[BUG] Complete Reaver-gun breakdown: It's worse than we thought

Triple!

According to powered laffete under reaver's nosegun, it should be able to autoconverge according to pilot's helm display & laser-point targeting.
That means activating freelook will turn & converge the gun itself.
I think such advantage should justify worse hitbox & agility reaver have right now.

Very nice effort by the OP to prove that the Reaver is just as bad as everyone knew already.

S for sadly
H for humiliating
I for inferior
T for trash

If we put it all together, it spells...(censored).

You mean like the Lib had before Smedley was killed by one?
That would be awesome, and as popular with the other factions as dual hacksaws are now.

I really think there needs to be a quick maths+reading comprehension test before replying to this thread. Too many people are coming in here posting their experiences, or assumptions, either based upon misunderstanding the maths/explanation, or blindly erroneous maths of their own (like the hitbox example above).

Impossible shot is impossible. Fact. Those of us with Maths related backgrounds are clearly getting it; can the rest of you pipe down and accept that you do not have the relevant study background to get this?




If we put up an explanation of how light doesn't ever travel in a straight line, you'd all be in here saying 'but my shadow falls in a straight line!'

The "maths" is poorly defined and base on unproven assumptions.
If the angle of "convergence" is less than than the hitbox of the other ESF (and it is at all ranges) then there are no impossible shots as shooting the top or bottom of the ESF would line up the perfect hit. There may be a "blind spot" if the angles switched suddenly as your cursor crossed the target, but that "blind spot" is smaller than the size of the hitbox.
Also this would assume that the angle of convergence switched instantly (for each bullet), rather than being set when firing commences and staying constant for that burst (more likely).

In reality, no ESF pilots are flying around with a spreadsheet on the other screen calculating angles of convergence. You fire, then correct (and keep correcting because your target is moving).
Could reavers is some awkward circumstances miss one more bullet each burst than a mossie would have? Sure its possible, but nothing here proves a blind spot.

I'm slightly baffled by these posts. Not only was every little bit of methodology detailed (despite it's utter simplicity and reliability), you also have the exact same tools and could prove any of my statements wrong in minutes. I invite you to do so.

To however make incorrect and unsubstantiated assertions for the sake of being contrarian is just obnoxious. Please don't be that guy.

(At any point where you aim low while on model, you're aiming significantly too high. At any point where you're aiming off-model, you're missing by the simplest logic of geometry as the gun offset is still larger than half the length of the vertical axis of any fighter [in fact, it's about as large as the vertical axis of an ESF])

Go watch IronfistLMS twitch.tv stream and realize that the Reaver is a beast. He knows how to use the superior vert thrust of the reaver to maximum effect, and tears apart everyone on the server with it.

Stop trying to fly it like a scythe, you bads.

We were being sarcastic yesterday on stream about the Reaver being great. Sorry for the confusion buddy!

Global warming is fake. Evolution is real.

Move to Texas.

Thank you for posting this.

Define 'straight' Because in a vacuum it does (and don't tell me its bent by gravity, because gravity isn't bending the light, its bending space-time, so for example an object is orbit is actually moving in a straight line, the fact it doesn't look straight is cased by space-time been curved.)

Also as for me not been a maths person, well, Instead of taking my GCSEs at 16, I took my Maths A' Level then (normally you take that at 18) so I think I qualify there and I know what convergence is.

It does EXACTLY the same on the mosi. It may be slightly closer on the mosi, but looking at the video, the difference is very very minimal and MORE THAN COMPENSATED by the extra power of the vortex which is probably the most powerful of the ESF main weapons. There is NO position you can't score hits from, I played a Reaper fairly extensively in beta and had no troubles hitting, now with the AB boost, well, I would say they are at least as good as the Mosi.

If it doesn't fit your playstyle as well as the mosi, well play TR or lump it.

This is why this game will never make it pass the corner, every little change that gets made here is based on utter and complete NONSENSE, coming from scrubs, newbies and trolls in general.

These are the people who change things in this game, SOE chooses to drink the poison, so let the game be poisoned, it's not as if this game ever stood a chance on the big market.

You really should not waste your time and talent helping this game at all, it ain't worth it.

I am TR and a not a very good pilot for me :

scythe mean death and reaver mean kill. I am not saying it's always the case far from it, but i am more scared of scythe that's all.

Ok for weapon convergence but there is no good point to this gun ? like more damage ? attack speed, ? bullet speed ?

perfect

At full extensions the M18 Rotary does 13035 damage over 2.16 seconds per magazine and the Vortek Rotary 14744 over 2.22 seconds. The Hailstorm Turbolaser does 14168 over 2.2. The minor advantage of the Vortek is far outweighed by the Reaver's intended disadvantages alone, let alone this additional problem of gunmount. In order for the Reaver's traits* to mean anything, it does have to be able to shoot in a fair manner in the first place. Projectile velocities for the Vortek and M18 are equal and both drop at 7.5 meters per second, which makes them the fastest projectiles in the game that I know of. The Hailstorm fires at 700m/s but features a perfectly flat trajectory.

