actually whenever i played xo or mortar operator I had a printed map with line coords on it and did everything by hand
pen and paper rules the world
This is beyond gamey
Also lol imagine needing a calculator to do 6th grade x and y math
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Another cartesian coordinate plane tile based system falls to math nerds
Yea blind firing though is uhhhh. I mean people are going to do it and you can do anything you want to obfuscate the math behind it but someone will figure the formula anyways always. Which in itself maybe has soul, thereās a lot of whack math people do in aerial imaging and UAV piloting (NOT the lessers smh) and whatever, fixing photogrammetry distortions and scaling and whatever. I dont think linear systems of equations would be out of the question for someone with that kind of skillset; and every other server i know of that uses a linear sys for something coordinates (telesci and mortar pretty much lol) lets people use webmap calculators but itās also understood thatās not the ~real~ way to do it. Thereās no way to police it, so itās just let be.
If itās reverse-engineerable(mathable?) there is a nerd for that.
2 Likes
You donāt need it. I, too, can add and subtract in my head. This just saves you the time.
man this shit is lame as hell
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āColonel, I can do the math and get you the-ā
āNO. IāM NOT RISKING IT.ā
I still remember that. Damn you Peralta!
The fun part of calling OBs is the risk/reward for getting good coordinates, this cuts out the groundside aspect completley and just fucks over xenos with no counter. I genuinley think we should either make OBs not work on the coordinate system (bring back beacons) if its going to be abused by lame af power gamers who are obsessed with winning rounds
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OB beaconsā¦the pastā¦and the futureā¦i miss them
I thought about this for a good 30 minutes before posting it on the forums, wondering if I was gonna open Pandoraās box. To be honest with you, I donāt think thereās gonna be any significant effect. Iāve seen people do everything from marking down coordinates on a screenshot of the map with Paint to using a TI-84, and no one notices because itās so insignificant - all it does is make the process just a few seconds faster.
One, the number of people that actually do this even in a high-pop round is so minuscule. That is because the overwhelming majority of people find the fire support gameplay to be boring. Two, xenos donāt retreat when they see a green or red laser, they only retreat when something is actually fired at them. To them, itās just an early warning that they keep in the back of their heads (which sometimes happens to be a false alarm, like with CAS dry runs or the mortarās camera & fragmentation shells). And three, people that do have two braincells to rub together and perform addition and subtraction in their heads are already applying this. This only saves them a few seconds (of course, this depends on how good you are at doing math in your head).
I donāt think youāre going to see 8 TLs, a scout, and some riflemen filling the JTAC channel with coordinates. At most youāll see the same olā 1-3 regulars that enjoy fire support. The OT calculator and the pile of HE maxcap grenades or the dozen mini-OB HE mortar shells you can pump out as a result of it actually impacts the round more than adding or subtracting two sets of numbers - whether you do it in your head or not.
Oh, and as for the last part, winning the round is secondary to me. I just really enjoy blowing shit up with a radio, and Iāll keep doing it even when the queen is banging on the Alamoās door and all is lost.
New Marine wonder weapon just dropped?
This kind of stuff has been available for ages since mortars became a thing. People knew it existed, people knew it was really easy to do, people knew it was extremely powerful, but because it requires math of any kind the actual % of people who use these techniques to indirect fire is abysmally low to the point the effective gameplay impact is negligible. I honestly donāt think itāll lead to a noticeable increase in proficient mortar fire at all, so itās not a big deal imo.
Cool tool, though. Looks better than the cursed excel sheets people were using for sure!
I donāt see why people are upset over this. This something people have always been able to do, have always been allowed to do, and is not at all gamey, as any good mortarman worth their salt is already going to know how to offset their mortar to hit targets not specified with the cords they were given. This just makes this process that little bit easier.
this is awesome
people have known about this for years and its been accepted
CRY HARDERā¦ XENO MAINSā¦
5 Likes
this is the only counter to xenos like owl, haha
Honestly having mortar be handled similar to old Telescience from tg/ would be badass. It would be calculated like an actual MORTAR rather than just plugging in coordinates.
Youād have to find the base coordinates (Where the mortar is), target coordinates, firing arc, distance, etc., etc., etcā¦ Iād say make power fixed so that it removed a variable that has to be accounted for and the mortar operator can just plug in directions and angles
Though, admittedly, this would probably just make the Mortar even less used
idk, maybe a man portable mortar thatās handled like this would work out because the skill required to use it is roughly equivalent to the potential power of it
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Iāve wanted this change for mortar for so longā¦ Sadly, as you said, itād be way too complicated for CM, especially when the frontline changes every few seconds.
Perhaps we could make a FSC (Firing Solution Coordinator) role whose job is to take pre-recorded coordinates and do all that math with em in order to make the mortar more accurate and hit harder?
Another way is have mortar be a swap on simple/targetting shells.
Targetting shells (all the current ingame shells) lore being that mortar kits have autocalibrating features, but only for the USCM standard mortar shells.
Then simple shells would be cheaper shells wā some downsides (maybe less accuracy, range, etc) manufactured in the neroid sector (and easier + cheaper to import as a result). Since there is no auto-calibration for them, they have to be mathed.
Like a good simple shell would be a very cheap flechette mortar. One that you can just spam out while doing nothing else to suppress an enemy. A way to make it unique would be to have it be like, a single shot of gau (so that it isnāt countered by walls) over a large distance
Ot shells could be added to āsimple shellsā category too, since itās made by hand.