475 replies to this topic

[Paladin1]

Cavadus, on 16 November 2011 - 11:53 PM, said:

Retaining the TT ammo values per ton would be a mistake. Mw4 stepped in the right direction by increasing the ammo per ton (generally doubled it).

Yeah, we can't have people thinking through their tactics and husbanding their ammo for low risk, high reward shots. We need to just increase the ammo loads arbitrarily and let everyone spray and pray.

[Paladin1]

Nik Van Rhijn, on 16 November 2011 - 11:32 PM, said:

It will be interesting to see where things go. 20 min matches can be hard on mechs that are ammo dependant. It would seem that pre-aranged lances will have an advantage over individuals just turning up to play as a group of individuals. When this starts were all going to be "n00bs" and old reflexes from previous games could get us killed.

I agree that 20 minutes of fighting is going to be hard on any ammo dependent design, but only if targets respawn. If it's a straight-up fight of four on four with no respawn, then there shouldn't be a problem with ammo loads. After all, if you're ammo bins are dry, you sent that ordnance somewhere downrange, right?

[Atlas3060]

It isn't doing a thing sitting in the bin

[Nik Van Rhijn]

True - but what if it's 16 v 16 - and most mechs at the starting time line will have a number of ammo dependant weapons - think of the poor Hunchback - AC20's only have 5 per ton. Or will we have people just going for energy heavy variants?

[Paladin1]

Atlas3060, on 17 November 2011 - 06:53 AM, said:

It isn't doing a thing sitting in the bin

Absolutely correct, but it's doing even less if it's plastered all over a building instead of in the gut of that Hatchetman that just rounded the corner of that same building, is it not?

[Paladin1]

Nik Van Rhijn, on 17 November 2011 - 07:01 AM, said:

True - but what if it's 16 v 16 - and most mechs at the starting time line will have a number of ammo dependant weapons - think of the poor Hunchback - AC20's only have 5 per ton. Or will we have people just going for energy heavy variants?

Yeah, the AC/20 only has 5 salvos per ton but it doesn't matter if it's 1 on 1, 4 on 4 or 12 on 12. You're going to have more targets, but you're also going to have more teammates as well. After all, how many salvos do you think a target is going to take from your AC/20 if your teammates have already softened him up somewhat while you were closing with him? You don't have to win the entire battle by yourself. Win as a team or die individually is the name of the game.

[Atlas3060]

Paladin1, on 17 November 2011 - 07:08 AM, said:

Absolutely correct, but it's doing even less if it's plastered all over a building instead of in the gut of that Hatchetman that just rounded the corner of that same building, is it not?

If they manage to give us ammo explosions I may have saved myself from a earth shattering kaboom.
TT or VG there's always the advice of "Don't hold down the trigger unless you are sure". If someone is going to spray and pray then I'll wait until they are low and attack, besides like you said we'll be playing in teams and the one who tries to win all by himself is either a fool or a Clanner

[Paladin1]

You say fool, I say Clanner, same difference.

[Gaius Cavadus]

Paladin1, on 17 November 2011 - 06:25 AM, said:

Yeah, we can't have people thinking through their tactics and husbanding their ammo for low risk, high reward shots. We need to just increase the ammo loads arbitrarily and let everyone spray and pray.

In TT one ton of ammo of for an AC-20 will offer 50 seconds of sustained fire. In any MechWarrior game 5 shots of AC-20 ammo would never produce 50 seconds of sustained fire.

That 5 shots per ton works because you can only fire once every 10 seconds. In MWO, and past MW titles, rate-of-fires have always been a key balancing aspect in such a way that the boardgame isn't capable of portraying.

This is why many, many things have to be adjusted during play testing.

That AC-20 will do 120 points of damage per minute, 2 damage per second, 100 points of damage per ton, et cetera.

Basically, you're looking at a weapon that needs to sustain 2 DPS for 50s on a single ton of ammo.

I think it's pretty safe to say that no weapon in this game is going to have a 10s cooldown. That would make for a fantastically boring game when you're sitting there in real time.

Edited by Cavadus, 17 November 2011 - 11:41 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Cavadus, interesting point! One ton of AC20 ammo lasts less than a minute! but boy you be the sucker on the receiving end of that Minute

[Xhaleon]

A Hunchback usually has 2 tons of AC/20 ammo, by the way, so it has 100 seconds of fire.

[DocBach]

Cavadus, on 17 November 2011 - 10:58 AM, said:

I think it's pretty safe to say that no weapon in this game is going to have a 10s cooldown. That would make for a fantastically boring game when you're sitting there in real time.

If you've got a 10 second cool-down for your main weapon system that is capable of knocking another Mech's arm or leg off in a single salvo, it'd probably be a pretty tense 10 seconds while you waited for it to reload. Especially if you missed your last shot!

