Maneuverability, Processing, Melee, etc.

[█␢█]

So, the concept of "tracking" came up in chat (refer to spoiler), and I suppose it was getting a little to technical for just a handful of people in chat, exchanging lines. We need WALLS OF TEXT. So, if you wish to contribute, I suggest you kindly read the log and previous posts before contributing to the discussion.

 

The whole system of tracking in Armored Core 4 and Armored Core: for Answer is very vague. Unlike the older generation of Armored Core games, there is no visible lockbox. Instead, we're left with several "phases" of the lock: No lock, translucent white, solid white, white with trailing reticule, translucent red, solid red. The general consensus is that the ability to acquire and maintain a solid red lock has to do with some combination of arm maneuverability, weapon melee ability, dual processing, and sometimes head choice and FCS choice (be it lock speed or a hidden stat or, again, back to dual processing)

 

 

[LS] 9:37 pm: What exactly does parellel processing do? I know it's something to do with using two arm units at once, but what does it really change? Range of movement? Speed of movement? Precision?

[Person4645] 9:38 pm: The way I see it, it's a percentage (or something that works like that) or the melee ability when you use two arm weapons.

[Person4645] 9:38 pm: of the*

[Person4645] 9:38 pm: I'm assuming it's out of 1000

[Person4645] 9:38 pm: Or maybe not even melee ability but just tracking in general.

[LS] 9:39 pm: What is tracking in general, though?

[Person4645] 9:39 pm: Like the cumulation of arm maneuverability, melee ability, and solid lock.

[LS] 9:39 pm: Melee ability is speed of movement, if at all know what I'm talking about

[LS] 9:39 pm: Maneuverability is range of movement

[Person4645] 9:40 pm: I thought they were all speed haha

[Person4645] 9:40 pm: (I honestly don't know the difference between the two)

[LS] 9:40 pm: Then what affects range of movement, or lockbox size in classical terms?

[Person4645] 9:40 pm: I thought it was all constant.

[Person4645] 9:40 pm: If anything, speculation says head.

[Person4645] 9:41 pm: Haha

[Person4645] 9:41 pm: Yeah.

[Person4645] 9:41 pm: According to some people, it's the head that determines range.

[Person4645] 9:41 pm: I believe it to some extent.

[LS] 9:42 pm: The camera determines range.

[Person4645] 9:42 pm: Like it's all anecdotal, but I can't seem to track as well with auto-sighting with Kiritumi head.

[LS] 9:42 pm: Oh wait, you mean range of movement? I've never heard anything about that.

[Person4645] 9:42 pm: They say it's a hidden stat.

[Person4645] 9:42 pm: Yeah.

[LS] 9:42 pm: Oh, auto-sighting.

[LS] 9:42 pm: I don't know anything about autosight.

[LS] 9:42 pm: Autosight is for noobs

[Person4645] 9:42 pm: Otherwise, range of movement is constant, most people accept it as.

[LS] 9:43 pm: We can possibly be talking about the same thing.

[LS] 9:43 pm: *can't

[Person4645] 9:43 pm: I think we are.

[Person4645] 9:43 pm: Lemme read back.

[Person4645] 9:43 pm: Then what affects range of movement, or lockbox size

in classical terms?

[Person4645] 9:43 pm: Yeah, we are.

[LS] 9:43 pm: I'm talking about how far away something can be from the center of your screen and you can still shoot at it

[LS] 9:43 pm: That's a constant?

[Person4645] 9:44 pm: Mmhm.

[Person4645] 9:44 pm: And what I went into with the head was how well it "sticks" to the target, if you will.

[LS] 9:44 pm: No it's not. You can shoot off the screen with MGs, and only in like a two-inch area with a sniper rifle.

[Person4645] 9:44 pm: ?

[Person4645] 9:45 pm: I'm pretty sure you can if you gave it time to lock and slowly pull it off screen.

[Person4645] 9:45 pm: Because I've ran some loose tests.

[Person4645] 9:45 pm: The way I've found that it works is that there's a regular lock box where you can aquire a lock.

