198 replies to this topic

[TheRulesLawyer]

Captain Nice HD, on 16 November 2011 - 07:51 PM, said:

Under the Solaris VII Dueling ruleset, the traditional 10-second Ground Combat Turn is subdivided into 4 Solaris Dueling Turns. Weapons are given different rates of fire, often firing multiple times during the span of a single full Ground Combat turn. However, the rate at which heat is dissipated is not affected. The number of heat sinks required to offset the heat generated by constant fire of an energy weapon is increased to the point where it can no longer fit comfortably within the tonnage saved by not using an autocannon instead. The functional result is that autocannons can actually leverage their relatively low heat to their advantage for a change, and thus maintain damage rates no traditional flashbulb could hope to compete with. Even AC/5s and AC/10s become frighteningly competitive. The frustratingly limited and highly explosive ammunition becomes less of an arbitrary hindrance, and more accurately the only thing keeping autocannons from dominating the field entirely.

This is pretty much needs to happen to keep AC's relevant in a real time situation. Frightening damage output, but handicapped by only having a certain number of shots. Plus is makes taking more ammo in designs a wise choice. A hunchback should be truly terrifying if you let it get near you.

[Mechteric]

MWLL has an interesting system to help this, where the beam has to continually strike the same area over the duration of the beam to get the full damage potential. Its usually easy to hit the slower targets in the same place over that duration, but the faster moving mechs usually can get away with spreading the damage around due to aim drift. Personally I like it because its not arbitrarily weakening the laser's damage and reward a steady hand at the trigger (aka skill).

[Primarck]

Tierloc, on 16 November 2011 - 07:45 AM, said:

I disagree that the amount of time you aim at a target improves the precision of the weapon. One person may need more time than another to improve accuracy, but the weapon is still firing the same whether you aim it correctly or not, or whether it takes me 20s to bead a target and someone with experience shooting the weapon 5s.

The part where I really disagree with this topic (for the umpth time), is that the element of using my joystick to move the recticle is the accuracy part. The precision part is the computer guidance system running the weapons. If I was testing in target practice and shooting - missing, I would adjust the computer (provided I was targeting correctly with my joystick). During gameplay, the individual weapons may all have lead times or heavy gravity effects or effects to worldly phenominon like electro magnetic warping so energy can't be used, but the basic "I placed my recticle here, that's where my guns will fire" should be static. If it changed all the time, or had a random "you still missed" element, all you are compensating for is new players vs old players. Possibly "certain chassis focus quicker" or "certain weapons need less focus". That system doesn't make anyone a better player, and is extremely downplaying any competitive aspect. It encourages specific types of gameplay (camping comes to mind).

In WoT (referenced alot), I believe that cone was based on the human aspect of reloading and targeting the weapons. It allowed for your team to train to aim more precisely, certain tanks had different sized crews etc. The damage calculations were already superiour, without the cone of fire that game would be alot better - but I understand it. I do not understand it for a Mechwarrior.


I think I've seen enough of these to wait another 8 months for the game to come out.

If they took cone of fire out of WoT, the average hit rate for tanks in that game would jump to 90+ percent. Is that anything like what an actual world war 2 tank would shoot? Especially in the middle of combat, and moving at top speed? Doubtful....

[rgreat]

I have 2 possible solutions for a problem:

1. Easy one:
Medium Laser must not deal all 4 points of damage instantly. Damage must be spread while laser burns. It is much harder to keep all damage on same spot if you have to keep weapon on taget for about half a second for standard laser and few seconds for pulse laser.

2. Complex one:
Each mech armor part (Head/Arm/Leh/L,R,C Torso/e.t.c.) must be split on many more smaller chunks of armor zones each with the same armor points.

So Lasers will only hit one (or few) small chunk of armor and deal all damage there, while AC20 shell will explode on contact and deal 20 damage for several chunks of armor withing moderate radius.

If Laser hit on already destroyed armor chunk it will deal 4 damage on internal structure.
If AC20 hit on already destroyed armor chunk it will deal 20 damage on internal structure.

This will make 4 Med Lasers as effective as 1 AC20 but only if you are quite a sniper and can repetedly hit the same spot with them and literally drill a small hole in mech.
Also even if you fire all 4 in alpha strike they may hit different chunks due to a a difference in ther placement on mech and small errors in calibration, especially at longer ranges.
And that will make targeting computer very useful.

