27 replies to this topic

[Woodstock]

adding ammo via the mechlab does no answer the question. More armour = need more ammo to do the same effect.

The only viable answer to this ammo issue is the idea that PC games you are more accurate so naturally more salvo's will hit resulting in the effect of more ammo.

Just repeating that you can add more ammo shows a lack of though (no offence intended) ... the armour does not weigh more ... so why should the ammo?

IF its easier to hit with ammo based weapons in MWO than the TT rules then this is valid ... but I'm not 100% on this until I get to play the game.

[GHQCommander]

We don't know the specifics. I would not mind my ammo cooking, it is realism.

Some of you may be assuming that ammo explosions would happen a lot but we don't know. It may only happen in a situation where you are ignoring heat warnings, your under fire or near fire and your mod for managing heat has been damaged.

Your situation for cooking ammo may already be one where your nearly gone anyway but how you manage your mech in the last seconds will decide how bad it gets. If you blow due to damage it may not create as big explosion, if you blow due to ammo cooking it may damage your team. So the last moments would become about ensuring your not a danger to teammates and trying to cooldown plus retreat.

Would that not suggest more of tank style play, rather than mechs blowing up all over the place too quickly, that just wouldn't be fun. Battles need to last long enough to test our ammo reserves a little I feel. So maybe the whole ammo cooking thing is the element in this game where players make a retreat or they blow big time.

Battlestar Galactica Online has hull damage but importantly it has durability. Both decrease in battle. It also has power, which increases fast enough however when under siege you find your power running out at times and your fire power is halfed. This is part of the seige effect and I'm thinking MechWarrior Online is going to do this well. Any Mech team under seige has to have a gradual, long term effect from the fighting so one side must retreat or lose.

I think it could be a very interesting element and I don't mind it being in the game.

[Zerstorer Stallin]

Woodstock, on 07 June 2012 - 02:56 AM, said:

adding ammo via the mechlab does no answer the question. More armour = need more ammo to do the same effect.

The only viable answer to this ammo issue is the idea that PC games you are more accurate so naturally more salvo's will hit resulting in the effect of more ammo.

Just repeating that you can add more ammo shows a lack of though (no offence intended) ... the armour does not weigh more ... so why should the ammo?

IF its easier to hit with ammo based weapons in MWO than the TT rules then this is valid ... but I'm not 100% on this until I get to play the game.

I would agree with the point there is lack of thought in action here. Saying because of the increase of armor I should get more free ammo per ton is akin to saying because of the increase of armor all the weight of laser weapons should be reduce, which in turn negates the very reason you increased the armor in the first place. A stock Cat can be modified to xl engine, ff armor and tag/art/narc missles which increase how many missles will hit. Also this will free up space for max armor, added weapons and more ammo. More over most of the cries of "oh god missle weapons are so weak" are from a thread from one persons 2 hour hands on from e3. How about before we swing the buff nerf/bat we play the game? Also, they have added effects because of the armor increases. MISSLES and AC can knock a mech off its feet. Gezzs in the table top game pilot rolls WIN the game for you. This is huge effect! For the first time, you'll see alot of ac and missles due to this. All in all my main hope is a well balanced experience, where team effort from combine arms will carry the day.

Edited by Zerstorer Stallin, 07 June 2012 - 04:27 AM.

[Woodstock]

I don't see the lower energy weapon weight angle the point here is it takes more missiles/AC rounds to do the same damage ... if you reduce energy weapon weight then you just increase the number of weapons and therefore the damage put out.

Increasing the amount of ammo per ton will not increase the damage of the weapon ... just allow them to fire more often ... not an issue for energy based weapons.

[Riin Suul]

as far as ammo cooking off due to heat goes, I imagine that the auto-shutdown of the mech is designed to do so before ammo can cook off. I could be wrong, but that is how I would do it, if I was designing a mech.

[Roland]

I kind of like the idea of cooking the ammo, but at the same time I fear that such a mechanic could just further benefit energy weapons.

It's not like AC's generate zero heat, right? An AC20 is generating 7 heat in the TT rules.

While less than a boat of lasers, it seems like if the ammo can cook, it just makes it so that it becomes additionally problematic to run any AC weapons mixed with lasers. If you just boat pure lasers you may run hotter, but you can't actually blow yourself up... as soon as you put anything with ammo on the mech, then you run the risk of exploding and killing yourself.

I'm not too worried about these nuanced mechanics until we get in the game and play around with it though.

[Star Captain Obvious Kerensky]

No extra ammo per ton is confirmed. Watch the HD gameplay trailers and look at the ammo count of the mechs. (Well, machine guns got extra ammo)

But yes, mechs have more armor. This is perfectly balanced. WHY? You ask? who dares speak such blasphemy?

Its simple: In table top, you roll dice to detemine hits. In Mechwarrior, its your own skill. In table top, your odds of hitting any given shot were 50% on a good day. Yet for a first person shooter, even the crappiest pilot will hit 80% of the time. Skilled pilots hit 95% of the time.

Since MW:Online pilots will be hitting much more often, and usually to the same location, armor values needed to be increased to keep the game balanced. Otherwised assault mechs piloted by humans (instead of die rolls) will core most mechs in a single shot.

Edited by eldragon, 07 June 2012 - 06:10 AM.

[CaveMan]

When random misses and hit location tables are taken out of the equation, most canon 'Mechs have *more than enough* ammo to destroy an enemy. The Dragon for example has 2 tons of ammo for its AC/5. That's 200 damage. Even a terrible pilot will probably be able to put 150 of that on target. Even with doubled armor and structure values, an Atlas can only take 156 to its center torso before it goes down. With an AC/5 firing every 5 seconds, that's a 3 minute fight. The Dragon can do that just with one weapon, and it has four.

Edited by CaveMan, 07 June 2012 - 07:38 AM.