647 replies to this topic

[WardenWolf]

Nightcrept, on 14 March 2013 - 01:04 PM, said:

From what i have been reading from searching for splash damage lrms never got splash damage.

I have very preliminary evidence that LRMs are causing some level of increased damage, but have not yet been able to test enough to determine if it is splash or something else at work. I need to do some testing on live (apologies in advance to whomever my teammates are when I do this) and I will post back here with anything I can come up with.

[Nightcrept]

The testing grounds have always seemed off to me.

WardenWolf, on 14 March 2013 - 01:09 PM, said:

I have very preliminary evidence that LRMs are causing some level of increased damage, but have not yet been able to test enough to determine if it is splash or something else at work. I need to do some testing on live (apologies in advance to whomever my teammates are when I do this) and I will post back here with anything I can come up with.

Not saying they didn't. I just can't go far enough back in the patch notes to find out and can't find anyone complaining about it in the search functions.

[stjobe]

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

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.

First off, thank you for taking the time to answer us Paul, we really appreciate it.

But I have to ask: Why even have splash damage? Isn't it enough that each SRM does 2.5 damage to the location it hits? What purpose does the splash damage serve, other than inflating the damage of each SRM to some unknown value depending on how many hitboxes the blast intersects? It seems like a mechanic intended to punish light 'mechs with their smaller, closer together hitboxes, but it just means that SRMs do different damage to different 'mechs - which is, at least in my opinion, a major no-no for balance.

Edited by stjobe, 14 March 2013 - 01:13 PM.

[Sagamore]

Nick Carlile, on 14 March 2013 - 01:09 PM, said:

See, I'm the opposite. I don't care. Because my actual in game experiences haven't really been heavily impacted by this.

I think these testing ground tests lacking real world dynamics such as movement are making the problem look a lot bigger than it really is.

It is a big problem if you pilot Commandos or other compact light mechs on a regular basis, which I'm guessing you do not.

[iminbagdad]

dude, beta tester of the month award to you

[Nightcrept]

Sagamore, on 14 March 2013 - 01:12 PM, said:

It is a big problem if you pilot Commandos or other compact light mechs on a regular basis, which I'm guessing you do not.

I do. I run commandos and ravens. I haven't had any trouble.

I have been one shot once y a splatcat and laughed. Other then that I generally get slowly plinked to death by lasers or not at all.

[Jman5]

Quote

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.

Hey Paul, I thought the geometry on these original mechs were updated back in December. Hence why you guys rolled out camo for these guys a few weeks later.

[Nightcrept]

The op needs to update his post with paul's answer.

People are posting without reading his post.

[Nick Carlile]

Sagamore, on 14 March 2013 - 01:12 PM, said:

It is a big problem if you pilot Commandos or other compact light mechs on a regular basis, which I'm guessing you do not.

So commando pilots and spider pilots?

F em, light mechs trolled everyone hard for MONTHS, let them suck for a while.

I'd honestly be fine if they just deleted the 3L at this point too.

[Red Madman]

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

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.

So, if you don't want splash dmg to apply to you, for now, run a Jenner, Hunchback, Catapult, or Atlas, right?

[Ghostbear Gurdel]

I just read the OP, but in my opinion as a lover of the LRMs (My favorite weapons) I believe that there should be no missile splash damage. The missiles should do their 1.5, or 2.5 damage to the location they actually strike, and that is it.

Edited by Ghostbear Gurdel, 14 March 2013 - 01:25 PM.

[Nick Carlile]

Kind of surprised this thread got so quiet after Paul posted.

[WardenWolf]

Nick Carlile, on 14 March 2013 - 01:20 PM, said:

So commando pilots and spider pilots?

F em, light mechs trolled everyone hard for MONTHS, let them suck for a while.

I'd honestly be fine if they just deleted the 3L at this point too.

It isn't just those - they are just where you see the worst-case scenario. Other smallish or more compact mechs, especially where a single hit could 'splash' across multiple armor zones, are also affected.

When I had heard them talk about 'splash' damage I always assumed it meant that a near-miss with missiles would do a little damage anyways (a missile exploding a meter away from a mech's foot would still do maybe 10 or 20% of its damage. I had no idea that they meant a full-on hit would do its own damage *plus* further splash... and certainly not that the splash damage could be equal to the initial impact.

Now I can't say what the Devs intended, though Paul's post a page back is very helpful, but I can say that personally as a player (and one who uses both Streak SRMs and LRMS on my two most played builds) I don't think this sort of multiplication of damage should be in the game at all.

