647 replies to this topic

[One Medic Army]

Paul Inouye, on 14 March 2013 - 12:53 PM, said:

Interesting and very thorough testing by the OP and many kudos for the in-depth write-up.
This problem has 2 levels.

First is that Testing Grounds has quite a few issues when reporting damage and the numbers you're seeing are inflated quite a bit (almost double). We will be addressing this bug and others as Testing Grounds matures over time.

Second, this does NOT eliminate the findings that S-SRMs AND SRMs are doing more damage than intended. This is not due to some top secret, behind your back weapon balancing. It has to do with splash damage, how it was first implemented and the new smaller Mechs coming out.



Here is one of the scenarios described and I've turned on the debug tools to let us see exactly what is going on in terms of hits and damage being done.

The Raven 3L has just fired 1 volley of 2 x S-SRM2 at the Commando 1B. As you can see, the amount of damage done to the Commando does not make sense. There is a total of 51.5 armor being stripped off the Commando. We've been able to reproduce this repeatedly and we're getting an average damage of 12.9 per missile. Quite a bit higher than the intended 2.5 damage per missile plus splash damage.

So what has happened to cause this? Smaller Mechs and more complex geometry than what was available when the splash damage system first went into the game. When SRM splash damage went into the game, there were a total of 4 Mechs available to the playerbase. The Jenner, Hunchback, Catapult and the Atlas. These 4 Mechs have very unique targeting silhouettes and were used to calculate the radius of splash damage per missile. Now what has happened is that the splash damage across smaller Mechs or Mechs with more complex/tighter component positioning are getting hit with more splash damage than intended.

In the image below, you can see how much overlap the damage done to the Commando has and how that it is taking significantly more splash damage than it should.



We are looking at the tuning for these hit locations/splash damage and will update as soon as possible.

Well, looking at those hit locations, and the damage dealt to the commando, it seems pretty clear why it seems like SSRMs always hit CT.
They always splash CT regardless of where they hit due to the ratio of missile spread to damage radius.

Actually looking at the hit spread is really interesting, in-game it never felt like the SSRMs had that much spread.

Edited by One Medic Army, 14 March 2013 - 02:06 PM.

[DeaconW]

Recommend everyone drive Splatcats and StreakCats until this is resolved! Wait...I did that with a COM-2D for about a month to try to get ECM fixed and that didn't work out so well...nevermind...nothing to see here, folks, move along... Seriously..thx Paul for acknowledging the issue.

[Homeless Bill]

I'm glad they've acknowledged the problem, but I fear that like most things, it'll be added to the back of a queue and patched after a month or more. For the love of god don't wait to fix this: just remove splash damage until you can make things work right (like collision).

[hammerreborn]

Wow...well, that explains how commandos seem to explode from my srm4s, and why I explode from getting shot in the arm with an srm6.

50+ damage from a 10 damage alpha, christ. That means 2 srm4 (hitting the same spots) could potentially do a 100 damage alpha from splash.

This test also really supports the putting the training ground in the game though, and gj to everyone who helped with this.

Edited by hammerreborn, 14 March 2013 - 02:31 PM.

[Felicitatem Parco]

Paul Inouye, on 14 March 2013 - 12:53 PM, said:

Interesting and very thorough testing by the OP and many kudos for the in-depth write-up.
This problem has 2 levels.

First is that Testing Grounds has quite a few issues when reporting damage and the numbers you're seeing are inflated quite a bit (almost double). We will be addressing this bug and others as Testing Grounds matures over time.

Second, this does NOT eliminate the findings that S-SRMs AND SRMs are doing more damage than intended. This is not due to some top secret, behind your back weapon balancing. It has to do with splash damage, how it was first implemented and the new smaller Mechs coming out.



Here is one of the scenarios described and I've turned on the debug tools to let us see exactly what is going on in terms of hits and damage being done.

The Raven 3L has just fired 1 volley of 2 x S-SRM2 at the Commando 1B. As you can see, the amount of damage done to the Commando does not make sense. There is a total of 51.5 armor being stripped off the Commando. We've been able to reproduce this repeatedly and we're getting an average damage of 12.9 per missile. Quite a bit higher than the intended 2.5 damage per missile plus splash damage.

So what has happened to cause this? Smaller Mechs and more complex geometry than what was available when the splash damage system first went into the game. When SRM splash damage went into the game, there were a total of 4 Mechs available to the playerbase. The Jenner, Hunchback, Catapult and the Atlas. These 4 Mechs have very unique targeting silhouettes and were used to calculate the radius of splash damage per missile. Now what has happened is that the splash damage across smaller Mechs or Mechs with more complex/tighter component positioning are getting hit with more splash damage than intended.

In the image below, you can see how much overlap the damage done to the Commando has and how that it is taking significantly more splash damage than it should.



We are looking at the tuning for these hit locations/splash damage and will update as soon as possible.

I'm looking forward to a nice Fireside Chat about this ;-)

[M4rtyr]

Have to say, after reading Pauls post and seeing that it is intended for SRM's to do 2.5 damage per missile PLUS splash damage on top of that I'm severly concerned on how capable the dev team is in balancing this game.

