3
But hey, I admit, I LOVE the idea of a 'mech exploding in a massive conflagration, but without the engine explosion what else is there? Well, I'll tell you a forgotten little element of Battletech that Microsoft ignored outright: The Ammo Explosion.
How does the ammo explosion affect gameplay? Well, it's an added risk for using ammunition based weapons, which tend to be cheaper and run cooler, as a whole, than energy weapons, albeit at the cost of weight. However, designs that carry too much ammo into battle risk being the equivalent of being filled with yea many tons of TNT. It doesn't take much to set it off - just a poke of a machine gun or small laser, and suddenly the entire 'mech is blown apart with so much force, nothing salvagable remains.
But that takes us to another forgotten element of the Mechwarrior and Battletech games - the Critical Hit. Crit hits rarely happen when a 'mech is still well armored (1.1% of shots that hit will cause any kind of critical hit), but once the armor is damaged enough on a particular location (Counting as none left), you start to do damage to a mechs' internal structure, and more importantly, have a high chance (40% or so per weapon grouping) to do damage to the internal components, or "Criticals". Some of these have minor effects, like hitting a heat sink or arm actuator, while others can have dramatically handicapping effects, like gyroscope hits, engine hits, cockpit hits, and the ever-daunting Ammo Bin hit.
As to fears of crit hits and ammo explosions causing energy weapon favoritism, consider for a moment that while an autocannon isn't the best choice on small 'mechs, they tend to shine the most on bigger, bulky designs that can afford the AC's weight. These larger designs often can't field as many energy weapons, because these guns produce so much heat that you need to invest in huge amounts of heat sinks to compensate (Take the Awesome as an example. Almost 1/4 of it's weight is dedicated to heat sinks alone; that's more than it's armor, and only 3.5 fewer tons than it invests in weaponry). That makes the AC5 and 10 very tempting candidates, especially when larger 'mechs are more likely to take crit hits over the course of a battle than a light or medium, which tend to die from excessive direct damage. The ammo explosions act as a very interesting equalizer in a battle, giving players a chance similar to a headshot, in which even a mighty Atlas or Orion can be felled with a single lucky shot. This is something that we saw back in Mechwarrior 2 for sure, and possibly in Mechwarrior 3 (I lost my disk years ago).
Of course, the way to counter this vulnerability on any ammo-toting 'mech was to dump your ammo. If the part of your 'mech where the ammo was getting close to having it's armor fully depleted, a push of a button would dump all your remaining ammo out of the back of your 'mech. Of course, this had risks of it's own, as a lucky shot from behind could ignite the dumping ammo, tracing it's way back into your now-exposed torso. Granted that you were smart about where your ammo was dumped, this wasn't a problem.
I seriously think that the Critical Hits system, as well as the Ammo Explosions and ammo dumping systems, should be reinstated in this game. It's just one of many things that Microsoft opted to remove for the sake of the layman. 10 years later and after the near collapse of PC Gaming, I find that PC gamers tend to prefer complexity and detail, while rules-light players tend to veer more towards console gaming. As such, that, combined with a large number of Mechwarrior 2 players on the board, gives me a feeling that this is the route that would be best taken, in order to restore to the game one of it's defining features that separated it from the pack.
Edited by ice trey, 15 November 2011 - 10:21 PM.
