173 replies to this topic

[Grey Ghost]

I sure would like slug rounds for it. I know that eventually normal Autocannons get the use of specialized ammo not available to the LB-X that keeps them relevant. Though I guess that all depends if/when PGI implements them.

If they did give it slug rounds... my guess is PGI would do something like reduced ammo per ton so as not to make it a sure thing over the AC/10. Even though for normal rounds it really should be.

[Lucky Clove]

Craig Steele, on 19 February 2014 - 10:32 PM, said:

OK so if you want to use the comparison to an AC to try and get it set in your mind how about this.

At the moment, an AC10 has a (TT) range of 450m right, 15 hexes.

But the theory might be that the shell / propellent allows it go beyond that range. I mean it doesn't just hit a wall and drop to the ground right. But even though the shell has that physical property, its extremely unlikely that it can be effective at greater ranges (can't compute for ballistic variables over greater distances, whatever handwavium you like here)
So what the Mercury is doing for the LB is granting a more effective way of targetting, increasing its range (putting a scope on) and allowing the weapon to be effective at a longer range.

I understand! I'm refering to the theory of it's name. The LB-X. With the "LB" standing for "Light/Long Barrel".

[Deathlike]

Gremlich Johns, on 19 February 2014 - 06:32 PM, said:

"AC10 is Canon" is what you meant despite the fact that the AC10 is a "cannon".

I wish you guys would get it right.

Canonball!

For the record, if the weapon price is doubled from the weapon it's directly related to (the AC10).. it better be worth it (Artemis tends to be worth it... when it's working).

[wanderer]

Quote

It weights less than an AC/10 and takes up less space than an AC/10, but has the same number of shots/ton, same amount of damage/ton of ammo, and that's from Table Top (not from PGI).

It should not be better-than an AC/10.

Notably,it is the only one in the LB line that does so. All other LB-X's are bulkier than their standard counterparts, though lighter and better ranged.

In MWO, this isn't a problem. Give it slower reload time and a lower maximum range to go with it's smoothbore barrel. AC/10 gets a better long game and ROF, LB-X gets an alt-fire mode and slightly better bulk/tonnage. Later IS LB-2/5/20-X will take up more crits rather than fewer vs. a standard AC, but can be tweaked in similar fashion.

Quote

All the nonsense about weaponry aside, if they increased the per-pellet damage of the LBX 10 to 1.4, then it'd match damage levels seen in Mechwarrior 4, and as a result, would actually be a functional weapon.

Or, instead of the half-finished MW4 version,we could just give the darn gun it's standard fire mode instead of treating it like an oversized blunderbuss.

Edited by wanderer, 20 February 2014 - 04:34 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Craig Steele, on 19 February 2014 - 07:02 PM, said:

Huh?

As I recall you rolled to hit, then rolled on the LRM10 chart for number of hits and then hit locations. Then if you did any internal dmg you got to roll a crit for every point (ie, 1 dmg lots). Splat shells still hit armour first.

The chances of destroying 10 components are astronomical?

Sure, but they are a lot higher than the chances of destroying 10 compenents with an AC/10 - because that only gets one crit roll. Astronomically low chance is still much better than no chance.
On average, the LBX 10 when dealing damage to an unarmed location has not just a higher chance to destroy one component, it has a good chance to destroy multiples, where as an AC/10 had only a low chance to do so.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 20 February 2014 - 04:46 AM.

[Purlana]

By the time you get to the internals the fight is almost over anyway thus crits have a very low value. (To me anyway)

Direct DMG to a hurt section > spread crit DMG on a dying mech.

Edited by Purlana, 20 February 2014 - 05:05 AM.

[DEN_Ninja]

As far as my opinion goes it is because of the way autocannons work in MWO and really defeat the abilities of the LB X 10. It is actually a really strong weapon. Mount it with some heavy hitting armour chewing weapons and it will crit.

Problem occurs when you compare it to AC's. They are called autocannons. We've argued this before the but AVERAGE Autocannon were weapon systems that delivered a payload equivalent to the class assigned to it. Not every one of them either had a maker that used single slug firing systems or having common ones. Sadly we are using sing slug pinpoint precision cannons.


Where the AC/10 would have been a weapon system that fired something like 10-2 shots in rapid succession the LB X 10 would just fire the the ten shot shells. Kind of like if every current regular AC could fire like a faster Ultra A/C5. The UAC/5 would just firing faster ignoring cool down for the jam rate.

Autocannon - Equivalent to a Rifle that either fires on burst or it is a sniper rifle that fires that single round
LB X - Shotgun
Ultra - Machine Gun more jam rate.

