17 replies to this topic

[Renan Ruivo]

So lets say i shoot my AC10 at an atlas, and the shells hit at a 150º angle. Will there be any sort of damage calculation based on the angle of the shot?

Haters gonna hate ... but this is one of my favorite aspects in WoT, to be able to use your position relative to your enemy as a method to reduce or even negate damage. Mind you, i am not talking about shots bouncing because the enemy is a tier above. I'm talking about tactics.

[Aegis Kleais]

Haters gonna hate?

*sighs*

There's been no word on whether the game will have deflection of large caliber rounds. Realistically, to have a round deflect, it was not due to player skill, but rather luck of the shot. There would (thankfully) be no reliable way to ensure incoming shots deflected.

[PewPew]

I can see this not happening for a couple of reasons

- It would be too complex to model this considering mechs have many, many more faces than tanks do.
- The pace of mech combat and the complicated shapes of mechs combined with latency would make angles more or less random.
- Mechs that were designed without this game in mind would have varying benefits from this and throw off balance. A mech could easily become over/under powered because of favorable/unfavorable artist designs.
- Game mechanics are put in for a mix of balance, fun, and a sense of realism. This has never been added before because it doesn't add much to the game other than to make things so complicated that the player has no control over it.

[AntiSqueaker]

This would simply make ballistics horridly underpowered, since Lasers would just be able to melt through the armour. Would be almost no point in running anything but a laser boat for close range brawling if you had a random chance to bounce that AC/20 shot off of an Raven's quite curved front.


Also; it would take forever to implement this since the mechs are so much larger than tanks, and have many more sides that would each have to have their own angle and whatnot.

[Davoke]

I have to admit though, it would be hilarious that one time when an AC20 round ricochets off a Raven and goes straight through an Atlas cockpit.
Or when it bounces off the Catapults underbelly and slams into an Atlas' foot.

[Damocles]

Mechs don't hull down like tanks, they are almost constantly in motion. So the tactical aspect of presenting armored angles is ...pointless.

Autocannons and the rounds that they use are not WW2 era weapons.

The armor employed by Battlemechs is not steel. It is reactive to prevent penetration, this is the method of deflection currently employed.

[Renan Ruivo]

Aegis Kleais, on 10 June 2012 - 12:48 PM, said:

Haters gonna hate?

*sighs*

There's been no word on whether the game will have deflection of large caliber rounds. Realistically, to have a round deflect, it was not due to player skill, but rather luck of the shot. There would (thankfully) be no reliable way to ensure incoming shots deflected.

Well, yes. You can't very well mention something from WoT without someone complaining just because.

As for WoT, causing a round to deflect was very much due to player skill. If you have two equal tanks going one-on-one and you position yourself on a wide angle relative to your oponent, his hits would ricochet much more often. It is a tried and true tactic.

PewPew, on 10 June 2012 - 12:53 PM, said:

This has never been added before because it doesn't add much to the game other than to make things so complicated that the player has no control over it.

Same as the above, it can work in the hands of an experienced player. Although unexperienced ones would cry and say the game is "unbalanced" and that the enemy was cheating and whatnot. Your other points strike true though.

AntiSqueaker, on 10 June 2012 - 12:58 PM, said:

This would simply make ballistics horridly underpowered, since Lasers would just be able to melt through the armour.

What about making it the same way with lasers if the enemy is using reflective armor? Reflective surfaces can get more or less reflective depending on the angle, so it would make sense. However ballistic round would ricochet much less often from reflective armor. Missiles wouldn't ricochet no matter the armor.

[LackofCertainty]

I don't think that they'd implement deflection, because armor in Battletech doesn't work that way. In the BattleTech universe, weapons have become so good at penetrating, that old fashion armor designs (like sloped armor etc) aren't effective anymore. This is why you see designs like the Atlas which is basically a giant wall instead of all designs being hunched and sloped. Instead of focusing on deflection, armor design has switched to be Ablative. It no longer tries to bounce a shell off, instead if just crumbles to absorb the energy/explosion. Think more like the Crumple Zones of a car, less old school tanks.

This is why every hit in BattleTech does damage, and I think it makes for more interesting combat. No one likes to be in a situation where their weapon simply can't do anything to the enemy, like what sometimes happens in WoT. (I recall a scenario where I rolled up behind a KV in my little crap tank and fired point blank into it's rear armor only to get a "That one didn't go through." )

Edited by LackofCertainty, 10 June 2012 - 02:00 PM.

