20 replies to this topic

[The Botanist]

I have been playing a few days now and like most noobs have come here for tips on getting better. I have been reading a lot lately but still have one question I can't seem to find answer to. Are the weapon ranges absolute as in that is how far the weapon will fire, or merely suggestions, particularly lasers? I have been waiting to engage enemy mechs until within range but seem to be taking damage from what seem to be the same types of lasers that I am waiting to get into rage of. So, I am wondering if I am just missing something or if the weapons will fire past their specified ranges and with what effects?

Thanks for any and all help!
The Botanist

[Lorcan Lladd]

Missiles detonate mid-air past their intended ranges.
Lasers keep going up to twice their informed ranges, but then they can only cause half damage.
Autocannon shells and Gauss Rifle slugs behave in a similar manner but will lose altitude during their trajectory.

[The Botanist]

Awesome, I really appreciate the response! Thanks!

[Gauss Master]

Lrm have a hard limit of 1000m, there are a few meters of play depending on how far past that the mech you lock and fire upon goes (personally have seen them go up to 50m past), but that is a special case. If dumb-fired (fired w/o lock) at 1000m they explode if still in the air.

Srm have a hard limit of 270m, if no contact made with any mech, explode at that limit.

Ssrm have hard limit of 250m, if no contact with targeted mech, explode at that limit.

Lasers have an infinite range, due to their nature, but damage is basically as noted already. At specified range on your HUD, laser does it's max damage, at double that range, damage is 1/2 value, decreasing drastically as the range extends beyond double. (ex: Large laser
- optimal range 450m = 9dmg, so 900m = 4.5dmg, dropping off quickly to 0dmg after that)

Ballistics are interesting tbh, the 2 longest range ones can still do damage out to 2000m+, with damage being as noted already, full damage at optimal range, 1/2 damage at double range (not counting machine guns at all since they are worthless at any range).

Loadout for any of these will be determined to be usefull/not useful to you as you determine your play style and mech preferences.

Hope this was helpful


I found a chart that someone else has made up, and I stand corrected on energy weapons, ballistic are still as stated tho.

Edited by Gauss Master, 08 January 2013 - 11:40 PM.

[Wun]

When you aim your target reticle, your HUD shows the distance to that target. In addition on your weapon display your weapons will show green if you are at a range you will do 100% damage and yellow if at a range you will do partial damage.

[Rakkis]

Well I feel stupid now. I wasn't firing my weapons because I thought those were the extreme ranges listed.... well now I know

[Blalok]

If you haven't been there yet, check out Smurfy's site (mwo.smurfy-net.de), mock up a loadout in the mechlab, and check the 'weaponlab' button - it'll show you damage for each weapon, with sliders to adjust how often you fire. There's a TON of other info on this site as well, and the forum linked there has a slug of good loadouts (still having fun with the Shotgun Willy atlas...)

[Unnatural Growth]

Also, play with your weapons in "testing grounds", You can see exactly how far away you can still hit with various weapons.

If your crosshair turns red after you fire, you hit and caused damage.

[Aym]

Well some of this information isn't 100% accurate. Energy weapons (PPC's and Lasers) all do damage out to twice their listed range, and the damage drops off linearly (in a straight line) from 100% damage at the listed range down to 0 damage at anything past twice the range. Additionally the regular PPC (not the ER PPC) does reduced damage at less than 90 meters. This is also supposed to be linear down to 0 damage at 0 meters, but anecdotal evidence suggests there may be a minimum damage of around 4 that it never does less than...
Ballistics (all AC and gauss) do damage out to three times their listed ranges which is also linear after 100% damage at listed range, to half damage at twice range, and zero at three times range.
Fl@mers and MG's are wonky.

[Not A Real RAbbi]

OldOrgandonor, on 15 August 2013 - 03:56 AM, said:

Also, play with your weapons in "testing grounds", You can see exactly how far away you can still hit with various weapons.

If your crosshair turns red after you fire, you hit and caused damage.

This occurs even if the target is outside of sensor range, by the way. Also if the mech is untargetable due to ECM. No matter what else, if you caused damage then your reticle WILL turn red to let you know it.

[Koniving]

Gauss Master, on 08 January 2013 - 11:33 PM, said:

Lasers have an infinite range, due to their nature, but damage is basically as noted already. At specified range on your HUD, laser does it's max damage, at double that range, damage is 1/2 value, decreasing drastically as the range extends beyond double. (ex: Large laser
- optimal range 450m = 9dmg, so 900m = 4.5dmg, dropping off quickly to 0dmg after that)

The very chart you quoted shows the "half damage at twice range for a laser" to be incorrect. (I believe you quoted the stats of the AC/10. Gotta be careful about these things.)

