171 replies to this topic

[MaddMaxx]

I voted Yes. Seems the Dev want it to be a mechanic of the in-game Missiles. It is obviously a WiP, which it wasn't, just 2 days ago. So we making head way baby. Gotta like good head......way

[megoblocks]

Livewyr, on 21 March 2013 - 10:14 AM, said:

I dare you to stand next to the watermelon I'm shooting with an RPG-7 (tis a shaped charge)

RPG would just rip right throw the watermelon and carry on. You'd be fine.

[Jammergeddon]

You guys shouldn't be arguing about shaped charges if you don't understand the science behind them. Also realism doesn't need to come into play into LRMs as they would be too effective. I voted no, because I'm a ******* EOD tech.

[ElLocoMarko]

Maybe someone actually replied after I got bored reading non-replies on page 3...
Why is there splash damage at all?

The answer comes straight from the hotfix notes.

Paul Inouye said:

But Paul, you said you'd REMOVE splash damage!!!!
I know I did, but here's the kicker and yet another part of the mystery of missile damage. We tried removing splash damage
and it did exactly what you think it was going to do. Pinpoint on target damage. Cool right? Yes... but...

Doing this exposed a problem with the grouping/clustering of missiles. We now have a high percentage of any incoming missile targeting the CT. This is BAD.

Why there was splash damage originally? You guess... I'm going with because missiles had splash damage in the CryTec engine all along and they didn't take it out.

[IrrelevantFish]

DanNashe, on 22 March 2013 - 10:24 AM, said:

Basically, you're grossly underestimating the programming difficulty of producing diffuse damage in this engine.

No, I'm well aware. Even if you assume completely random missile flight paths, damage will frequently cluster and always focus in the region with the largest profile. If you're trying to get a nice, even spread without any clumps, then yes, splash damage is the way to go, but if that's the desired result, I'm wondering why one wouldn't just ignore individual missile impacts in damage calculations and treat the entire cloud as a single entity for the purposes of damage calculation.

However, if the spread and flight pattern is done properly, the clumping itself will be essentially random will even out over multiple salvos. The problem is that right now, missile clouds are often narrower than mechs' upper bodies (or narrower than a single torso section in the case of SSRMs), which means that everything is landing on the torsos and hardly anything in the arms.

Regardless, would fixing the diffusion problem be easy? No, and after reading the hot-fix post, I must admit that I'm less certain of my assertion about the relative ease of fixing splash versus re-balancing without it, and you may well be right. Their implementation of damage tracking and mech components may be entirely different from what I'd imagined (I'd assumed minimal divergence from what's currently present in the CE3 Free SDK), and it may be pinpoint damage that would require extensive rewrites, not splash.

Thus, my position has changed somewhat: while I'm not in favor of splash damage in theory, I won't blame PGI one bit if they return to/stick with it.

ElLocoMarko, on 22 March 2013 - 10:53 AM, said:

Why there was splash damage originally? You guess... I'm going with because missiles had splash damage in the CryTec engine all along and they didn't take it out.

In the unaltered CryEngine, weapon splash effects are controlled almost entirely via parameters in XML files. Adjusting on/off state, radius, and fall-off literally takes minutes. It's play-testing and balancing that would take so much time.

Also, from what I've heard, missiles originally did pinpoint damage, and PGI only added splash at the insistence of the closed-beta community.

[Brian Stranskie]

If this was a normal combat game with ground troops and very lightly armored vehicles (like say a hummer) then splash damage i think would be relevant and fair. Or even if there were elementals it would have a role to play on them. Since even the lightest of mechs use thick dense armor i see no reason why there is such a thing as splash damage in the game. To penetrate this armor it takes armor piercing rounds which are manufactured much differently than a standard explosive round. If the missiles in this game are "explosive" it would be like shooting a tank thats all buttoned up with a rpg. Yea they will feel the hit and it might rock the tank a little but it will do nearly no damage aside from maybe scraping the paint. Even if you took a frag grenade and put it on top of the tank it wouldnt do jack. With how these missiles were made in the game its like getting your cake and eating it too you get a missile that punches through armor and on the same armor causes damage to the area like a grenade would do if it landed in the middle of a squad of troops. This is what happens when people program things that they have no working knowledge of. You can have either explosive or armor penetrating. If you use explosive on something armored the results should be rather disapointing like shooting a hard body armor with a hollow point bullet (not going to do much) or shooting the same armor with a nice high velocity FMJ armor piercing round (small but effective hole)