[Person4645] 9:45 pm: And then a slightly extended box where you can maintain it.

[Person4645] 9:46 pm: And then how well you can maintain it depends on the general tracking (which I mean not get that-white-catch-up-reticule)

[LS] 9:47 pm: So in your estimation, melee ability, maneuverability, parellel processing, a hidden stat in the head, and lock speed affect the same raw stat?

[Person4645] 9:48 pm: Mmm, I think the hidden head stat and lock speed affect the stat indirectly, though.

[LS] 9:48 pm: So how are you saying that there's a red box and a white box, but it's the same for all weapons?

[LS] 9:48 pm: There are weapons that can be red off the screen with LAHIRE.

[Person4645] 9:49 pm: Haha yeah I know what you're talking about.

[Person4645] 9:49 pm: But it's alot harder to observe those things with all the other variables going about.

[LS] 9:49 pm: That puts you at a great advantage over me

[LS] 9:49 pm: Because I have no bloody idea what you're talking about

[Person4645] 9:49 pm: Like I can keep a lock past 180 degrees vertically downward to fire missiles if I'm QB'ing as I go past.

[Person4645] 9:50 pm: Like maybe to 190 degrees.

[Person4645] 9:50 pm: And wait, Lahire the arms or the FCS?

[LS] 9:50 pm: That's odd. I wonder if it's the speed or the accel which tilts the AC.

[LS] 9:50 pm: FCS.

[Person4645] 9:51 pm: Oh okay.

[LS] 9:51 pm: Or wait, maybe arms.

[LS] 9:51 pm: I don't remember anymore.

[LS] 9:51 pm: All I know is that I've heard like 5 people explain this, and they all said the same thing, and it's exactly the opposite of what you're saying, haha.

[Person4645] 9:51 pm: With FCS I honestly wouldn't be able to say because I always use the same 3 or so.

[Person4645] 9:52 pm: Oh no shit? Haha.

[Person4645] 9:52 pm: What do they say.

[Person4645] 9:52 pm: Because I'm pretty sure of what I'm saying..

[Person4645] 9:52 pm: But I could just be blatantly misinformed.

[LS] 9:52 pm: What I was trying to say up there; that some of these things affect range of motion, and some affect speed.

[LS] 9:53 pm: I had heard that lock speed was only how fast the recticle turned red after the enemy was within the 'redbox'

[LS] 9:53 pm: Manueverability is range of motion, and has no effect on speed of motion

[LS] 9:54 pm: Melee ability affects speed of motion, with there being an unrelated hidden constant for range of motion for each weapon

[LS] 9:54 pm: And I've never heard PP explained

[LS] 9:54 pm: That's what I've always heard, haha.

[Person4645] 9:54 pm: For me, maneuverability is the raw stat and PP and melee ability are constraints/buffs on top of that (in what I'd assume is a percentage)

[Person4645] 9:54 pm: That's just me, though.

[Person4645] 9:55 pm: I've heard what you said before too.

[LS] 9:55 pm: Raw stat for what, though?

[LS] 9:55 pm: Speed or range?

[Person4645] 9:55 pm: Speed.

[Exorcet] 9:55 pm: It's speed and range.

[LS] 9:55 pm: So you're saying range is constant NO MATTER WHAT?

[Exorcet] 9:56 pm: The speed you can track at drops with distance from screen center.

[LS] 9:56 pm: (except head differences)

 

 

So, I suppose to start this off:

 

What I think.

The ability to physically aim the weapon at the target is determined by arm maneuverability alone. Additional stats (dual processing and melee ability) serve to modify it as a percentage (much like camera functionality modifies max lock range, 505 roughly being 100%). Things such as lock speed can indirectly affect this by modifying how long it takes to acquire a solid lock, for example.

