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Grouped Weaps Vs Internals


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#1 MechWarrior3671771

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 05:57 AM

In service to the new player community, I am asking a stupid question so the rest of us won't feel shy about asking stupid questions :)

Say you have 3 med pulse lasers, grouped as
left mouse click = group 1, all 3 lasers
right mouse click = group 2, 2 lasers in arm

You come across a red team mech that has armor stripped and is orange.

Wouldn't it be smarter to fire your lasers separately? To get a greater chance of a critical hit? How does that work anyway? Does the game consider them fired separately if I fire the 2nd before the burn time is finished on the 1st one?

Is it worth it to fire them separately for 6 damage (more crit potential?) or just alpha all for 18 damage?

Edited by Fenrisulvyn, 02 October 2015 - 05:59 AM.


#2 TercieI

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 06:03 AM

I'm not sure whether critical roll is by shot or by weapon, so I'm not sure about the math of critical hits. But your underlying assumption is flawed because by breaking up your shots, you spread your damage out over time and become way less likely to hit the same component with all your shots. Known damage sooner is way more valuable than maybe damage later. There really are extremely few circumstances where using less than all available firepower (as permitted by weapon load and current heat level) is a good decision. Also...never put yourself in the hands of RNGs if you don't have to!

#3 Thorqemada

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 08:23 AM

MWO is a game about Alpha-Strikes.

The best for critical hits is to have a bunch of weapons that do 10 or more points of damage all at once per hit.
Bcs most Equipment has 10HP and thus you will have immediate effect of destruction upon a crit.

Weapons like Lasers, MGs, LRMs, SRMs, all LBX ACs, or the AC2, AC5s for example need to drown their target with so much hits that the Micro-Crits they do disable some Equipment - usually it takes to much facetime if you do not have an abundance of microcritting weapons.
And then it s probably about the DPS (Ultra ACs have a good place here) anyway and not about the Crit.

What will make you use less Weapons or Chainfire is 1) Heatmanagement und 2) bypass HSR (Hitreg) issues (fewer Weapons occasionally mean better HSR).

Dont hunt crits, simply do the most damage for the least damage return you can do and enjoy the occasional fun fight with another Mech Pilot insane enough to want a good fight instead of an easy kill.

Edited by Thorqemada, 02 October 2015 - 08:24 AM.


#4 Havyek

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 08:38 AM

ABA

Always
Be
Alphaing

#5 Rhavin

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 10:09 AM

I always keep one group of all my pulse or med lasers on chainfire, and one group to alpha all my weapons. I don't believe it matters critical wise but if I am close to overheating and have a chance to do some damage I can hit the chainfire group and give a parthian shot or two without risk of shutting down. It's really great when you are in a build that has an excess of ghost heat, especially fighting in mount mordor. I use it on my top dog and cheetah builds the most.

Its better to alpha when you can, even if it's group 1 then group 2, but its nice to have an option when it's just not possible to do that due to heat Imho.

#6 Spleenslitta

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 10:34 AM

View PostThorqemada, on 02 October 2015 - 08:23 AM, said:

MWO is a game about Alpha-Strikes.

The best for critical hits is to have a bunch of weapons that do 10 or more points of damage all at once per hit.
Bcs most Equipment has 10HP and thus you will have immediate effect of destruction upon a crit.

Weapons like Lasers, MGs, LRMs, SRMs, all LBX ACs, or the AC2, AC5s for example need to drown their target with so much hits that the Micro-Crits they do disable some Equipment - usually it takes to much facetime if you do not have an abundance of microcritting weapons.
And then it s probably about the DPS (Ultra ACs have a good place here) anyway and not about the Crit.

What will make you use less Weapons or Chainfire is 1) Heatmanagement und 2) bypass HSR (Hitreg) issues (fewer Weapons occasionally mean better HSR).

Dont hunt crits, simply do the most damage for the least damage return you can do and enjoy the occasional fun fight with another Mech Pilot insane enough to want a good fight instead of an easy kill.