First the simple concept of splash damage is completely broken in that you have samller mechs that will ALWAYS take much more splash damage then larger mechs simply based on hitbox sizes. So this is akin to increasing the armor values of the larger most heavily protected mechs while the lights stay the same.

Secondly the missiles already have higher damage compared to other weapons, no whether you think that valid or not when you add splash damage then you end up with not 2.5 damage per missile but maybe as much as 5 per missile (assuming multiple locations hit and that they don't make splash damage something like .1 damage or something meaningless).

With splash damage splatcats are going to be the top dog without a doubt. But besides that light mechs are going to be useless because they'll take more of it and can't survive a damage increase thatpretty much only effects them.

Splash damage should -NOT- be a part of this game and i think its a huge design flaw the devs are making with it and it sounds to me like they've not even thought it through at all.

[agenttbc]

It's simply untrue that light mechs are going to be useless. They're not useless RIGHT NOW and fixing this problem will make them more survivable. So obviously they'll be even better. Plus. hitting a little mech with missiles is much harder than hitting a big guy.

So I'm not sure what damage increase you're talking about. What we're looking at is a damage DECREASE from current levels.

[warner2]

Splash damage confuses me. It's like this free, extra, undocumented, damage on top of the listed damage which is odd. At the very least it should be listed alongside the hit damage so we can see how much damage these weapons are doing in total (LRMs, SRMs too). Either that or the single listed figure should include the maximum possible splash damage.

Either way it shouldn't be hidden.

[Psikez]

Amazing how you give people a testing grounds and they go out and...TEST things?!

[Nightcrept]

agenttbc, on 14 March 2013 - 02:44 PM, said:

It's simply untrue that light mechs are going to be useless. They're not useless RIGHT NOW and fixing this problem will make them more survivable. So obviously they'll be even better. Plus. hitting a little mech with missiles is much harder than hitting a big guy.

So I'm not sure what damage increase you're talking about. What we're looking at is a damage DECREASE from current levels.

Don't use logic you'll scare them off. Just let them forget that players begged for splash damage and that it's been in game for almost 5 months....shhhhh.

warner2, on 14 March 2013 - 02:50 PM, said:

Splash damage confuses me. It's like this free, extra, undocumented, damage on top of the listed damage which is odd. At the very least it should be listed alongside the hit damage so we can see how much damage these weapons are doing in total (LRMs, SRMs too). Either that or the single listed figure should include the maximum possible splash damage.

Either way it shouldn't be hidden.

They don't know how much damage it can do. Think of srm's in game currently as rocket propelled grenades. Anything in the blast radius takes damage. So if the grenade does 2.5 damage (it is an explosive area effect) it does that to all areas of the mech in it's radius. So if the blast radius happens to be in a corner of your little mech that borders your arm-leg and ct then they all take 2.5 damage. More then likely though the impact damage is 2.5 and the blast is around 1 or 1.5. Just guessing though.

Psikez, on 14 March 2013 - 02:56 PM, said:

Amazing how you give people a testing grounds and they go out and...TEST things?!

Funny thing is the testing grounds aren't accurate. It did work to expose a not secret but apparently long forgotten game mechanic.

[Praehotec8]

This would explain why sometimes when I use a group of SRMs they seem to be God's Gift to Warfare, and other times, it feels like they are barely scratching the paint (from comparable distances).

I don't think LRMs need significant adjustment though (although it would be interesting if the did somewhat greater damage to armor than currently and somewhat less to internals than currently).

[Monky]

A few additional problems I'm seeing with splash based on evidence gathered in tests;

Missiles impacting the front of small mechs are also taking off rear armor. This is a huge disadvantage for small or thin mechs, and can still affect larger mechs hit from the side. It basically forces you to take gobs of rear armor so you don't get rear cored from a front attack with missiles. This is also true even on a reduced 2.5 damage max per SRM/1.9 damage max for LRM splash damage - UNLESS you add ray traces from the point of impact to every location the splash radius reports as being hit to see if it's in LOS of the impact point - which honestly sounds like 'more server lag' to me.

The second issue is on small mechs, with revised splash damage (2.5 per srm/1.9 per lrm max output) you would see the whole mech spreading missile damage, effectively rendering them nearly immune to missile damage.

At this point I would have to say it is not viable to have splash damage as a factor in missile damage unless these problems can be effectively overcome.

Edited by Monky, 14 March 2013 - 03:17 PM.

[Tikkamasala]

Nightcrept, on 14 March 2013 - 02:58 PM, said:

It did work to expose a not secret but apparently long forgotten game mechanic.

That's not true. The OP (and many more players) discovered a bug. We knew missiles dealt splash damage, but i at least hoped the stated damage per missile would include the possible splash or that the splash damage would not excessively exceed the missiles stated damage.

And now please take your trolling somewhere else.

