20 replies to this topic

[Thejuggla]

I've been noticing all mechs I've bought don't come with ammo in the legs slot, when it's a lot better idea since they come UN-cased in the side torsos. I am curious if this is due to ammo not allowed in legs lore wise that might of been left out?

[Edustaja]

Must have been the Battletech board game designers way to create tension in the game, eg. most basic variants in the game had some weaknesses to them. I won't comment on the lore aspect of this.

[scJazz]

BattleTech when played on the Table Top includes Kicking. It would be horrifically insane to store ammo in the Legs when by turn 3 some Spider has jumped behind you and is kicking your legs.

[Nebelfeuer]

I do not remember a rule but as far as I remember most official mechs (not sure about the clan ones) had their ammo in CT or ST and very few in the arms. Legs where normaly reserved for heatsinks(better efficiency in water), JJ or weapons. Furthermore it does from a designers point of view very little sense to make the reloadmechanisem transport ammunition through all components of of a mech ( would take a lot of space and additinal weight + be more vunerable(what is not reflected in the rules nor MWO). There will have been some planned weaknesses in differend designs aswell concerning ammo placement aloke to amor distribution(in MWO you unforunately have none of these because you can build as efficent as possible and are limited only by weightclass and hardpoints which makes it a little boring in that aspect in comparison).

[Gremlich Johns]

Nebelfeuer, on 18 September 2013 - 04:03 PM, said:

I do not remember a rule but as far as I remember most official mechs (not sure about the clan ones) had their ammo in CT or ST and very few in the arms. Legs where normaly reserved for heatsinks(better efficiency in water), JJ or weapons. Furthermore it does from a designers point of view very little sense to make the reloadmechanisem transport ammunition through all components of of a mech ( would take a lot of space and additinal weight + be more vunerable(what is not reflected in the rules nor MWO). There will have been some planned weaknesses in differend designs aswell concerning ammo placement aloke to amor distribution(in MWO you unforunately have none of these because you can build as efficent as possible and are limited only by weightclass and hardpoints which makes it a little boring in that aspect in comparison).

I've been stating this since closed Beta. My point of view is that the only thing that belongs in the legs are heatsinks. Bad thing with that is the DHS occupy 3 slots and the legs are only 2 slots. My solution? Make the legs slots fit heatsinks whether DHS or SHS. 1 DHS per leg or the normal 2 SHS per leg.

ammo otherwise needs to teleport from the legs to get up to say, an arm mounted weapon like the LBX.

[Void Angel]

It doesn't matter. The original designs all placed ammunition with or near the weapon system that used it, but there is no rule that says you can't put it in the legs, or the opposite arm, or whatever.

Any arguments that invoke "realism," in a science fantasy game featuring 5-story tall humanoid robots (who are somehow far more durable than tanks using the same technology) - should be ignored

Edited by Void Angel, 18 September 2013 - 04:55 PM.

[Zervziel]

Granted there were a few mechs with machine guns in the legs meaning there were also ammo feeds running through the legs...I seem to remember infantry having a field day once they figured out the sweet spot to hit the mech in to make the ammo cook off and leg the mech.

[Skunk Wolf]

Is CASE fixed or is it still useless?

[Konril]

Well, the fact is even the original table top rules didn't say anything about mounting ammo anywhere in particular. But I firmly believe back then that most of the original mech designs were made more to the "rule of cool" than anything practical.

Here is one interesting bit of trivia. Although ammo can be stored throughout the battlemech, it is loaded and unloaded through the rear torso. So if you were using the optional table top rules for ammo dumping, you do not want someone shooting you in the back when you decide to dump ammo. Boom!

[Deathlike]

Skunk Wolf, on 18 September 2013 - 07:34 PM, said:

Is CASE fixed or is it still useless?

CASE always worked AFAIK... just not for XL engines.

Until we get Clan DHS, there's no "bad" reason to avoid putting ammo in the legs.

Edited by Deathlike, 18 September 2013 - 09:39 PM.

[DEMAX51]

Skunk Wolf, on 18 September 2013 - 07:34 PM, said:

Is CASE fixed or is it still useless?

CASE has always worked, but a lot of people don't fully understand how it works. Here's a brief rundown:

-CASE can only be placed in your side torsos

-All CASE does is prevent ammo explosions from damaging your CENTER TORSO (Gauss ammo doesn't explode, but the rifle itself can and this is still considered an "ammo explosion"). The CASEd side torso can still be destroyed by an ammo explosion, but CASE prevents damage in excess of your side torso's HP from carrying over to the CT.

-Ammo does not need to be in the same location as CASE, but it does need to be on the same side of the 'Mech (ex. if ammo in your right arm/leg explodes, a CASE in your right torso will still protect your CT).

