201 replies to this topic

[FupDup]

stjobe, on 19 January 2014 - 10:33 AM, said:

Players would still see the benefit of the ACs damage delivery method; putting all their damage in one location. They'd just have to think twice before loading up on as many ACs and as much ammo as they could carry.

It would put a much needed check on ACs.

The only AC that actually has a pinpoint damage advantage over other weapon types is the AC/20. The AC/10 is matched in pinpoint power by the PPC for less weight. The AC/5 has a similar weight investment as a PPC, but half of the pinpoint damage. The AC/2 is about as pinpoint as a laser or less, and with as much heat, while taking up more weight. The LB 10-X is one of the least pinpoint weapons in the game. From that list, the AC/2 is sub-par and the LB 10-X is just plain bad. Those two weapons don't need this kind of nerf (without a corresponding buff). The AC/10 is also fairly sub-par at the present time (the projectile speed reduction didn't help it much, and it was fairly meh even before that).

This also doesn't address missiles, which spread damage (not pinpoint) and are fairly sub-par in most circumstances in current play (LRMs in particular need a lot of ammo to last for a decent amount of time).



Note that I'm not arguing against increase ammo explosion chances per se, I'm just pointing out that the pinpoint argument only applies to the AC/20. The others do not have this advantage. And we also have to address missiles, which are often outclassed right now. There would have to be corresponding buffs for most of the AC line (mainly the 2 and 10, including LB 10-X) and all missiles to keep them useful.

Edited by FupDup, 19 January 2014 - 10:54 AM.

[Davers]

Pro: Mechs won't carry 6+ tons of ammo and need to rely on backup weapons.

Con: Memories of killing untouched Enforcers and Hunchbacks with one medium laser shot to the back.

[Yiazmat]

Davers, on 19 January 2014 - 10:55 AM, said:

Pro: Mechs won't carry 6+ tons of ammo and need to rely on backup weapons.

Thus creating more balanced loadouts, making the game more stratigic and fun. win/win for everyone.

[Gaan Cathal]

Curccu, on 19 January 2014 - 09:50 AM, said:

My understanding is that C.A.S.E. does not prevent that sidetorso blowing up, just CT.
Ammo explosion in leg --> damage overflows to sidetorso = dead
Ammo explosion in arm --> damage overflows to sidetorso = dead
So XL engine makes C.A.S.E. totally useless

I had forgotten that you can't put CASE in limbs. The answer to that is to allow the use of CASE in limbs, I guess. Or not run XLs in ballistic-heavy mechs, there's an argument they're a bit too good on certain mechs as it is. The former is better IMO simply because it makes sense. There's no logical reason why you can armour an ammo box in a side torso, but not a limb, it's counterintuitive.

Khobai, on 19 January 2014 - 10:03 AM, said:

You are wrong. I have killed countless Hunchbacks by shooting their ammo in their arms/legs. It kills them outright. Even Jagermechs die most of the time if you get an ammo explosion on them.

Some of the larger mechs like Highlanders may not die outright, but balancing the game around Highlanders is not how it should work. We need to balance the game around medium mechs.

And sometimes even larger mechs can be killed by cascading ammo explosions. Its just not a good game mechanic. RNG should NEVER instantly kill you.

That requires two propagations of the ammo explosion damage. That either means that ammo explosions are setting off ammo explosions in the same limb, the target mech has ammo in the side torso that also gets set off, or they had few enough hitpoints that a single ammo explosion can burn through a limb's IS, a ST and the CT.

I don't actually think case 3 is a problem. A full ton of AC/20 ammo comes out to 140 damage. Presuming that excess damage to a destroyed ST is propagated at a 0.5 multiplier to the CT like normal damage that shouldn't core a Hunchie that's not substantially damaged. Given the history of this game's coding, I have to admit I'm not sure how convinced I'd be that assumption is correct, but it should be correct, and if it's not it needs fixing. Design decisions, however, should assume things work as intended.

I agree that horrific chain explosions of ammo from getting your foot shot off are bad. The simple solution is to give ammo explosion 'attacks' a crit chance of 0%. That solves cases 1 and 2 for the marginal cost of never having a weapon lost in a damaged ST to ammo explosion damage. That's a very fringe case, and something easy to sacrifice for the benefits of an ammo explosion system that's fair to both parties.