3. Combine 1 and 2.
I like this option most.

P.S. This is my first post here, but i played both table tops and all BT games for last 20 years.

Edited by rgreat, 18 November 2011 - 11:58 AM.

[UncleKulikov]

TheRulesLawyer, on 18 November 2011 - 10:25 AM, said:

This is pretty much needs to happen to keep AC's relevant in a real time situation. Frightening damage output, but handicapped by only having a certain number of shots. Plus is makes taking more ammo in designs a wise choice. A hunchback should be truly terrifying if you let it get near you.

Agreed. Especially considering the different weaknesses Ballistics have compared to energy, like the risk of ammunition explosion. On these forums, I've never heard of an Autocannon boat, so there is something separating them at least in previous mechwarrior games.

[Tierloc]

UncleKulikov, on 18 November 2011 - 11:51 AM, said:

I've never heard of an Autocannon boat

I know I've already mentioned it here but it's possible it got deleted with the new management of indirection.
All things ballistic.

AC boat (cuac2s, 5s, especially on coliseum, high % daishi, anni, even a cyclops)
Light gauss boat (6 LT daisy, chain fire or alpha)
Machine gun boat (the more the merrier, works well on daishi, talos, anni, knocking someone over with mguns ftw)
Rac boat (6 rac 2s are neat, the knock on 3 20s is better)
Rail boat (railgun, 2-3 mini gauss or light gauss, usually the marauder II) - only mentioned because it has no energy.
AC20 boat (2 AC20s, usually a loki or thor, ground and pound special ops)
Heavy Gauss boat (1 heavy gauss on a hunchback at full speed, till mektek nerfed the chassis)
Long Tom Fuey(2 long tom Canis, pronounced like "Hong Kong Fuey")

I'm sure I'll think of more.

The great thing about MW4 is the weapons do not follow exact TT rules so they are not as imbalanced as they would be if say medium IS lasers were actually 5 points of damage and didn't have the modest range restrictions.

[AlanEsh]

Why do so many of you think weapons in this game are going to have the same weight, damage, heat, and crit spaces as in the TT game? The devs need to make a game that works as a sim, not try to force stats from a 1980s board game into their real time shooter. They're not going to let laser boating, or whatever, dominate other weapons setups... if they do this game will fail, and I highly doubt they are ignoring this fact.

[Tierloc]

Primarck, on 18 November 2011 - 11:17 AM, said:

If they took cone of fire out of WoT, the average hit rate for tanks in that game would jump to 90+ percent. Is that anything like what an actual world war 2 tank would shoot? Especially in the middle of combat, and moving at top speed? Doubtful....

What they did was give purchased chassis superiour cones of fire. The M3 Stuarts do not need to stop.

Based on the turret speed and the map terrain, and my mouse, if I was cruising by a target at 40kph, with my recticle bouncing all over the place causing me to move my mouse to focus the shot, avoiding obstacles and enemy fire (not that they dodge very easily) and I was still able to line up a shot on a target that was a good distance away, I should be able to without having the added RNG dartboard super impose a random but still modifiable spread on top of the angle of the shot and location on the target. I say modifiable because of the different chassis cones, the team training etc can affect it.

[Tierloc]

Angelicon, on 18 November 2011 - 12:19 PM, said:

Why do so many of you think weapons in this game are going to have the same weight, damage, heat, and crit spaces as in the TT game?

The damage values for available weapons in the year of BT the developer has mentioned are probably the easiest things to transpose to a game besides the list of available weapons itself, or the list of mechs available. Since the day the developer said they were adhering to the rules as strictly as possible, the idea has stuck. I just don't understand how that translates over to being part of the problem with the previous MW titles, because they weren't all the same. They did say in the Q&A that honing the system would need to be a factor, which probably includes weapons.

[TheRulesLawyer]

Angelicon, on 18 November 2011 - 12:19 PM, said:

Why do so many of you think weapons in this game are going to have the same weight, damage, heat, and crit spaces as in the TT game? The devs need to make a game that works as a sim, not try to force stats from a 1980s board game into their real time shooter. They're not going to let laser boating, or whatever, dominate other weapons setups... if they do this game will fail, and I highly doubt they are ignoring this fact.