[Roland]

This kind of thing doesn't really add much to a game of this type.

With tanks, they're basically just boxes...so you can try to angle your facing panels away from a shot.

But with a mech, given the relative complexity of the geometry, you'd either have to have a lot of complex crap going on to calculate the chance of bouncing a shot, or you'd have to do calculations that didn't match what the player was actually seeing.

Overall, it doesn't really add anything to the game, except uncertainty for the people playing, which ultimately reduces fun.

[Renan Ruivo]

LackofCertainty, on 10 June 2012 - 01:56 PM, said:

I don't think that they'd implement deflection, because armor in Battletech doesn't work that way. In the BattleTech universe, weapons have become so good at penetrating, that old fashion armor designs (like sloped armor etc) aren't effective anymore. This is why you see designs like the Atlas which is basically a giant wall instead of all designs being hunched and sloped. Instead of focusing on deflection, armor design has switched to be Ablative. It no longer tries to bounce a shell off, instead if just crumbles to absorb the energy/explosion. Think more like the Crumple Zones of a car, less old school tanks.

This is why every hit in BattleTech does damage, and I think it makes for more interesting combat. No one likes to be in a situation where their weapon simply can't do anything to the enemy, like what sometimes happens in WoT. (I recall a scenario where I rolled up behind a KV in my little crap tank and fired point blank into it's rear armor only to get a "That one didn't go through." )

Hmm, that is a good explanation. Thank you for it.

[Leanansidhe]

*Runs up to Renan Ruivo and starts kicking him in the head until he gets pulled off by forum mods*

[Stormlight666]

Renan Ruivo, on 10 June 2012 - 12:45 PM, said:

So lets say i shoot my AC10 at an atlas, and the shells hit at a 150º angle. Will there be any sort of damage calculation based on the angle of the shot?

Haters gonna hate ... but this is one of my favorite aspects in WoT, to be able to use your position relative to your enemy as a method to reduce or even negate damage. Mind you, i am not talking about shots bouncing because the enemy is a tier above. I'm talking about tactics.

Except a tank is made with armor designed to bounce other tank shells off of it.

A battlemech is made to fight a variety of troop and mech types and due to the bipedal nature of its design, angling armor may help against the odd AC round, but the weight would (a) slow down a mech and ( leave make it tin-foil against lasers and PPC's. It would also make it really unbalanced and the first time you'd go down a hill you might just fall and tumble down.

[PANZERBUNNY]

it would be cool if arms and limbs flew off when destroyed and were able to hit mechs and damage them. It would be rare, but really really fun.

[SnakeTheFox]

Like others have said, armor in BattleTech is ablative and not designed towards deflecting rounds.

The autocannon rounds are described as "high explosive armor piercing", which while technically non-existent currently, sounds awfully similar to "high explosive anti-tank" and is perhaps just a redesignation of that type of round to cope with the reality in BT that "tanks" are no longer the dominant battlefield impliments. If that's true, HEAT rounds traditionally do not "bounce" or "ricochet". They hit the armor and the shaped charge "detonates" creating a stream of ultra-hot gases that cut into armor. As such, it is not really possible to "deflect" that reaction like you would a solid steel AP shot from a World War II-era tank gun, so you must merely ablate it.

All that is irrelevant, as if there's one thing BattleTech isn't, it's realistic. There's no shame in that, people rarely mock Star Wars or Warhammer 40k over realism, for the same reasons.

Edited by SnakeTheFox, 10 June 2012 - 06:28 PM.

[UncleKulikov]

I hope not. That would make Ballistic weapons even weaker than they already are against energy equivalents.

[Ravana]

Yes I can see round deflection for AC's being rather irrelevant for the plan and simple fact that they are explosive rounds. When they strike a surface, they explode, the only thing deflecting after that is the shrapnel. A Gauss round might deflect but it would have to be a rather shallow angle to do so, like less then 10 degrees.

[PANZERBUNNY]

Well, from a story non-gaming point of view, with all the mech designs that have smooth rounded pieces etc, ballistic weapons will be glancing off of the armour.

From a game standpoint, this simply isn't worth modeling. It would downgrade ballistics and make energy the way to go if there was a chance for my AC 20 round to glance off, doing very little or no damage.

[0siris]

Just no, only want good aiming and walking around factoring into shooting. I feel that dice rolling angles for ricochet or 0dmg crits would diminish gameplay experience.