171 replies to this topic

[jakucha]

I feel like it's only logical for a missile to have splash damage. Just balance it out so they do the amount of damage they're supposed to with the hit and splash damage combined.

[New Breed]

That's a silly question to ask

BECAUSE THEY ARE MISSILES , NOT ARROWS? JESUS.

[Tice Daurus]

Stoicblitzer, on 21 March 2013 - 11:21 AM, said:

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.

Actually the damage in this game gets lower the further away you get. I've had light mechs where I've had LRM's explode both near and further away to where the closer the explosion of the splash damage the more damage it does, just like in real life. The further away you get from the damage the less I've received. So there is a sense of realism in the game when it comes to splash damage.

Regardless of what people think however, whether or not it should be in or not, it's ultimately here to stay. It's possible the hotfix today might cause splash damage to be temporarily removed for a while it's being fixed, but it will be added back in eventually once the problems are addressed and tested.

[M4rtyr]

jakucha, on 21 March 2013 - 11:48 AM, said:

I feel like it's only logical for a missile to have splash damage. Just balance it out so they do the amount of damage they're supposed to with the hit and splash damage combined.

I don't see any logic in at all. Ever seen a tank take splash damage form an anti armor missile?

But desides the lack of any real reasoning, it just makes them all the harder to balance. Its a stupid little gimmick to try and put a PGI personal spin on the IP and its a very bad option.

[Livewyr]

Radko, on 21 March 2013 - 11:46 AM, said:

Have you considered that an MG in MWO weighs four times as much as an M242?

Yup (I also considered that somehow flamers are doing damage in MWO) That's because there was no point to a .12 ton weapon in the game..

Btw: as to your earlier statement about 180 rounds making 11 lbs per missile.. it's actually 100 missiles per ton (it was boosted in MWO) which puts them at 20lbs a piece meaning when you get hit by a single LRM20.. you're getting hit with 400 pounds of missiles...

(Even at 11lbs per missile.. that's 220 pounds of missile, from a single LRM20... my 35lb 120mm HE would tear a gigantic hole in a steel tank)

Edited by Livewyr, 21 March 2013 - 11:58 AM.

[Glo Worm]

Jason Parker, on 21 March 2013 - 10:25 AM, said:

They are explosives.

They should produce splash damage. But it shouldn't be additional to their damage on hit location.

So if a SRM is supposed to do 2.5 points of damage. A part of those 2.5 should be applied to the hit location and the rest should be scattered in a radius around the hit location as splash damage.

If a missile hits a mech, it should do its listed damage to the section that was hit. If it misses the mech, it should do (minor) splash damage if it hits within 10m. The splash damage should be roughly equivalent to a few machine gun hits.

[Tannhauser Gate]

Since there is only 1 kind of ammo for LRMS in MWO (so far), I think it’s safe to assume they are GP (general purpose) explosives thus splash. Shaped charges would be “armor piercing” special variants and probably more expensive. Also, LRMs do 1 point of damage in a small radius of each missile clustered around the central point of impact creating the cumulative damage in the area.. hence splash.

The real question is, should LRMs do splash in its present “OP” state in MWO? My answer is, are they really OP?

More than any other weapon, they should be painful and effective enough to encourage / require ECM, AMS, and use of cover. They are designed to serve as guided ballistic artillery to control the battle field so they should hurt enough to discourage charging / noob rushing. Presently, that's what they do. They are probably OP a little since they can now blow off half an assault mechs frontal armor too easily.

Note on noob rushing: Those who choose to never use counter measures and noob rush should not complain that LRMs should be nerfed.

Edited by LakeDaemon, 21 March 2013 - 12:16 PM.

[M4rtyr]

Livewyr, on 21 March 2013 - 11:55 AM, said:

Yup (I also considered that somehow flamers are doing damage in MWO) That's because there was no point to a .12 ton weapon in the game..

Btw: as to your earlier statement about 180 rounds making 11 lbs per missile.. it's actually 100 missiles per ton (it was boosted in MWO) which puts them at 20lbs a piece meaning when you get hit by a single LRM20.. you're getting hit with 400 pounds of missiles...

(Even at 11lbs per missile.. that's 220 pounds of missile, from a single LRM20... my 35lb 120mm HE would tear a gigantic hole in a steel tank)

Here we go with 'real' world examples. An arty round is not a missile. Much of that weight would be the rocket motor/fuel and the guidance system (in the case of LRM's).Leaving a much smaller warhead. But then again the Abrams also has a 120mm gun but they use HEAT or Sabot rounds for anti tank not HE because they are more effective at penetrating. Lastly, Mechs are not steel armored tanks, hell present day tanks aren't steel armored.

