Night Thastus, on 26 July 2015 - 04:38 PM, said:
I actually made that Standard engine Enforcer as well, I just thought the benefits outweighed the drawbacks for adding an XL. The case on the original one I showed is to keep leg ammo explosions from reaching the side torso. On a medium, it's pretty valuable, especially with XL.
That's not how CASE works in MWO. In MWO, CASE only keeps damage that
starts in the side torso from traveling towards the center torso. That's it. It does not prevent damaging traveling
into the side torso from an arm/leg at all.
*
Usually, if you mount ammo in a side torso, and it gets destroyed, you lose the side torso completely. Also usually, the damage from the ammo explosion is so high that you have a bunch of "left over" damage left even after your ST gets popped. Say your ammo explosion deals 40 points of damage, and your ST containing the ammo only had 10 points of internal structure left. Well, 10 of those 40 points take out your ST - now there's 30 points of damage left over.
These get applied to the CT, but there's a damage reduction mechanic. Whenever damage transfers from one 'Mech component to another, it loses 60% (I think, the actual number may be a bit off) of its potency. So your 40-point ammo explosion deals 10 points to your ST, taking it out entirely, and then proceeds to deal a further 12 points (40% of the remaining 30 points) of damage to your CT. This is why you hardly ever see anyone use CASE even on STD engine builds - it just doesn't add much protection.
If an ammo explosion occurs in your leg or arm, destroying it, and excess damage from that explosion gets applied to your ST? CASE does absolutely nothing there. There is a damage reduction due to the transfer mechanic, but CASE has nothing to do with it. In MWO, using CASE on an XL engine does literally
nothing.
Now, if you run a STD engine, and your leg/arm ammo explosion ALSO takes out your ST, CASE will prevent any excess damage from the ST loss from getting applied to your CT... but that's rather pointless, as the initial excess damage will have gone through two 60% damage reductions by the time it reaches your CT anyway.
*This entire post is talking about Inner Sphere 'Mechs specifically. Clan OmniMechs automatically have CASE installed in all components. Even so, they only prevent damage from traveling out of the originating component - they do not prevent damage from coming in from a different component.
Edited by Bloodweaver, 26 July 2015 - 05:13 PM.