1 Topic by Gaulois (edited by Gaulois 2011-06-21 23:06:40)

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Topic: Unable to interrupt all weapons with spacebar

Conditions:
Robot: arbalest
Weapons: 5x T1 light em guns + 1 small missile launcher.
Using solidcore ammo (blue) and the red missiles (thermal/seismic 150m optimal)


I observed that if I go farther than 150m (and my 5 em guns have an optimal range of 152m), I can no longer interrupt my weapons using spacebar.
(most probably because of this missile launcher)
My character is therefore shooting over his optimal range and wasting ammo.

I guess this is because the game tries to activate the launcher instead of interrupting the rest.

I would suggest to slightly change stuff, so you can have 2 different signals for activating and deactivating all weapons.

Not necessary 2 key, I would like something like:

- Press spacebar = activate all weapons
- If all weapons activated, press spacebal to interrupt them
- If some or all weapons are activated, hold spacebar 1 sec to interrupt them
- If no weapons is activated hold spacebar 1sec to automatically shoot once and interrupt the cycle.


This would be very useful should hybrid bots appears in game. There's already a few like arbalest and kains that has missiles only slots.

My blog about MMO design:
http://mmockery.wordpress.com/
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Re: Unable to interrupt all weapons with spacebar

I'm thinking spacebar needs to be changed to "toggle all weapons fire".

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Re: Unable to interrupt all weapons with spacebar

That's precisely the problem. If a weapon is unable to fire, Spacebar will never let you interrupt the other weapons. Only when all weapons are activated, can you turn them off by pressing spacebar.

My blog about MMO design:
http://mmockery.wordpress.com/

4 Reply by Annihilator (edited by Annihilator 2011-06-21 18:35:24)

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Re: Unable to interrupt all weapons with spacebar

Guns nButter wrote:

I'm thinking spacebar needs to be changed to "toggle all weapons fire".

simply making it toggle all would result in switching on those that are inactive, and off those that are active.

we already got same discussion there:
http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/topi … -fire-all/

i may sound simple for you "just make it toggle all" - but which way should it toggle all?

with example:
4 slots, 2 active, 2 inactive

you hit spacebar

now what should happen?
- deactivate the two active ones, starting the cooldown cycle*, or
- trying to activate the two inactive ones (which is what it does now)

only thing the DEVs could do there is to add another condition:
"if any module returns error, deactivate all"


* simply deactivating all would also result in a *** of complaints - at least from me:
i got 6 laser on my seth, three of them got a bit less range then the others. so i end up smashing the spacebar until all start shooting while im getting closer to my target. Deactivating all would result in many unnecessary cooldown-cycles of the weapons that are already in range.

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear
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Re: Unable to interrupt all weapons with spacebar

I always fire in manual mode with my kain. I suppose the ROF on lasers would be annoying, but for something like rails or gauss guns it's slow enough to be manageable.

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Re: Unable to interrupt all weapons with spacebar

It still surprises me that people refuse to hit the hotkeys for each weapon when special cases like this arise.  Sure, a key bind for "deactivate all weapons" would be nice, but I'm certainly getting along quite well without it.

Being a missile user, we have a special circumstance for needing to micro-manage our weapons as well.  Since we don't do instant damage to our targets, we have to judge how many missiles are needed to kill the target as to not waste missiles.  The only way to do this is to toggle off how ever many we dont want to fire, then switch targets and fire the rest once the first ones fly.

What I'm trying to say is that I have no issue having to do this on a pretty regular basis, so I dont see why you should have any problem.  Hitting a few extra keys really isnt an inconvenience, unless you have your weapons bound to UIOP{} or something like that.

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Re: Unable to interrupt all weapons with spacebar

You make a good point.

But the change I propose should be fairly easy to implement, and offer more options without changing anything at the actual system.

I think it's always good to have more options, as long as it don't bother anyone/anything already existing.

My blog about MMO design:
http://mmockery.wordpress.com/
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Re: Unable to interrupt all weapons with spacebar

With lasers, and I assume other types, when you reload it does it left to right. So if you happen to not have enough ammo remaining, its easy to have 1 laser run out before the others.

Everytime you hit space bar, that empty laser trys to reload, which is irritating but also the other 4 lasers don't stop. But especially with lasers, with fast cycle times and LOS issues, you can waste rounds on plants and hills trying to manually shut off 4 lasers while trying to still move around. And if your already low, 5-10 rounds could mean the difference.

For farming, its more about wasting rounds on bots that are out of optimal range, and if you change primary target before it's locked, the lasers will continue to cycle (without firing) and space bar still won't stop them.

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Re: Unable to interrupt all weapons with spacebar

im not sure if this was mention but if you go down to the bottom of the modules window and right click on your weapon and un check []AUTOMATIC your weapons will only fire 1 time and then stop. then at that point you have to hit space bar to fire all your weapons or F1-F? to fire them individually like how we use to i mech warrior.