13 replies to this topic

[Gorondu]

In the ingame videos I have seen so far, when a laser (green ray) hits the target, it only starts glowing a little bit. No smoke, no explosion, no fire. This looks pretty boring. It looks like the laser only heatens up the armor of the enemy mech and thats it. I would like to see a brighter glowing where I hit, smoke, fire and maybe some little random explosions and glowing sparks flying around.

An ingame video with much laser action is here:



Here's a video of a real laser cutting steel. There you see the many glowing sparks flying around (molten metal):



Edit: Changed mechwarrior ingame video to an official one.

Edited by Gorondu, 07 July 2012 - 06:23 AM.

[Gorondu]

Here a video of a laser cutting ceramic (mech armor consist mainly of ceramic afaik):

[Chillybill]

1st - the video of the laser cutting metal aint the same because it uses a blast of air to clear the molten metal, imagin what it would look like without the blast of air, just a trail of molten material?
2nd - the video of the ceramic would be a little closer to what occurs in MWO except the lazer is way underpowered
3rd - OMG dude I can't believe that you found that video and really can't believe you actually posted that here in this forum probably be a good idea to take it off and put up a legal video because that one isn't, but I think you knew that!

[Aethon]

I would like to point out something that I thought was obvious: MWO is still in beta, and NO video out there right now represents the final product, leaked or otherwise.

[Lightdragon]

those are also only medium class lasers, they are supposed to be little popgun weapons so it looks fine hit em with the red ones (large) i bet they will leave bigger holes

[Fooooo]

Even tho this thread will most likely be locked / deleted I wanted to get a word in.

After refraining from looking for any non-offical vids, as I didn't want to cloud my judgement of the game from such footage, I gave into this one............and im loving how the LOS works and how people drop off radar etc, its very cool and the first time ive seen , quite clearly , how it actually works.

Edited by Fooooo, 07 July 2012 - 06:28 AM.

[Strum Wealh]

"Standard BattleMech armor is composed of several layers providing various degrees of protection and support. The first layer is extremely strong steel, the result of crystal alignment and radiation treatment, which is also very brittle. The second layer is a ceramic, cubic boron nitride, which combined with a web of artificial diamond fibers acts as a backstop to the steel layer. These two layers rest atop a titanium alloy honeycomb structure which provides support, and a layer of self-sealing polymer sealant which allows for space and underwater operations."

"In the BattleTech universe, armor is ablative in nature. This means that it is generally destroyed or blown off when hit, but in the process of doing so, it absorbs enormous energies, protecting the unit it is mounted on. While powerful blows will still rock a vehicle, there will be little, if any, internal damage as long as armor plating still remains. Armor-piercing rounds do exist for certain weapons, but they require a higher technology level and cost more. As a result, destroying a 'Mech requires either immense firepower, concentrated fire on a vulnerable location, or a lucky hit."

As previously noted, the laser cutter uses a blast of air to remove molten metal from the piece being worked.

Lightdragon, on 07 July 2012 - 06:12 AM, said:

those are also only medium class lasers, they are supposed to be little popgun weapons so it looks fine hit em with the red ones (large) i bet they will leave bigger holes

For MWO:
Red beam = Small Laser
Green beam = Medium Laser
Blue beam = Large Laser
Blue bolt = PPC

[Lightdragon]

well thats bass-ackwards from other mech games

[Schtirlitz]

Personnaly, i don't care. Visual effects should be good-looking and that's it.
Nothing more.

[Strum Wealh]

Lightdragon, on 07 July 2012 - 08:09 AM, said:

well thats bass-ackwards from other mech games

MechWarrior 2 had Large Lasers as blue and Medium Lasers as green.
See here.
Presumably, the Small Lasers were red, but I haven't found video of them being used in MW2.

MechWarrior 3 used the reverse - blue for Small Lasers, green for Medium Lasers, and red for Large Lasers.

MechWarrior 4 used different colors for each laser type, with all laser sizes of the same type being the same color (red for IS Standard Lasers and IS Pulse Lasers, green for Clan ER Lasers and ER Pulse Lasers, blue for IS X-Pulse Lasers).

The idea seems to have been that longer wavelengths (the red end of the spectrum) correspond to lower energy values while shorter wavelengths (toward the blue/violet end of the spectrum) correspond to higher energy values.
See here.

[Lord Ikka]

As far as the current videos go, we've seen red small lasers and green medium. Also, a PPC blast in the Assault video by a Catapult that was a blue-white burst.

[Wyr]

I think the effects are only for the first few minutes, and when you show the game to a friend (not the closed beta with NDA, obviously). For every other situation what matters is that weapon effects should be distinguishable. So color coding the laser sizes help, regardless if it is acceptable from scientific standpoints or not. But if it can be done a bit more accurately all the better.

[Strum Wealh]

Lord Ikka, on 07 July 2012 - 09:22 AM, said:

As far as the current videos go, we've seen red small lasers and green medium. Also, a PPC blast in the Assault video by a Catapult that was a blue-white burst.

#19 from the screenshots posted at Massively:


The POV is from a modified -K2 Catapult firing two Large Lasers (blue beams, upper-left and upper-right) and two Medium Lasers (green beams, lower-left and lower-right).

So, we know that MWO Large Lasers are, in fact, blue.

[Lord Ikka]

Damn, should have payed more attention :-P
It does look like the pulse lasers will follow the color scheme, they just seem to be a stuttering beam instead of a solid beam.