[Strum Wealh]

Osric Lancaster, on 19 February 2014 - 09:39 PM, said:

Would be interesting to see 1.4 per pellet damage exclusively to internal structure, with a fraction of a % chance to do through-armor critical damage with an LB-10X hitting armor.

Personally, I would rather see the crit damage multiplier and percentages increased.

• overall crit chance: 66% → 75%
  
• 2x crit damage multiplier → 3.5x crit damage multiplier
  
• chance for 1 critical hit: 39% → 50.00%
  
• chance for 2 critical hits: 28% → 33.33%
  
• chance for 3 critical hits: 6% → 16.67%

With those numbers, there would be a 37.5% overall chance (75% chance for a critical hit * 50% chance for "1 critical hit") for a single LB-X submunition (that is, a single "pellet") to deliver 3.5 units of damage against internals, a 25.0% overall chance (75% chance for a critical hit * 33.33% chance for "2 critical hits") for a single LB-X submunition to deliver 7.0 units of damage against internals, and a 12.5% overall chance (75% chance for a critical hit * 16.67% chance for "3 critical hits") for a single LB-X submunition to deliver 10.5 units of damage against internals.
Note that there would also be a 25.0% overall chance for each LB-X submunition to not score a critical hit at all, and deliver only 1.0 units of damage against the target's internals.

IMO, such changes would dramatically increase the effectiveness (and, thus, both desirability & public opinion) of the LB 10-X AC (and, when the time comes, the other members of the LB-X family) with regard to savaging opponents' internal components (by potentially destroying multiple components per salvo, and more quickly depleting exposed structure hitpoints), while still allowing the standard AC/10 to retain its niche (concentrated damage versus single locations & single components).

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Craig Steele, on 19 February 2014 - 09:19 PM, said:

One mans trash............

... is another's multi-kill death-machine.

Reitrix, on 28 January 2014 - 07:32 AM, said:

Wait, the LBX is a trash weapon? Someone forgot to tell my Muromets! brb, informing my LB Muro he needs to change to AC10s because the LBs are useless.

That one player can experience such success with the LB-X (in what is assumed to be a not-rigged match) shows that it can be done.
That some other players cannot easily (or at all) replicate such results is not necessarily indicative of the gun itself being "bad", and is arguably more-indicative of those particular players being unable (for whatever reason(s)) to employ it with similar success.

Edited by Strum Wealh, 20 February 2014 - 06:51 AM.

[Roland]

Quote

That one player can experience such success with the LB-X (in what is assumed to be a not-rigged match) shows that it can be done.

Is it really possible for you to fail to grasp weapons balance to such a degree that you don't understand that this is totally immaterial to the discussion?

Any weapon, no matter how terrible, can potentially be used and achieve good results.... Because any number of external circumstances could contribute to it. Perhaps his enemies were simply terrible. Perhaps he just happeneed to luck out and show up when his team had already crippled mechs using real guns.

People need to get it through their heads that a screenshot of something happening once doesn't actually indicate anything at all, other than the fact that once it happened. It doesn't mean the weapons used are anything other than trash.

[dwwolf]

Purlana, on 20 February 2014 - 05:02 AM, said:

By the time you get to the internals the fight is almost over anyway thus crits have a very low value. (To me anyway)

Direct DMG to a hurt section > spread crit DMG on a dying mech.

MWO and yer right due to non random aiming. TT it is better due to random hit locations.

And yes mechs help you aim and move. Per canon mechs have robot brains that help movement aiming etc. Part of the learning curve in mech piloting is understanding how the robot brain carries out commands. Note that both the pilot and the mech are learning from each other.

[Satan n stuff]

Strum Wealh, on 19 February 2014 - 06:49 PM, said:

a single LB 10-X shell could destroy up to 10 separate components in BattleTech. By contrast, a single LB 10-X shell in MWO would need to have all 10 submunitions strike a single component to destroy said component

In MWO a single LB 10-X submunition can deal up to 9 damage total to up to 4 components. That means up to 3 hits for 1 damage each as a normal crit ( all hits can damage components up to three times ) , and 1 hit for 2, 4 or 6 damage as bonus crit damage. ( I think you only get one hit from that crit bonus, it'd be nice to get a confirmation or clarification on that. )

[Strum Wealh]

Satan n stuff, on 20 February 2014 - 07:20 AM, said:

In MWO a single LB 10-X submunition can deal up to 9 damage total to up to 4 components. That means up to 3 hits for 1 damage each as a normal crit ( all hits can damage components up to three times ) , and 1 hit for 2, 4 or 6 damage as bonus crit damage. ( I think you only get one hit from that crit bonus, it'd be nice to get a confirmation or clarification on that. )

Sources here and here...

