171 replies to this topic

[RiotGearEpsilon]

FireEater222, on 21 March 2013 - 11:00 AM, said:

How often do you think the tank parked next to that tank, or more often the tank firing the missile while face to face, goes away without pressure and shrapnel damage in your perfect world of shaped charges?

100% of the time.

[Vasces Diablo]

Did I miss something? Do we know that LRMs are shaped charges and not just High Explosive?

I'm being serious, is this listed somewhere?

Edit: phone posting issues

Edited by Vasces Diablo, 21 March 2013 - 11:10 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Kraven Kor, on 21 March 2013 - 10:58 AM, said:

Watch a shaped-charge warhead hit a tank, and tell me you would want to be standing next to that tank when it happens.

I'm not demanding splash damage, but I'm OK with the concept in MWO.

Just not the current mechanics where the missile does more damage to the locations it does not hit than to the location where it does hit.

And if we really want to talk shaped charge warheads... have you seen what happens if a shaped charge fails to penetrate the wall of metal it strikes? "Splash damage" doesn't begin to describe. 6" chunks of shrapnel buried 2 inches into solid reinforced concrete 10 meters away is not adequately described by something so polite as "splash damage."

If I sit in another tank, I think I won't care. I just hope I didn't like th guys in that other tank, and that the shooter is out of rockets.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 21 March 2013 - 11:08 AM.

[Radko]

FireEater222, on 21 March 2013 - 11:00 AM, said:

How often do you think the tank parked next to that tank, or more often the tank firing the missile while face to face, goes away without pressure and shrapnel damage in your perfect world of shaped charges? I agree partially, distance is safety, but any explosion of any type regardless of shaping the resultant plasma, has pressure, heat and destructive energy.

Should mechs also take damage from their walk animations, if we're going to account for every source of "destructive energy" no matter how minor?

Edited by Radko, 21 March 2013 - 11:08 AM.

[CutterWolf]

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)

Your a "support" player and in that roll you rarely get the kills. Your job is the keep the enemy's head down and strip armor and weapons which is what LRMs are good at doing. Just because your not getting kills with them does not mean they are not viable weapons

Edited by CutterWolf, 21 March 2013 - 11:09 AM.

[OneEyed Jack]

Hedonism Robot, on 21 March 2013 - 10:55 AM, said:

Missiles have splash damage so they can weaken surrounding components for hard hitting ballistics and energy weapons to punch through. Typically missiles are used to "soften" up the target, with splash damage they can deliver a nice punch without coring a mech. The super missiles this week are just flat out broken, they are not softening targets but melting them.

No, missiles splash all over the mech to soften it up. They don't need to also do splash damage to spread out the impact. it's redundant.

As long as the total damage is balanced where it should be, considering that any missile hit is actually multiple hits across various areas of the mech, it doesn't even matter if there is splash damage or not. It will still spread out damage either way. As long as it works, realism is unimportant.

[Calem]

Splash damage is simply a bad game mechanic for standard (x)RMs. We already have a weight/space/heat/damage_application trade-off consideration to make. It’s the deal you agree to when mounting said weapon. Offering up so much tonnage/crits/heat for so much damage is transparent, simple, robust and easily adjustable if needed. It's good - 1.8/2.5 damage should be 1.8 damage/2.5 damage, whatever value.

Asking for splash damage is just asking for small mechs and/or mechs with complex hitbox structures to be at a disadvantage – for no good reason. From a game design viewpoint, I don’t see any sane reason why I would want that. If lights would be overly missile-shielded without splash damage, then that should be addressed by other means – missile trajectories, speed. Heck, even angle-adjusted hidden missile hit tables for chassis would work for me.

[Erasus Magnus]

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?

it take what works best. it seems that splash damage on missiles do not, so i go with the no splash damage option.

[OneEyed Jack]

Kraven Kor, on 21 March 2013 - 10:58 AM, said:

Watch a shaped-charge warhead hit a tank, and tell me you would want to be standing next to that tank when it happens.

Do you really not understand the difference between flesh and armor. The blasts would have to be orders of magnitude larger than they could possibly be with standard warheads before the armor would give a damn.

Quote

And if we really want to talk shaped charge warheads... have you seen what happens if a shaped charge fails to penetrate the wall of metal it strikes? "Splash damage" doesn't begin to describe. 6" chunks of shrapnel buried 2 inches into solid reinforced concrete 10 meters away is not adequately described by something so polite as "splash damage."

Have you seen what happens to the wall of metal when that happens? Absolutely nothing.

Which one are we talking about in this game?