But most important of all. It's a -GAME- not real life and the game which PGI has based most of their weapon numbers off of is not balanced for splash damage. PGI is having a hard enough time getting the balance right without the ****, why would it be easier with it.

[Livewyr]

M4rtyr, on 21 March 2013 - 12:09 PM, said:

Here we go with 'real' world examples. An arty round is not a missile. Much of that weight would be the rocket motor/fuel and the guidance system (in the case of LRM's).Leaving a much smaller warhead. But then again the Abrams also has a 120mm gun but they use HEAT or Sabot rounds for anti tank not HE because they are more effective at penetrating. Lastly, Mechs are not steel armored tanks, hell present day tanks aren't steel armored. [Good thing missiles aren't damaging internals until the ARMOR is removed then..]

But most important of all. It's a -GAME- not real life and the game which PGI has based most of their weapon numbers off of is not balanced for splash damage. PGI is having a hard enough time getting the balance right without the ****, why would it be easier with it.

Playing in real life, if you hit a tank with several hundred small missiles, the armor is going to take damage, just because it isn't obvious with one or two doesn't mean that several aren't going to punish it badly.

But.. back to the GAME:
Pardon me for thinking that splash damage is possible in a game where machine guns and FLAMETHROWERS damage armor.

I rather like the idea of spreading damage over the mech, allows for SUPPORT (softening). Leave the pinpoint damage to the Directfire weapons...

[Kylere]

Splash Damage makes sense because when you have an external explosion, YOU WILL HAVE SPLASH DAMAGE.

End of story. All you little basement dwellers and weekend warriors and your books. If I fire an AT4-HEAT at a target it will focus damage, not eliminate splash. Only someone who had never heard a shot fired in anger would argue against the logic of splash damage to a target. Hell, I saw a burned out T-72 about 50k north of the Iraq/Saudi border in '91 that had not received a single direct hit, but somehow it still succumbed to the MLRS strike that took it out. That is splash damage. End of story.

[Essemecks]

LakeDaemon, on 21 March 2013 - 12:06 PM, said:

Since there is only 1 kind of ammo for LRMS in MWO (so far), I think it’s safe to assume they are GP (general purpose) explosives thus splash. Shaped charges would be “armor piercing” special variants and probably more expensive. Also, LRMs do 1 point of damage in a small radius of each missile clustered around the central point of impact creating the cumulative damage in the area.. hence splash.

The real question is, should LRMs do splash in its present “OP” state in MWO? My answer is, are they really OP?

More than any other weapon, they should be painful and effective enough to encourage / require ECM, AMS, and use of cover. They are designed to serve as guided ballistic artillery to control the battle field so they should hurt enough to discourage charging / noob rushing. Presently, that's what they do. They are probably OP a little since they can now blow off half an assault mechs frontal armor too easily.

Note on noob rushing: Those who choose to never use counter measures and noob rush should not complain that LRMs should be nerfed.

I think the most depressing thing exposed by this patch is that even when something is glitched to horrifically favor a particular playstyle, one that is at odds with several other playstyles and makes them all-but impossible in the game's currently glitched state (brawling, assassinating, back-capping... basically anything that isn't "fire with weapons that have a range of at least 1k"), you still have people defending the broken game mechanic.

This guy argues that they serve a valid role in their current state that they didn't before. That unlike Gauss cannons, ER PPCS, and other extreme range weapons, LRMs alone should be able to instantly annihilate anyone that leaves cover to accomplish anything in a single volley because, hey, how else can they control the battlefield if they're not one-shotting mechs?

The argument is silly, and the game-mechanic makes playing any other way a lot less fun... which is what should concern you more than anything else. Do you honestly believe that someone is going to pick up this game, take the heaviest trial mech available, get one-shotted by an LRM20 blob, and then come back and play more? Your little game world is going to wither and die because players like you defend your particular playstyle well beyond the point of selfishness.

[jakucha]

M4rtyr, on 21 March 2013 - 11:54 AM, said:

I don't see any logic in at all. Ever seen a tank take splash damage form an anti armor missile?

But desides the lack of any real reasoning, it just makes them all the harder to balance. Its a stupid little gimmick to try and put a PGI personal spin on the IP and its a very bad option.