Large laser on your chart shows 9 damage at up to 450 meters. It then says 4.5 damage at 675 meters. 2.25 damage at 787.5 meters, and finally "10%" or 0.9 damage at 855 meters. Of course, at 900 meters and beyond you do exactly "0" damage based on the linear math given by the chart.

Do note: Laser beams actually do stop dead in the air at triple +/- 25% of their stated range.

The golden rule is this:
Lasers fire out to exactly double their stated range for exactly 0 damage, and it linearly climbs as they get closer.
Ballistics fire out to triple their stated range for exactly 0 damage, and it linearly climbs as they get closer.

Note: the AC/2 is the one weapon least affected by range. Since its ideal damage is 2, long ranges affect it within a 0 to 2 damage ratio, where all others lose much more over long ranges. It is also the longest ranged weapon in the game as of when this is written. This may or may not change with the introduction of the upcoming "Mech-mounted Mortars."

LRMs detonate at maybe 1,004 meters? Difficult to test. I know SRMs are supposed to detonate at about 270 meters but sometimes reach 274 meters, hence the +4 meters for missiles. Their damage seems unaffected by range.

Neat thing about LRMs, the closer you are the lower they fly. The farther away you are the higher they fly. Eventually if far enough away they come straight down. The tears are glorious!

Slight edit: PPCs count as a ballistic weapon in host state rewind, behave as ballistic weapons, but suffers the range restrictions of the energy weapons. It fires to double its range for 0 damage, and linearly climbs as the target gets closer.

LRMs have a minimum range of 180 meters but if you fire at a target that's 177 meters away, and they move 3 meters farther away, you can make the hit work.

Regular PPCs are supposed to have a field inhibitor that you can switch off at great explosive risk and extra heat in order to hit at close range. This unfortunately is not how PGI chose to do it. Instead you linearly drop from 10 damage at 90 meters to 5 damage at 45 meters to 0 damage at 0 meters.

Some weapons, like the AC/20 and Gauss Rifle, unintentionally do zero damage at less than 10 meters against small stationary targets like Ravens and Spiders. This however is a bug and only occurs in live matches.

Edited by Koniving, 16 August 2013 - 06:08 AM.

[Liquid Leopard]

Blalok, on 14 August 2013 - 09:11 PM, said:

If you haven't been there yet, check out Smurfy's site (mwo.smurfy-net.de), mock up a loadout in the mechlab, and check the 'weaponlab' button - it'll show you damage for each weapon, with sliders to adjust how often you fire.

^ This. I'd just like to clarify that the 'Weapon Lab' shows you Damage Per Second, not just the damage of a single shot.
Regardless, Smurfy's Mechlab models it as linear.

I made this build in the mech lab just to see the graph of Range vs. DPS for some different cannons.
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...cd91e7879fe4918

The linear dropoff in DPS indicates there's a linear dropoff in actual damage.
So, at maximum range, damage may be zero, but halfway between the optimum and max ranges, a weapon should be doing half damage.

Missiles do the same damage throughout their effective range, and self-destruct at 1000m (but people still keep shooting them at targets 1500m away ).
I think machine guns are an odd case...
For many months, they had a 90m optimum range, and could do some amount of damage out to 180m, but I saw the maximum range quoted as 200m in the MW:O wiki. Now the display in the cockpit says they have a range of 120m, and Smurfy's seems to be showing them as doing damage at 2x optimum range, rather than 3x like other ballistics.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure a machine gun bullet isn't doing a whole point of damage at optimum range. Shooting MGs at a target who still has armor, at > 300m is silly, but I've seen it.

Edited by Liquid Leopard, 28 September 2013 - 07:21 AM.

[Koniving]

Liquid Leopard, on 15 August 2013 - 06:44 PM, said:

Anyway, I'm pretty sure a machine gun bullet isn't doing a while point of damage at optimum range. Shooting MGs at a target who still has armor, at > 300m is silly, but I've seen it.

Mgs are given a "10 shot" slice. It's ~1~ point of damage for 10 bullets. Note the ~ marks are for an average.

Ironically once the enemy's armor is gone, it becomes ~11~ or around 11-ish points of damage to internal components for 10 bullets with ~1.65~ additional internal damage for an average of ~2.65~ damage per 10 bullets.

Note individual bullets can spike up to 3 internal component (weapon, heatsink, ammo) damage at a very low percentage, which thusly spikes ~0.45~ for that single bullet to your internal structure (bones under the armor).

Mark my words, we'll see a reduction in crit chances for the MG or some other nerf soon. People are complaining about instantly losing their weapons and rapidly dying to MGs.

Edit: "Note," not "not"

Edited by Koniving, 16 August 2013 - 05:53 AM.

[New Day]

Koniving, on 15 August 2013 - 07:02 PM, said:

Mgs are given a "10 shot" slice. It's ~1~ point of damage for 10 bullets. Not the ~ marks are for an average.