[Psikez]

Nightcrept, on 14 March 2013 - 02:58 PM, said:

Funny thing is the testing grounds aren't accurate. It did work to expose a not secret but apparently long forgotten game mechanic.

Most aware of splash, most not aware of a streak potentially doing 12.9 damage.

[stjobe]

Monky, on 14 March 2013 - 03:16 PM, said:

A few additional problems I'm seeing with splash based on evidence gathered in tests;

Missiles impacting the front of small mechs are also taking off rear armor. This is a huge disadvantage for small or thin mechs, and can still affect larger mechs hit from the side. It basically forces you to take gobs of rear armor so you don't get rear cored from a front attack with missiles. This is also true even on a reduced 2.5 damage max per SRM/1.9 damage max for LRM splash damage - UNLESS you add ray traces from the point of impact to every location the splash radius reports as being hit to see if it's in LOS of the impact point - which honestly sounds like 'more server lag' to me.

The second issue is on small mechs, with revised splash damage (2.5 per srm/1.9 per lrm max output) you would see the whole mech spreading missile damage, effectively rendering them nearly immune to missile damage.

At this point I would have to say it is not viable to have splash damage as a factor in missile damage unless these problems can be effectively overcome.

The second issue could be avoided by decreasing the splash radius from the absolutely massive 7 meters it's been tested as being, perhaps down to a meter, meter-and-a-half?

I'm not surprised the whole of the Commando is enveloped in a 7-meter blast radius, it's what? 9 meters tall?

[Monky]

You guys should really stop feeding the troll Just don't respond to him, he's after attention.

stjobe, on 14 March 2013 - 03:24 PM, said:

The second issue could be avoided by decreasing the splash radius from the absolutely massive 7 meters it's been tested as being, perhaps down to a meter, meter-and-a-half?

I'm not surprised the whole of the Commando is enveloped in a 7-meter blast radius, it's what? 9 meters tall?

Yeah, 7 meters seems a bit crazy. Maybe they had it that way to be used against (possible at the time) infantry/tanks/aircraft?

Given the current scope of the game though, a smaller (much smaller) radius might be within workability - but I think it would still need ray traces, which still means more server calculations. The goal is to provide effective mechanics that create fun gameplay while still being reasonably close to BT/MW at least in appearance, and I believe that's possible without splash damage at all.

Edited by Monky, 14 March 2013 - 03:31 PM.

[Tikkamasala]

Monky, on 14 March 2013 - 03:16 PM, said:

A few additional problems I'm seeing with splash based on evidence gathered in tests;

Missiles impacting the front of small mechs are also taking off rear armor. This is a huge disadvantage for small or thin mechs, and can still affect larger mechs hit from the side. It basically forces you to take gobs of rear armor so you don't get rear cored from a front attack with missiles. This is also true even on a reduced 2.5 damage max per SRM/1.9 damage max for LRM splash damage - UNLESS you add ray traces from the point of impact to every location the splash radius reports as being hit to see if it's in LOS of the impact point - which honestly sounds like 'more server lag' to me.

Iirc they "fixed" that, i.e. missile splash damage doesn't hit front and back of a small mech. At least the picture in Pauls post shows no damage to the back of the commando.

[stjobe]

Tikkamasala, on 14 March 2013 - 03:25 PM, said:

Iirc they "fixed" that, i.e. missile splash damage doesn't hit front and back of a small mech. At least the picture in Pauls post shows no damage to the back of the commando.

These were taken just now in the training ground. I was 50m in front of the COM-1B, firing a single SSRM-2 at it.
The first volley didn't do any damage to the rear, but the second and third did. The fourth killed the poor 1B.





So no, it doesn't appear to be fixed - at least not on the Training Ground.

Edit: As Vercinaigh pointed out below, that's internal damage, not armour damage. I stand corrected.

Edited by stjobe, 14 March 2013 - 03:42 PM.

[Vercinaigh]

stjobe, on 14 March 2013 - 03:35 PM, said:

These were taken just now in the training ground. I was 50m in front of the COM-1B, firing a single SSRM-2 at it.
The first volley didn't do any damage to the rear, but the second and third did. The fourth killed the poor 1B.





So no, it doesn't appear to be fixed - at least not on the Training Ground.

No damage being done to the rear there, internal damage is not front or rear based, just the armor, which is untouched in those pics.

[Nightcrept]

Thontor, on 14 March 2013 - 03:14 PM, said:

I think most of us knew there was splash damage.. just not that splash damage was in addition to the base damage per missile

I still don't believe it was ever stated that splash damage was in addition to the base damage per missile.

at least not since I joined closed beta back in July... before that? i can't say.

Unfortunately as you and me figured out we can't figure this out because we don't have access to cb patch notes anymore.

This is what I remember. Players begged for the addition of splash damage since almost the beginning of this game. Sometime before the artemis patch during the jenner is God days they added it to all the missiles including lrms. (Mainly from what I remember due to the cries about the difficulty of jenners and the net code issue).

After the artemis debacle of God's death from above they either removed it from LRms or reduced it but left srm's and ssrm's alone.