There are four blaster types you can get on a gunship.

 

Type 1 gunships ("goodgunship"- Quarrel/Mangler/Mailoc/Redeemer) have burst laser cannon and light laser cannon.

 

Type 2 gunships ("crappygunships"- Comet Breaker/Mangler/Strongarm/Demolisher) have laser cannon and heavy laser cannon.

 

 

Generally, this means that BLC > Light > Laser > Heavy in terms of firing arc.

 

 

Ok, so you'd expect this. Each of these laser types has advantages and disadvantages- while BLC is too good, that's probably not due to the wide firing arc, and more importantly, all of these firing arcs are common on the non-gunships that have access to the same cannons.

 

 

Now, right click to scope and charge. How big your scope is determined by the cannon you have. All the railguns claim 20 degrees- that would be smaller than even the heavy laser! But in practice, it seems that some scopes are larger and others smaller, and it seems entirely based on the type of blaster equipped.

 

 

Am I nuts? No way this is intended.

 

Also no way 20 degrees is acceptable- that's way too teeny!

pull back on your mouse scroll wheel when sniping. widens the field of view.

 

beware the tracking penalty.

Certainly that is true, but that's not what this is about. This is about screen real estate. You have a much bigger targetable field, and a much larger field of view, with the larger firing arc blaster cannons- which makes no sense, right? This is a bug?

There are four blaster types you can get on a gunship.

 

Type 1 gunships ("goodgunship"- Quarrel/Mangler/Mailoc/Redeemer) have burst laser cannon and light laser cannon.

 

Type 2 gunships ("crappygunships"- Comet Breaker/Mangler/Strongarm/Demolisher) have laser cannon and heavy laser cannon.

 

 

Generally, this means that BLC > Light > Laser > Heavy in terms of firing arc.

 

 

Ok, so you'd expect this. Each of these laser types has advantages and disadvantages- while BLC is too good, that's probably not due to the wide firing arc, and more importantly, all of these firing arcs are common on the non-gunships that have access to the same cannons.

 

 

Now, right click to scope and charge. How big your scope is determined by the cannon you have. All the railguns claim 20 degrees- that would be smaller than even the heavy laser! But in practice, it seems that some scopes are larger and others smaller, and it seems entirely based on the type of blaster equipped.

 

 

Am I nuts? No way this is intended.

 

Also no way 20 degrees is acceptable- that's way too teeny!

 

I doubt that they intended railguns to use the firing arc of the equipped blasters. As for the 20 degree firing arc my guess is that it is so small to counterbalance being able to 1 shot scouts and just generally do heavy amounts of damage. It also seems that firing arc is related to tracking penalty, the harsher the tracking penalty the smaller the firing arc. My guess is that since there would be a point where tracking penalties would reduce accuracy to 0% they limited the firing arc base stats so at the outer most edge you'd still have a small chance to hit.

 

Assuming I understand how tracking penalty works (namely each degree from the center of your firing arc gets a tracking penalty) at 20 degrees you're already going to have a tracking penalty that reduces your accuracy to near 0%. Considering that I don't really see how a larger firing arc would be beneficial.

If I miss on my first shot, or they're moving too quick for me, first thing I do is roll my mouse wheel out. I want as much play on my Rail as possible.

 

If I really think about it, I rarely ever, ever, ever nail somebody from a zoomed-in position, unless they're crawling along, dumb enough not to spook from my first shot, or stationary. Nor is it necessary for me to BE zoomed in to nail people. Zooming in tightens your tracking and your arc hard...it's like trying to shift your aim while your arms are buried in sand.

 

Now, by the same token, I miss a lot. My hit rating for an average match middles around 35%. So I suppose it's a tradeoff...zooming out lets you catch up with running targets better, but perhaps makes you less accurate. It's an interesting theory...I'll see for myself if my hit rating goes up if I zoom out to let them run, then back in to tighten up the shot.

Excellent! I will also point out that the listed firing arc on all railguns is 20 degrees, which is far, far smaller than even the most constricted available on live, which is the heavy laser in the new gunships. Please consider:

 

1- Enlarging this value in general- we did all buy burst laser cannon and have been playing with that sniping arc, so taking that to approximately a fifth of current will be a huge nerf.

2- Making this value depend on the railgun type. Of the three railguns, there is not much desire for plasma. If plasma had a huge firing arc compared to the others, that would be a compensatory advantage.

If I miss on my first shot, or they're moving too quick for me, first thing I do is roll my mouse wheel out. I want as much play on my Rail as possible.

 

This isn't about that. I never (ok, very rarely) zoom in. This is about the field of aimable area varying with your weapon. To see for yourself, use a Quarrel with Burst Laser Cannon (the thing pretty much everyone has) and notice how much of the screen you can "snipe" with. Now check out your Comet Breaker with heavy laser, and notice how much LESS of the screen you can "snipe" with.

 

The intended arc is even smaller than that, as I address in my previous post.

Correct on both accounts! This is indeed a bug, and we'll be fixing it in a future update.

 

 

There is an issue that hasn't been raised as far as I know involving gunships that most people probably use to their advantage, though I think it is also an unintended consequence:

 

Zooming out (mousewheeling back) while scoping brings you to 0% zoom, you turn at normal rate and can see a LOT more than when zoomed in farther. This in itself is not a problem. But the HITBOX for your target GROWS. It actually shrinks when you zoom in to the target, making the scoped in targeting WORSE than the scoped out targeting. This is probably NOT what you intended...

Wouldn't you NOT want to have a 20 degree or larger firing arc with the HUGE tracking penalty? I have my arc at 16 degrees, as firing from 17 degrees to 20 degrees gives you an 85-100% chance to miss. You can offset it with accuracy about 9 degrees, but that's still such a huge miss chance it's not even worth it, especially not with evade rates to add onto it.