 

One of the bigger areas of difference was regarding the actual lock boxes in these current generation games. How I see it, there are two lock boxes, so to speak. There is one where locks can be acquired and one where locks can be maintained. Both are still very wide, but the latter lock box is slightly more liberal. (Refer to next spoiler)

 

 

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa66/person4645/Untitled-2fix.png

 

 

So pretty much the numbered things are my representations of the locks (no lock, white, solid white, trailing white, red, solid red, respectively). If I were better at art and understood perspective I'd be able to make a better diagram, but I think it's good enough to serve it's purpose for now. The gray box represents the the viewable screen. The white outline represents the area in which you can acquire a solid lock red or white. The radius of this area is what ever the max lock range is and covers somewhere less than 90 degrees upward and downward. Any lock here will pretty much hold. The red box that's slightly outside the viewable area is the extent to which solid locks can be maintained. So trailing locks and translucent locks will break completely.

 

Now (if I've covered the bases well) it should come together how I see all these things working. Maneuverability indirectly affects tracking (I'll now use tracking to refer to the general ability to both aim towards and keep a lock on an enemy) as a whole by reducing the chance of a trailing lock. FCS contributes by allowing for quick acquisition of a solid lock, so on and so forth. Stability and aim stability does play some role in this too as high amounts of recoil tends to force the arms towards the center, directly in front of the AC.

 

----------

 

Aaaanyways, this is completely my own speculation based on anecdotal evidence and very questionable testing with friends. Feel free to contribute your own theories and contest my own shaky one.

Edited February 14, 2016 by wktk

[Exorcet]

[Exorcet]

Bump, perhaps to spark topic to life. Did some tests, went to split screen (with my small non HD TV) and dashed around the lock box in various ways.

 

-I tested snipers on SOBRERO arms, seems they have full range of motion, so maneuverability likely does not effect range of motion.

 

-The lock box is confirmed oval.

 

-Lock speed seems to decrease with distance from center, though it's slight. I could be imagining it, someone else should check. They seemed constant with sniper rifles on SOBRERO, but I did not count this because of the supposed tracking modifier on sniper weapons.

 

-FA's number changes on melee are probably not in the same scale as AC4, It was easier to break lock by boosting/QB in AC4.

 

-Cannons actually have full horizontal range of sight.

 

-Red lock occurs when the aiming reticule (what b called the trailing white lock) is over the AC's white lock (the white lock that is always around an AC if it's in FCS range). This means that even if an AC is moving faster than the reticule, it might not be able to break redlock immediately.

[Harakiri Tiger]

So, let me get this straight. Your ability to acquire a target and maintain effective accuracy while you're both moving is affected by all these stats?

 

-

Arm Maneuverability

(Arms)

-

Firing Stability

(Arms)

-

Melee Ability

(Weapon)

-

Lock Speed

(FCS)

-

Lock Range

(FCS)

-

Parallel Processing

(FCS)

-

Camera Ability

(Head)

-

Stability

(AC)

-

Lockbox Size

(???)

That's quite a lot of things that play into whether you can acquire your target and hit them, if so. Could there be anything else that affects your ability to acquire and hit a target? Is lockbox size the same for all weapons, different per weapon, or per FCS?

[Taurus]

have lockbox size in ACFA series?

[█␢█]

-Lock speed seems to decrease with distance from center, though it's slight. I could be imagining it, someone else should check. They seemed constant with sniper rifles on SOBRERO, but I did not count this because of the supposed tracking modifier on sniper weapons.

Just an update on this: I found that it's not the distance from the center that affects the reticule speed, but the distance from what ever it is you're trying to track. As the reticule gets closer to the intended target, it slows down (which makes me think of "precision" and therefore Aim Precision for some reason; so that's testing for another time). The distance that it slowed down at did seem to be affected by maneuverability, but then so did reticule speed as a whole (so I'm thinking some sort of gradient that gets tighter as maneuverability increases).

 

Other than that, the lockboxes are oval like Exorcet said, weapons don't seem to affect lockbox size nor does FCS, I didn't find anything that supported Exorcet's sniper modifier, and recoil on the arms seemed to push the reticule towards the target (?).

