23 replies to this topic

[Felicitatem Parco]

We know that, currently, standing toe-to-toe with your opponent and shooting its Left Torso over and over again will not cause damage to "spill over" to the center torso. The Dev's have stated this in the forums. They do not use "Damage Transfer" because it simply does not make sense to magically transfer damage from one destroyed bodypart to a neighboring intact bodypart. I have a proposal to bypass the need for "Damage Transfer" as it is currently defined.

Now, from here-on-out, I will only use the word "destroyed" to mean that all of the armor and internal compnents for a bodypart are completely destroyed, broken, shot-out, and dysfunctional. Here's a break-down, by bodypart, of how I think Destroyed bodyparts should be treated:

• Head - a destroyed head means your Mech is toast.
  
• Center Torso - a destroyed Center Torso means your Mech is toast.
  
• Arms - destroyed arms just get severed and fall off.
  
• Legs - a destroyed leg will cause the mech to limp slowly forward, render you unable to walk backwards, and a significantly forceful weapons impact to that destroyed leg should cause your Mech to fall down.
  
• Side Torso - a destroyed side torso should become "transparent" to ballistic and energy weapons (because the remaining material it too weak to stop an Autocannon bullet or a weapons-grade laser), but still cause the detonation of missiles (because they have sensitive stand-off impact sensors)

Here's my justification:



After you blow-out a leg, it'll have no motorized or otherwise-powered way to adjust for impacts, and so it should be easily knocked-out from under you. It won't be a magic bullet shield, and continuously shooting the same leg won't kill your opponent, but rather just make them fall repeatedly.

After you destroy a side torso it has no significant ballistic armor left to stop high-velocity shells and high-energy lasers, and so they would pass through the remaining scraps of weak material until they hit somethitng more solid.

However, that weak remaining scrap would cause the detonation of missile warheads because HEAT missiles actually do the most damage when they detonate 30 or so centimeters in front of their target, so they have very sensitive impact sensors that can be set-off by materials as flimsy as a metal wire mesh [in reality... I assume the same is true in BattleTech]. You can still cause "splash damage" to other bodyparts, though, as I assume missile warheads cause splash damage within a certain radius of impact.

The Trasparency of Side Torsos could be effectively implemented in the game ONLY IF the game engine has the proper tools. One must allow slugs and lasers that come in at the right angle to pass through the Side Torso and, if they hit the Center Torso on their way out, they should cause immediate injury to the internal components of the Center Torso without having to worry about the Center Torso's external armor. Any shot that passes through a destroyed Side Torso would already be inside the Mech's internal compartments and would therefore not have to deal with the external Center Torso armor.

If destroyed Legs became unstable crutches,
if Arms get lopped-off,
if Side Torsos become transparent to bullets and lasers but still detonate missiles,
and if well-aimed shots that enter through a Side Torso can hit internal components of the neighboring compartment without counting against armor...

...then Damage Transfer is completely unneeded.

(Edit: Needless to say, destroying both legs will kill your Mech. Also, I chose to not propose Transparent Legs when they get destroyed because I thought the "falling down" mechanism is better.)

Edited by Prosperity Park, 21 May 2012 - 02:37 PM.

[ManDaisy]

So let me get this strait... the missiles... they do nothing?

[Felicitatem Parco]

ManDaisy, on 21 May 2012 - 02:38 PM, said:

So let me get this strait... the missiles... they do nothing?

If you shoot a destroyed side torso, then you deserve nothing (!), but you'll still get splash damage, so be happy.

(I know... "the goggles...")

Edited by Prosperity Park, 21 May 2012 - 02:51 PM.

[Solis Obscuri]

My wishlist:

• Torso sections show clearly that they are destroyed.
  
• Arms fall off when destroyed.
  
• Arms are destroyed with adjacent side torso.
  
• Legs show clearly when they are destroyed.
  
• Destruction of both legs destroys/incapacitates a 'mech for the remainder of a fight.
  
• Destroyed sections do not absorb weapons damage or "transfer" it, they allow it to pass through and hit other things.
  
• Missiles do not attempt to lock on to destroyed sections, they track to remaining sections or miss cleanly if they don't have a good lock.

[eZZip]

Sounds like a good suggestion to me (basically what I envisioned, too). I think damage should be reduced somewhat when shooting through destroyed sections, but that's all.

