Better chainfire?

[S-Array 03]

Chainfire fires the first weapon in the group, then waits until the first weapon's cooldown ends before shooting the second weapon and so on.
Is there a way to get chainfire to optimise DPS instead of this behavior? As in, for a 2 identical weapons group, fire the second weapon whent he first's cooldown is at 50% ?

[pete]

What your asking for isn't chain fire. If you group your weapons differently and have a multi button mouse maybe?

Alternatively you could make many individual clicks with your mouse rather than holding the button down

[Eagle_of_Fire]

I have no clue about what you are talking about. If I chainfire a whole group of weapons (like med lasers for instance) I can fire them almost instantly simply by clicking the corresponding button several times in a row.

You want to fire slower to reduce heat (which is probably the only reason you would chainfire in the first place)? Then just click slower.

[Cyzxxikz]

The only way to do what you want is to do the math, and create a macro that will tap the trigger at the correct intervals, while everything is in a group on chainfire.
Alternatively you could have the same DPS by firing the whole group, and spread less dmg, giving you higher effective DPS.

Also, chainfire does NOT fire the next weapon when the first weapons cooldown ends. It fires the next weapon every .5 seconds.

[Kay]

As Eagle said, you don't have to hold the trigger and wait, chainfire can cycle as fast as you can pull the trigger. Alternately, just group your weapons better.

What's really missing is a dedicated "Alpha Strike" button, instead of wasting one of the six groupings for that function.

[ICE 9]

Originally posted by S-Array 03:

Chainfire fires the first weapon in the group, then waits until the first weapon's cooldown ends before shooting the second weapon and so on.
Is there a way to get chainfire to optimise DPS instead of this behavior? As in, for a 2 identical weapons group, fire the second weapon whent he first's cooldown is at 50% ?

Chain fire is used primarily to mitigate weapons overheating. However, what you are trying to do can, to a limited degree, be accomplished by dividing similar/same weapons between two or more weapons groups.

For example: A Missile boat (Cyclops CP-10-Q for instance) having four SSRM4's and two LRM15-ST's (or four Clan SSRM4'S and two Clan LRM15's) can be configured in such a way to have two of the SSRM4's and one LRM15-ST assigned to weapons group 1 (keymapped to mouse button 1) and the other two SSRM4's and LRM15-ST assigned to weapons group 2 (keymapped to mouse button 2), with both weapons groups set to chain fire. This arrangement allows you to rapid-fire all missiles by trilling mouse buttons 1 and 2 (like trilling two keys on a piano) to devastating effect.

Note: You can only do this with YAML mod installed. Without YAML, the chain-fire locks up when the target is either inside minimum LRM range or is beyond maximum SSRM range.

Enemy light mech AI will attempt to flee when confronted with this, only to run from a continuous stream of SSRM4's at close range into a kill box where ALL missiles (4 SSRM4's and 2 SSRM15-ST's) are rapidly fired. This usually kills the enemy mech in one or two seconds, if POTENT WARHEADS II and DAMAGE TUNING weapons quirks/upgrades are installed. Even Annihilators, King Crabs, and Blood Asps cannot face such overwhelming fire-power.

[Cyzxxikz]

Originally posted by ICE 9:

Originally posted by S-Array 03:

Chainfire fires the first weapon in the group, then waits until the first weapon's cooldown ends before shooting the second weapon and so on.
Is there a way to get chainfire to optimise DPS instead of this behavior? As in, for a 2 identical weapons group, fire the second weapon whent he first's cooldown is at 50% ?

Chain fire is used primarily to mitigate weapons overheating. However, what you are trying to do can, to a limited degree, be accomplished by dividing similar/same weapons between two or more weapons groups.

For example: A Missile boat (Cyclops CP-10-Q for instance) having four SSRM4's and two LRM15-ST's (or four Clan SSRM4'S and two Clan LRM15's) an be configured in such a way to have two of the SSRM4's and one LRM15-ST's assigned to weapons group 1 (keymapped to mouse button 1) and the other two 2 SSRM4's and 1 LFRM15-ST's assigned to weapons group 2 (keymapped to mouse button 2), with both weapons groups set to chain fire. This arrangement allows you to rapid-fire all missiles by trilling the mouse keys 1 and 2 (like trilling two keys on a piano) to devastating effect.

Note: You can only do this with YAML mod installed. Without YAML, the chain-fire locks up when the target is either inside minimum LRM range or is beyond maximum SSRM range.

Enemy light mech AI will attempt to flee when confronted with this firepower, only to run from a continuous stream of SSRM4's at close range into a kill box where ALL missies (4 SSRM4's and 2 SSRM15-ST's) are rapidly fired. This usually kills the enemy mech in one or two seconds. Even Annihilators and Blood asps cannot face such overwhelming fire-power.

What am I missing? why not group lrms and srms seperately?

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Yeah, I would definitely do exactly that. Map the LRMs to one key (usually 3 on my mouse) and SRM on another (I usually use 1 and 2 for main weapons of a mech).

I do my best to only use 4 groups since my mouse only has five buttons and I've mapped middle mouse for bringing up the map. Which I do almost every 5 to 10 secs when I have no enemies in sight and aren't actively shooting at something.

[ICE 9]

Originally posted by Cyzxxikz:

What am I missing? why not group lrms and srms seperately?

You can, but it is not as effective.

When only SSRM's are fired using one mouse button, the rate of fire is limited by weapon cycle time, and by how quickly you can depress the mouse button after the weapon has cycled. The same applies to LRM's.