Warning, contains opinions:
It takes just about ~12000 points worth of Rotary damage to kill an ESF. All fighters are capable of doing this with ease without reloading. The Scythe performs this feat with the greatest reliability (best aim handling due to aircraft acceleration properties, no drop, good gun position), the Mosquito performs very close (the damage difference is noticeable when trying to head-on 1-mag) and the Reaver is essentially a role of the dice or burning a lot of fuel to make sure you're shooting down at a ~45 degree or greater angle at anyone coming at you head-on (down-angle shots force tangential target velocities down to near zero if they want to engage you while also lowering the angular impact of bullet drop - meaning you just aim with the crosshair and hose away).

Consider this entire post amicable shop-talk and experience-swapping. I've frequently flown all 3 empires ESF completely maxed out (TR/VS pulled by others, obviously) and am relating not confabulation or wishful thinking but the results of both trial and experience. While I can't speak for anyone else or conflate their opinions with mine, I haven't met a veteran pilot who felt the Reaver's gunmounts were fair or in any way an enjoyable experience. I know fixing this would mean relearning a lot of things that are almost entirely drilled into my skull, but I would still prefer it to the current situation. Not to mention how massively unfair the current offset is to new players.

* This is actually the only Reaver-specific trait, singular, that cannot instantly be proven to be equal or worse than every other empire.

I'm not sure where you guys have got yourself confused, and there is no need for personal attacks. I'm as interested in this as you are.
See below a diagram of convergence. It shows where the crosshairs are (pilots angle) and where the bullets fire (projectile angle).
Red lines = Reaver aiming above mozzie
Green lines = Reaver aiming on mozzie
Black lines = Reaver aiming below mozzie


As OP proves, the angle of convergence changes depending on distance. If his calculations are correct, @ 10m the angle is about 12 deg, at 1000m the angle is fractional. For arguments sake lets say non convergent at 1000m.

In the example above, the reaver overshooting the mozzie has an advantage as his shots will still hit (red lines). When shooting at the mozzie he hits it as aimed because the angles converged on the mozzie (green lines). When shooting under the mozzie, his crosshairs are now pointed further out so the angle of convergence is back to slight (black lines).

Now an "impossible" shot would require the following conditions:
1. The mosquitos hitbox has a side that is equal to or smaller than the distance between the reavers polit view point and the reavers gun
2. The dogfight is at flight ceiling, upside down or at least the reaver is angled to the sky - to allow the crosshair and projectile angles to be least convergent
3. The mosquito must be perfectly aligned so that it is only exposing that small side
4. The mosquito must be constantly descending and correcting its angle relative to the reaver so the reaver is forced to aim just below it, but not descending so fast that he flies into the projectiles.
5. The reaver must be positioned precisely so that this particular angle occurs & remains constant (changing any position relative to the mozzie blows the "blind spot". This also means if the reaver was ascending (flying with space bar) he must continue to do so)
[refer to the little red mozzie for size & position required for a "blind spot"]

Given that even the worst cry thread doesn't claim the mozzie (or scythe) has a hitbox that small, the argument for a "blind spot" is invalid and convergence gives as much advantage to overshooting as it does disadvantage to undershooting.

If you can find a specific example where there is an actual blind spot, please do post it.

I've got work to do by now and have to be up at 6 AM. I guess explaining geometry on the internet will require at least a scanned drawing. I can try to give you a few pointers though, maybe by the time I get around to it you'll have worked it out:
All the conditions you've listed are incorrect. Most are perceptual fallacies. It might help to remember that their are really two Mosquito's: Mosquito-present and Mosquito-future. Mosquito-future is much more jaded than Mosquito present. Mosquito-future is the target, Mosquito-present is an unfortunate obstruction that misaligns the sights. They are never the same as long as their are non-zero tangential components of the velocity vector.

The list of conditions for our scenario becomes much more intuitive and less convoluted if we start with this understanding. It also becomes a little Zen.

tldr: Planetside is completely balanced. Stop whining. SOE did something no company has ever done. L2P.

LOL

God am I sick and tired of the people who base their arguments of "balance" or "imbalance" on their own personal anecdotes. Wow, you witnessed some "top gun" NC pilot called "Ironfist" on Youtube. That's what you're basing your embarrassing nerdrage rant on? Amazing.

Higby said they were looking into it, your so called fix is an unintended change, lest we fly 10 ton aircraft that lack momentum, have ****** up brakes and handle like crap, if they plan to remove momentum and pee all over the laws of physics, let's do it right, this post just so happens to pinpoint an old problem I never encountered on other empires, now I know why it happens, thanks to OP.

They could have saved themselves dozens of topics by simply undoing such moronic fix without compensation, now, all the little rags are being brought out and the reaver itself may need a full redesign if in fact they plan to keep it light as a scythe or a mossie. All in all, nerfing the worst aircraft in the game just proved to be the wrong step towards balance, every ESF has it's strenghts and it's weaknesses, the reaver has only negativity behind it, if we were to exclude the pointless top AB speed it has.

Hey, when you nerf something, you nerf it right or you don't nerf it at all, what more can I say?

This guy obviously works with Ballistics to make such claims, for you to question him without proof or expertise and even insult him just proves your ignorance, let's try to keep this thread classy.