stjobe, on 21 May 2013 - 12:30 PM, said:
A weapon that cannot destroy armour cannot destroy internal equipment.
Conversely, any weapon that CAN destroy armour is equally effective at destroying internal equipment.
That's the problem with these "crit weapons" - they're inferior to other weapons even at the things they are meant to excel at.
There's no such thing as a "crit weapon" in BattleTech, it's completely a MWO phenomenon. Dual MGs in BT was a serious threat to light 'mechs due to their ability to damage armour - and they were a serious threat to heavier 'mechs because ANY weapon could score a through-armour crit on a roll of 2 on two dice.
There' simply no *need* for a "crit weapon" in MWO, but there IS a need for a viable, light-weight ballistic weapon - something that he "crit weapon" idea denies us when it's applied to the MG. By all means keep it for the LBX if you absolutely must have a "crit weapon", but for all that's BattleTech let the MG be a regular armour-damaging weapon like it's supposed to be.
Actually, there is. Weapons that fired multiple times in a single firing where critical hit weapons. SRMs, LRMs, and LBX were critical seeking weapons (the Machine Gun was not a critical seeking weapon due to only 1 shot per turn but that has translated differently into MWO).
The reason why SRMs and LBX was not effective against armor in CBT is because they did not focus all their damage onto the location that was hit, instead they spread all over the mech that was hit. But this is effective for seeking critical hits because you only need 1 point of damage to hit that open location (and doing high points of damage didn't matter) and something was getting destroyed in that section.
In MWO, internal equipment (and not internal sections, that is different) have HP ranging from 13 to 3, with the average basically at 10 HP. This makes weapons that deal 10 HP much more effective at destroying equipment than many small hits because they only have to hit the critical hit chance once and they will destroy most stuff. The smaller weapons need MANY critical hits before they destroy a single item due to dealing less than 10 HP and randoming to other items in the same section.
That isn't an issue in CBT because one hit destroys a whole item but MWO, this is not the case. If the critical seeking weapons were more effective than any other weapons at destroying items at their optimal distance, you would see their effectiveness.
I honestly think the first order of balancing them is making all weapons have the same critical seeking chance. I don't understand why the "critical seeking" weapons have almost a 41% reduction in critical hit chance over "non-critical seeking weaopns" that almost always hit harder than the "critical seeking" weapons.
All weapons should have a 25% chance for 1x, 14% for 2x, and 3% for 3x.
Next, critical seeking weapons need to assume an average number of hits at optimal range. The LBX is mainly the culprit here because of the wide spread. If you assume you fire at a stationary target at maximum optimal distance of Medium size should have 3 pellets hitting it on average, then the pellets critical hit damage should be factored into that calculation. The same goes for the Machine Gun, assuming 1.0s worth of fire at a target at maximum optimal range.
Once you have determined that number, buff the damage of critical hits to be on par with non-critical seeking weapons. Thus, I would suggest making the critical damage factor of the LBX to be 3x to be on par with the AC/10 (similar weapon), assuming the critical hit chance is the changed to 25%/14%/3%.
The Machine Gun should keep the critical damage factor of 12.5x, which makes it deal 1 damage per critical hit, but this is assuming it should have the same critical hit chances, 25%/14%/3%.
1