Ironically once the enemy's armor is gone, it becomes ~11~ or around 11-ish points of damage to internal components for 10 bullets with ~1.65~ additional internal damage for an average of ~2.65~ damage per 10 bullets.

Note individual bullets can spike up to 3 internal component (weapon, heatsink, ammo) damage at a very low percentage, which thusly spikes ~0.45~ for that single bullet to your internal structure (bones under the armor).

Mark my words, we'll see a reduction in crit chances for the MG or some other nerf soon. People are complaining about instantly losing their weapons and rapidly dying to MGs.

That's because people are idiots

Edited by NamesAreStupid, 15 August 2013 - 10:49 PM.

[Koniving]

NamesAreStupid, on 15 August 2013 - 10:09 PM, said:

That's because people are idiots

Use them. You'll see why. You can kill an Atlas with 6 MGs in 5 seconds once the armor is gone. Just by the stats that should be 30 damage. To kill an Atlas you must deal 62 damage.

Note: Number 1 trick to using them. Treat them like a laser; aim directly at the target, never lead, watch them die insanely fast, reach an excess of 600 damage in 2 minutes with only MGs if you start engaging a cluster of 6 enemies after they have weak to no armor on most of their body parts.

Edited by Koniving, 16 August 2013 - 05:57 AM.

[Itsalrightwithme]

Also don't forget that MG are hitscan, they behave like lasers (instant hit, no flight time). They added the animation of bullets trailing just to mislead .... so use them as you do lasers, point at exactly where you want to hit (not ahead of it) and fire away. My MG damage tripled after realizing this.

[New Day]

Koniving, on 16 August 2013 - 05:55 AM, said:

Use them. You'll see why. You can kill an Atlas with 6 MGs in 5 seconds once the armor is gone. Just by the stats that should be 30 damage. To kill an Atlas you must deal 62 damage.

Note: Number 1 trick to using them. Treat them like a laser; aim directly at the target, never lead, watch them die insanely fast, reach an excess of 600 damage in 2 minutes with only MGs if you start engaging a cluster of 6 enemies after they have weak to no armor on most of their body parts.

Underlined the important parts. Doing that in anything other than the magic spider (which is the problem, not the MGs) is suicide. How many 6 MG Jagers how you been seeing around. Lots? Didn't think so. Neither is the MG cicada a problem, beacuse it's hitboxes aren't broken.
Also you are going to be spreading damage all over the place especially if your opponent has enough brain cells to know to twist.

[Koniving]

NamesAreStupid, on 16 August 2013 - 04:35 PM, said:

Underlined the important parts. Doing that in anything other than the magic spider (which is the problem, not the MGs) is suicide. How many 6 MG Jagers how you been seeing around. Lots? Didn't think so. Neither is the MG cicada a problem, beacuse it's hitboxes aren't broken.
Also you are going to be spreading damage all over the place especially if your opponent has enough brain cells to know to twist.

I have a simple answer to that.

How many MG Jagers do you see? And how rapidly did we get devastated?


MG Spider. Watch how virtually instantly with a fraction of a second spray of MG they drop like flies.

All videos below this point are before the new system. They take longer. No insta-deaths. Powerful, yes, but not overpowered.


2 MG Jager. Devastates.


Didn't do as good on this one. Mainly because I bragged at the beginning after so many great matches with the build.


And I'm not always relying on speed to save me. Here's a slow Raven 4X -- though since it hasn't got MGs it's just here for fun.

If you were on the receiving end of my MGs from any mech, you'd be screaming for PGI to nerf them.


Oh how you'd scream.

Right now two MGs does around ~11~ damage/sec to critical components. That's just an average number. Of that average it does 1.65 on top of the 1 damage/sec to your structure. That isn't counting the 7% chance of a single bullet spiking 3 real damage. O.o; If you aren't crying now you will be when your engine crit-hits are turned on and you can die by it.

An 18 HP AC/20 can be destroyed in less than 0.25 seconds with moderate conditions from 2 MGs.
Knowing that an engine has 15 health... How long do you think you'll live?

Edited by Koniving, 16 August 2013 - 05:27 PM.

[Modo44]

Look to the bottom right of the HUD. Green means optimal range (full damage). Yellow means past optimum range (partial damage). Black means out of or under minimum range (no damage). The colours change as you move the target reticule. Non-missile weapons do OK up to twice their optimal range. Any farther, and you are in tickle territory.

[Koniving]

Modo44, on 17 August 2013 - 11:19 AM, said:

Look to the bottom right of the HUD. Green means optimal range (full damage). Yellow means past optimum range (partial damage). Black means out of or under minimum range (no damage). The colours change as you move the target reticule. Non-missile weapons do OK up to twice their optimal range. Any farther, and you are in tickle territory.

This.

Note it turns Black when the weapon will do nothing at all.