-CASE is useless on 'Mechs with an XL engine, as it does not prevent the side torso from being destroyed.

Edited by DEMAX51, 19 September 2013 - 05:47 PM.

[Hexenhammer]

Its just one of those things.


I'm a bit old when it comes to Battletech but as far as I can remember the only mech that came with weapons in the legs was the Crusader.

[Appogee]

Gremlich Johns, on 18 September 2013 - 04:07 PM, said:

Make the legs slots fit heatsinks whether DHS or SHS. 1 DHS per leg or the normal 2 SHS per leg.

ammo otherwise needs to teleport from the legs to get up to say, an arm mounted weapon like the LBX.

Completely agree. Even though it would 'wreck' my loadouts, it makes more sense for ammo to need to be carried in arms or torso.

We'd all have to deal with it equally. Ballistics are a bit OP relative to lasers now anyway, so it could be balanced out.

[Vassago Rain]

There are lots of mechs with ammo in the face, legs, CT, arms... The awesome series is really into leg ammo. Orions are into leg ammo. Locusts and thunderbolts have ammo in the head.

[DEMAX51]

Appogee, on 19 September 2013 - 10:33 AM, said:

Ballistics are a bit OP relative to lasers now anyway, so it could be balanced out.

If you factor in tonnage and critical slots, I really don't think ballistics are OP compared to Lasers. If you consider that the lightest AC weighs as much as the heaviest energy weapons, and that those ACs need further weight/crit slots for ammo, and the fact that the weapon becomes useless once ammo has been depleted, I find them to be fairly well-balanced.

[Appogee]

DEMAX51, on 19 September 2013 - 11:10 AM, said:

I really don't think ballistics are OP compared to Lasers.

Need for heat sinks + weapon duration in addition to cycle time + need to hold lasers steady instead of splashing damage.

I generally prefer energy weapons to ballistics, however, in tournaments I am ''forced'' to choose ballistics because of the superior competitive edge they provide.

Edited by Appogee, 19 September 2013 - 12:25 PM.

[Alaskan Nobody]

DEMAX51, on 19 September 2013 - 10:15 AM, said:

-All CASE does is prevent ammo explosions from damaging your CENTER TORSO.
(Gauss ammo doesn't explode, but the rifle itself can and this is still considered an "ammo explosion")

Shifting the parenthesis makes it a little easier for me to read, if nothing else...

Putting it in the middle of the sentence at first I thought you were declaring CASE to prevent ammo explosions of any kind, not just the damage transfer >.<

[Tolkien]

I can't remember the mech now, but there was at least one tabletop mech that had ammo in the opposite side of the mech from the weapon.

Ammo in one torso, with the weapon (Autocannon?) in the opposite arm or torso.

That was the exception though, not the rule.


Just as a point of interest on tabletop it was much less of an advantage to have ammo in the leg compared to here in MWO. Reasons being that first off if ammo was critted I believe it did the full damage of the remaining ammo, or a large enough fraction of it that it was often the end of the mech regardless of where it was stored (unless you had case - this also made case more useful). Additionally the randomized hit locations made it much more common to get leg armor stripped off than it is here.

Edited by Tolkien, 19 September 2013 - 01:52 PM.

[Sadistic Savior]

Thejuggla, on 18 September 2013 - 03:18 PM, said:

I've been noticing all mechs I've bought don't come with ammo in the legs slot, when it's a lot better idea since they come UN-cased in the side torsos. I am curious if this is due to ammo not allowed in legs lore wise that might of been left out?

I don't recall lore mentioning it one way or another. I do know that lore includes mechs that mount weapons in legs (I think the Crusader is one)...so there is really no reason not to include ammo.

As for volatility...ammo only has a 10% change of exploding when destroyed by a weapon. I have to imagine a laser is a lot more likely to ignite ammo than the kinetic energy of a kick would.

IMO it kinda bothers me only because it seems convoluted to engineer a way to feed ammo stored in legs to the torso or arms. But the TT rules and novels do not mention this not being possible.

The legs were mostly used for heat sinks in TT...but that was back when single heat sinks were common.

Edited by Sadistic Savior, 19 September 2013 - 02:16 PM.

[MortVent]

yep, you usually saw heat sinks or jump jets in the legs.

Ammo and weapons were usually grouped together, for simpler feeding (lore wise)

Omnimechs are a good example of how that could be insane otherwise, standard tech mechs (aka non-omnis) could be built with ammo feed routes throughout without worry.

And many mechs were fiction mentioned as having issues with ammo feeds (the MAD-3R was really bad with the autocannon.. to the point one house replaced it with a large laser)