Just gotta say something about this.
Each individual MG bullet and LBX pellet has a 39% chance to crit one component, 22% chance to crit 2 components and 6% chance for 3.
But that's not all. MG's have a base damage of 0.08 damage per bullet but when it crits it does 1350% damage. That's 1.08 damage per bullet that crits.
LBX pellets do 200% damage with each criting pellet and yes each pellet gets a seperate chance to crit.
With the MG's high firerate it becomes the most lethal weapon in MWO in the later part of a match due to all the exposed internals.

Here is a link to it all http://mwo.gamepedia.com/Critical_Hit

I've tried it....3-4 MGs is lethal once the armor is gone. Try peeling off armor off a target in the testing grounds with lasers and then watch how fast MG's take out exposed weaponry.
Even 2 MG's have their place.

#7 Tesunie

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 10:43 AM

From my understanding:
Each weapon that hits an internal component has a chance of causing a critical hit. In the case of lasers, which deal damage overtime, each "tick" of damage has a chance of causing a critical hit, but only for that "ticks" worth of damage.

AKA: For laser weapons, (not exact information) say a medium laser does 5 damage over 1.25 second. Each 0.25 of time is a tick of damage. What that laser does is it will deal 1 damage per 0.25 seconds of beam on target (with these made up numbers). So, the longer the beam is on target, the more damage. Each tick has a chance of causing a critical hit, so the more ticks you get on a target, the more chances that one of them will deal a crit.

Most components (weapons, heat sinks, etc) have a health pool of 10 damage. They must take 10 damage worth of crits to be destroyed. (AC20 has 20 health. Engines, gyros, actuators, etc have no health pool and can not currently be destroyed by critical hits.)

#8 Thorqemada

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 11:31 AM

I have tried MGs too and MGs make in 1 single occasion sense - you can only mount MGs!
Every other case it is better to not take MGs!

#9 Spleenslitta

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 11:50 AM

View PostThorqemada, on 02 October 2015 - 11:31 AM, said:

I have tried MGs too and MGs make in 1 single occasion sense - you can only mount MGs!
Every other case it is better to not take MGs!

....Sorry but i made this KFX build work and it's been working for several hundred matches. It's ability to take limbs and internal components off is very good.
Plus the sound of 4 MG's is addicting. BTW...have you tried doing that experiment in the testing grounds like i suggested?

1 ER laser of every size (small, medium and large), JJ's, ECM, 2 extra DHS and 4 MG's. It's gotten me to the upper tier 3 and it seems it will carry me to tier 2. Not bad....
I sometimes change the extra DHS and the cER LL for a single cER PPC.
I keep the cERML for assisting my other weapons whenever it's within effective range and i can spare the heat.

Point is to not let the enemy hit you. Shoot but do not get shot in return. Here is how you can do it....if you can manage to read it all.
Non Meta Light Mech Tactics Guide.

Before you ask....yup. It's all real and i'm not joking.

#10 Thorqemada

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 12:04 PM

Yeah - so it works on a low prio target....ok...

#11 Spleenslitta

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 12:11 PM

View PostThorqemada, on 02 October 2015 - 12:04 PM, said:

Yeah - so it works on a low prio target....ok...

Think of it like this. Let's say there is an assault mech with a bucket load of weapons.
He has some exposed internals but those are mostly in the yellow so it will take a while to chew through the internal hitpoints of each bodysection.
He can still dish out a lot of pain before you can bring him down.

But with MG's you can take out those internals and with very little effort since it's easy to hit stuff with MG's...or LBX if it's at longer ranges.
Point is that you don't need to hit that specific section repeatedly while he torsotwist to make you hit his arms instead.
There is no twisting away from MG's since they fire constantly. No breaks in firerate.

Remember.....just because you cannot make MG's work doesn't mean others are automaticly doomed to fail.