[S3dition]

Radko, on 21 March 2013 - 10:06 AM, said:

Anti-tank warheads work by using a shaped charge to direct an explosive lance directly into the target, punching a hole through armor. While MWO obviously isn't real life, it seems absurd that a battlemech, some kind of armored future space robot comparable to a tank, would care about an eleven pound missile exploding several meters away.

Note: That's not eleven pounds of explosives. That is the entire missile, plus ammo feed. The actual explosive is probably less than a hand grenade.


Splash damage continues to prove computationally difficult, buggy, unstable, and perhaps impossible to balance.

Why not merely require missiles to hit the target to cause damage?

Only one small problem with this - LRM's do NOT have shaped charges. A shaped charge would be useless against a mech because of the "ablative armor" (a terrible idea in and of itself). It's supposed to act similar to layers of reactive armor, so you're destroying one very small tile. The idea of an LRM and SRM is to blow off large amounts of armor - hence the splash damage.

To be honest, bringing logic into this debate is rather pointless. Mechs aren't real, the TT game mechanics are broken, and nothing at all makes any sense. I'd prefer they make a fun game than one that makes sense to you.

EDIT: Oh, and if you hate splash damage now, just wait until swarms are in (http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Swarm_LRM)

Edited by S3dition, 22 March 2013 - 08:46 PM.

[IrrelevantFish]

S3dition, on 22 March 2013 - 08:44 PM, said:

Only one small problem with this - LRM's do NOT have shaped charges. A shaped charge would be useless against a mech because of the "ablative armor" (a terrible idea in and of itself). It's supposed to act similar to layers of reactive armor, so you're destroying one very small tile. The idea of an LRM and SRM is to blow off large amounts of armor - hence the splash damage.

I couldn't find info on standard LRM warheads on Sarna, so I can't say one way or the other if LRMs were shaped charges in the lore (by golly, they should be), but you're wrong about ablative armor. It has little in common with reactive armor and though it does nothing to defend against projectiles, it's very effective against lasers and particle beams. Ablated material is intended to form a boundary layer at the armor's surface which would absorb and diffuse significant amounts of the beam's energy before it reached intact armor.

S3dition, on 22 March 2013 - 08:44 PM, said:

To be honest, bringing logic into this debate is rather pointless. Mechs aren't real, the TT game mechanics are broken, and nothing at all makes any sense. I'd prefer they make a fun game than one that makes sense to you.

Well, I thought TT mechanics worked quite well in TT, but otherwise I agree with you 100%. Hell, the armor described in BT lore wouldn't actually be ablative, and would have to be several inches thick in order to defeat man-portable weapons that have been manufactured in Iraqi goat-sheds.

Yes, if I were concerned about realism, I would stay far, far away from all things BattleTech.

[S3dition]

IrrelevantFish, on 23 March 2013 - 03:14 AM, said:

I couldn't find info on standard LRM warheads on Sarna, so I can't say one way or the other if LRMs were shaped charges in the lore (by golly, they should be), but you're wrong about ablative armor. It has little in common with reactive armor and though it does nothing to defend against projectiles, it's very effective against lasers and particle beams. Ablated material is intended to form a boundary layer at the armor's surface which would absorb and diffuse significant amounts of the beam's energy before it reached intact armor.



Well, I thought TT mechanics worked quite well in TT, but otherwise I agree with you 100%. Hell, the armor described in BT lore wouldn't actually be ablative, and would have to be several inches thick in order to defeat man-portable weapons that have been manufactured in Iraqi goat-sheds.