Because that's what battletech canon says they do. Take any well established sci-fi universe and go tell them you need to radically change how everything works to make a video game and you'll end up with pretty much the same response. The game needs to fit the fiction, not the other way around.

[wanderer]

TheRulesLawyer, on 18 November 2011 - 10:25 AM, said:

This is pretty much needs to happen to keep AC's relevant in a real time situation. Frightening damage output, but handicapped by only having a certain number of shots. Plus is makes taking more ammo in designs a wise choice. A hunchback should be truly terrifying if you let it get near you.

The old Solaris VII rules make energy weapons much, MUCH more balanced. Let me show folks in TT terms why.

Heat generated was rated at 4x what it is now, as "turns" were 1/4 normal time. Thus, a single AC/20 shot would be 28 heat, four ML shots 48 heat points. The heat scale was also 4xed- so autoshutdown was +120 overheat vs. +30 in the normal TT game.

Heat sinks worked the same, however- they actually drew off the same amount of heat in a ten-second space as normal, but S7 tracked overheat effects over each 2.5 second turn, meaning a major heat spike could force shutdowns or ammo explosions and had immediate effects on movement or targeting.

So take a 'Mech with it's 10 heat sinks. Normally, the AC/20 doesn't even worry that, while the ML x4 gives you a mere +2 overheat. Not enough to matter.

In S7, that means the AC/20 gives you +18 overheat (equivalent of just over +4 normally), while the quad ML's put you at +38 (equivalent of just over +9 normal).

The autocannon shot barely slows you down for a second. The ML salvo has slowed you up (for quite some time) and fragged your targeting (till you cool down a bit), and won't even bleed all the heat off if you fire them again when they recharge, meaning the next cycle of firing will ***** you up even worse if you keep the trigger down. Meanwhile, AC/20 boy will have cooled down completely by the time he's reloaded and ready to have another shot at you. And that doesn't even include the heat generated by movement, especially if you're jumping- which will take up a small but noticeable amount of your cooling capacity.

It also helps with things like PPC's (hot, slow recharge) vs. AC/5's (low heat, faster reload) balancing out in ways they don't even normally do in TT play.

[DocBach]

Machine Guns and Autocannons pretty much ruled Solaris 7 rules.

[Yeach]

Oppi, on 18 November 2011 - 08:03 AM, said:

And given the fact that lasers can only damage the exact location they hit (there is no "explosion" or anything like that, the armor hit would just get super hot and melt eventually), a 0.5m spread would definitely mean that damage wouldn't add up.

And that's exactly why I would decrease the sum of damage dealt by weapons fired together to model the spread without adding more hit zones. That way, 1 med laser would deal 5 damage. If you fired more than one laser simultaneously, and they'd all hit the same hit zone, they'd only deal n*5*0.8 damage to that zone (or something like that). So there'd be a tradeoff between firing your lasers all at once to increase the chance of hitting the same spot or using chain fire to make every hit count for the full amount of damage the weapon can do.
Maybe the factor (0.8 in my example) could be increasing or decreasing according to the distance to the target and maximum weapon range (so it would be near 1 at optimum range/'focus' range and get worse at everything else).

Actually, that could solve a lot of problems mentioned on the forums if balanced right (like people firing PPCs at knife range, alpha strikes etc).

I wouldn't be too opposed to this.

Factor 80% hitting where they converge and 20% spread to other areas. (example)
Use a 0.5 second limit threshold if they used chain-fire (macro) to bypass this route.
That is if you fired faster than the threshold it would still amount to the 80/20 spread.

[EDMW CSN]

wanderer, on 18 November 2011 - 04:03 PM, said:

