I guess this is more along the lines of a question to the devs or Sherpa (if he knows), along with proposed solutions, if anyone here understands their answer.

Q1a: Why does the cursor move in very small increments instead of a smooth, flowing motion? If you're zoomed in and trying to precisely pinpoint an object for a long turbo or rail gun shot, you'll know what I mean. It's impossible to thread the needle.

Q1b: Why do shots appear to "twist" after a long ways? Zoom in and use a rail gun to see what I mean. Roguelazer and I spaced to 1200m (near the maximum range of the rail gun) and tried to hit each other. Nevermind that neither of us were moving, but it is impossible to hit something at that range because of the shot "twist" (see it most vividly in a Vulture or Valk).

Q1c: Why, in the same situation described in the previous question, do shots land several clicks off of where the cursor is pointing, when zoomed in? Sometimes, the Valk shoots above and to the left of where you're pointing. There are no extraneous forces at play--both sniper and target are stopped.

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These problems have been bugging me, as it makes precision fighting nearly impossible.

Camps did you have auto aim on? If you did here's a1k0n's response.

"The autoaim calculation was surprisingly more difficult than I had thought, and we actually had to do a sort of gradient descent to solve it, and we only do two iterations. In other words, the autoaim calculation isn't exact, and it could possibly be wrong in the case of high relative velocities.

I want to look at it and see if I can solve that problem, and also smooth it out so it doesn't jump around so much. It also has no idea whether or not the problem is solvable: if you're flying backwards at 400m/s with an Unreal engine, it's impossible to hit anything in front of you unless it also has an Unreal engine, but the autoaim still points uselessly towards your target.

But we've a million other things to do. This probably isn't too hard, but who knows when we'll get to it."
-a1k0n


Thats what he said to me in my atuoaim turbo thread, and the 'smoothness' he's talking (or lack there of) is the reason for your 3 questions. If you had auto aim off I don't know the answer.

I noticed Vendetta's mouse tracking is a bit choppy too. At least in OS X it is. All my other games have smooth tracking, even while zoomed. Anyway to see what I'm talking about use the zoom key and push the mouse the slightest bit in one direction. Rather than smoothly moving in that direction your crosshair jumps drastically by one increment. The only way you can fix it is to turn your mouse sensitivity down... but then that makes your regular (unzoomed) aiming too slow. You need to somehow compromise between the two.

I've also noticed laser beams twisting and becoming inaccurate also. It's not an autoaim problem either. It even occurs when you have no targets selected. It's been around for quite some time (since I started playing Vendetta). It's especially annoying when trying to demine from long distances. By the looks of it the only weapon port that seems to be accurate is the middle one. I hope it gets fixed soon.

Yes, it is an issue with the position of the port. That's why I always place precision weapons like the railgun in the middle port. It's also why I never put rails on a vult. The side ports are not as accurate.

Eldrad, is has nothing to do with autoaim or turboing. Rogue and I were stopped every time. It is something built in to the engine. Arolte's talking about the same thing. Mouse tracking is choppy, and very noticeable if you zoom in and track.

I was in a centurion with autoaim off. That gets rid of the "off-center port" problem and the autoaim problem. The problem is twofold:

1. When you zoom in, moving the mouse makes the cursor move in jumps, because the cursor moves relative to your unzoomed in view, not your zoomed in view. That is because zooming in changes FOV, not zoom level.

2. Like the gatling cannon, all weapons fire has a slight "spread" to it. This is not usually noticable at low distances, but at long range you will see that most of your shots fire in a circle AROUND your cursor, not at it.

1. Yes. I'm hoping they'll make a much smoother and more progressive zoom in future builds. Oh well, I guess it's yet another one of those feature we have to wait for.

2. So why is it set that way? Why doesn't it have zero error? Aren't lasers supposed to be 100% accurate? If the spread was taken off it just might help ward off rocket rammers more, but probably not solve the problem completely. Still it would be a step in the right direction.

2) I would guess that the spread is a result of small changes in the calculations used in the autoaim. Since the autoaim doesn't know that you are both stopped, i figure it is probably continuously recomputing the aimpoint. This would create some small rounding differences based on where it was in the calculations loop when you pressed the trigger, and adjust the aim by a fraction of a degree. <<--- Just a guess

Uhhh... even when you have no target selected? The aimbot screws up? Because it still does it when you're standing completely still and have no target selected.

>>> autoaim off

My autoaim was off at all points. It usually is.

The problem you guys are talking about is related to a network optimization. The orientation of your ship (and the direction of a weapon fired) are quantized, so that their network packets are smaller, so we have to send less data back and forth. We have it tuned so that the quantization isn't noticeable normally, but it does become apparent when you're zoomed in.

Maybe we should give every weapon a small scatter effect, like the flechette cannon has, so that we can call this a "feature".

/me shakes fist at waylon

Rail guns a scatter. Lol. *screams in horror* Triumph of unguided rockets, I say, since you can't depend an energy weapon to hit its target precisely. That is, unless you overhauled the weapons to give each one a small proximity charge. :D

Cembandit somehow adjusted something or other that gave him uncanny aim with rails. If he can do it, I'm sure the devs can.

But then again, that probably depends on what exactly he adjusted.

I believe he just created an outside program that takes an image of what vendetta sees, and fires the rail the moment the target reticule becomes yellow.

Are you kidding me? Isn't that considered cheating? That's like an aimbot for an aimbot that fires for you.

Or like a bot that trades for you 24/7?

Are you kidding me? Isn't that considered cheating?

well since it only works for the railgun which is really the only weapon fast enough that you would want to fire it every time your targeting cursor goes to yellow....

besides i believe he also sent a copy of the code to the devs so that they could see what he had done.

Remember he was banned from the game. I dunno if he sent a code or not.. :\

Judging by his overall poor attitude towards the community, it's doubtful whether he ever sent the code in to help stop further cheating. Which is sort of ironic because that's exactly what we've been instructed to do as beta testers. Not just play around and have fun.

/me shakes his head