If the missile is big enough, i.e. not a little RPG then yes the tank will take splash damage. Since these are missiles designed to combat other big mechs, they're going to be powerful enough to do that.

Think more Javelin missile, not RPG-7.

Edited by jakucha, 21 March 2013 - 12:33 PM.

[Tice Daurus]

http://youtu.be/M1kAmL1adH0

Just thought it would be fun to post this here since we're talking about missiles and splash damage. Still want to stand next to the tank now?

(And yes, I understand the Javelin missile is probably a more heavier and more powerful missile altogether, but it's somewhat comparable)

Edited by Tice Daurus, 21 March 2013 - 12:39 PM.

[Ialti]

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?

Because battle mech armor is designed to flake off.

[Radko]

Livewyr, on 21 March 2013 - 11:55 AM, said:

Yup (I also considered that somehow flamers are doing damage in MWO) That's because there was no point to a .12 ton weapon in the game..

Btw: as to your earlier statement about 180 rounds making 11 lbs per missile.. it's actually 100 missiles per ton (it was boosted in MWO)

In tabletop, fragmentation missiles do nothing to armor.

Also, by that reasoning, each machine gun round is two pounds. That means it's firing beefier shots than a GAU-8.

Quote

(Even at 11lbs per missile.. that's 220 pounds of missile, from a single LRM20... my 35lb 120mm HE would tear a gigantic hole in a steel tank)

You know that picture I posted of an Abrams getting a hole punched in the side skirt? The skirt's steel. Notice how the blast didn't do jack ****?

[DegeneratePervert]

Yes, because missiles explode, and explosions hurt and stuff.

I just wish there was a way to balance the damage from the initial hit with the splash, but that's so much math.... so much math.

[Livewyr]

Radko, on 21 March 2013 - 12:50 PM, said:

In tabletop, fragmentation missiles do nothing to armor.

Also, by that reasoning, each machine gun round is two pounds. That means it's firing beefier shots than a GAU-8.

You know that picture I posted of an Abrams getting a hole punched in the side skirt? The skirt's steel. Notice how the blast didn't do jack ****?

Yeah.. the GUA-8 doesn't do jack to Chobham either.. in fact, not even regular AP tank rounds do too much to Chobham.. It's CHOBHAM (Depleted Uranium).. No machine gun in the world has a prayer of doing anything to Chobham armor.. and yet MGs in MWO are doing damage.... so can we quit with the Chobham armor comparison?

(If we can assume that Armor has improved in the future to be very effective, we can also assume that weapons have improved as well.)

[jakucha]

Livewyr, on 21 March 2013 - 12:56 PM, said:

Yeah.. the GUA-8 doesn't do jack to Chobham either.. in fact, not even regular AP tank rounds do too much to Chobham.. It's CHOBHAM (Depleted Uranium).. No machine gun in the world has a prayer of doing anything to Chobham armor.. and yet MGs in MWO are doing damage.... so can we quit with the Chobham armor comparison?

(If we can assume that Armor has improved in the future to be very effective, we can also assume that weapons have improved as well.)

Technology in Battletech is a mixed bag. Can't look at one thing and assume everything is up to par, radar is a good example. Lots of it was designed with '80s tech and sci-fi ideas in mind.

Edited by jakucha, 21 March 2013 - 12:59 PM.

[Radko]

Ialti, on 21 March 2013 - 12:48 PM, said:

Because battle mech armor is designed to flake off.

This conversation is going in circles.

"Why is the game like X?" I ask.

"Because X is good gameplay," someone says.

"Why is X good gameplay?" I ask.

"Because it's realistic."

"Here is evidence why X is not realistic," I reply.

"Ah," comes the response. "But X is realistic in tabletop."

"But it is NOT like X in tabletop," I say "It is like Y instead."

"Yes well, because MWO gameplay..." and so the conversation repeats.


LRMs causing splash damage is NOT realistic. Small explosives do only cosmeic damage to armor in real life.

It is NOT backed by tabletop or lore, where fragmentation missiles do no damage to mechs.

And most importantly: It does NOT produce good gameplay. It produces buggy, broken, inconsistent, imbalanced gameplay, for no benefit.

Edited by Radko, 21 March 2013 - 01:04 PM.

[Mazzyplz]

the only thing that makes sense about splash damage is that if you shoot your SRM too close to the enemy you get damaged yourself.

when they take splash damage off, you'll be facehugging with even less of a consequence