The old Solaris VII rules make energy weapons much, MUCH more balanced. Let me show folks in TT terms why. Heat generated was rated at 4x what it is now, as "turns" were 1/4 normal time. Thus, a single AC/20 shot would be 28 heat, four ML shots 48 heat points. The heat scale was also 4xed- so autoshutdown was +120 overheat vs. +30 in the normal TT game. Heat sinks worked the same, however- they actually drew off the same amount of heat in a ten-second space as normal, but S7 tracked overheat effects over each 2.5 second turn, meaning a major heat spike could force shutdowns or ammo explosions and had immediate effects on movement or targeting. So take a 'Mech with it's 10 heat sinks. Normally, the AC/20 doesn't even worry that, while the ML x4 gives you a mere +2 overheat. Not enough to matter. In S7, that means the AC/20 gives you +18 overheat (equivalent of just over +4 normally), while the quad ML's put you at +38 (equivalent of just over +9 normal). The autocannon shot barely slows you down for a second. The ML salvo has slowed you up (for quite some time) and fragged your targeting (till you cool down a bit), and won't even bleed all the heat off if you fire them again when they recharge, meaning the next cycle of firing will ***** you up even worse if you keep the trigger down. Meanwhile, AC/20 boy will have cooled down completely by the time he's reloaded and ready to have another shot at you. And that doesn't even include the heat generated by movement, especially if you're jumping- which will take up a small but noticeable amount of your cooling capacity. It also helps with things like PPC's (hot, slow recharge) vs. AC/5's (low heat, faster reload) balancing out in ways they don't even normally do in TT play.

This would probably work if the freezers worked as intended over a span of 10 seconds ingame. But I am not sure how the devs gonna pull it off.

[Lasercat]

I'm kind of surprised that so many people have jumped the gun and are assuming the final mwo game will use the exact same values for everything straight from the board game.

[Riptor]

Youre surprised after the Devs said they would try to adhere to the TT rules as close as possible?

Also translating damage volume from TT to game is one of the least problematic translation from one medium to the other.

A PPC will allways cause more damage then a Large laser for example.

The problem here is a heavy ammo based weapon vs lots of smaller lighter weapons making the first one obsolote cause they do the same or a similiar ammount of damage while being lighter and not dependand on ammunition plus a smaller chance of all of them getting disabled.

What this thread basicaly means is: Why bother with cannons if you can just have lasers that are more resistant to damage and dont use ammo.

Ammo explosions are the number one death reason for IS mechs without CASE.. so anyone running around with an ammo weapon risks insta death. Someone who runs around with energy weapons does not.

Something has to be done to make Autocannons more attractive or else why bother implementing them in the first place?

[trycksh0t]

I've been trying to work this out for awhile, and the simplest answer is to do away with perfect convergence. Barring that, I had another idea that probably wouldn't work, but I'm throwing it out anyway, because that's what I do.

I think one issue is how damage is handled. Laser damage is caused by intense focused energy and heat, causing whatever is under the beam to melt or vaporize. Ballistic weapons, such as autocannons, deal damage through kinetic force, smashing whatever happens to be in their way. The answer I came up with, aside from the obvious of getting rid of the magic 'auto-converge' that causes all weapons to hit the same spot, is to change how damage is handled. Damage from lasers should apply ONLY to armor, until the armor has been stripped, at which point they can damage internal components. Ballistics should have a penetration value, increasing with caliber, that allows them to have a chance of punching through a given amount of armor on an area, and dealing internal damage BEFORE all armor has been removed.

Ex. - Your target has 35 'points' of armor remaining over his CT. Your 4 medium lasers will melt 20 points of that away, leaving 15 points left. Now, had you hit with an AC/20, there's a 30% chance of dealing damage and punching through, leaving 15 points of armor left, but also shoving a 120mm slug through his engine, gyro, or any other components that happen to be there, possibly taking him out in one-shot, where the lasers would need at least 2-3 more hits on that area to disable him.

[Riptor]

Quote

deal damage through kinetic force, smashing whatever happens to be in their way

Actually in BT Autocannon rounds are HEAPS... so they explode on impact.. thought AP rounds are kinetic only if the discription of the BT autocannon is to believed.

[trycksh0t]

Riptor, on 18 November 2011 - 08:45 PM, said:

Actually in BT Autocannon rounds are HEAPS... so they explode on impact.. thought AP rounds are kinetic only if the discription of the BT autocannon is to believed.

HEAP do explode on impact, but also contain a kinetic energy penetrator within the shell. The high-explosives contained within a HEAP is intended to shatter the upper layers of gradated armor, allowing the penetrator to hit deeper into the target.

[Riptor]

Yeah but saying smashing through the armor sounds more like the shells they used in WW2 that would do little damage to the armor but still destroy the insides, wich seeing how mechs are build wouldnt be as effective on a mech then on a tank