35 replies to this topic

[DeeRax]

OK, so we were arguing about the random spread of the t-32 bolt in this other thread: https://community.pl...-bolt-thoughts/

And I got to wondering, and wanted to see some of this stuff myself. Sure, I could just look at the Salty Stats sheet, but I wanted to see how that stuff translates visually. So, with time on my hands and nothing better to do, I loaded up Test Arena, and got to work taking screenshots of the different shotguns, at three different ranges. It's not exactly scientifically rigorous or perfect, but I tried to be as objective and consistent as possible.

This was mostly for my own nerdy curiosity. I present no claims here, only info. Others can draw their own conclusions, if there are any worth drawing. I figured I'd go ahead and post it here, on the chance that it will be useful to somebody. Or not. I don't care . But If somebody is interested in this, but would like to see more tests, let me know and I'll do some; I realize these are pretty small samples.

Let's begin.
I chose three rough ranges (Point Blank, Close, and Medium; Didn't bother with a Long range, don't use shotguns at long range), and did 5 shots with each shotgun at each range (So, 15 shots total for most of them; For the Bolt, I did 5 sets each for both uncharged and charged, so that's 30 for the bolt). I highlighted each individual shot in it's own color (red, yellow, green, blue, and purple-magenta-pinkcolor), and then superimposed each shot onto one image for each range set (PB, Close, Medium). So that's three images for each weapon (One for PB, one for close, and one for medium; Bolt gets 6, because uncharged & charged). Make sense? (It'll make sense when you look at the images below). Sorry, I had to do it this way to get around the image limit for posts. However, I do have an image of each individual shot, PM me if you're interested, and I'll send you links.

Tons of spoiler tags to follow.

BOLT

Spoiler

Point Blank Range:
Uncharged:

Spoiler

Charged:

Spoiler

Close Range:
Uncharged:

Spoiler

Charged:

Spoiler

Medium Range:
Uncharged:

Spoiler

Charged:

Spoiler

BREACHER

Spoiler

Point Blank Range:

Spoiler

Close Range:

Spoiler

Medium Range:

Spoiler

FLAK

Spoiler

Point Blank Range:

Spoiler

Close Range:

Spoiler

Medium Range:

Spoiler

MINI FLAK

Spoiler

Point Blank Range:

Spoiler

Close Range:

Spoiler

Medium Range:

Spoiler

RE-FLAK

Spoiler

Point Blank Range:

Spoiler

Close Range:

Spoiler

Medium Range:

Spoiler

And just for giggles...

MIRV

Spoiler

Point Blank Range:
They pretty much just all looked like this:

Spoiler

Close Range:
Again... Smoking crater:

Spoiler

Medium Range:
It's worth noting that slightly beyond this range, the MIRV projectiles magically disappear. I personally think that's a little dumb, and that they should continue on like all the other projectiles. But anyway...

Spoiler

WORST SHOTGUN

Spoiler

Point Blank Range:
They pretty much just all looked like this:

Spoiler

Close Range:

Spoiler

Medium Range:

Spoiler

Reach for the stars Rocketeer!

Spoiler

Go, go! You can do it!

Spoiler

JK, whoops.

Spoiler

That's it for now.
Oh, except one thing, before I finish...
Let's take a look at this one again:

Spoiler

Hmmm...

SATANIC BATTLETURKEY ILLUMINATI CONFIRMED:

Spoiler

Edited by (TDM) DeeRax, 12 November 2015 - 01:06 AM.

[HHJFTRU]

Nice work, thank you, but I'm a bit confused, why are there so many dots? For example uncharged T-32 has only 5 pellets and there are 5x5 dots on the image.

[DeeRax]

Nice work, thank you, but I'm a bit confused, why are there so many dots? For example uncharged T-32 has only 5 pellets and there are 5x5 dots on the image.

Right, because each image has 5 shots for each range; each shot has its own color. For example, the uncharged t-32 image has 5 red dots, 5 yellow, 5 blue, etc.; I did multiple shots in order to get something of a sample size.

Sorry, I know that's confusing, but I had to do it that way because of the limit on how many images you can put in one post. Lemme know if you want to see individual shots, and I'll send or post links.

Edited by (TDM) DeeRax, 12 November 2015 - 01:01 AM.

[HHJFTRU]

Clear. Thank you.

Edited by someone, 12 November 2015 - 01:08 AM.

[asipo]

nice work

[Rainbow_Sheep]

Never realised the flak has worse spread than the mini flak

 

Although I'm guessing the miniflak has steeper falloff

[DeeRax]

LOL, the flak has almost a worse 'spread' than the corsair's MIRV even.

Edited by (TDM) DeeRax, 12 November 2015 - 01:56 AM.

[DerMax]

Good stuff. For everything but reflak and miniflak, you don't even need the primary crosshair � the big circle will do the job.

