in instances with corridors, etc.; and with all that, there were only very occasional problems, not even enough to cause threads on forums about it (I think I saw maybe 2 or 3 complaints about it in the 3 years I played CoX).  Champions Online also has it (free to play, so if you haven't experienced collision detection in an MMO, you can test it out for yourself).  Collision detection is workable in an MMO, the gain in immersion is pretty big (and would be great in this game, where you're supposed to be in a substantial metal object), and I don't think griefing would really be that big of a problem, bearing in mind that the Alpha islands are purely PvE anyway - and one would think that whoever gets to the PvP action on the Beta islands is either going to be sensible or get a very quick lesson in being sensible.

Also, tracking just makes sense - what's the point in WASD steering unless you can strafe and it has some effect?  So ok, you're not targeting directly as in a shooter, so let there be some effect from angular/transverse velocity.

or you could use 2 or 3 people to stop a person from running away from a mob spawn, killing them in the process.

You're all assuming that the collision size of a mech has to be large. It doesn't. You could have a narrow cylinder/rectangle for collisions. On alpha, the collision could be even smaller. For example, the Tellesis "only 5 entrances" issue. Well, if it takes 15-20 people per entrance to block it on alpha, let the griefers do it if they can pull it off. Gives a whole new meaning to the term "station camp". If it becomes a serious problem, I'm sure the devs could find an easy solution (like expanding the docking region so that to block all the entrances would take more people)

On betas, collision would force people to be more disciplined in larger engagements and in movement. I don't see a problem with that. The collision box on betas could be much larger as well, because if someone is griefing you on beta you can shoot them.

Tracking is something worthwhile to the game if it can be done. As it is, light bots might as well just try to blow up on a mech to try and kill it. Pilot skill needs to be put into play more, and a tracking system would allow for that much more than the current "hit size" limitations. Gun tracking should have simple angular change in addition to hit size calculations for missing, missile tracking could be similar to that other game; explosion radius, explosion size, and explosion speed.

[I'm not a game dev/network junkie, but using what knowledge I have as a learning programmer...]
The game already is sending positional-directional data. Projected angular calculations are not extensively difficult to do, and only need to be calculated probably twice a second, and only on locked targets (assume 8 calculations per player max, assume 200 player battle, that's 3200 calculations a second. Each calculation is definitely less than 100 floating point calculations, but let's assume it's 100. That's all of 320,000 floating point calculations, out of the gigaflops (1,000,000,000) that a server can do. That'd be a 0.032% increase out of total CPU usage if they only had 1 gigaflop. I doubt that would be the issue.
[/end probably half-correct calculations, which are probably only an order of maginitude wrong, if that]

EDIT: And as for all the "but you could kill my [insert big mech here] with a [insert small mech here] comments that are inevitable, that means you're doing it wrong. Being bigger does not always mean you're a better fighter, and if you're getting killed by a castel in your mesmer because you don't have a demob/tracking booster fit or you're not using terrain/cover... you're doing it wrong and should die. Just because you're big doesn't mean you are invulnerable, or at least, it shouldn't. The fact that you are shows imbalance, because it means even an idiot in a heavy mech is worth more than the best pvp pilot in the game in a light bot.

I'm not arguing whether or not to make the game more immersive, I'm arguing to make the game more skill involved. That's the primary argument of my post. I'm supporting the OP through a different means; the combat needs tracking, and tracking needs collision detection, so combat needs both.

And if having to spend a extra minute travelling is the worst that you can be griefed in this game, then the sandbox is limited. Part of playing in the sandbox is that sometimes other kids throw sand in your eyes. Inconvenience happens. griefing happens.

granted, but the mechanic that allows it should add enough value to the game to offset it. The players getting griefed, the alpha dwellers, get no benefit from collision, just all the negatives; not even immersion for the RP group.