Understanding Lag
........Understanding lag used to be one of the most important factors in becoming a fine mechwarrior pilot.
........Basically, lag is a slight timing shift caused by the internet. It is the time it takes for your computer to send information to another person's computer and for their computer to respond back to your computer. Usually this is only a matter of milliseconds, but with bad connections (or slow modems) this can escalate into a second or two. In Mechwarrior 4 a mech is usually where it appears in the game.
Mechwarrior 4 is different than past series games. Due to the time shift caused by lag in previous versions you had to "lead" your target in order to hit them. This is no longer the case (for most weapons). You can now simply "point and shoot." In other words, what you see is what you get! However, lag still effects you. In Mechwarrior 4 sometimes you will see mechs "warp" - meaning you see them one place and they magically appear somewhere else. What this translates to is that YOU are "lagged" and as the server updates the information on your display you see the correct position of the mechs. That's what you see when YOU are lagged. What your enemies see is that your mech slows down to a crawl or your mech just continues to move in one direction and this makes you a very nice target. What can you do about it? Short of getting a high speed connection, you can do nothing. Bottom line is that lag hurts YOU not your enemy. The makers of Mechwarrior 4 designed the engine this way because in the past, people complained that those who always won the game were the ones on the worst connections.
Note: Using the "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) method will show you a couple things. In Mechwarrior 4 you will notice when shooting Gauss rifles that after firing the weapon, it takes a little time to reach the mech when it is 400 or more meters away. The farther away the target is, the longer it will take for the Gauss to reach it. Therefore if your target is moving in any direction (other than straight towards you) you must "lead" or shoot in front of the target in the direction it is heading, to allow for the time the weapon takes to travel the distance to the target. This is not technically lag, it is more a limitation of the weapon's slower speed. Practice will teach you just how far to lead a mech when firing Gauss Rifle.
When firing SRMs, (not streaks - SRMs do NOT lock on the target) it will also be necessary to lead the opponent's mech - especially if he is in a small fast mech. How much lead depends on how fast the target is going. Faster mechs require more lead time. Watch as you fire the missiles and you'll see whether or not you gave enough lead time. If you see them hit the mech, you accurately figured the lead time! Again, practice will teach you how far to lead when using SRMs.