As title goes. I've been examining some weapons stats and actual recoil and found something that I've never seen. What is Horizontal Recoil Tolerance for? Is it better to have lower value or higher value? I want to know how it works.
Right now we can only speculate. For now, our current theory is (from my Gunplay Guide): Normally, the direction of horizontal recoil is completely random for each shot, but Horizontal Tolerance limits the number of possible consecutive hits to one side. In case of TRAC 5, Horizontal Tolerance of 0.55 allows no more than 4 consecutive kicks in one direction. That said, I did some in game testing, and it seemed to disprove this theory. Reaper DMR has tolerance of 0.4 with recoil 0.2, so it should do no more than 3 consecutive kicks in one direction, but I was able to record a video where it kicks 4 times. I haven't conducted a more thorough test, like comparing to weapons with same recoil but different tolerances, it's on my to-do list, but I'm not in a particular rush.
No problem, credit's due here though: http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/2d53io/vanulabs_recoilhorizontaltolerance_demonstration/ Also there's this post. Not sure if it's correct but seems like it.
So any idea what Horizontal Recoil Tolerance (HRT) actually is? I'm well versed in weapon and recoil mechanics, I wrote the Gunplay Guide, so I've got a pretty good idea of what every stat does, except for the HRT. I've done a lot of experiments, so far there are 2 theories of what HRT is. I disproved the first one, the second one seems to work, but in a weird way, so I'm at a loss. Here's an example of Reaper DMR recoil pattern from one of my experiments: First theory: Horizontal Tolerance limits the number of consecutive recoil kicks in one direction. Disproved: Reaper DMR has HR of 0.2/0.2 and HRT of 0.4, this should mean it can only kick in one direction 2 times maximum, but on the picture above you can see up to 4 kicks in one direction. Second theory: HRT sets the overall width of the recoil pattern, relative to the position of the crosshair at the time of the first shot. Proved: Reaper DMR's recoil pattern width should be 2 shots in either direction. So for example, it can kick 2 shots left, then kick 4 shots to the right, but no more. In other words, absolute value of the accumulated horizontal recoil should be less or equal to the HRT. So accumulated recoil for the Reaper DMR's shot sequence above looked like this: 0 0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.2 0.4 0.2 0 -0.2 -0.4 -0.2 0 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 etc. At all times absolutes of the values above are less than HRT of 0.4. This sets the precedent: accumulated horizontal recoil CAN be equal to the HRT, but cannot exceed it. HOWEVER, this doesn't seem true for all weapons: Gauss SAW has HR of 0.175/0.175 and HRT of 0.525. This means that Gauss SAW can kick up to three times in one direction, but in all my experiments I couldn't get it to kick 3 times, only two. Same goes for EM6. It has the same horizontal recoil of 0.175/0.175 and HRT of 0.7, so it should be able to kick 4 times, but I was able to get only 3 consecutive hits. SAW and EM6 have the same horizontal recoil, EM6 has bigger tolerance, so SAW is more accurate, and experiments confirm it. But sometimes the difference in HRT doesn't actually change anything, even though it should. For example, T32 Bull and T16 Rhino have exact same recoil stats, except for the HRT. They have 0.2/0.2 horizontal recoil, Bull has HRT of 0.5, Rhino of 0.7. It should mean that Bull can kick 2 shots, and Rhino can 3 shots, so Bull should be better in that regard. However, in all ~1000 rounds I've fired with Rhino I couldn't get it to kick 3 times. I'm clearly missing a piece of the puzzle. Any ideas? So far each weapon seems to decide on its own whether it can kick 2 or 3 times, as long as it's within HRT, but it doesn't matter how large the HRT actually is. I haven't been able to get any weapon to kick 4 times, even though weapons like Orion with 0.2 / 0.225 and 0.9 should be able to easily do that. But I was able to get Orion kick only 3 times.
Maybe we can get a dev to chime in here? Though it might take a bit. It took Everquest almost 2 decades before AC was explained... and you do NOT wish to see the formula for that. Well sure you do, here's the trainwreck: https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/ac-vs-acv2.210028/#post-3078126 Reason I post this is be prepared for some really wonky crap if we actually do get an answer.
I'm sure I could understand and explain however complicated formula, as long as it's made of known values, perks of higher education and all. Just hoping for an alternative point of view, that hopefully will "click" my understanding of the HRT. But I don't expect devs posting here, everyone knows they only post on reddit. I copy pasted this to a couple of places on reddit as well, but I don't think devs visit those specific parts. Thing is I have no idea how reddit works, and I'm not in a terrible rush to figure it out.
I hear you there. I'm just hoping whatever the way HRT works it isn't super complicated. And if its anything like AC in EQ.. then the numbers you see in game actually don't mean anything. Other than higher or lower is 'better' or 'worse' I forgot to mention that no where in that formula actually represents the AC value you actually see in game which sucks. All that number turned out to be was the addition of AC from AGI (avoidance AC) and Armor (Mitigation AC). Basically your avoidance 'rating' and armor 'rating' added together. You knew having 'more' was better. But not how much of what, due to diminishing returns. It took them 14 years to finally post the formula. And we still don't really know how to apply it. And this is due to.. well mobs having an ATK formula that works in a similar way. And that formula has yet to be posted. So that's my biggest fear. That its so convoluted that even the numbers in game aren't going to help. From your tests, its leaning that way.
Maybe it's because the tolerance values are rounded? In the API some figures are not whole numbers but X.999999999, for example. Perilously close to X+1, but not. The spreadsheets and my list rounded them to the nearest whole number, but the API does not always use perfectly even figures. As an example, if a gun had a Horziontal Recoil Min/Max equal to Horizontal Tolerance / 3, it should in theory be able to kick three times. But if instead of say 0.9 the tolerance value was 0.8999... then if its recoil was 0.3 it actually couldn't kick three times in one direction because 0.3*3 > 0.8999... despite being = 0.9. Of course, that wouldn't explain the T16 only kicking twice, but it might explain a few edge cases. There's also the possibility that the game is simply not able to accept improperly multiplicative Recoil-Tolerance interactions. The 0.7 HT of the T16 doesn't divide evenly from the 0.2 HR it has, and the engine does something weird that essentially pares down the effective HT. It may be the 0.7 is there to interact in some capacity with the Advanced Grip (which lowers the HR to 0.134 and the HT to 0.65). Quite honestly how Grips interact with Tolerance is another issue entirely, as it seems like lowering a gun's HR would in some cases actually make it prone to more drift, in the sense that it could kick more times in the same space. My general experience with weapons is that this isn't the case though, so perhaps the guns obey some invisible formula when interacting with Tolerance in order to make Grip effects purely beneficial.