It's worth pointing out that we're actually talking about reducing the amount of RNG involved in ammo explosion mechanics. Currently the situation is that they are so rare as to not be a substantial drawback, but will occasionally nuke someone off the field because someone rolled snake-eyes. Both of those things are bad.

FupDup, on 19 January 2014 - 10:50 AM, said:

The only AC that actually has a pinpoint damage advantage over other weapon types is the AC/20. The AC/10 is matched in pinpoint power by the PPC for less weight. The AC/5 has a similar weight investment as a PPC, but half of the pinpoint damage. The AC/2 is about as pinpoint as a laser or less, and with as much heat, while taking up more weight. The LB 10-X is one of the least pinpoint weapons in the game. From that list, the AC/2 is sub-par and the LB 10-X is just plain bad. Those two weapons don't need this kind of nerf (without a corresponding buff). The AC/10 is also fairly sub-par at the present time (the projectile speed reduction didn't help it much, and it was fairly meh even before that).

I don't like disagreeing with you, your thoughts are usually well informed, but in this case I really do have to.

Assume a mech with a 250std engine and Dubs as the base.

A pair of AC/5s and four tons of ammo runs to 20 tons. It doesn't overheat on Terra Therma while being humped by a lance of flamer Locusts.

A single PPC and enough heatsinks to reach the same level of heat efficiency (admittedly, excessive) runs to 17 tons. That's not a particularly big difference, especially considering that the AC/5 has a 1.5s refire, compared with the PPC's 4s refire, and that many dubs takes up all of the crits in the world.

That said, it's not a very good comparator anyway, the AC/5 takes two weapon slots, for example, and the PPC is and AC for the purposes of the 'pinpoint vs not pinpoint' debate. The slot it takes up is irrelevant, it's effectively a ballistic, it just happens to be a ballistic with the only advantage lasers have going for them tacked on (and people wonder why it's so prolific).

Compare an AC/10 and a Large Laser. Same situation with engine/dubs. One AC/10 plus four tons ammo comes out to 16 tons and a cooling efficiency of 1.67. A Large Laser with enough DHS to hit the same cooling efficiency comes out to 11 tons. It has less overall damage, a worse refire rate (almost double), spreads it's less-than-ten damage, as opposed to being pinpoint and has less functional range because of the stupid multiplier ********.

Yes, a cooling efficiency of 1.67 is unrealistic in isolation, but who fits a realistic mech with one ten-damage weapon?

This leads onto the other issue with pinpoint damage and ballistics, it scales. Add a second AC/10 and a second Large Laser. The pinpoint advantage becomes more prominent, because it's more damage being concentrated (hitpoints being finite). Not only will a pair of AC/10s burn through an arbitrary 100 hitpoints of target faster if both shooter and target are stationary and ergo pinpoint is irrelevant (close to twice as fast, infact), but in the case of movement, it will only need to be on target for a split second in every 2.5s. A pair of large lasers will need to be on target for a continuous one second period out of every ~4s.

Given that PGI won't touch any convergence-based mechanics with a ten foot pole, MW:O will always be about clustering firepower for an operational range. The best way to do that is stack the same or similar weapons. That, because of the above effect, amplifies the pinpoint damage advantage.

Edited by Gaan Cathal, 19 January 2014 - 12:11 PM.

[Wabbit Swaya]

There is a lot of revision that can be done, with concerns to ammo explosions, CASE, heck you can bring Tag into this too.

Ammo explosions should be more common, and the damage dealt by them could be based on what ammo it is. Because with AC ammo we're talking about two things, the propellant, and the warhead, so the bigger the round, the more damage done per round left in the mag to explode. So a half mag of machine gun ammo(would just be the rounds propellant) going off could be an inconvenience in a bigger mech, two or three rounds of ac20 going off could be a killer.

CASE could be brought into play, by not letting that damage spread to adjacent component, and be further revised to mitigate the damage in the component itself by having it reduce the crit chance on either parts in that component, So it wouldn't make using it in an XL equipped mech totally useless.

