8 replies to this topic

[Eleshod]

Seriously PGI I will shower you in money and totally do stuff that ill regret in the morning for the Raptor II, Void Signature and Null Signature systems as well as the Stealth Armor. Seriously, like do this and I will be the happiest scout in mechwarrior history!


http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Raptor_II


http://www.sarna.net...ignature_System


I miss this mech so bad, it's like the big ''Medium'' Brother too my Raven...

[GalaxyBluestar]

i'd wait till they get 3050 tech done right before asking for that stuff.

however at the rate things are going around 2 decades sounds about right for getting this game completed.

[FupDup]

This thing would induce so much rage from bad pilots killed by it that it would eclipse the 3PV and Coolant Flush episodes combined.

[Coralld]

Given the way they handled ECM, which is like Angels ECM with Null Sig Armor already. I wouldn't be surprised if they made Null/Stealth/Void Armor would make it so you turn completely invisible. To that I say bring on the HBK-5SG, comes with ECM and Null Sig Armor with Endo Steel, Gauss, and 2x ML.

Predator mode activate!!


To be honest, I would only really be for this if they managed to better balance what we have now.

Edited by Coralld, 25 April 2014 - 08:53 PM.

[El Bandito]

There were only 2 types of pilots I cursed to hell as "chickenshit abusers". The 3L pilots during its heyday and 5D pilots, also during its heyday. The broken hitboxes had major role in that though.

Edited by El Bandito, 25 April 2014 - 09:28 PM.

[Eleshod]

I agree completely I would not mind having them add Stealth armor, then pulling the target jam from ECM unless you're mounting Stealth armor. This is coming from a religious raven player. =D

Edited by Eleshod, 25 April 2014 - 08:54 PM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Eleshod, on 25 April 2014 - 08:38 PM, said:

Seriously PGI I will shower you in money and totally do stuff that ill regret in the morning for the Raptor II, Void Signature and Null Signature systems as well as the Stealth Armor. Seriously, like do this and I will be the happiest scout in mechwarrior history!


http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Raptor_II


http://www.sarna.net...ignature_System


I miss this mech so bad, it's like the big ''Medium'' Brother too my Raven...

and 23 years from now, you can have it. Well, make that 22.

[Lykaon]

So,this system builds 10 heat and becomes less effective when moving?

Isn't our current ECM already better than this?Sure it doesn't auto match your camo scheme or anything but it does prevent sensor detection at ranges over 200m generates zero heat,is a better AMS than AMS by preventing any missile locks,Is a superior means of enhancing comparative sensor ranges than any sensor enhancing module,jams artemis and TAG counters BAP's non ECM countering functions (whew that sounded lame even when typing it) and with the added benifit of projecting all of these magic powers to every friendly mech within 180m of you.

Yeah now that I've thought it over MWo ECM is so much better than a Null Sig or void sig or chamelionpolerizationthingy-ma-whatzit.The only thing better would be the much prized "munchkin anti everything feild emitter" but I just made that up to illistrate how rediculous all this crap is.

[Strum Wealh]

Coralld, on 25 April 2014 - 08:49 PM, said:

Given the way they handled ECM, which is like Angels ECM with Null Sig Armor already...

No, they didn't - MWO's implementation of Guardian is nothing like either Angel or VoidSig.

Spoiler

Strum Wealh, on 25 April 2014 - 04:55 AM, said:

"The Guardian ECM Suite is a broad-spectrum jamming and electronic countermeasure device, designed to reduce the efficiency of enemy long-range scanning and surveillance equipment. The Guardian interferes with sensor readings, preventing identification at ranges of more than 180 meters. Closer than that, 'Mech pilots usually rely on their own vision in case their sensors cannot override the Guardian's jamming." - Technical Readout: 2750, pg.10

