147 replies to this topic

[Orkhepaj]

I cant see what problem could it cause to be able to shot down some missiles, most mechs cant even shot that up to target the missiles in the first place. Only problem could be if server power needed to calculate the hits is too much.

[RandomLurker]

1. Gameplay balance doesn't need it. Nuff said.

2. It doesn't make realism sense either. In-universe, laser beams are only a couple centimeters wide. You could fire into a cluster of LRMs and still have a ridiculously small chance of hitting one, much less holding the laser on target long enough to destroy it.

[Darius Deadeye]

Lets not forget that the sole reason you are able to react and pretend to target said incoming missiles, is because they're moving at snails pace relative to "real life missiles".

Should you be allowed to shoot down missiles, because realistically you can react soon enough to do so? Well, lets implement that feature, but at the same time implement actual real life missile travel speeds..

... Or just stick with what we got, because it works as intended.

[Orkhepaj]

RandomLurker, on 10 September 2013 - 12:47 PM, said:

1. Gameplay balance doesn't need it. Nuff said.

2. It doesn't make realism sense either.  In-universe, laser beams are only a couple centimeters wide.  You could fire into a cluster of LRMs and still have a ridiculously small chance of hitting one, much less holding the laser on target long enough to destroy it.

1.fine
2. it is not only about lasers, small chance to hit so? btw these are military laser that can cut throu mech armor wouldnt have much problem shooting down unarmored missiles , i dont know how much w energy they can shoot in 1 sec but probably they could cut throu missile frame in a fraction of a second imho

Edited by Orkhepaj, 10 September 2013 - 01:00 PM.

[LauLiao]

Or you could just... you know, take cover when you get your 30 seconds of warning that a weapon is about to hit you.

[LauLiao]

RandomLurker, on 10 September 2013 - 12:47 PM, said:

2. It doesn't make realism sense either. In-universe, laser beams are only a couple centimeters wide. You could fire into a cluster of LRMs and still have a ridiculously small chance of hitting one, much less holding the laser on target long enough to destroy it.

Because CANON! http://www.sarna.net...-Missile_System Not that I'm advocating this proposition (I'm not).

[RandomLurker]

As to being military grade lasers, the reason laser AM systems hav etaken so long to develop in real life is because of the requirement to hold the beam on target long enough to heat up the missile. Missiles are surprisingly resilient. The beam has to rest on a single point long enough to burn through the skin and then damage the internal components. Sweeping a beam accross it is pretty much useless due the tiny expsoure time. Go look up the test videos on youtube.

Also, canon laser physics are pretty mind boggling when you start applying real physics to them. Given a 10 second exposure time (assuming the laser duration is the entire length of the game turn), 8 armor points per .5 tons, and assuming the armor is pure steel (which it should, in fact, be much stronger then), the energy input from a medium laser is enough to cause explosive vaporization of the target mass. Go look up the old posts on classic battletech forums for the guys who did the calculations on this stuff. MWO lasers clearly melt the armor, so there's no way they are powerful enough to destroy missiles with a glancing hit, and there's no way you can hold them on target manually, so it just isn't going to work.

As for laser AMS, the system automatically holds the beam on target with computer precision. That's why it -and regular ams for that matter- works.

In the end though, the gameplay balance thing makes it all irrelevent. Apply realism to btech weapons is just going to get you all sorts of headaches

ps. Fun fact: the CBT forum guys also did water displacement measurements on the mech models, calculated the mass/volume ratio, and figured out that most mechs would float in water. Apparently there's a LOT of empty space inside those things

[RandomLurker]

Here's one of those test vids. Remember, when you say that Btech has much more advanced lasers, remember that they are hand controlled, not radar controlled, and can only even hit out to 1000m. The one in the video has a range of several miles. The exact details of wattage, range, wavelength, etc are of course classified so we can't do a real comparison.

[xXButcherBlackXx]

I don't get why people are rolling out real life scenarios of lasers shooting down missiles. The lasers in Mech Warrior are far stronger than anything we've created yet and can clearly punch through tons of armor relatively quick. Don't forget this is a Sci-fi game and in the lore of mech combat shooting down missiles with lasers is a no-brainer.

