9 replies to this topic

[Spud Nick]

I have heard that machine guns will damage internal structure more than the outer armor. I have also heard that energy weapons deal more damage to the armor while missiles and ac's deal more damage once the outer armor is gone. Is any of this true?

[Wintersdark]

Machine guns do extra damage to internal components, and there is a mechanic where a percentage of damage to internal components is then also applied to the internal structure, so yes: When armor is gone, Machine Guns do get a 15% bonus damage to internal structure.

That said, they don't do a lot of damage to begin with, so don't rely on them tearing {scrap} up. "Real" weapons will still do more damage to internal structure overall on the grounds that they simply do more damage.

All the above applies to machine guns specifically. And LB-X autocannons, which also do slightly more damage to internal components and thus slightly more damage to structure, but it's a very small difference.

Lasers, other autocannons and missiles all do exactly the same damage to internals as they do to armor.

[Koniving]

Slightly more? There's a (slight chance) of doing 300% more per "pellet" or shard for the LB-10. Though 200% is more common. (Keep in mind that's changing a shard from doing 1 damage to 2. Or 1 to 3. 10 shards each with their own bonus damage roll.)

ACs and lasers and missiles do identical damage (i.e. 1 armor to 1 + 15% structure). ACs do the damage faster because they are instant chunks of damage. Same with PPCs. If there's one special aspect of ballistics implemented that would make it better in one way or another, it would be the physical force applied would cause a mech's stability to go down. This might eventually lead to a gyro overload (i.e. you fall over). Not implemented though. Lasers 'burn' the damage in over 1/2 of a second to a full second but do not use ammunition and are very light. Missiles can be clustered easily to do lots of damage and on tabletop they were great high-crit weapons. Here not so much though each missile has its own crit rates.

Note: "High crit" means a high chance to damage critical components such as weapons, heatsinks, engines, actuators (not enabled), and other things.

Examples: If the gyro were hit, you'd have a hard time keeping your balance. Not enabled yet. Actuators (once functional but disabled 'cause at the time people thought it was a bug and there was no Betty to tell you), damage to an an arm actuator causes the arm to be unable to align with the other arm; this results in 'off-target' shots. Damage to a leg actuator causes you to 'drift' toward the weaker leg as it moves slower-ish than your good leg. It didn't actually move slower but that's the fluff. Basically it kinda forced you to turn as you walked straight, so you had to keep countering for it.

Engine destruction (not truly enabled) would result in instant death even with your body intact.

Damage to weapons, the results are obvious. Damage to ammo, it goes boom pow pow and sounds like popcorn. And heatsinks frying means you stay hotter longer.

For anything else.. Start here, scroll down as you read. The fancy icons have special info.
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...eapon_ballistic

Edited by Koniving, 02 October 2013 - 09:28 AM.

[Kurkotain]

That's interesting. i didn't knew actuator damage was implemented. when was that, the early CB days?

I still think they should use the cockpit displays like in the early trailers for the game.

[Wintersdark]

Slightly more is still accurate, Koniving. All weapons can score 1 to 3 critical hits. Mg's and machine guns have a higher chance for each, but its still small.

So, and AC10 can crit (and thus destroy) 3 separate components in a single blow.

The lbx will tend to 'average out' more, as each of the 10 one damage pellets are testing, as opposed to one 10 damage pellet. The lbx (and mg) hits just have a higher chance to score 1, 2 or 3 critical hits per roll

[Mycrus]

Mgs are great for kill stealing

[Konril]

Spud Nick, on 01 October 2013 - 06:57 PM, said:

I have heard that machine guns will damage internal structure more than the outer armor. I have also heard that energy weapons deal more damage to the armor while missiles and ac's deal more damage once the outer armor is gone. Is any of this true?

There are some non-Battletech mech games out there that do something like this, however it is not true for Mechwarrior Online or the core Battletech game. 5 points of damage is 5 points of damage whether it comes from a medium laser, an AC/5, or a Streak SRM 2. Mind you, the pattern of damage will differ between those system. However, 10 points of damage from a PPC is identical to 10 points of damage from an AC/10.

Except for the head, the structure of any battlemech is half the maximium armor allowed. So for a Raven or Jenner (35 tons), structure is 12 points per arm, 16 points per side torso and leg, and 22 points in the center torso. For an Atlas, structure is 34 points each arm, 42 points in each side torso and leg, and 62 points in the center torso. The head always has a fixed value of 15 points of structure and up to 18 points of armor, even on the lightest and heaviest mechs. (Don't ask me why.)

In terms of toughness, the only difference between structure and armor is that structure allows for critical hits. Most weapons and equipment have their own health values, usually 10 but as little as 3 and as much as 18 in certain cases. A critical hit will do normal damage to the structure, but also applies the damage to a random weapon. So, for example, if an AC 10 or PPC hits an exposed location with 3 medium lasers with 10 hp each, it will always do 10 points to the structure, but can randomly do 10 points of damage to 1, 2, or all 3 of the medium lasers. Since that's enough to destroy the laser, you and your target may see 1, 2, or all 3 medium lasers be destroyed.

