SniperCon, on 24 February 2014 - 02:18 PM, said:
CASE in the side torso protects the side torso from ammo or gauss explosions of the connected arm or leg. Tested in game.
Funny, this has in fact been tested in game by two or three units I was dropping with and found NOT to be the case. Misinterptetation of a few experiments, when people assumed they saw case "protecting" thier side torso from the explosion of the ammo or gauss in their arm all proved to be attributed to ignorance of the internal structure and damage transfer rules. For example, gauss crits on dragons we had out fitted with CASE seemed to create explosions that did not destroy the XL engined dragons, but what the guinea pigs did not realize was that from the moment armor was off thier arm, the damage ... even crits hitting slots was hitting actuators and other locations in the arm... reducing internal structure of said arm until by chance the gauss had taken its 3 points and rolled its explosion percentage. Very often when it detonated, it took out the remaining internal structure of the arm, but that structure being close to 20 left very little damage to then be halved and passed inwards to the side torso intenal structure on that side. So little as to be missed or interpreted as just "splash" from inaccurate fire that accidentally peeled armor from other locations.
It took actually coordinating several people making dragons with NO arm or torso armor, as well as an accurate test shooter, in a real match or 5, to see that CASE was only placebo protection to the side torsos. As equipment in those side torsos, they only stop damage transfer from thier location, inward to central torso. This is still a good thing for gauss or any other explosion on that side of the body, because it will travel arm into side torso, then side torso CASE will stop it from destroying the Center Torso. Obviously, since it didnt stop transfer to the SIDE torso its useless for an XL Engine user who wants to protect thier engine.
A note about our testing methodology. When we did this first we were very sloppy and reached the wrong conclusion, which others easily could do. When I feel we later did it right, we thought it out. It reduced down to deliberately taking an unarmored dragon into match, with gauss rifle and no crit padding of ammo in the arm. The dragon had an XL engine and using machine gun and flamer wedeliberately damaged the gauss side, side torso to a cherry red internal. If CASE protected that side torso from damage transfer, then when the gauss detonated, it would NEVER EVER destroy the dragon, because case would be doing the blocking of damage coming into the torso, not just that going out into the Center Torso when it was destroyed. We then started shooting the unarmored gauss arm with mechine gun, which at the time were capable of something like a 12x crit. Very quickly the gauss would crit and detonate, sometimes seemingly leaving the dragon untouched and alive...the side torso internal still cherry red. Some said, see we've done it twice, even three times in a row, it protects.... but the thing was when you were rigorous, testing ten drops, it became clear, the machine gun detonated the gauss which then did its full 20 or so damage to the arm intenal structure. I dont have 60 ton arm structure memorized, but assuming its half of the max arm armor of 34 or 36, that is 17-18 points meaning only 2-3 points of damage was left over to pass into the side torso. Halving all damage passed inwards means it really was passing only a single point of damage inwards, not enough to finish off or even change the internal structure damage color indicator.
When we did the more rigorous testing, 10+ drops in horrible mechs that the testers didnt wnt to play that way, it became clear that if one damaged the arm with the gauss more before using machine guns, say with a ppc... that less structure was there to absorb a gauss explosion, much more damage transferred inward and boom, the XL side torso was gone any time you did a gauss crit with explsion. No CASE protection existed. A number of us posted about this either officially, or support tickets thinking that CASE should protect, and the developers replied that how we had hoped CASE would work was not correct and that primarily CASE was on XL builds because of canon, where it literally still mattered for repair and rearm costs if you protected your CT core, fusion reactor etc from destruction because it cost alot to rebuild an engine/fusion reactor etc. The Devs also stated they might eventually look into enhancing CASE functionality in this way, but also it was projected to be unlikely because CLAN version of case works this way, so it would be giving clan CASE to inner sphere, effectively.
Unless this was modified as a "stealth buff" as opposed to a " stealth nerf" in the past year and a half, then those finding still stand, even if they are being mischaracterized and bent in being related. Plenty of times I have seen people recommend taking gauss and having CASE to protect from the gauss explosion, but what is being omitted is that its for a standard engine build. Those its being recommended to are often running XL builds to scrounge up the tonnage for the gauss in the first place. They read it in the most optimistic sense, CASE protects from gauss explosion, without the subtext.
-Madporthos
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