#12 _____

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 12:26 PM

As Thorq said, right now it's much more efficient just to take out the component altogether and not worry so much about critting the stuff inside. That was important back in 2013 when the lack of quirks and clan mechs meant smaller alphas, higher heat, and higher TTK, so you were more concerned about where you're hitting and what you're doing with each shot. Now we're in the world of 50 pt alphas on medium mechs and 80+ on assaults. If you see an enemy with an open component just concentrate your alpha on that component and blow it off.

#13 Spleenslitta

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 12:35 PM

View PostBlackhawkSC, on 02 October 2015 - 12:26 PM, said:

As Thorq said, right now it's much more efficient just to take out the component altogether and not worry so much about critting the stuff inside. That was important back in 2013 when the lack of quirks and clan mechs meant smaller alphas, higher heat, and higher TTK, so you were more concerned about where you're hitting and what you're doing with each shot. Now we're in the world of 50 pt alphas on medium mechs and 80+ on assaults. If you see an enemy with an open component just concentrate your alpha on that component and blow it off.

Question is...are you so accurate that you can always hit that specific component hard enough? Lasers need to burn for awhile and the enemy will twist off some of the damage.
In any case. Let's say you see smoke pouring out of an enemy mech and you target him to know if it's the center torso or one of the sidetorsos.

By the time you get the target info and aimed your alpha at that damaged component MG's have allready had several seconds of barragetime.
With MG's you fire at an enemy with smoking bodysections and you will crit something. Never fails.

There are advantages to both methods. Neither one is the best i'd say. I've made MG's work just fine.
My problem is the AC2's and Flamers....those i just can't make work no matter what i do. But maybe that's just me?

#14 Koniving

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 01:21 PM

View PostFenrisulvyn, on 02 October 2015 - 05:57 AM, said:

In service to the new player community, I am asking a stupid question so the rest of us won't feel shy about asking stupid questions :)

Say you have 3 med pulse lasers, grouped as
left mouse click = group 1, all 3 lasers
right mouse click = group 2, 2 lasers in arm

You come across a red team mech that has armor stripped and is orange.

Wouldn't it be smarter to fire your lasers separately? To get a greater chance of a critical hit? How does that work anyway? Does the game consider them fired separately if I fire the 2nd before the burn time is finished on the 1st one?

Is it worth it to fire them separately for 6 damage (more crit potential?) or just alpha all for 18 damage?


When explained last year by PGI's Alexander or Karl, can't recall... (Think it was both.)

The critical rolls are done per individual weapon per 'use'. Even with pulse lasers which use "ticks" to determine damage, the "crit damage success" is evidently calculated when you pull the trigger, not when/if you hit. It is negated if you hit armor or miss. It is permitted if you manage to hit. Still the crit damage is turned into a percentage on beam weapons like medium pulse lasers so that if you earned a single crit on a single MPL, and 3 of 5 ticks makes it, you're doing 3/5ths of a single crit, too.

That said it wouldn't matter if you chain fired them or fired them at the same time far as crits.

....Having said that, I've come to notice that if your ping is high, or if you fire a lot of weapons very frequently, you'd be better off chain firing due to hit registration. This is also why I highly encourage stream-firing your LRMs and SRMs instead of clustering them up in a single blow. Fire too much and quite simply, "How many missiles was that again? Meh, I'll just say it was 20."

#15 Spleenslitta

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 01:24 PM

Hey Koniving. Do SRM/LRM have only 1 chance to crit or is it based on per missile kinda like the LBX pellets?

#16 _____

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 01:24 PM

View PostSpleenslitta, on 02 October 2015 - 12:35 PM, said:

By the time you get the target info and aimed your alpha at that damaged component MG's have allready had several seconds of barragetime.
With MG's you fire at an enemy with smoking bodysections and you will crit something. Never fails.


That's the other thing, with the current mid-long range peek meta as it is you rarely get targeting info anyway. Just go for the CT most of the time. If you poke out an ST, that's a bonus. Most of my engagements in the pub queue are 300m+ so no chance for MGs and LBXs to be effective.