Lasers do behave slightly different than other weapons in the way they do critical damage, because of the way they do damage. Instead of doing all the damage at once, the damage is split into 10 shots over the duration of the beam (1 second or 0.75 seconds for pulse lasers). Each micro hit has its own chance of doing critical damage. So a medium laser would have 10 chances to do 0.5 damage each chance to exposed equipment. That means exposed equipment tends to get cooked at a slow but even rate. In the above example, if the strike was from two medium lasers instead of a PPC or AC/10, the target's lasers would get consistently 6.1 damage split between the three lasers. So it would take 5 such strikes before all three of the lasers failed at once. Mind you, the target's structure is not going to last that long, so the lasers will probably last until the whole component is destroyed.

Does that make sense?

[Sadistic Savior]

Spud Nick, on 01 October 2013 - 06:57 PM, said:

I have heard that machine guns will damage internal structure more than the outer armor. I have also heard that energy weapons deal more damage to the armor while missiles and ac's deal more damage once the outer armor is gone. Is any of this true?

All weapons damage armor the same.

What you are thinking about is crits. Critical hits are hits to internal items that destroy them without having to destroy their "hit points" first. So one hit could potentially destroy an engine, for example. Or ignite an ammo store. Some weapons are a lot better at crits than others.

There is no chance for critical hits until the armor for that section is destroyed first though. And the weapons that are best for crits, are the worst for point-specific armor damage. But there is no separate damage type that is armor specific....weapons that damage armor will damage internal structures just as much. They just will not have as high a possibility for crits as some other weapons.

Edited by Sadistic Savior, 02 October 2013 - 07:43 AM.

[Koniving]

Wintersdark, on 01 October 2013 - 09:25 PM, said:

Slightly more is still accurate, Koniving. All weapons can score 1 to 3 critical hits. Mg's and machine guns have a higher chance for each, but its still small.

So, and AC10 can crit (and thus destroy) 3 separate components in a single blow.

The lbx will tend to 'average out' more, as each of the 10 one damage pellets are testing, as opposed to one 10 damage pellet. The lbx (and mg) hits just have a higher chance to score 1, 2 or 3 critical hits per roll

Crit DPS. Supposedly includes all the percentages and throws in an average rate. The reason LB-10s get so much more is that every one of the 10 'bullets' of the cluster round gets its own damage role. Yes, the AC/10 can do up to 3 crit rolls, but the LB-10 in a single firing can do up to 30 crit rolls (may not do as much damage per roll, but it rapidly adds up considering component health varies from 4 to 20.)



Before the recent MG nerf, twin MGs could instantly destroy an AC/20 with its 18 crit HP the moment the armor was removed. That was before any other weapons got crit damage buffs, so my 6 SLs didn't contribute.

Source of image.

[Wintersdark]

Koniving, on 02 October 2013 - 09:36 AM, said:

Crit DPS. Supposedly includes all the percentages and throws in an average rate. The reason LB-10s get so much more is that every one of the 10 'bullets' of the cluster round gets its own damage role. Yes, the AC/10 can do up to 3 crit rolls, but the LB-10 in a single firing can do up to 30 crit rolls (may not do as much damage per roll, but it rapidly adds up considering component health varies from 4 to 20.)



Before the recent MG nerf, twin MGs could instantly destroy an AC/20 with its 18 crit HP the moment the armor was removed. That was before any other weapons got crit damage buffs, so my 6 SLs didn't contribute.

Source of image.

Yup, but that crit DPS is scattered throughout critical items with the LBX. That's the issue, really, because you essentially destroy every component simultaneously after a lot of pounding, instead of knocking out items with every single crit, assuming your foe is moderately clever and crit-padded.

The problem with Crit DPS considerations (and the chart looks correct to me) is that you're not doing critical damage long. It's over very fast, either because you disengage, or you destroy the un-armored component.

So, given time, the LB-X theoretically can do substantially more damage to internal components. However, in actual play, the regular AC10 is more likely to actually destroy things before the mech section is destroyed. Thus, an AC10 can destroy up to three separate components in a single through-armor round, whereas the LB-X is extremely, extremely unlikely to destroy anything outright unless there's only one component there to hit. It's generally better to just knock out a single item fast than burn through all of them slowly, even if you're doing twice the critical DPS. In situations where you're going to leave a mech with no armor in a location but disengaged (you were destroyed, ran away, whatever) the 10+ damage weapon is more likely to have left the target short weapons/heat sinks.

Machine guns where different, given the insane ROF and massively high crit rate, it worked extremely well for them. Before the nerf, this allowed them to "pass through" an extremely high DPS to internal structure.