"The Guardian emits a broad-band signal that interferes with all sonar, radar, UV, IR, and magscan sensors. This signal projects a "cloak" to a radius of 180 meters, protecting all units within the circle. Enemy long-range sensors can find vehicles and 'Mechs within the curtain, but the Guardian obscures the reading, preventing identification. By the time the enemy gets within visual range, sensors can sometimes override the jamming, but most pilots rely on their own eyes." - Technical Readout: 2750, pg. 92

"The Guardian ECM suite is a broad-spectrum jamming and electronic countermeasure device designed to reduce the effectiveness of enemy long-range scanning and surveillance equipment. The Clans also use an ECM suite with the same capabilities in a lighter and smaller package. A unit can mount only one ECM suite.
An ECM suite has an effect radius of 6 hexes that creates a "bubble" around the carrying unit. The ECM's disruptive abilities affect all enemy units inside this bubble, as well as any line of sight traced through the bubble. It has no effect on units friendly to the unit carrying the ECM." - Classic BattleTech Master Rules (Revised), pg. 136

"Around the end of the Reunification War, Johnston Industries (a Terran Hegemony company, working in partnership with Yelm Weapons of Fletcher) debuted the Guardian ECM suite on the newly deployed Nightshade VTOL. This broad-spectrum jamming and electronic countermeasure system revolutionized electronic warfare (EW). In a day when most communications and targeting systems had grown accustomed to a battlefield flooded by conventional electronic noise and counter-noise, the Guardian was powerful and smart enough to scramble all hostile electronics within a spherical "bubble" roughly 180 meters across. The Guardian could even adapt to and scatter contemporary EW packages like the Beagle Active Probe, Narc Missile Beacon and Artemis IV - all while simultaneously keeping friendly channels and targeting enhancers clear." - TechManual, pg. 213

Guardian has always had the 180-meter bubble, since it was introduced to BattleTech (via TRO 2750) in 1989 (which demonstrates that those posters who go around asserting things like "ECM should only protect you. Angel Suit ECM is another story." and "...see ECM not give blanket radar cover to nearby friendly mechs (that's supposed to be the separate Angel ECM equipment anyway)..." don't know what they're talking about with regard to BattleTech ECM systems ).

Guardian is - and always has been - described as essentially a combination of electronic radar jamming equipment, some degree of laser jamming equipment (to address IR & UV based lidar systems), an infrared countermeasures (IRCM) system (likely very similar to the planned CIRCM system), a sonar jamming system (see here and here), and some system meant to confuse magnetometers and magnetic anomaly detectors - everything listed other than the anti-MAD capability is a demonstrated, real-world technology.

While Guardian (and its descendants - Clan ECM, Angel ECM, and the ECM components of combined systems like Watchdog CEWS and Nova CEWS) would indeed generate an electronic noise that could theoretically be used to locate the source, both the IS and the Clans apparently did not include significant (or any?) anti-radiation munitions in their armories until the FedCom began to field the low-effectiveness Listen-Kill Missiles in 3038 & Clan Smoke Jaguar began to field the more-effective Anti-Radiation Missiles in 3055 (which the IS couldn't replicate until 3065).

On top of that, PGI utilized several of the advanced BattleTech gameplay rules from Tactical Operations in their implementation of Guardian (which is where things like the dual ECM/ECCM modes, the failure-to-detect condition, and Beagle's ability to "burn through" Guardian's jamming at short range come from), which made the PGI's Guardian implementation much more feature-intensive & complicated and which (IMO) is a large part of what's thrown so many people off.

Strum Wealh, on 25 April 2014 - 12:27 PM, said:

However, the Tactical Operations rules did allow for ECM suites to assist in negating the ability for an opposing 'Mech to establish a sensor lock.