As for the Tag, that could be revised to give missiles some pinpoint damage, having the missiles impact on whatever component the tag happens to be hitting at the time of missile impact.

Alot of this probably requires a lot of code, I being far from an expert on the either the subject of writing it, or even on all the original rules of the TT game, will leave it at that.

[Zerberus]

FupDup, on 19 January 2014 - 10:15 AM, said:

You're thinking of CASE II.

Come to think of it, yeah, I am..

[Gaan Cathal]

Wabbit Swaya, on 19 January 2014 - 11:46 AM, said:

As for the Tag, that could be revised to give missiles some pinpoint damage, having the missiles impact on whatever component the tag happens to be hitting at the time of missile impact.

750km, 22 pinpoint damage, for 10 tons plus ammo. Option to auto-concentrate damage from multiple mechs with one aimer.

Well, it would solve any issues with the AC/20 being a bit over-tuned, that's for sure. 88 pinpoint damage Stalkers here we come.

[MischiefSC]

I'd still rather have ACs do a limited DOT. Say 0.3 to 0.5 seconds. Given the nature of pinpoint damage, by the time you're dealing with an ammo explosion you're 1 extra shot from death anyway.

Leave Gauss pinpoint. ACs and PPCs DOT, just very brief. Balances poptarting and every AC build out there. Speed AC10s/20s back up but make AC5s 0.2, ac 10s 0.3, PPC 0.4, AC20 0.5.

Maybe give PPCs 5 points pinpoint and 5 points random splash damage but no DOT?

In any case that's a way better solution. It's still pretty close to instant damage but will inherently spread the damage a bit, especially on moving or twisting targets. It'll also make poptarting and hillhumping less dominant. Still viable, just not as dominant.

[Wabbit Swaya]

Kinda getting off the subject put forth by the OP.

Gaan Cathal, on 19 January 2014 - 12:27 PM, said:

750km, 22 pinpoint damage, for 10 tons plus ammo. Option to auto-concentrate damage from multiple mechs with one aimer.

Well, it would solve any issues with the AC/20 being a bit over-tuned, that's for sure. 88 pinpoint damage Stalkers here we come.

Though it would be a change from the "Death by AC20/PPC" madness I usually die by lately.

They could counter it by making the Tag beam brighter, hence the tagger would be sending out a Batsignal saying "Here I am, **** me".

Also tag/missile can be countered by getting under or behind cover, thus bringing in terrain awareness.

Or stagger the missile hits, so as the target moves, or the tagger moves so does the tag beam and the missile hits.

Not saying they have to change tag at all, but I would like a lot more use outta my SRMs

[Gaan Cathal]

Wabbit Swaya, on 19 January 2014 - 12:42 PM, said:

Not saying they have to change tag at all, but I would like a lot more use outta my SRMs

You'll get plenty when/if they fix the hit detection on them. That is the problem they have at the moment. And doing 2.0 damage compared to a 2.5 SSRM, which is...well, moronic.

[Wabbit Swaya]

Yeah, I never got the damage diff. either, prolly someone down the line whined because they only have two per 1.5ton mount, they should have a buff.

As for the hit reg, methinks, they will put out many more sales, and hero mechs before they get to fixing that... if ever.

[wanderer]

Mind you, we also carry much more ammo than TT. 15-20 shots for an AC/20 is considered plenty in TT, while in MWO, you'd easily run the bay dry on anything significant. We do have to carve through twice the armor.

I do think we need better odds of ammo detonating though, along with Gauss rifles. With all the walking bombs we have, ammo explosions should be MUCH more common, and without CASE, many of those should be painfully fatal. Call it at least 33% chance of a critted and destroyed ammo location detonating, dealing the usual damage, and said locations should only have 1HP for the purposes of how much it takes.

[Serpieri]

I've only been playing a few days, but I did notice the majority of the mechs were running Ballistic load outs, and what was even stranger I have yet to see an Awesome in the game, and a few other mech variants. It seems the reason for that is because ballistics are doing far greater damage with very little risk or fear of running out of ammo before the engagement ends.