[TheRulesLawyer]

Limited ammo might really be the saving grace for balancing ammo weapon vs energy weapons. You can have ammo weapons have stupid high DPS numbers, but only a very limited amount of use. Energy weapons then could be lower DPS but you wouldn't have to worry about missing and running out of ammo. High skill cap weapon vs low skill cap weapon.

[Gaius Cavadus]

DocBach, on 17 November 2011 - 11:40 AM, said:

If you've got a 10 second cool-down for your main weapon system that is capable of knocking another Mech's arm or leg off in a single salvo, it'd probably be a pretty tense 10 seconds while you waited for it to reload. Especially if you missed your last shot!

I could live with the longer cooldowns if ACs operated a bit differently than what we've seen in previous MW titles.

I can't remember the exact name of the novel but there was one about the GDL on Hesperus II that involved some Zeus prototypes. The author had a really interesting way of describing them that's always stuck with me. I think it was a Pardoe novel but I may be mistaken.

Basically, they operated like the autocannons on the post-WWII AMX french tanks that had the oscillating turrets and autoloaders.

How it worked was that a "cassette" of multiple shots was loaded up and the pilot could just fire the AC like a machine gun. So in bursts, one round at a time, or you could dump an entire cassette all at once if you needed to.

I always loved that description of autocannons.

So, using some arbitrary numbers to maintain the 2 DPS and 50s of sustained fire you could have an AC-20 that operates something like this:

Ammo Per Ton: 25
Ammo Per Cassette: 5
Damage Per Round: 4
Rate of Fire: 0.4s
Cassette Reload: 8.0s

Edited by Cavadus, 17 November 2011 - 11:51 AM.

[Hodo]

DocBach, on 17 November 2011 - 11:40 AM, said:

If you've got a 10 second cool-down for your main weapon system that is capable of knocking another Mech's arm or leg off in a single salvo, it'd probably be a pretty tense 10 seconds while you waited for it to reload. Especially if you missed your last shot!

According to the Solaris VII ruleset.

AC/20
Heat-28
Damage-20
Range 1-3/4-6/7-9 (standard BT hexes) 1-12/13-24/25-36 (S7 Hexes which are 1/4th the size of standard hexes)
Delay - 3 turns (or 7.5seconds between shots)

This meant you could fire roughly roughly 75 rounds a minute.

And the ammo of a Hunchback depended on the model.

HBK-4G, 2 tons of AC20 ammo

The later 3050 upgrade, 1 ton of AC20 ammo mounted in a CASE. (which meant no one ever used it.)

[Kudzu]

Hodo, on 17 November 2011 - 02:11 PM, said:

The later 3050 upgrade, 1 ton of AC20 ammo mounted in a CASE. (which meant no one ever used it.)

Then they did the 5N that pretty much was "4g with double heat sinks".

[UncleKulikov]

Ballistics definitely need some kind of boost to remain competitive against energy weapons. As they are now in tabletop, they are just less efficient and more risky than a battery of medium lasers.

[Kudzu]

UncleKulikov, on 17 November 2011 - 02:15 PM, said:

Ballistics definitely need some kind of boost to remain competitive against energy weapons. As they are now in tabletop, they are just less efficient and more risky than a battery of medium lasers.

Not quite true. Their heat to damage to range ratio is very good, but they pay for it in bulk and limited shots, and lets not forget that under a system of scattered damage the AC/20 is a beast.

[UncleKulikov]

Kudzu, on 17 November 2011 - 02:17 PM, said:

Not quite true. Their heat to damage to range ratio is very good, but they pay for it in bulk and limited shots, and lets not forget that under a system of scattered damage the AC/20 is a beast.

That is true (hunchback fan myself), but heat sinks plus medium lasers is a better heat to damage ratio for the tonnage.
Also taking ballistics means you can run out of ammunition, and that your ammunition can detonate. Both of which are very significant risks that energy weapons don't have an equivalent to, now if an energy weapon was destroyed by enemy fire and it exploded dealing damage to the mech, I would agree more readily.

And that doesn't take into account the ballistics; I've never heard people complain about Autocannon boats in previous Mechwarrior games.

Edited by UncleKulikov, 17 November 2011 - 02:25 PM.

[TheRulesLawyer]

Kudzu, on 17 November 2011 - 02:17 PM, said:

Not quite true. Their heat to damage to range ratio is very good, but they pay for it in bulk and limited shots, and lets not forget that under a system of scattered damage the AC/20 is a beast.

That only really applies when you have crits and damage dispersal for single weapon systems. Also the ac/2 and ac/5 are really pointless in a double heatsink world. Its only the really big ballistics that mean anything post 3025 tech.