Yes, if I were concerned about realism, I would stay far, far away from all things BattleTech.

Actually, you're reading the wrong Sarna reference. The one you want is here: http://www.sarna.net...hs_%26_Vehicles

What you just referenced is infantry and wearable ablative armor.

The way it works is by covering the structure with hundreds of small plates. As a plate is struck, it breaks away "absorbing" the impact and protecting the structure. Reactive armor works the same way. When a round hits it, it detonates and directs the blast away from the vehicles primary armor.

In both cases, the armor can be disrupted by small arms fire that is strong enough to detonate/destroy the plates.

[BigJim]

I have no idea why they even implemented Splash damage for a game like this - I mean, what is it meant to achieve?

This isn't UT where you can fire a rocket near the ground or a wall near an enemy and catch them in the splash, so why bother making the weapons code more complex and prone to bugging than it needs to be?


If you want to simulate the mechanism of missiles causing damage spread over the mech, well, that is handled by having missiles *hit* all those locations spread over the mech.

That's what Missile-Grouping is for, and that's why Artemis exists in this game, to reduce said grouping and better focus one's damage.

I mean, it's so simple, so why purposefully make it more complex?
Programmers man..

Missiles just need to be a basic projectile subclass, job done.

Edited by BigJim, 23 March 2013 - 04:21 AM.

[Solomon Ward]

Pro Splash.

The area of impact and the amount of splash damage is debatable.

[Delas Ting Usee]

Omni 13, on 21 March 2013 - 10:45 AM, said:

which is why a lot of the LRM support players are upset, our(near useless unless boated) missiles are going to be made even less viable. (if previous patches are any sign of how it works)

Speak for yourself - I'm not upset - I'll just boat MORE missiles

[Vrekgar]

Delas Ting Usee, on 23 March 2013 - 04:48 AM, said:

Speak for yourself - I'm not upset - I'll just boat MORE missiles

THIS! By nerfing missiles like they have you hurt boats a little yes, but you hurt every non boat build more. You just encourage dropping the weapon altogether, or making a bigger boat.

I really dont get why the concept of how missiles should work is so terribly difficult. In TT it functions as a dice roll so.... Why cant a similar mechanic work here?

Concept: Dice Roll For Hit.

Missile Fly in Three Phases:

• Launch: They Ascend to altitude from the launch height. This takes skill to learn just how far away from things your mech has to be to clear obstructions, Or if your exposed and have Direct LOS it just means you need to clear over any friendlies in the way.
  
• Cruise: Missiles fly across the intervening space. Not much going on here.
  
• Terminal: Where the missiles arc down and dive to attack the target or the last locked position. HERE is where the change I propose would occur.

As the missiles dive to attack they need to stop acting like a swarm and each missile needs to "Roll Dice" to determine what part of the mech if any it will try and attack. Things like Artemis and Tag can weight the rolls to reduce "Miss" rolls or increase the chance of multiple missiles hitting the same part.

[S3dition]

Vrekgar, on 23 March 2013 - 05:25 AM, said:

THIS! By nerfing missiles like they have you hurt boats a little yes, but you hurt every non boat build more. You just encourage dropping the weapon altogether, or making a bigger boat.

I really dont get why the concept of how missiles should work is so terribly difficult. In TT it functions as a dice roll so.... Why cant a similar mechanic work here?

Concept: Dice Roll For Hit.

Missile Fly in Three Phases:

• Launch: They Ascend to altitude from the launch height. This takes skill to learn just how far away from things your mech has to be to clear obstructions, Or if your exposed and have Direct LOS it just means you need to clear over any friendlies in the way.
  
• Cruise: Missiles fly across the intervening space. Not much going on here.
  
• Terminal: Where the missiles arc down and dive to attack the target or the last locked position. HERE is where the change I propose would occur.