[Merl61]

doin the lords work bro

[MomOw]

DeeRax's got the shotgun

 

[PoopSlinger]

Post of the month!  Give him a prize

[Amidatelion]

WORST SHOTGUN

 

i fckn love you man

[ticklemyiguana]

The reflak and mini flak shot groupings are very satisfying to see. I do wish the average spread for the shotguns wasn't random though. T32 close range charged and point blank uncharged there are three blue and yellow shots respectively that are outside the primary circle, which doesn't happen anywhere else. If that were medium range, a pilot could miss multiple shots even when aiming perfectly. This is silly.

This sort of thing may or may not be a hot topic in the other thread. I haven't read it.

Edited by ticklemyiguana, 12 November 2015 - 05:51 AM.

[Kopra]

Why are people attributing randomness to spread distribution? The spread of reflak and miniflak aren't less random, their spreads are distributed across smaller areas, which makes them more precise. When people want fixed spread they mean that the pellets hit the same places every time, not tighter groupings necessarily, although some weapons could use a tweak in either falloff distances or spreads.

The pictures are nice and remind me of the groundwork in producing the following sheet:

Spoiler

[americanbrit14]

Never realised the flak has worse spread than the mini flak

 

Although I'm guessing the miniflak has steeper falloff

considering that the mini-flak becomes more than useless when the target is over probably 12m away, and the flak actually has a pretty decent range for a shotgun (though it makes sense, mini-flak is a less powerful, rapid fire shotgun, so in a realistic setting the bullets would not be able to travel far enough and with enough power to pierce the metal, while the flak is a much more powerful, kind of, "Pump action-like" shotgun if you will, so its shot would travel farther)

[ticklemyiguana]

Why are people attributing randomness to spread distribution? The spread of reflak and miniflak aren't less random, their spreads are distributed across smaller areas, which makes them more precise. When people want fixed spread they mean that the pellets hit the same places every time, not tighter groupings necessarily, although some weapons could use a tweak in either falloff distances or spreads.
The pictures are nice and remind me of the groundwork in producing the following sheet:

Spoiler

I'm not positive if you're referencing my post, but I am stating that based on the photos above, the T32 seems to actually have a random spread distribution, which while minimal, I feel is kind of unacceptable.

Edited by ticklemyiguana, 12 November 2015 - 01:46 PM.

[DeeRax]

When I was doing this, I noticed the breacher was hella' random too, almost as random as the bolt.

[JackVandal]

Worst shotgun looks like a murder scene, and its really interesting to see how the spread is on all of these.

[EM1O]

thank you very much! this confirms Van/Scout mini flak is most phat, and Bruiser Dumb Fires are hottest def Mirv.

edit: woops you missed that. most obvious Mirv of all, other that Griffin.

awsum work

Edited by em1o, 12 November 2015 - 04:29 PM.

[CounterlogicMan]

The extreme randomness, in comparison to most fps' with shotguns, of spread from shot to shot has been one of my pet peeves with Hawken for a long time.Would love to see normalized (consistent/predictable) spread. With a game were things are flying and dodging around and every shot counts....random spread just makes room for frustrating experiences. Were the player feels that they were cheated by bad rng rather than just missed a shot due to their own fault in aim. To be fair, it is sometimes just something to blame. I personally have seen and experienced bad rng on shotgun spread result in missed kills or defeat in place of certain victory. I have most certainly also blamed it wrongfully. The point being, making the spread consistent between shots would not only remove another thing people can blame for their own mistakes, it would also make the game play more consistent and rewarding for people playing with shotguns.

 

Thanks for taking the time to do these screenshots. Very informative and bring to light something a lot of people don't realize. The extent to which shotgun spreads are random between shots.

 

In my opinion, the first step in making burst and sustain primaries feel more balanced. Is to make each of the shotgun's spread the same from shot to shot. Players should only miss damage because they didn't aim well enough...not because the rng gods dictate they missed.

Edited by CounterlogicMan, 12 November 2015 - 06:13 PM.

[DM30]

In my opinion, the first step in making burst and sustain primaries feel more balanced. Is to make each of the shotgun's spread the same from shot to shot. Players should only miss damage because they didn't aim well enough...not because the rng gods dictate they missed.

A perfect example of this is the "Fight people from the forums" duel that I did against Weezl3 a while back in our Raiders, both using Bolt. He had me down to a sliver of health and theoretically one more uncharged Bolt shot should have killed me. He shot multiple times, just grazing me with a single pellet on a couple of shots in a row, and I ended up winning that round when my MIRV reloaded. His shots were well aimed and the first one should have killed me but the game decided, "Nope."

 

In a game that (at least in the past) has claimed to be skill-focused with competitive aspirations, this kind of randomness doesn't contribute anything.

[Kopra]

I'm not positive if you're referencing my post, but I am stating that based on the photos above, the T32 seems to actually have a random spread distribution, which while minimal, I feel is kind of unacceptable.

 

I've just recently seen more usage of "random spread" instead of "large spread" and "T32 has a more random spread than Reflak". It's probably not worth making a post over it but it's enough to pop a vein in your eye if you consider what randomness in this context is. 

