Super Mechs, Haxors or WTF?

Vettie’s Views Special Edition # 2

Super Mechs, Hackers or What?

I am sure you have all seen it. The Mech that would not die. Every panel blinking. Bright reddish brown flashing like a caution light at a dangerous intersection. Almost like a strobe light. Yet, somehow, some way, this mech continues to be hit, absorb the shots and even return fire, without exploding. You pound and pound at the super mech even managing to blow off arms and torso slots, but this thing continues to move and come at you, away from you or even shoot you, but it simply will not die. On comms we scream “Hacker” or “This guy wont take any damage!” or “WTF???? Three alphas and no damage!” or something along those lines.

It is very likely that you have seen this happen. You may have chased the mech around the battlefield pumping round after round into it hoping for the kill. You may have noticed that when he returns fire, you show damage right away, maybe you go crit or even die before this super mech does.

There is even a chance that you may have been super mech yourself. Maybe you got lucky and had one of those ‘out of mech’ experiences where you took shot after shot and were still functioning. You look at your damage bars and see that you head is green, but there is no armour anywhere else on your mech, but you are not yet legged and you still have most if not all your weapons and are able to return fire.

I have been the lucky one a few times, having a mech that I wondered what was holding it together. I am almost positive that Cow had that experience way back in NBT when he managed to take down 4 or 5 MC Marauders in a Strider after the rest of us had been destroyed.

Is this some form of hacking? Is it a packet filter of some sort? Is it lag? What causes this? Well, I personally don’t believe it is a hack or packet filters and I really don’t believe it is what we think of as lag.

Let’s look at the opposite side of this. Ever kill a heavy or an assault mech in 2 or 3 shots? Ever been in a no radar situation, make a jump only to find the enemy right in front of you about 200 meters or so, shoot and see the mech explode? Ever work with your wingman and lay into an enemy only to have it explode after just a few rounds?

Have you ever been in a mech that you thought had little or no damage, only to be killed in seconds? Ever been in a mech that seemed to die in just 2 shots? Ever get destroyed in a mech and you never saw what did it, but it SEEMED to happen in 1 shot?

I don’t know what causes it, but I can speculate. I have been involved with the game for a long time and seen all kinds of things. As I said, I don’t think it is any kind of hack (in most cases) because it has happened to me. I have even seen this in ‘instant action’ games or in a private server against bots. Every once in a while, it just happens. I would say it was something to do with the internet or the net code, but I have seen the same phenomena in instant action where there is no internet connection involved. I am guessing that it is just something in the game, the game engine.

I suspect, knowing very little about programming or how ‘game engines’ work, that what we are experiencing is something similar to lag, but it is happening within the game engine, or the game’s rendering engine. Again, just guessing here, but I think what we are seeing is some sort of internal lag that accumulates around 1 player, or mech or bot, and even though we see the mech being hit, the game engine has not caught up to us yet. Eventually of course, 1 of 2 things happen. #1 the engine catches up and all those shots you were pounding super mech with ‘hit it’ and it explodes, or #2, all the players or bots shooting at super mech get destroyed before the engine catches up with super mech and obviously the game respawns resetting the game engine / rendering engine. Put another way, and each of you may have run into this as well, ever notice how once in a while you get no sound warnings about things that are happening then all of the sudden you get all the warning sounds, one after another? The sound in the game is catching up with what has happened and what is happening.

I cant help but wonder if it has something to do with the speeds of the microprocessors we are using now, or even the quality of the graphics cards we are using. If I remember correctly, Mech Warrior Mercenaries had a recommended CPu of 700mhz and a 16mg video card with 128mg of ram. Now how many of you use that kind of set up? I know on my gaming machine, I am running 2.4Ghz CPu, 128mg Video Card and 1gig of ram. Yeah my machine will run Mercs just fine. Hell, even the +PT+ MP3 Mission Play server runs something close to that, 2.0Ghz CPu, 128mg Video Card and 2gig of ram. Even my kids pc well exceed the requirements for playing mercs, with a 900Mhz CPu, 128mg Vid Card and 512mg of ram.

My thoughts are that the game engine was designed to handle what, at the time, seemed phenomenal processors and video cards. 700Mhz up to (guessing) double that, or 1.5Ghz CPu with video cards starting at 16mg up to 64mg. Another factor in all of this is the speeds of the individual devices. A 700Mhz processor (most likely) ran somewhere in the neighborhood of 266mhz up to 333mhz front side buss while the vid cards ran somewhere in the 180mhz to 250mhz speeds. Todays CPu’s and Video Cards are MUCH faster, especially the video cards. Both NVidia and ATI have continued to up the bar in graphics rendering and speeds. Intel and AMD continued to boost speeds on their CPus until the last year or so where they branched out into 64-bit processing and dual core processors.

I think it is these technological increases that have brought this to the game we love. I think if we all played on 800Mhz CPu machines with 256mg of ram and a 2xAGP 64mg Vid card that we would see less of the super mechs and even less of what we have come to love as lag or no damage bug (NDB). Yes, I am saying our computers are too fast for the game and as a result we see unusual things like mechs that don’t take damage, super mechs if you will, and NDB run rampant. Sooner or later the engine catches up with what went on and it all applies, simple fact is you may not be there to see it, or you may get destroyed before it does so.

I am not trying to say that that is no one hacking or running packet filters, not at all. What I am saying is that, possibly, there are fewer running these things than we think, in my opinion. Sure there are guys that ‘print screen’ and I am positive there are some people messing with their packets and I am even more positive there are some playing with the memory hack because I have been a victim of this and even have had it shown to me.

I absolutely agree that connection issues have a great deal to do with what we see on screen. Lag or latency is a big issue, but the game is set up for many types of connections. I also think that MOST players set their connection at a speed and don’t screw with it after that. I am sure that there are some that tweak and tweak to get what is best for them out of their settings. By that, I mean I think some connect to a server and see what is happening and maybe even play a round or two. After determining that they are taking too much damage or not inflicting enough, they disco and go tweak their connection settings and re-join the game. Now they hit harder but take less damage coming back. Yeah I am sure there are those that do that.

I would like to hear from you and get your thoughts on Super Mechs, engine speeds, connection issues and hacks. Take a few minutes, think about what I have said here and let us know your thoughts.