As the missiles dive to attack they need to stop acting like a swarm and each missile needs to "Roll Dice" to determine what part of the mech if any it will try and attack. Things like Artemis and Tag can weight the rolls to reduce "Miss" rolls or increase the chance of multiple missiles hitting the same part.

I play my game with a keyboard and mouse. I'm not sure how you're playing with a pair of dice

Edited by S3dition, 23 March 2013 - 05:31 AM.

[Orkimedes]

S3dition, on 23 March 2013 - 05:31 AM, said:

I play my game with a keyboard and mouse. I'm not sure how you're playing with a pair of dice

Effectively, it would be an RNG. You know, those computer things that generate random numbers....like a dice.

[Squirtbox]

Merky Merc, on 21 March 2013 - 01:20 PM, said:

Why is anyone even bothering to use real world comparisons to MW/BT? There are 0 weapons in BT that make any sense in comparison to the RL counterparts (if they have one), weapons have arbitrary ranges, weapons are much heavier than they should be (ballistics), you can somehow reload weapons mounted in your chest and arms from ammo stores in your feet, and the mechs... the mechs themselves are designed in such a fashion that they would ripped apart in seconds on a modern battlefield.

I don't care if a shaped charge is a shaped charge, BT/MW is space magic and makes about that much sense.

Because this needs to be repeated. The question should be are LRMs being calculated as individual missiles or as a blob with randomized hit locations.

[StandingCow]

As for realism... it shouldn't do splash.

But to be different from the other weapons I don't mind splash damage.

[IrrelevantFish]

S3dition, on 23 March 2013 - 04:15 AM, said:

Actually, you're reading the wrong Sarna reference. The one you want is here: http://www.sarna.net...hs_%26_Vehicles

What you just referenced is infantry and wearable ablative armor.

Nope. Check again. I got the right one.

However, though the armor described in the lore "ablates" in the Merriam-Webster sense of the word, it is not "ablative armor," which is effectively a militarized version of modern reentry vehicles' heat-shielding.

S3dition, on 23 March 2013 - 04:15 AM, said:

The way it works is by covering the structure with hundreds of small plates. As a plate is struck, it breaks away "absorbing" the impact and protecting the structure. Reactive armor works the same way. When a round hits it, it detonates and directs the blast away from the vehicles primary armor.

First, that is not how real-life reactive armor works. Second, reactive armor is not designed to defeat conventional explosives, and is probably less effective than the equivalent weight of solid plate (not that it matters, given how little solid plate is needed to defeat mundane explosives).

And finally, what's described in the lore is reactive armor without any core, something also known as "bad brigandine." The lamellar structure wouldn't increase stand-off distance between inner and outer layers and the detachment process would absorb very little additional energy while vastly increasing vulnerability to successive strikes in that area.

[Psydotek]

I feel the reason splash damage exists for missiles is not because that's how missiles and rockets function in real life but more to spread damage over the 'mech chassis without having to go through the difficulty of coding/modeling the flight path of each missile to actually strike different parts of the 'mech.

Good? Bad? Whatever. Doesn't matter as long as the damage is spread around in a decent manner.

[MadSavage]

OP is wrong. 2000 lbs for one ton of SRM ammo, 100 missiles, makes each missile weight~20 lbs. An FGM-148 javelin missile weighs ~26 lbs and take out modern tanks in one hit due to the fact that it has a fairly sizable warhead and attacks the tank's weakest armor, the top of its turret. The javelin missile also has extensive guidance systems, SRMs have none at all. The claim that an SRM only has "a hand grenade's" explosive is ridiculous.

However, SRMs do not need splash damage in this game. Splash damage for missiles was implemented in MWLL because there were battle armor and smaller armored vehicles, necessitating more realistic missile effects. In MWO, there are no combat units less than the size of a light mech. Therefore, splash damage is unnecessary. There is no way spalsh damage from a near miss of a mech's legs should do damage to the enemy mech. Point damage is sufficient to simulate the effects of missiles.

Edited by MadSavage, 23 March 2013 - 08:37 AM.