The most damage that an individual LB-X submunition can deal to a target is 6 units: 1 unit base damage within optimal range * the 2x damage multiplier for the LB-X * the maximum of 3 critical hits per submunition → 1*2*3 = 6.
Note, also, that the overall likelihood of that happening for any given submunition under the current implementation is 3.96% (66% chance to deal critical damage at all * 6% chance for "3 critical hits").

"The max damage each pellet can do is 6 compared to the normal 1 point of damage each pellet does to armor."

[Satan n stuff]

Strum Wealh, on 20 February 2014 - 07:54 AM, said:

Sources here and here...

The most damage that an individual LB-X submunition can deal to a target is 6 units: 1 unit base damage within optimal range * the 2x damage multiplier for the LB-X * the maximum of 3 critical hits per submunition → 1*2*3 = 6.
Note, also, that the overall likelihood of that happening for any given submunition under the current implementation is 3.96% (66% chance to deal critical damage at all * 6% chance for "3 critical hits").

"The max damage each pellet can do is 6 compared to the normal 1 point of damage each pellet does to armor."

Ah thanks, then I assume that what's listed on smurfy's site is the total damage dealt?

[Mcgral18]

Roland, on 19 February 2014 - 09:57 PM, said:

No dude, you are overthinking it, which is exactly the problem with almost all of the ridiculous ideas surrounding this weapon.

Remove the silly "critical damage" nonsense.

Up the pellet damage to 1.4.

DONE.

Just do that, and see what happens.

I imagine we'll see quite a few LB30 and 20 builds.

I think I'd start at 1.2 damage and a cool down of 2.0. Might as well make it a brawling weapon. 1.4 would be very powerful.

[Deathlike]

Mcgral18, on 20 February 2014 - 09:33 AM, said:

I imagine we'll see quite a few LB30 and 20 builds.

I think I'd start at 1.2 damage and a cool down of 2.0. Might as well make it a brawling weapon. 1.4 would be very powerful.

Anything is better than the state of uselessness... especially when I'm driving in a light, I'm generally not threatened by LBX. You might as well shoot me with an overweight version of the SRM.

[Satan n stuff]

Deathlike, on 20 February 2014 - 09:57 AM, said:

Anything is better than the state of uselessness... especially when I'm driving in a light, I'm generally not threatened by LBX. You might as well shoot me with an overweight version of the SRM.

I've killed a fair number of Jenners that way.

[Deathlike]

Satan n stuff, on 20 February 2014 - 11:09 AM, said:

I've killed a fair number of Jenners that way.

I honestly don't remember the last time I died to LBX. It is far and few in between. The last time was probably when I was crit anyways, which pretty much any weapon could accomplish that at that point.

Edited by Deathlike, 20 February 2014 - 11:50 AM.

[Satan n stuff]

Deathlike, on 20 February 2014 - 11:50 AM, said:

I honestly don't remember the last time I died to LBX. It is far and few in between. The last time was probably when I was crit anyways, which pretty much any weapon could accomplish that at that point.

I was referring to the SRMs, but I've killed jenners with an LB 10-X too.

[wintersborn]

Craig, Yes they are long range precision rifles but I had to make the comment due to last summers visit to a range that has a 1k (yards) target.

Daekar my barrel is 26" long stock (.338 Lapua) but your right unless you get into bench rest you don't usually see barrels longer than that.


I did some testing with my Cicada just for some information.

Forrest colony snow map vs a Atlas AS7D in my Cicada with a LBX10 and a AC10 only shooting the left side torso (missile hard point). I found that I could land all LBX10 shots/pellets into just the side torso at around 105-110m directly facing the Atlas.

I chose 100m for the test just to make sure and I did the test 5 times with each weapon just holding down the fire button hitting only the side torso with a stop watch.

The LBX10 would take the arm off in about 23 seconds.
The LBX10 would core the Atlas from as little as 24 seconds (once) and about 28 seconds (three times) but also took 1.33 (once).

The AC10 would take the arm off in about 24 seconds.
The AC10 would core the Atlas also from as little a 25 seconds (once) but the remaining four times averaged about 1.38.

Granted you can see the LBX seems to add a chance to cause more random damage to a already damaged location but the AC10 can do similar damage from farther away.

Range vs random chance for extra damage is the trade off.

I don't want to stand face to face with a Atlas in my Cicada for 23 seconds a 100m : (

[East Indy]

Reduce cooldown to 2.0 seconds, increase ammunition count to 20. See what that does.