 

Also, as for back weapons, during battles, I've noticed that they initially have the same range of movement as arm weapons and then shrink back to their limits. So that opens up to the possibility that these elastic qualities of the range of movement also apply to arm/arm weapons, which could explain the insane auto-sight tracking of featherweights.

 

For future tests:

• Test melee/maneuverability of back weapons
  
• Test effect other arm stats may have on reticule speed
  
• Further explore weapon recoil vs. reticule movement
  
• Test solid locks vs. translucent locks in performance
  

Edited February 12, 2010 by /b/

[Exorcet]

I didn't find anything that supported Exorcet's sniper modifier

 

I came up with that to explain how SR's could have more melee than LR's (for example), but still track worse. I also recall sniper weapons being a lot easier to aim near screen center (which would make sense given that you found the reticule speed to depends on how close it is to the target AC, so this might be busted already).

 

This is all from AC4, and I don't think I ever gave it a proper test. I might look into it sometime.

[█␢█]

Oh okay from AC4. Yeah, I just did some tests tonight on FA. I didn't seem to notice the distance from the center playing into speed unless it was with recentering after losing a lock, but this is just along the horizontal axis; vertical or vertical+horizontal may be something different.

 

The problem with the sniper rifle modifier in this game is that sniper rifles all three have the lowest three melee numbers so unless we can find some sort of baseline for melee's influence, the modifier would be pretty iffy.

Edited February 7, 2010 by /b/

[Exorcet]

Yeah, this is a change between 4 and FA then. The SR's, 47 in particular, had decent melee. Both had more than weapons like CANOPUS (124), WADOU(102), GAN01-SS-WG (159), etc. 47 was able to surpass ALTAIR (234), SAMAWA (232), EURYALE (206).

 

However, I now think that the distance from center effecting anything was an illusion, especially in light of your tests. Unless it's another AC4-FA change.

Edited February 7, 2010 by Exorcet

[█␢█]

Update once more:

 

This time ran tests regarding back weapons. Confirmed that back weapons have an individual maneuverability stat of around 4500. These are also affected by dual processing whenever there are two weapons with a "melee ability" stat in use.

 

Translucent locks don't seem to affect the aim precision, but I didn't test more than that.

 

I'll get to the other things eventually.

[Fragrant]

Sobrero arms are really bad for sniping. They seen to get lazy when just standing still and when they fire, they will be off by a lot, even with a lock.

 

I also find laser weapons seem to have less accuracy with arms that have precision stats at around 50 while anything with 90 and above get extremely well aimed hits on anything that moves.

 

Also, I was using a next with judith arms and had a lock on something that wasn't moving at 1300 range, I fired both shots, and each missed the target by like 2-3 game units. Like the arms somehow were not able to aim properly. Then I picked the arms that had nearly 100 for aiming and shot from the same distance and the shots didn't sway in any direction, they just went straight to the target. The weapons being used were lasers or sniping guns. I'm not so sure because I did this test over a year ago. I was trying to make another main for long range fighting.

[█␢█]

Yeah, it probably should be that way. Arm aim precision and weapon aim precision are related. So the higher the arm precision, the higher the change that the weapon will fire within the weapon's precision area.

[Fragrant]

What stats work best with lasers? I heard arm stability is quite useless on any laser weaponry.

[Genocide]

Depends on what range you're fighting at. Since lasers have no recoil, they are inherently more accurate than shell weapons. So stats like arm Firing Stability play little to no role in how a laser round travels, arm Aim Precision too doesn't really do a whole lot, since the laser itself is accurate (it only flies straight in the line the rifle was pointing at when you pulled the trigger). EN Skill will amplify the damage on a percentage basis. I.e. 95 EN Skill --> 95% damage listed in the stats for the laser rifle. This is why arms like Latona are so popular for EN weapon wielding ACs, the EN Skill at a base level is over 100, so you're getting extra damage. If you plan to use a laser at close range, then stats like lock speed on the FCS (possibly dual processing depending on what you pair the laser with) and arm maneuverability will be a great boon. Longer range laser shooting isn't really advised, because, and I've heard it numerous times, and even observed it myself, the longer the laser travels in distance (or maybe its the time the laser takes to travel a certain distance, one of the two, or maybe a combination of both), the more the destructive power dissipates. This is why lasers with high velocity (Altair, Avior, BFF [forgot serial number lol]) retain their high amounts of damage over longer ranges, because they travel faster. That's also why they're slightly harder to dodge as well.