[Lightfoot]

It's the TT design for LRMs. It works well with dice and a hex mapped board, but doesn't in a PC game. I usually never use LRMs because they are so buggy with damage. You need to really boat them to get reliable damage. Except for this last patch of course. And you get better damage usually from just about anything else.

So I really think the splash component of LRMs needs to be minor and the point damage raised to be reliable, predictable damage. Balanced for same.

[Taemien]

You all still going on this realism craze (despite me proving you otherwise at that)? Ok. here's how it works, the Dev's stated they are changing it. Its their world, their rules. End of discussion about realism. Stop the trolling.

[Dreamslave]

Livewyr, on 21 March 2013 - 10:11 AM, said:

Why yes..

Because explosions are pinpoint..

Says the civilian with no military or explosive experience. You do realize you are piloting a multi-ton war machine specifically built to weather any outside damage, explosions included? A small fiery explosion does nothing but scuff the paint on a present day M1 Abrams with common earth found materials, you really think a small fiery explosion would hurt a futuristic bi-pedal armored machine of destruction?

Splash damage was a kind of "neato" idea, but it certainly isn't need in this game.

[Stoicblitzer]

This thread has been very enlightening and I enjoyed reading it. I'm fine with or without splash damage. If they do include it though, then the additional damage done has to be pretty low. There probably is additional destructive force involved with having a ~10 pound LRM propelled through the air at a certain velocity hitting something. The acceleration due to gravity on some of these maps is higher than 9.8 m/s/s so that force may not be insignificant compared to the detonation force. These sort of physics likely aren't modeled in this game anyways but it provides a little background on why they may be including "splash damage" in this game.

[Marcus Tanner]

FireEater222, on 21 March 2013 - 11:00 AM, said:

How often do you think the tank parked next to that tank, or more often the tank firing the missile while face to face, goes away without pressure and shrapnel damage in your perfect world of shaped charges?

Geez, if I were in a tank and the tank beside me took an rpg with a shaped charge, my reaction would be less "ouch" and more "sucks to be them".

Shrapnel from the blast? You might *hear* the shrapnel from the other tank, but not feel it.

[PurpleNinja]

MrPenguin, on 21 March 2013 - 10:15 AM, said:

Nevermind, thought you where talking about something else.

Yep, me too.

[ALKALIN3]

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

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

find me a stable, balanced explosive and I will deem you a god....

the very idea of that comment blows my mind...

Erasus Magnus, on 21 March 2013 - 11:15 AM, said:

it take what works best. it seems that splash damage on missiles do not, so i go with the no splash damage option.

so what you're asking for is long range lock-on ballistics?

Splash damage needs to be "fixed" not "removed"

[Livewyr]

Dreamslave, on 21 March 2013 - 11:20 AM, said:

Says the civilian with no military or explosive experience.

I'd be offended, but I'm laughing.

<-- 11C, 2-2SCR, 07-08, Baghdad/Baqubah. I enjoyed the MCV-B.

If you know what that translates to, you know I have a bit of knowledge about explosives. ("Comp B")

Against Chobham armor, Current small explosives don't mean too much. Chobham armor is also currently the best of the best of what we have thus far in production today.

If I drop a 120HE on a Steel Armored tank.. (like everything before Chobham) It was F'd up, horribly.

You can play the "Quality of Armor" vs "Quality of Weapon" game if you like, but explosions still damage armor.
And given that Machine guns are chipping away at this armor, I think it wouldn't be too far off base to say that they're going for the "Quantity over Quality" concept.

Edited by Livewyr, 21 March 2013 - 11:41 AM.

[Sean von Steinike]

Not needed. If infantry are ever put in, then maybe splash against soft targets.

[Radko]

Neekoli, on 21 March 2013 - 11:34 AM, said:

find me a stable, balanced explosive and I will deem you a god....

the very idea of that comment blows my mind...

What? Why is that strange?

You're making no sense.

Quote

so what you're asking for is long range lock-on ballistics?

Splash damage needs to be "fixed" not "removed"

Why? What does missile splash do for gameplay?

No one has given a reasonable answer to this.

Livewyr, on 21 March 2013 - 11:40 AM, said:

You can play the "Quality of Armor" vs "Quality of Weapon" game if you like, but explosions still damage armor.
And given that Machine guns are chipping away at this armor, I think it wouldn't be too far off base to say that they're going for the "Quantity over Quality" concept.

Have you considered that an MG in MWO weighs four times as much as an M242, or twice as much as a GAU-8, (both weapons that are effective against armor) and uses ammo massing approximately one pound per round?

Edited by Radko, 21 March 2013 - 11:53 AM.

[Roland]

Splash damage doesn't really add anything to the game from a gameplay perspective, and just makes it harder to balance missile weapons.