• "The ranges of various electronic sensor systems appear in the Sensor Range Table. To make a Sensor Check, the player rolls 2D6. A result of 7 or 8 means the sensor detects any unit within its short range. A result of 5 or 6 means the sensor detects units out to its medium range. A result of 2 to 4 means the sensor detects units out to its long range. A roll of 9 to 12 means the sensor failed to detect any units. Remember that a spotting unit may use only one type of sensor per turn, which is declared to the gamemaster at the start of the turn." - TacOps, pg. 222
  
• "In the double-blind game, all ECM and stealth systems modify the die roll results of spotting units attempting to detect an enemy unit equipped with such an ECM system. Because different ECM/stealth systems have different effects against different probes and sensors, the modifiers vary depending on the spotting unit's probe/sensor and the enemy unit's ECM system. These modifiers appear in the ECM/Stealth Modifier Table. Once the sensor detection dice roll has been made (including adding any bonus modifiers from the controlling player's side), the player consults the ECM/Stealth Modifier Table and adds the applicable modifier to the roll result." - TacOps, pg. 224

PGI evidently made the intuitive leap from there to "the BattleMech's Targeting-Tracking System cannot achieve a weapons lock against something that its sensors cannot lock-onto; it cannot lock-onto what it cannot 'see'".

For MWO LRMs:
Being unable to achieve a sensor lock - and thus a weapon lock - does not prevent the weapon from being fired; when fired without a lock, MWO LRMs will go to wherever the reticle was pointed at the moment the weapon was fired (that is, the dumb-fired LRMs will not follow the reticle once they have left the launch tubes).
As such, MWO LRMs still have a decent chance of hitting a stationary or very slow-moving target (such as the classic poptart, or a team huddled against a hill/outcrop/etc - basically, the same situations against which the artillery & air strike modules would be used) - or one whose movements are so predictable that the LRMs can be launched at the point where the target is expected to be - at range. Against a fast or evading target, however, LRMs at range are unlikely to be the most-effective or easy-to-use option.

For MWO SSRMs:
Since the entire point of the Streak missile system is efficiency & ammunition conservation, the weapon is designed to not fire unless & until a weapon lock has been achieved.
As the Guardian suite can prevent an opposing 'Mech from achieveng a sensor lock (an ability well within its purview, and arguably its primary function), it can also prevent the subsequent weapon lock (since "the opposing BattleMechs' TTSs cannot lock-onto what their sensors cannot 'see'").

Note that this is different from what the more-insidious Angel suite does with SSRMs:

• The Angel ECM Suite works like standard ECM, but can also block the Bloodhound Active Probe, Artemis V and C3 Booster Systems, and even negates the locking systems of Streak missiles." - TacOps, pg. 279
  
• "Streak missiles fired into or through a hostile Angel ECM bubble will not fire if the to-hit roll fails, but on a successful Streak launcher attack, the attacker must roll on the Cluster table as though the launcher were a standard (non-Streak) model." - TacOps, pg. 279

While both Guardian and Angel can prevent an opposing 'Mech from achieving a sensor lock (with the latter being more effective against attempts to counter it (e.g. larger penalties applied to an opponent's Sensor Check) in addition to affecting the higher-grade EW equipment), Angel gains the added effect of ensuring that the guidance systems of any SSRMs that do manage to lock-on fail in-flight, thus removing the SSRMs' "guaranteed to hit" aspect and making said SSRMs act like regular SRMs (which is something that Guardian cannot do).

And on top of that, "the Angel ECM suite counts as two ECM or ECCM suites, or the player can choose to run the Angel at 1 ECM and 1 ECCM" (TacOps, pg. 100); the Angel suite is a "two-fer" system that can act like two stacked Guardian suites, where each "side" of the Angel can be set to either mode independently of the other (such that a single Angel suite can act like two adjacent disrupt-mode Guardians (and, yes, the two "sides" stack with each other in BT), two adjacent counter-mode Guardians (and, again, the two "sides" stack with each other in BT), or two adjacent Guardians with one in each mode (and no, the two "sides" of a single Angel suite don't interfere with or cancel each other when set in opposing modes in BT)).

If MWO's implementation of Guardian was based on Angel (let alone, Angel + VoidSig), it would have a greater number of capabilities AND far more potent versions of those capabilities we see in MWO's Guardian, than what we've ever seen in-game.