 

Every weapon with spread in Hawken has random spread. It doesn't appear to be weighed to any certain spot(s), hence it's random. While arguably weapons like Flak and T32 are more affected by the randomness of the spread mechanics of Hawken, the requests of increasing the falloff range and/or spread size may not be the right answer. It was the solution given to the sustained weapons in the move from Ascension to Steam patch Hawken, and see where we are now.

 

"Then make the spread more consistent to certain spots, what's the problem?"

I don't have any experience from UE3, so if I'm wrong please correct me here. Granted this is UE4 but an example of implementing weapon spread:

 

8:38 -> setting up the random floaters for pitch and yaw (with minimum and maximum values)

10:04 -> spread in action

 

 

However Hawken's spread system is implemented (pitch & yaw vs. pitch & roll), it might be a sizeable amount of work to set up the correct angles for each hitscan trace. Even after the random spread of shotguns would be fixed, there'd still be other weapons like the unscoped Sabots with random spread also. A sabot rework where they'd always be 100% accurate but require scoping more heavily would then be in order. And then you'd still have Vulcans, etc. so this is like a really annoying technical debt in a competitive sense.

Edited by (KDR) Kopra, 15 November 2015 - 04:15 AM.

[DeeRax]

-snip-

 

Thank-you for that, I actually wanted to know more of the technical details behind this stuff.

[MechFighter5e3bf9]

i think the fact a t32 is tracefire and reflak is projectiles warrants an edge for reflak on the terms of accuracy for obviously how projectiles travel time and lag factors coupled with identical spread of a t32 means reflak is more often than not the lesser, who is to say that it is not so right now, but it deserves an edge over a tracefire version of itself and bouncing the reflak shot is only used in ceremonies

[cavefishes]

i think the fact a t32 is tracefire and reflak is projectiles warrants an edge for reflak on the terms of accuracy for obviously how projectiles travel time and lag factors coupled with identical spread of a t32 means reflak is more often than not the lesser, who is to say that it is not so right now, but it deserves an edge over a tracefire version of itself and bouncing the reflak shot is only used in ceremonies

Nice necro. Also, re-flak isn't a projectile, it's hitscan. The reflecting shot effect is visual only, not an actual representation of travel time - even bounced shots connect instantly.

[DeeRax]

Actually, thnx for the necro - I now realize that I was hosting those images on a server that is now defunct; Sorry about that everyone.

[MechFighter5e3bf9]

thats what got me to stop and read in the first place, the missing images lol

[DeeRax]

I still have the images on my hdd, I'll fix 'em at some point soonish.

[MechFighter5e3bf9]

still waiting for them images, that is priority of this thread now for curations sake the internet is missing a piece man put it back

[DeeRax]

Whelp, seems RLD may have decreased the limit on how many images you can put in one post even further (Seriously Reloaded, WTF?!), so I won't be able to update the original post; Instead I'll have to divide the images into multiple posts (Following this one). So, sorry for the multipost (Blame RLD), but this info deserves to remain here for posterity.

[DeeRax]

BOLT

Spoiler

Point Blank Range:
Uncharged:

Spoiler

Charged:

Spoiler

Close Range:
Uncharged:

Spoiler

Charged:

Spoiler

Medium Range:
Uncharged:

Spoiler

Charged:

Spoiler

Edited by (TDM) DeeRax, 17 June 2016 - 09:30 AM.

[DeeRax]

BREACHER

Spoiler

Point Blank Range:

Spoiler

Close Range:

Spoiler

Medium Range:

Spoiler

Edited by (TDM) DeeRax, 17 June 2016 - 09:31 AM.

[DeeRax]

FLAK

Spoiler

Point Blank Range:

Spoiler

Close Range:

Spoiler

Medium Range:

Spoiler

Edited by (TDM) DeeRax, 17 June 2016 - 09:25 AM.

[DeeRax]

MINI FLAK

Spoiler

Point Blank Range:

Spoiler

Close Range:

Spoiler

Medium Range:

Spoiler

Edited by (TDM) DeeRax, 17 June 2016 - 09:25 AM.

[DeeRax]

RE-FLAK

Spoiler

Point Blank Range:

Spoiler

Close Range:

Spoiler

Medium Range:

Spoiler

Edited by (TDM) DeeRax, 17 June 2016 - 09:25 AM.

[DeeRax]

And just for giggles...

MIRV

Spoiler

Point Blank Range:
They pretty much just all looked like this:

Spoiler

Close Range:
Again... Smoking crater:

Spoiler

Medium Range:
It's worth noting that slightly beyond this range, the MIRV projectiles magically disappear. I personally think that's a little dumb, and that they should continue on like all the other projectiles. But anyway...

Spoiler

WORST SHOTGUN

Spoiler

Point Blank Range:
They pretty much just all looked like this:

Spoiler

Close Range:

Spoiler

Medium Range:

Spoiler