In Battletech, inner Sphere mechs can only place case in torso locations - if the mech had an XL engine (depending on how many rounds left of the ammo) - a crit on the ammo was an instant kill since the explosion took out all the internal points of that section. In this game, C.A.S.E. is not used because players have the freedom to stick the ammo anywhere they want which is not how it was handled in Battletech, If I remember correctly the ammo had to be placed within the same location or an adjacent one. For example, ammo placed in the right leg can only feed a weapon in the right torso. Where as ammo in the right torso can only feed a weapon in the center torso and right arm.

In this game, the mech keeps on trucking firing shell after shell with no regard to his ammo or fear of an explosion. Where as energy mechs for some reason don't dissipate heat correctly, and are hampered even more by a loss of heatsink. Can someone explain what's going on with energy weapons because I shouldn't be overheating but I am after firing only a few salvos where as in my Cataphract which is still using single heatsinks I have no problem.

[Pjwned]

Toong, on 19 January 2014 - 01:47 AM, said:

A good rule of thumb is this: If you see a problem, and think the solution is

A) a simple value change that, somehow, no one came up with before, or
to change said values by more than a couple percent,

then you have almost certainly not given the problem enough thought, and are probably wrong.



Making ammo explode 100% of the time is too far in the other direction. No matter where you store your ammo, with a 100% explosion rate, you'd see explosions as the cause of death shoot waaay past acceptable limits. I have no idea how to do the math, but probably something in the 30-40 percent range? Considering that ammo explosions are typically fatal to a 'mech that could have otherwise kept going, you'd also see a huge spike in premature deaths.

Carrying a CASE can stop the immediate death sentence, but it won't stop the explosion from taking off enough of your 'mech to make death a foregone conclusion. Basically you'd be removing structural hitpoints altogether, since the first crit would spell the destruction of that section.

If this were implemented, most people would probably stop using them altogether. That's the opposite of balance.

Tone down ammo explosions then.

Seriously, I would much rather see a smaller, consistent risk of carrying ammo than a chance of having a limb blown off and trying to shrug it off only to have RNG strike and all of a sudden it's INSTANTLY DEAD and there's not much to do to mitigate it because CASE is garbage.

I suppose it's possible a 100% chance still wouldn't be ideal even with drastically dampened ammo explosions but the way it is now is just stupid.

[OneEyed Jack]

Gaan Cathal, on 19 January 2014 - 11:43 AM, said:

I had forgotten that you can't put CASE in limbs. The answer to that is to allow the use of CASE in limbs, I guess. Or not run XLs in ballistic-heavy mechs, there's an argument they're a bit too good on certain mechs as it is. The former is better IMO simply because it makes sense. There's no logical reason why you can armour an ammo box in a side torso, but not a limb, it's counterintuitive.

It's NOT ARMOR. It's a combination of a baffle system to direct rather large explosive forces in a certain direction and modification to armor to give it blow-out panels without compromising it's protective qualities. Maybe if you have a clue what you're talking about, it'll be a bit more logical and intuitive.

wanderer, on 19 January 2014 - 01:34 PM, said:

I do think we need better odds of ammo detonating though, along with Gauss rifles.

Gauss Rifles need better than 90% chance of detonating? Not that I have a problem with increasing the chance (it woulnd't make much difference, IMO), but I fail to see why it's needed.

Quote

in Battletech, If I remember correctly the ammo had to be placed within the same location or an adjacent one. For example, ammo placed in the right leg can only feed a weapon in the right torso. Where as ammo in the right torso can only feed a weapon in the center torso and right arm.

Citation please. It's been awhile since I did any mech designing in TT, and my memory isn't what it once was, but I don't recall any such restriction, though people keep preaching it as if it were gospel. I also can't seem to find it in the mech construction section of the Tech Manual. So if someone could please enlighten me, I'd appreciate it.

[Khobai]

Quote

Note that I'm not arguing against increase ammo explosion chances per se, I'm just pointing out that the pinpoint argument only applies to the AC/20. The others do not have this advantage.

Thats not entirely true. Because you can take three AC/5s. 15 damage every 1.5s certainly counts as pinpoint. The reason why AC/5s are so much better than AC/10s is because you can spam 3-4 of them on one mech unlike the AC/10 which you can only have two of, and youre always just better off with two AC/20s instead.