#17 Satan n stuff

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 01:25 PM

View PostTerciel1976, on 02 October 2015 - 06:03 AM, said:

I'm not sure whether critical roll is by shot or by weapon, so I'm not sure about the math of critical hits. But your underlying assumption is flawed because by breaking up your shots, you spread your damage out over time and become way less likely to hit the same component with all your shots. Known damage sooner is way more valuable than maybe damage later. There really are extremely few circumstances where using less than all available firepower (as permitted by weapon load and current heat level) is a good decision. Also...never put yourself in the hands of RNGs if you don't have to!

Critical hits are determined per individual hit, meaning it rolls once per laser "tick" per laser. This is why lasers are so bad at taking out items, the sheer number of rolls ensures that critical hits will spread evenly across all crit slots basically every time, so you'll have to burn through a lot of item HP before any items get destroyed unless that item takes up a lot of slots relative to the total slots used in that component.
This means components with a lot of small items in them are nigh immune to item damage from lasers because you'll have to take out nearly all of the item's combined hit points before any are destroyed and the component itself will not last nearly as long.

View PostKoniving, on 02 October 2015 - 01:21 PM, said:


When explained last year by PGI's Alexander or Karl, can't recall... (Think it was both.)

The critical rolls are done per individual weapon per 'use'. Even with pulse lasers which use "ticks" to determine damage, the "crit damage success" is evidently calculated when you pull the trigger, not when/if you hit. It is negated if you hit armor or miss. It is permitted if you manage to hit. Still the crit damage is turned into a percentage on beam weapons like medium pulse lasers so that if you earned a single crit on a single MPL, and 3 of 5 ticks makes it, you're doing 3/5ths of a single crit, too.

That said it wouldn't matter if you chain fired them or fired them at the same time far as crits.

....Having said that, I've come to notice that if your ping is high, or if you fire a lot of weapons very frequently, you'd be better off chain firing due to hit registration. This is also why I highly encourage stream-firing your LRMs and SRMs instead of clustering them up in a single blow. Fire too much and quite simply, "How many missiles was that again? Meh, I'll just say it was 20."

If that's true, ignore what I just said. Do you have a link for that?

Edited by Satan n stuff, 02 October 2015 - 03:26 PM.


#18 Spleenslitta

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 01:40 PM

View PostBlackhawkSC, on 02 October 2015 - 01:24 PM, said:


That's the other thing, with the current mid-long range peek meta as it is you rarely get targeting info anyway. Just go for the CT most of the time. If you poke out an ST, that's a bonus. Most of my engagements in the pub queue are 300m+ so no chance for MGs and LBXs to be effective.

Sorry but i did make MG's effective....but i guess nobody believes me.
All i know is that when i replaced the MG's with an SRM6 with artemis i suddenly got fewer components destructions per match.
It was very noticable too and it's the truth.
It's like i said earlier...just because you cannot make MG's work doesn't mean everybody who tries will fail automaticly.

But i guess that means there is more dakka dakka dakka dakka for me. Yup...you guys have to settle for the dakka dakka from having 3-4 UAC5's while i get waaaay more of the awesome sounds.
Just wish ammo explosions were to be feared like they used to be....had so many ammo explosions from using my MG's back then.

Edited by Spleenslitta, 02 October 2015 - 01:41 PM.


#19 _____

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 02:08 PM

View PostSpleenslitta, on 02 October 2015 - 01:40 PM, said:

Sorry but i did make MG's effective....but i guess nobody believes me.


You don't have to be sorry. I believe you. I also believe you'll be more effective using something else. I've also seen people kill stuff using flamers so...

#20 Khereg

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Posted 02 October 2015 - 02:13 PM

I generally only split my fire up for the same weapon type for two reasons:

1. Heat management (ghost heat, operating near shutdown, conserving b/c the ct I'm firing at is already cherry red and there's another guy I need to shoot ASAP, etc.)

2. Geometry (generally splitting groups between sides of the mech to facilitate corner poking without wasting shots and heat by firing weapons into a wall)

Otherwise, alpha strikes are best strikes.





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