I think it is about time that this is fixed, to clarify the problem:
Activate autotargetting, fire at an enemy. The rails will thus spin, unlike when autotargetting is NOT on.

Um....?

If you are fimiliar with rails, you would know they twist if they are on any non-central port.

Nearly all energy weapons have an uneven twist to 'em.

I'm still lost...

Arolte's right. Any energy weapon on a left or right post will "twist" and miss its target at extreme ranges.

Devs, we need a zoom, not a FOV change!!! :(

Rails are slightly more necessary to be accurate, though:/

The twist that you're referring to is the different guns targeting slightly different points this isn't what causes the missing, just a symptom. The problem is that the auto aim isn't a perfect estimation (and also isn't good enough to go unnoticed in many game situations). a1k0n has repeatedly said that fixing this is one of the things he wants to do... so let's not bug him about it any more.

A dev explained this to me in great detail awhile back. When the game sends your location and orientation to the server, the data is quantisized to take up less bandwidth. At normal zoom, that's fine. But when you zoom WAY in and you need more precision, the quantization becomes noticable and annoying. According to him, any move to fix this would greatly increase lag.

How do other MMORPG games allow accuracy without sacrificing lag? I still don't quite get it. I still think something more can be done to at least make long-range aiming better. Oh, and Eldrad, it still applies without autoaim.

In other mmorpgs, you roll the dice to see if you hit.

Arolte: In many other MMORPGs, vector data isn't 3d. Forthermore, space is really big. Think of the vector as a line extending from the nose of your ship. In other MMORPGs, that line might have to go a kilometer before it hits the end of the map. In Vendetta, it has to go on for millions of kilometers...

What about delayed hitscan weapons? The tracers can still be there, but projectiles won't actually be involved. Therefore less lag. Perfect for railguns.

It's not the projectiles that cause the problem. It's that the actual vector of your ship is cut. So if you're pointing at (104.123453, 204.123643, 109.977534), your vector might be truncated to (104.1, 204.1, 109.9), which means that any shots you fire are sent in a direction somewhat different from the intended one.

I dunno what spin you guys are talking about. It might look like it's spinning, I guess, because of the way it's rendered, but lasers/ions/rails/etc don't spin.

Yes, velocity is quantized. Roguelazer has it basically right although it's always more complicated than that. This can be solved by adding a new type of underlying weapon type (rails are based off of lasers/ions/etc) which encodes its velocity with higher precision and using that instead. Rails are sort of a hack right now. It'll be fixed eventually.

Also, zoom == FOV change. The method used to zoom really has nothing to do with this problem; the fact that the mouse rotates your view N degrees per mouse 'mickey' regardless of FOV setting will also be fixed eventually.

What they mean is that rails go in a circle AROUND the reticle. So your first shot might be just outside the reticle to the right, then your second might be just outside the reticle on top, and so on and so forth. So you get a complete revolution of shots going around the center of the reticle if you fire for long enough.

a1k0n, i don't know about you, but i KNOW those rails spin, I KNOW it, becuase I KNOW it makes a difference in what i hit.

Not really spin. They just go at an inward angle, which causes them to go off center at longer distances. This applies even when you're completely stationary and have no target selected. Unless it remembers the last calculated shot and stores that in some type of memory, I'm not too sure whether the whole idea of calculating trajectory, velocity, etc. would be solely responsible for this anamoly.

a1, I'm fairly sure what people are referring to is that if you have multiple energy weapons of the same type the auto aim will often shoot at a point between you and your target resulting in the shots converging to that point then proceeding to create the mirror image of their initial order.

Will FOV also stop effecting the sky box and have some useful meter as indication of how much you're zoomed in?

Arolte, when you deactivate autoaim that does not happen.