[Strum Wealh]

xXButcherBlackXx, on 10 September 2013 - 05:48 PM, said:

...and in the lore of mech combat shooting down missiles with lasers is a no-brainer.

No, it wasn't.

For that matter, an average lore/TT MechWarrior (depending on whether they were IS or Clan) had only a ~70-85 percent chance of hitting a stationary 'Mech-sized target when their own 'Mech was standing still; putting enough energy on a single spot on a ~70mm-wide missile that would likely be moving at ~400 m/s would have been effectively impossible for anyone not having "plot device" levels of skill (e.g. anyone not Kai Allard-Liao).

[xXButcherBlackXx]

Strum Wealh, on 10 September 2013 - 06:05 PM, said:

No, it wasn't.

For that matter, an average lore/TT MechWarrior (depending on whether they were IS or Clan) had only a ~70-85 percent chance of hitting a stationary 'Mech-sized target when their own 'Mech was standing still; putting enough energy on a single spot on a ~70mm-wide missile that would likely be moving at ~400 m/s would have been effectively impossible for anyone not having "plot device" levels of skill (e.g. anyone not Kai Allard-Liao).

I speak of all mech games/shows/movies etc.; of which the overwhelming majority depict missiles being shot down by a blast or sweep of a laser...



Macross, Gundam, Eureka 7, Evangelion(above)...and the list goes on.

Edited by xXButcherBlackXx, 10 September 2013 - 06:51 PM.

[RandomLurker]

Battletech has always prided itself on being more realistic then similar sci-fi universes. Lasers are speed of light; Lasers aren't visible unless passing through smoke, etc; FTL uses semi-plausible phsyics, and all non-FTL stuff uses Einsteinian phsyics; there's a lot of discussion of logistics, support personnell, mech maintenance and so on to create a realistic world.

Not that Btech is remotely close to reality, but it goes to a lot of effort put up the illusion. So making comparisons to reality IS relevant, because straying too far from it goes against the grain of the verse, so to speak.

Don't forget that in Btech universe, computers are scrap. Almost nothing is automated, and all weapons of war are under direct manual control. According to canon, a laser has near-infinite range, and the game range values are only based on the ability of the tracking equipment to make it actually hit the target. Which should tell you how bad said equipment is. (Then why do ER Lasers make more heat? yeah, I know- gameplay trumps all is the answer). AMS itself was Lostech for hundreds of years.

Edited by RandomLurker, 10 September 2013 - 07:13 PM.

[blinkin]

i voted yes to all. if people want to stand in the open in a vain attempt to shoot down a couple missiles instead of diving for cover i say let em' BUT with this, Charles Darwin should be worked into the scoring system (give credit where credit is due).

[Fabe]

xXButcherBlackXx, on 10 September 2013 - 06:50 PM, said:

I speak of all mech games/shows/movies etc.; of which the overwhelming majority depict missiles being shot down by a blast or sweep of a laser...



Macross, Gundam, Eureka 7, Evangelion(above)...and the list goes on.

Ok then maybe all mechwarriors should be 'emo' teenagers well. As I already said this isn't Macross,gundam or Evangelion . So no shooting down missiles like this.

Edited by Fabe, 12 September 2013 - 05:43 AM.

[xXButcherBlackXx]

Soda Popinsky, on 10 September 2013 - 08:57 AM, said:

Conceptually, I don't see a problem with shooting down missiles with a low efficiency. But think of the programming / net issues. That's 20 or so flying hit boxes that needs to be calculated. I don't know how AMS currently handles the hit boxes, so it may be doable.

Orkhepaj, on 10 September 2013 - 12:31 PM, said:

I cant see what problem could it cause to be able to shot down some missiles, most mechs cant even shot that up to target the missiles in the first place. Only problem could be if server power needed to calculate the hits is too much.

It shouldn't be intensive at all. Missiles and ammo have hit boxes and can interact with other objects already. All that this change would require would be to say something like "If missile collides with ammo, then show explosion animation."

[Qwaar]

This discussion would be much more enthralling and fresh if it weren't for one very basic thing.