Edited by Khobai, 19 January 2014 - 02:26 PM.

[Oriius]

I guess the chance could be upped a little from what it is, I don't think even pushing it to 100% is going to do what people seem to think it will.

The idea would just move to staying at range more, and putting as much of that ammo down the field as possible before ever needing to close. Should they find them self in a brawl then they likely messed up anyway.

All I can see this hurting are brawlers (be it srm builds, or single AC/hybrid setups who don't want to throw down all their ammo quickly), and I can't see why any of those need a kick in the teeth right now.

That kind of change would not in any way change how I play my ballistic Jager *at all*, it would likely kill off what little desire I do have to play any of my centurion's though.

I think the issue is with heat, change the way heat works and you change a lot more of this.
Lets say you get too hot, then the ammo blows, that as an interaction with ammo would be a better change.

I feel a low heat threshold with a somewhat higher dissipation rate, tied to penalties based on that heat level would be the best start towards a more interesting game (and I say start because I don't believe it would be a magic fix-all change, just a step in a better direction),

Edited by Oriius, 19 January 2014 - 02:44 PM.

[CyclonerM]

In the novels it happens quite easily to die from ammo explosion.. I also would like a very little % of critical engine explosions..

Btw, what if we just raise the % of ammo explosion? maybe 50-60% ? People will be encouraged to take a CASE to counter it and it would be still rare enough..

Edited by CyclonerM, 19 January 2014 - 02:51 PM.

[Gaan Cathal]

OneEyed Jack, on 19 January 2014 - 02:03 PM, said:

It's NOT ARMOR. It's a combination of a baffle system to direct rather large explosive forces in a certain direction and modification to armor to give it blow-out panels without compromising it's protective qualities. Maybe if you have a clue what you're talking about, it'll be a bit more logical and intuitive.

It's a box of woblobium with ting feeders that allow for purple-spectrum shift to minimise ammo explosion.

Ammo can explode. CASE stops ammo explosion propagating.
You can put ammo in limbs. Ergo it makes intuitive sense to be able to put CASE in limbs.
Maybe if you had a clue what 'intuitive sense' was, you'd not rage at people for not having memorised the (self-contradictory) fluff for a niche wargame from the 80s.

OneEyed Jack, on 19 January 2014 - 02:03 PM, said:

Citation please. It's been awhile since I did any mech designing in TT, and my memory isn't what it once was, but I don't recall any such restriction, though people keep preaching it as if it were gospel. I also can't seem to find it in the mech construction section of the Tech Manual. So if someone could please enlighten me, I'd appreciate it.

Your Tech Manual is an insufficient source, since I have a superior source in the form that I tested putting CASE in a limb in MW:O and it doesn't work. My experimental method is clearly detailed, and supports the conclusions reached in simulation using Smurfy. You may peer review at your leisure.

Or read a document with only the most tenuous relationship with the subject matter, that works too.

CyclonerM, on 19 January 2014 - 02:50 PM, said:

Btw, what if we just raise the % of ammo explosion? maybe 50-60% ? People will be encouraged to take a CASE to counter it and it would be still rare enough..

A page or so back I ran some maths on the odds. Assuming two tons ammo in a leg, you'd only have a ~7% chance of triggering an ammo explosion with each shot if the explosion chance was 50%. And that's assuming basically perfect conditions, two tons in a leg is the least crit-padding it's possible to get in a viable build and you need a weapon that does at least ten damage with it's crit.

For reference, 100% explosion chance translates to only ~14% chance of actual explosion using the above example.

Edited by Gaan Cathal, 19 January 2014 - 02:57 PM.

[wanderer]

OneEyed Jack, on 19 January 2014 - 02:03 PM, said:

Gauss Rifles need better than 90% chance of detonating? Not that I have a problem with increasing the chance (it woulnd't make much difference, IMO), but I fail to see why it's needed.

As in, ammo needs to be fragile and go boom a lot more. When I have torso sections with 7+ tons of ammo destroyed and no explosions killing me afterwards, something is wrong in ammosplosionville. That is, ammo needs to be volatile, along with the Gauss Rifle. Sorry if that sounded like I was saying Gauss needed to go boom more.