If the game has been balanced toward this then I suspect that per-missile damage might have to be raised if the splash damage were taken away, but I hope that the Devs look at what simply dropping splash entirely does, and then decide if it should stay but be toned down (some combination of less damage on the splash and smaller explosion radius) or if it should be removed but the damage per shot perhaps increased slightly. We'll see in time, of course, but as others have pointed out this balance can spread and affect other aspects of the game too (cough, ECM, cough). I'm hoping it gets resolved sooner rather than later

[Warrax the Chaos Warrior]

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.

Is there some reason why you guys feel it necessary to have splash damage? As has been stated elsewhere in this thread, that's not how anti-armor ordinance works, and I don't personally see how it adds anything to the game. Have you considered just taking it out?

[WardenWolf]

Nick Carlile, on 14 March 2013 - 01:28 PM, said:

Kind of surprised this thread got so quiet after Paul posted.

Why? We know the Devs are aware of it now, and we got an explanation for the phenomenon that fits with the test results. They can't fix it overnight - the best we could hope for would be turning off splash for a patch, but that couldn't go live till next week at the earliest (and even a change that fast is extremely unlikely).

We can keep doing some testing, specifically in the LRM realm, and discuss possible options - but the power rests with the Devs, and they are on the job.

[Bubba Wilkins]

Nick Carlile, on 14 March 2013 - 01:28 PM, said:

Kind of surprised this thread got so quiet after Paul posted.

Why would you be surprised? Issue was identified, discussed and ultimately acknowledged.

Aside from the unanswered question on whether or not this also effects LRM's, there is nothing further to really discuss until they implement whatever correction they are going to make.

As for that, it's only logical to assume that all missiles shared the same base damage model and that splash would be applied to LRM's the same time it was applied to SRM's and Streaks.

[stjobe]

Thontor, on 14 March 2013 - 01:32 PM, said:

Clearly that is their intent, but I'm saying their intent should change.

And if it doesn't change, make it clear in game, the firepower meter, and in the weapon statistics, how much damage they actually do.

That's the thing though, they cannot know. It depends on how many hitboxes the blast radius intersects, and that depends on a whole range of other factors, like the angle the missile strikes, where it hits on the target etc, and changes from hit to hit.

Unless they cap the total splash damage at some fixed number, SRMs can only be said to do more than their listed damage.

A much cleaner and fairer solution would be to just remove splash damage. It serves no discernible purpose, and it only makes missiles hard to balance properly.

Edited by stjobe, 14 March 2013 - 01:42 PM.

[Piranha]

Nick Carlile, on 14 March 2013 - 01:28 PM, said:

Kind of surprised this thread got so quiet after Paul posted.

Problem (partly) acknowledged -> a small number of certain not to be named members of the community stopped to argue that everything is probably working as intended -> no surprises here

[Monky]

Recommended course of action;

Disable splash for now as it is based on an antiquated mech hitbox design setup.

Do internal testing for a few days to get good telemetry and verify the target's damage taken (not the damage readout from the shooter's end) matches the volleys hitting it. Adjust missile damage a bit if needed and roll it out asap to live.

If Splash is still determined to be a vital element to the game, come up with a way to prevent the 'extra' damage, so that each missile can only ever do 2.5 points of damage total. Re-design and re-implement after it is determined to not have these detrimental chassis/variant dependent effects.

Also; Note this does seem to be affecting LRM's as well. Test Case; LRM5, stock Jenner JR7-D, aim at front using tag/artemis, watch as everything hits the CT but all the armor dissapears from everywhere on the mech and it is destroyed in 3-4 volleys. An LRM5 with 100% hits should be doing slightly less damage than 2 medium lasers, but it does more.

Edited by Monky, 14 March 2013 - 02:01 PM.

[Voidsinger]

TO THE DEVS

Splash damage breaks armour consistency.

Anytime you allow splash damage on a mech to do more damage than the missile in total, you are breaking armour in favour of larger mechs.

Because a smaller mech will almost 100% of the time have more damage across multiple locations with splash than a larger, you have introduced variable damage per weapon (missile). Tabletop did not have this issue due to imprecise distances, and use of hexes. The reason it breaks armour consistency is that armour is not based on surface area, but rather total for location. This means that for any square metre with X amount of armour on a location, a smaller mech will have thicker armour per point allocated.

This means if splash damage allows a mech to exceed 100% of the damage per missile (2.5 per SRM, 1.8 per LRM), then you change the protection per point of armour in favour of larger mechs.

The only way splash fairly can work is if all locations are calculated as parts of 100%, and a percentage of each point of damage is allocated to a location within the explosive radius.

Anything else creates variable armour with a bigger is better rule.