Prosperity Park, on 21 May 2012 - 02:27 PM, said:

The Trasparency of Side Torsos could be effectively implemented in the game ONLY IF the game engine has the proper tools.

With a typical hitbox system, there would be no problem. I read something about Cryengine 3 detecting hits in the same way everything is drawn (I think I'm almost certainly wrong about one of those parts), but I'd bet that can be circumvented even if it was a problem.

[Red Beard]

Solis Obscuri, on 21 May 2012 - 03:24 PM, said:

• Missiles do not attempt to lock on to destroyed sections, they track to remaining sections or miss cleanly if they don't have a good lock.

That seems really reasonable, in relation to what the devs have stated about damage.

[zorak ramone]

Prosperity Park, on 21 May 2012 - 02:27 PM, said:

• Head - a destroyed head means your Mech is toast.
  
• Center Torso - a destroyed Center Torso means your Mech is toast.
  
• Arms - destroyed arms just get severed and fall off.
  
• Legs - a destroyed leg will cause the mech to limp slowly forward, render you unable to walk backwards, and a significantly forceful weapons impact to that destroyed leg should cause your Mech to fall down.
  
• Side Torso - a destroyed side torso should become "transparent" to ballistic and energy weapons (because the remaining material it too weak to stop an Autocannon bullet or a weapons-grade laser), but still cause the detonation of missiles (because they have sensitive stand-off impact sensors)

Of course, I'm a big fan of the knockdown-on-hit for the destroyed legs. Something like this is really necessary as the legs take up a huge part of a mech's profile (1/3 to 1/2 in some mechs), and because they can be used to shield a vital section (the other leg).

I'm not sure I like the side torso transparancy, but then again, I may just be thinking about MW4. I think this could work if there was some sort of physical deformation of the model to indicate that the side torso was destroyed. I'm just thinking about MW4 mechs like the Thanatos and Zeus which had huge side torsos ... it would look pretty ridiculous if shots just flew through them.

[AlanEsh]

Prosperity Park, on 21 May 2012 - 02:50 PM, said:

If you shoot a destroyed side torso, then you deserve nothing (!), but you'll still get splash damage, so be happy.

Do we know there is splash damage from missiles? I'm not aware of this mechanic in other Btech titles or in anything the Devs have mentioned.

Other than screwing over LRMs, I think your solution is a good one.

[MaddMaxx]

zorak ramone, on 22 May 2012 - 06:31 AM, said:

[/list]Of course, I'm a big fan of the knockdown-on-hit for the destroyed legs. Something like this is really necessary as the legs take up a huge part of a mech's profile (1/3 to 1/2 in some mechs), and because they can be used to shield a vital section (the other leg).

I'm not sure I like the side torso transparency, but then again, I may just be thinking about MW4. I think this could work if there was some sort of physical deformation of the model to indicate that the side torso was destroyed. I'm just thinking about MW4 mechs like the Thanatos and Zeus which had huge side torsos ... it would look pretty ridiculous if shots just flew through them.

I look at it the same as if you placed 3 armored plates in a row. You shoot one over and over until it has a gaping hole in it. Unless you change to another panel, why would it be ridiculous to see another shell pass through the hole you created.

Now if the shot, as noted in the OP, comes in from the side, and there is no Arm or Torso section to stop the round, it carries on to whatever section it finds. You can never miss 2 sections as when the Center dies, the mech dies.

The Dev have stated that Missiles will self detonate at MAX range. If that is true then if they explode in close proximity to a Mech then any splash will be applied. I think one of the video's show a fast mover getting hit, but the damage seemed minimal. It could simply have been Splash based damage.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 22 May 2012 - 09:13 AM.

[Kreisel]

I think their are a lot of ideas being thrown around which really overly complexify damage, especially on the amount of time it would take to program them front.

I do think that the having destroyed sections essentially go 'transparent' for shots does make a lot of sense, it's consistent with what happens if your arm is blown off, it's no longer a target to hit, so it doesn't block damage, and you can't shoot it to cause damage to other locations. Shots that would miss the intended part of the undestroyed part of the mech still do, while ones that would hit are not sheilded. this makes a lot of sense.

