55 replies to this topic

[Yeach]

Going to this in a different way.

Pulse lasers should appear and function like the lasers from MW3 and MW4. The near instantaneous nature would gives them the vaunted -2 to hit modifier.

Lasers would then function like pulse lasers from MW4 or lasers from MW2.

Edited by Yeach, 03 November 2011 - 04:56 AM.

[Zypher]

TheRulesLawyer, on 02 November 2011 - 11:18 AM, said:

Pinpoint fire ruined online play for all previous editions of MW. Battletech isn't about targeting specific parts of a mech, its about shooting center of mass and having random hit distribution. There is no way to have pinpoint fire without leading to abuse. Circle of first means no easy head shots and makes aiming for legs much less profitable.

Agreed, I always wish the mechwarrior series had just the slight bit of weapon kickback to recreate seudo Circle of first. Obviously the closer in your are to the target the easier it would be to still make a hit on the desired portion of your target. But again, larger weapons like AC/20s would have more kick.

[pbiggz]

because your piloting a battlemech, kickback would be negligible, if there was any at all.
Any recoil that does occur is compensated for by the mech's computer.
Also to be kept in mind is that lasers dont have kickback, as they are literally light.

[UncleKulikov]

Starsiege had an interesting version called a "compression laser". It fired 3 laser blasts in quick succession, which allowed it to be more accurate because it was 3 shots over the same time a regular laser took to fire one.

The exact details should change a bit, but "pulse" doesn't indicate "continuous" to me. It should be a set number of blasts per trigger pull/cycle time.

pbiggz, on 04 November 2011 - 12:12 PM, said:

Any recoil that does occur is compensated for by the mech's computer.

I seriously doubt that.

Edited by UncleKulikov, 04 November 2011 - 12:21 PM.

[TheRulesLawyer]

pbiggz, on 04 November 2011 - 12:12 PM, said:

because your piloting a battlemech, kickback would be negligible, if there was any at all.
Any recoil that does occur is compensated for by the mech's computer.
Also to be kept in mind is that lasers dont have kickback, as they are literally light.

Really? Mechs are shooting projectiles equivalent upto a 16" naval gun. A MBT is about 65T. It fires a much much much smaller projectile and deals with significant recoil. Simple physics suggests that the recoil would be enormous on some weapons, computer dampened or not.

[gregsolidus]

He's got you their.

[wanderer]

Pulse lasers aren't as hard as people are making it out to be.

Shorter effective range, slightly higher damage vs standards of the same size, smaller cone-of-fire to represent the easier-to-correct laser firing.

Cake.

[wolf on the tide]

AJC, on 01 November 2011 - 09:55 PM, said:

The inner sphere recovered the ability to make pulse lasers by 3037 although they weren't really widespread everywhere until around the clan invasion.

also the they Inner sphere ER large laser was also re-debuted then it took the clan invasion for the IS ER tech versions of medium and small lasers.

most people don't realize that the inner sphere recovered a lot of advance tech before the clans hit.

but the clan invasion novels mostly seemly forgot about this.

cant remember the name of the mercenary unit offhand, but an old star-league base gets discovered, there was a FASA scenario booklet back in the late 80's... i remember it because one of the pilots was a disposessed mechengineer .. he build a mech from scraps that was half warhammer, half archer

[wolf on the tide]

TheRulesLawyer, on 04 November 2011 - 01:25 PM, said:

Really? Mechs are shooting projectiles equivalent upto a 16" naval gun. A MBT is about 65T. It fires a much much much smaller projectile and deals with significant recoil. Simple physics suggests that the recoil would be enormous on some weapons, computer dampened or not.

/agree
AC20 in a hunchback 50 tonner? anyone?

pbiggz, on 04 November 2011 - 08:12 PM, said:

because your piloting a battlemech, kickback would be negligible, if there was any at all.
Any recoil that does occur is compensated for by the mech's computer

< and a small amount of staggering back and forward >

hehe

[Captain Nice HD]

Patriot, on 04 November 2011 - 01:14 PM, said:

Also, Kulikov, MW4 Vengeance had a laser like that, except it fired a single shot, called a Bombast Laser, a wholly un-canon weapon, mind you.

There is a Bombast Laser listed in Tactical Operations. It is, however, a flashy, useless piece of junk.

[CaveMan]

I'd say pulsers should work similar to a strobe light. *flashflashflashflashflash*

Each shot is offset slightly from the center, creating kind of a "laser shotgun blast" effect with 100 shots over a period of about a half second. Spread should be about a 2m radius circle at the weapon's maximum range. You don't have to be dead on, because a good percentage of your shots are going to hit even if you're well off-center of the target.

[VYCanis]

THESE are pulse lasers, not particularly destructive ones, but a pulse lasers none the less

http://www.metacafe....from_warnlaser/







BT pulse lasers are not sci fi, just bigger and badder. Modern pulse lasers are commonly used in welding or cutting, where the pulses allow for control. Also, many pulse at rates too high to distinguish with the human eye

Edited by VYCanis, 08 November 2011 - 01:05 AM.

[John Clavell]

On the table top Pulse Lasers make sense, and IMO are pretty cheesy weapon. I've not played many MegaMek matches where someone is not who*ing with Pulse Lasers. In the computer games, they don't make much sense to me. I can hit as well with a pulse laser as I can with an ER large laser, I don't need to roll a dice to hit. Maybe they can implement a system in MWO where it's skill with a bit of randomness, in that case maybe Pulse Lasers would have a purpose. In MW4 the only good thing about pulse was the knock it provided to an enemy mech.

[Hagan]

I think they would have to design them like machine guns, 8-12 solid beams fired rapidly over 1.2-1.5 seconds from one point. Each beam does only a little damage but you can 'walk the shot' to the target (or across it) with a full volley causing the full damage. Several linked together would have have the same effect of a machine-gun similar to that of the Mechwarrior 5 video (Where the Warhammer engages the Atlas) spreading the shots over a wider area of the mechs armour (Albeit with a re-fire delay between volleys).

For me this would address the two issues that pulse lasers where designed for: Accuracy for fast moving mechs, Improved hit rates in medium/close ranged, stand up fire fights.

I'm more concerned about how quickly you can cook your own mech when using clusters of pulse lasers though.

[Amechwarrior]

Thank goodness for someone finally posting the TechManual pulse laser fluff. However I think that definition leaves out the reason why they get the -2 accuracy bonus. What someone posted earlier about how the 'mechs computer re-aims the laser between pulses which results in the increased accuracy. This may have been explained in BoK Trilogy, but looking for direct sources now.

By that fluff description all lasers in MW4 worked like pulse lasers, they continued to track the target over the course of firing. Whatever exact point you happened to pull the trigger down on, the lasers would adjust to keep focus on that one spot. That was a change from lasers in MW3 that you could "sweep" across an enemy over the time the laser was firing. If I remember the big reason for the change of style from the long sweeping "cutting laser beam" to the "self tracking" type was the same reason they chose to make LRMs fly in 5 missile packs, internet lag. Imagine 12 mechs like Novas or Catapults running around back when 56k was the norm. All those individual missiles and constantly streaming lasers beams was just too much. I remember MW3 as a laggy mess in general.

The standard and ER lasers did not have this self correcting ability and thus did not get any accuracy bonus. To translate that into MW terms, normal and ER lasers should have been like it was in MW3, a single continuous beam that just pointed strait and did not track the point of impact like all lasers in MW4. The Pulse lasers did have that ability and that is what made them so sought after. They should not be "rapid fire, low damage, higher DPS" weapons they should be able to put the damage on target and stay on target easier then a normal laser for the cost of shorter range.