When you divide the SSRM's between two mouse buttons and then add in the LRM's, you double the rate of fire.

However, assuming your use of SRM's vice SSRM's was a typo, your weapons group configuration DOES fix a problem that occurs in the configuration that I described in my previous comment. When chain firing SSRM's with an LRM, the chain fire sequence will occasionally stutter, or miss-fire, when one of the weapons systems loses lock (i.e. automatic switching between SSRM's and LRM's can only occur when both weapon systems have lock on the target).

One other advantage to your configuration is that (assuming your use of SRM's was NOT a typo) you don't have to wait for missile lock.

[Cyzxxikz]

Originally posted by ICE 9:

Originally posted by Cyzxxikz:

What am I missing? why not group lrms and srms seperately?

You can, but it is not as effective.

When only SSRM's are fired using one mouse button, the rate of fire is limited by weapon cycle time, and by how quickly you can depress the mouse button after the weapon has cycled. The same applies to LRM's.

When you divide the SSRM's between two mouse buttons and then add in the LRM's, you double the rate of fire.

However, assuming your use of SRM's vice SSRM's was a typo, your weapons group configuration DOES fix a problem that occurs in the configuration that I described in my previous comment. When chain firing SSRM's with an LRM, the chain fire sequence will occasionally stutter, or miss-fire, when one of the weapons systems loses lock (i.e. automatic switching between SSRM's and LRM's can only occur when both weapon systems have lock on the target).

One other advantage to your configuration is that (assuming your use of SRM's was NOT a typo) you don't have to wait for missile lock.

Yeah it was a typo.
I guess what I'm hung up on is why group the SSRMs and LRMS together? just to reduce the amount of weapon groups? Or is there something about them being together i'm too thick skulled to understand?

[Sotanaht]

Originally posted by Eagle_of_Fire:

You want to fire slower to reduce heat (which is probably the only reason you would chainfire in the first place)? Then just click slower.

There are actually many reasons to chainfire:
to conserve heat
to conserve ammo
to fire at multiple targets in rapid succession (eg vtols that only need 1 shot)
To compensate for poor accuracy (higher rate of fire/lower damage per shot to better guarantee at least SOME shots hit the target, less an issue in mechwarrior where everything is big and slow).

[ICE 9]

Originally posted by Cyzxxikz:

I guess what I'm hung up on is why group the SSRMs and LRMS together? just to reduce the amount of weapon groups? Or is there something about them being together i'm too thick skulled to understand?

If you mean, for example, as an alternative, using three mouse buttons - left and right mouse for the four SSRM4's and then the mouse 5 thumb button for the two LRM15-ST's?.. ...Yes, that can be done as well. And, here, you have all the benefits of maximum rapid fire, plus you don't have the occasional stuttering/miss-fire that you get when chain-firing SSRM's with LRM's.

Occasionally, I use the three mouse button configuration for "meat grinders" - where rapid and continuous enemy drops and re-spawning are encountered. Some DEMOLITION / SCORCHED EARTH missions can be like this. Also, high-difficulty WARZONE / BATTLEFIELD missions can become "meat grinders" as well... ...if you stay too long.

The down side to the three button configuration is that you have to use up an extra mouse button, and, in the chaos, you can sometimes experience trigger-hand "muscle-memory amnesia" and forget to switch to your LRM's / SSRM's when appropriate (you can also waste LRM's this way as well - when your thumb "forgets" to stop firing). With the two button configuration, you don't have to worry about that, since the LRM's / SSRM's are automatically switched on / off for you.

Basically, choosing between the two mouse button chain-fire configuration and the three-button configuration, is more of a matter of preference, than that of gaining a rapid-fire advantage... ...Oh, and I almost forgot: I haven't tried it, but you shouldn't need YAML for the three button configuration. You could probably do it in vanilla - if you can figure out how to load all that weaponry into a vanilla mech, that is.

[Kay]

I use a little-known under-appreciated piece of technology called a Trackball (Logitech M580). With this "mouse" I have seven possible buttons - Left, Right, Forward, Back, Mouse Up, Mouse Down and Mouse Middle. Most "gamer" or even halfway decent mice can mimic this setup.

I disable mouse-middle because it's too easy to accidentally click.

Group 1 - Left Click - Usually all my MLas or all my LLas (never both). If lacking lasers, this is my primary use weapon (PPC or Autocannon). If running with M and S lasers, I might combine the S with M.
Group 2 - Right Click - If mixed-laser, this would be whichever of the two wasn't Left Click, whichever laser group is less combined damage. If a missile boat, this would be all SRMS or all LRMS. If a gunboat, this is often the autocannon/gauss.

Group 3/4 - Forward/Back - On low-weaponcount mechs, these could be partial (usually arm) MLas or a single LLas, or partial missiles. A way to fire with less heat or less ammo wasted on light targets. Forward is often the "it's a Turret" button. On high-variety mechs, this would be the missiles if groups 1 and 2 are not.

Group 5/6 - Mousewheel Up/Dn - 90% of the time, this is the fists. Both up and down would be mapped to both arms, just so I don't have to think which direction. If I have an especially high-variety of weapons, I might map just mouse-down to the melee, and mouse-up is either partial or full LRMs.

The above setup works perfectly for almost every mech. The only real deviation from that I ever do is something like King Crab Carapace (4LBX) or Kaiju (4PPC), which really only uses two buttons, so I'll split Left/Right guns or all fire Left, chain fire Right.