[Exorcet]

Aim Precision too doesn't really do a whole lot, since the laser itself is accurate (it only flies straight in the line the rifle was pointing at when you pulled the trigger).

 

 

Aim affects EN as much as solids. CANOPUS on untuned ALIYA/A is very different from CANOPUS on a fully aim tuned A01-TELLUS.

 

Think of the aim stats like this:

 

The gun's precision is the inverse of the area of a circle, so 0 is the full circle, and 100 is a lone point (or dot). When you fire, your shot will randomly (it's not truly random, but a set pattern for each gun) land on some spot in the circle/point [so in the case of the point, the bullets always take the exact same path]. Then you have arm precision. This is another circle point, however, instead of being a probability field for the trajectory of a projectile, it is the probability field for the center of the gun's circle.

 

This diagram should help.

 

http://s280.photobucket.com/albums/kk187/E...pg&newest=1

[Genocide]

Ah, I got ya. I was only piecing together that which I had seen. Anyways, arms like Latona don't really need the tunes if you're fighting up close. Though I guess longer ranges are a different beast entirely.

[█␢█]

That's what I meant. D:

 

Also, though. I felt like Dual Processing was affected by what weapons you used in AC4, but it's not that way in FA. All that matters is if you're using two weapons with a melee ability stat simultaneously or not; it's not an average of the two, it's just a percentage of each one, independent of each other.

[Fragrant]

Hey Exorcet, remember me? I use to be part of that team you had, Omega Echelon. They should bring back team battles on weekends, I was in a few team battles the other day. FA 1.4 is definately great for team duels.

 

Ah, I see, so thats how aiming works? I thought precision was like a lessening of the probability of a random off the mark shot. Makes me wish that some of the other arms had good firing stats, that way there would be more variety on arms being used instead of just going for arms that have high aiming stats.

[Exorcet]

Hey Exorcet, remember me? I use to be part of that team you had, Omega Echelon. They should bring back team battles on weekends, I was in a few team battles the other day. FA 1.4 is definately great for team duels.

Indeed I do remember, OE rep. I don't really play FA, but if there is a player drought I don't really mind getting on. I'm always up for AC4 though.

 

Ah, I see, so thats how aiming works? I thought precision was like a lessening of the probability of a random off the mark shot. Makes me wish that some of the other arms had good firing stats, that way there would be more variety on arms being used instead of just going for arms that have high aiming stats.

Well, maneuverability is good balancer with precision. Though a lot of arms seem to have both.

 

 

 

Also, b, what do you mean about DP? That a sniper and MG had different reductions than MG/Rifle?

[█␢█]

What? Sort of, if I get what you're asking.

 

What I was saying was that I'm under the impression that some people think that a weapon combo shares the reticule and averages the melee ability between the two. However, I've found that each weapon has its own independent tracking reticule. So the sniper gets one with its 90-ish melee and the MG with its 300-ish melee; not one with around 200 melee.

[Fragrant]

Is there anything about ACFA you dislike? Although I think the lighting seems different personally[or did they make the resolution on the mechs smaller? I can't tell since I use a non-HD TV. Other than that, I don't see anything different about ACFA's gameplay other than those annoying fog effects in some levels. Something about the levels was a little epic although maybe it was because Nexts were slower, and the music was more upbeat. Although I still like ACFA better due to awesome parts and the gameplay in 1.4 is neat and fun. How many people on AC4 these days?

 

Also, I'm trying to figure out this entire aiming thing, because I don't want to modify the arms on my laser Next and trying to get it to have a high hit rate with just 50 precision. So at what range does parallel proccessing take affect if it only affects melee stat? Or I should say what range does the melee stat begin at?