However getting a free shortcut into the internal structure of the next section over would require a lot more programming, in addition it really devalues the armor spent on the CT. It would still be worth having that armor there, but it feels like destroying a side section to get into the internals a section over is cheating around that armor. Also... if your building a giant war machine with separated sections of internal structure, why wouldn't you build internal bulkheads to prevent damage spillover? I mean... how come the whole torso isn't one big section of critical slots rather than being split up into three separate groupings? what always made sense to me was that these portions were literally sectioned off inside the mech to protect the valuable internal structure if something is blown through in another part of the mech. Redundant protection for anything important is the name of the game when building something you expect to be damaged.

That being said, I really doubt side torso will have much of an ability to act as the invulnerable shield everyone seems to be afraid they will, and so it's probably fine for them to simply not transfer damage and remain in place. Honestly I'm more concerned about mech models where the center torso's are so big and easy to hit not one will do any damage to the side torso's and just core the center all the time,than I am concerned with sides absorbing more damage than they should for the center.

[Felicitatem Parco]

Kreisel, on 22 May 2012 - 10:39 AM, said:

(well-versed thoughts)

Yeah, the amount of programming required for the torso-transparency scheme is unknown to me, so that's why I placed that caveat about the proper tools being needed. However, I disagree on the "cheating" aspect of going behind armor only because the Technical Diagrams of Mechs that were published by the BattleTech owners show a lack of internal armor bulkheads. There is no real difference between a "side" and a "center" torso structurally-speaking, the only difference between them has to do with accounting. Seriously... the TT game and the Video game have to count armor in terms of "points" and so they decided to divy the torso up into 3 sections instead of 1 big section. There is no Mechanical difference between the torso compartments as far as the Mech's physical construction is concerned [addendum: as far as I know].

Edited by Prosperity Park, 22 May 2012 - 11:54 AM.

[Pht]

Prosperity Park, on 21 May 2012 - 02:27 PM, said:

We know that, currently, standing toe-to-toe with your opponent and shooting its Left Torso over and over again will not cause damage to "spill over" to the center torso. The Dev's have stated this in the forums. They do not use "Damage Transfer" because it simply does not make sense to magically transfer damage from one destroyed bodypart to a neighboring intact bodypart.

The damage transfer is not "magical" in any sense.

It represents the fact that all of the damage has already been determined to have HIT the target mech; it represents things like, say, lasing through a shoulder casing into a side torso, that sort of thing; and most of all, it DOES stop one "magical" thing - magically disappearing damage.

[zorak ramone]

Kreisel, on 22 May 2012 - 10:39 AM, said:

I do think that the having destroyed sections essentially go 'transparent' for shots does make a lot of sense, it's consistent with what happens if your arm is blown off, it's no longer a target to hit, so it doesn't block damage, and you can't shoot it to cause damage to other locations. Shots that would miss the intended part of the undestroyed part of the mech still do, while ones that would hit are not sheilded. this makes a lot of sense.

....

That being said, I really doubt side torso will have much of an ability to act as the invulnerable shield everyone seems to be afraid they will, and so it's probably fine for them to simply not transfer damage and remain in place. Honestly I'm more concerned about mech models where the center torso's are so big and easy to hit not one will do any damage to the side torso's and just core the center all the time,than I am concerned with sides absorbing more damage than they should for the center.

I too think that having torsos go "transparent" (i.e. shots go through) when destroyed makes sense.

What I'm worred about is how stupid it will look if, upon torso destruction, the now transparent (to weapons) torso is not visually deformed or removed (furthermore, if the torso is deformed/collapsed, then the arm should be dropped too). Imagine the hunchback and its huge right torso. After destroying the RT, it would be silly to have this huge block sitting there that shots just went through. Fire-blackened/scrap metal textures will not make things better.

As for invulnerable damage shields, I'm more worried about destroyed legs. Of course, a transparent leg that the mech is still using to stand and limp is also ridiculous. I think for legs, they should not be transparent to weapons, but rather hitting a "destroyed" leg with sufficent force should knock the mech down. Its much more consistent with the concept of the "destroyed" leg (i.e. its ruined, but its remaines are used as a crutch.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

Damage Transfer should work as it does in the TT... simple as that.

[Steel Talon]

When u shot destroyed front, side or rear armor in MWLL, it damages cockpit, which serves as hull integrity for mech (u can damage it directly by hitting the cockpit)
There are no damagable critical internals in MWLL tough

[Felicitatem Parco]

Jade Kitsune, on 23 May 2012 - 10:19 AM, said:

Damage Transfer should work as it does in the TT... simple as that.