You CAN shoot down missiles with weapons. The hitboxes behave very strangely, but I've shot missiles out of the air from about 800meters away from any friendlies with ER larges. It is not at all consistent, and sometimes you have to shoot in front or behind the missiles, but they will start exploding spontaneously. I initially got the idea to try when I saw the last MG jagermech on our team lessen his incoming damage by blazing away into the lrm volleys. It didn't help MUCH, but it did probably net him his last kill.

[xXButcherBlackXx]

Qwaar, on 12 September 2013 - 06:44 AM, said:

This discussion would be much more enthralling and fresh if it weren't for one very basic thing.

You CAN shoot down missiles with weapons. The hitboxes behave very strangely, but I've shot missiles out of the air from about 800meters away from any friendlies with ER larges. It is not at all consistent, and sometimes you have to shoot in front or behind the missiles, but they will start exploding spontaneously. I initially got the idea to try when I saw the last MG jagermech on our team lessen his incoming damage by blazing away into the lrm volleys. It didn't help MUCH, but it did probably net him his last kill.

There was a time that I thought missiles could be shot down. In all of those cases the missiles most likely exploded on their own, due to being shot out of range, while also being shot at; giving the appearance of being shot down.

[blinkin]

xXButcherBlackXx, on 12 September 2013 - 06:52 AM, said:

There was a time that I thought missiles could be shot down. In all of those cases the missiles most likely exploded on their own, due to being shot out of range, while also being shot at; giving the appearance of being shot down.

back in the old days i made fun of people by saying that it could be done but was incredibly hard because the missiles were small and fast. i encouraged people to stand still and carefully take aim at them. i had to back off and undo the misinformation i was spreading because there were too many people that believed it. i over estimated the intelligence of the forum goers.

missiles will always explode if they travel 1000m and AMS tracers are small and easy to miss for some. those two things are the only ways currently that missiles will explode in mid air.

[xXButcherBlackXx]

Fabe, on 12 September 2013 - 05:42 AM, said:

Ok then maybe all mechwarriors should be 'emo' teenagers well. As I already said this isn't Macross, gundam or Evangelion . So no shooting down missiles like this.

1.) Of course MechWarrior isn't any of these since: we can't transform from jets to battleroids like in Macross, fly around in space with an overpowered buster-rifle like in Gundam, or deploy an AT field like in Evangelion. Making this change is in no way going to turn the game into any of these. What it would do would be to correct this oddity of missiles being invulnerable to weapons that can destroy an entire mech. The main argument against, so far, has been that it's impossible, or at least very difficult, to shoot down missiles. If that is the case then why block a feature that other people would like because you think it's difficult and wouldn't make use of it?

2.) Can anyone honestly say that when a missile collides with a Large Laser, PPC, AC-5/10/20, that nothing should happen to it?

BTW, Most probably are emo teenagers .

Edited by xXButcherBlackXx, 12 September 2013 - 12:52 PM.

[xXButcherBlackXx]

Just did some digging and found this:
http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/#ammo_types

If this is correct, all missile types have a health of 10. Though I lean on the side of this value being per ton, given everything else in the chart is, it doesn't clearly state which is correct.

So,

Case 1(10 health per missile):

- PPCs, ERPPCs, AC-10/20, and Gauss should destroy a missile instantly.
- A Large Pulse Laser would require you to keep on target for the duration of the beam.
- Theoretically, a collection of lesser lasers could destroy a missile. (Teamwork!)

Case 2 (10 health per ton of missiles):

- A ton of LRM(180 missiles/ton) with a health of 10 means .056 health/missile
- A ton of SRM or SSRM(100 missiles/ton) with a health of 10 means .100 health/missile
- A shot from any weapon can destroy missiles.

Missiles can be destroyed by weapons other than AMS in either case; though if case 2 were adopted, things like the flamer would need to have no effect on missiles for obvious reasons. I'm not even touching on the heat being applied to the missiles, which should have some effect also. As far as ballistics, even an AC-2 should destroy a missile based sheerly on blunt force.

Edited by xXButcherBlackXx, 12 September 2013 - 02:22 PM.