Damage transfer works in Table Top because you first determine if a shot hits, then you determine where it hits.

In MechWarrior video games, the location of where your shots are placed will determine if a hit takes place.

Therefore: Damage Transfer is magical and an artifact of boardgame rules.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 23 May 2012 - 05:18 PM.

[Yeach]

So bascially if there is already a large hole in the right torso of your opposing mech and you shoot your lasers at it.
You actually are hitting the mech torso but since that torso isn't there you are shooting at thin air and might as well say that you missed ie didn't hit anything important.

[Felicitatem Parco]

Well, there are some scraps of material and bits hanging out, thin body paneling still attached, and weak & broken chunks of mechanical equipment there, but basically you're right: Shooting at a torso section that's been blown to smitherines is a waste of ammo. Your ballistic and military-grade laser shots woudn't be stopped by that stuff. Only missiles would be stopped becuse they have impact-sensitive standoff warheads.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 23 May 2012 - 06:52 PM.

[Kreisel]

Since this is a video game I'm infinitely more interested in balanaced play-ability than I am believable or 'realistic' physics (given that no one has a giant mech to blow the torso out of with lasers, this is all based on speculation). If the Devs say the game is more fun, balanced and playable without damage transfer, then I for one will believe them until a lot of Beta testers say otherwise. The game experience is what matters.

Sure, losing an arm if the associated torso is destroyed make sense in the real world, but... is it really more fun, more balanced? Or is it actually more balanced to make a player have to destroy each section individual rather than get a two for one deals on the side torso.

Remember anything placed in that side torso matters if it's destroyed, even if their are no weapons and CASE, it removes heat sinks, ammo count (possibly, haven't heard this confirmed but it makes sense), electronic equipment. Endo steel and Ferro Fib are about the only critical slots that don't do anything (remember arm actuators are in the ARMS not the torso) and the side torso's are the largest single source of critical slots on a mech. 12 Crit slots each, out of a total of 47. Slightly over 1/4 the entire number of crit slots on a mech. Sure if we only had tech lvl 1 these might not get used up, but that's a lot of space to give up, which could be used to save a great deal of weight.

I will admit it seems odd to me that both legs crippled wouldn't eliminate a mech, hopefully that's just an oversight, seeing as it seems like a balanced way to remove a mech when their isn't the silly damage transfer from one leg to another going on. Crippled speed seems like a pretty reasonable cost for the loss of a leg, especially now that it also will typically mean the loss of heat sinks as well. Wrecking both legs feels like somewhere around the same amount of work or damage as it takes to destroy CT, so I'm cool with that, a single leg rendering a mech effectively useless, I would not be. Especially with the base capping mechanic, just leg the other team and walk over and cap it while they can only sit and watch, no thanks.

For all we know, a mech who has lost a leg already is easier to knock over, no matter where you hit them at, assuming their are mechanics in the game from being knocked down at all yet.

So far the only argument I've seen for damage transfer that seems like it keeps fun and game balance in mind is the concern side torso's will be abused. That a legitimate concern, however being able to aim and focus your fire on certain section of your foes mech has long been a staple of the strategy of mechwarrior games, I'm confident we'll be able to hit undestroyed sections with most of our shots, at least so far as we are not missing the mech entirely

Edited by Kreisel, 23 May 2012 - 11:29 PM.

[Lycan]

Prosperity Park, on 21 May 2012 - 02:27 PM, said:

(Edit: Needless to say, destroying both legs will kill your Mech. Also, I chose to not propose Transparent Legs when they get destroyed because I thought the "falling down" mechanism is better.)

And my biggest question here is why?

Why, when both legs are destroyed, does that mean your mech is dead?

Is it because the tech is still not at the level where you can, in game, prop yourself up (or flip yourself over) with a work arm and use the other arm (if it's still there. ) to fire?

I mean, they're not doing damage transfer because it doesn't make sense but I don't see how it makes sense that a pristine mech can be considered destroyed if the only thing that got toasted were the legs. . . (Sure, it may or may not be a threat but calling it "destroyed" doesn't seem right. Hmm, maybe it's just a word usage issue I'm having . . . ).