15 replies to this topic

[Khanahar]

Been reading the material pretty avidly lately, but I can't say I really understand how the whole hardpoint system is going to work. I get that the hardpoints come straight from whatever variant of the 'mech you bought, okay. But how many hardpoints does each weapon take?

The DevBlog mentioned that a Large Laser could be replaced by a Medium and Small Laser, suggesting that it isn't just about the number of "holes in the front of the 'mech." Will it be MW4 style, where hardpoints are essentially equivalent to slots (except with ballistic weapons)? With missiles, it gets even more confusing, given that no two missile weapons at this tech stage (except SRM-2 and the streak variant) look the same on the outside of the 'mech.

Anyway, if anyone who gets it better than I could explain, it would be very helpful for those of us trying to theorycraft up interesting variants.

Cheers!

[Davoke]

From everything I've seen/heard, each weapon takes up both slots and hardpoints.
Slots hold weapons/ammo/electronics
Hardpoints dictate how many weapons you can mount, though i don't know how that will work(i.e. weapon sizes)
So, i think it works like that.
That's just speculation though.

[Der Zivilist]

The gist is this:

The mechlab works exactly as it does in tabletop, where you can fill a certain number of slots ("criticals") with whatever the heck you want, up to a maximum tonnage.

What MWO does in addition to the tabletop rules is imposing restrictions as to what weapon can be placed where. Take the Hunchback. It has an AC/20, a ballistic weapon, in its right torso. In tabletop rules, you can pull that out and put a LRM-20 and two medium lasers there if you wanted to. In MWO, you can't - you can only put in ballistics weapons into that location, and only a limited number. That is what "hardpoints" are.

The reason this was done is to prevent "boating", that is, loading Mechs out with crazy, one-sided fits like 20 medium lasers. Also, it allows the devs to add variants of each Mech with different hardpoint configurations (like the Catapult-K2, which has energy weapons instead of missiles in its shoulder pods). Finally, it helps with immersion, because it would be fairly unrealistic to see a Mech that is modeled with a big laser cannon to start launching swarms of missiles from the barrel, while firing off PPCs from its MG mounts.

Edited by Der Zivilist, 06 July 2012 - 08:46 AM.

[Minsc]

1 hard point = 1 weapon equip-able in that slot.

For example we have a mech with the following hard points and and equipped weapons:

Missile HP : LRM15 equipped
Energy HP : PPC equipped
Energy HP : small laser equipped
Ballistic HP : AC20 equipped

Now, that means we can equip a maximum of 4 weapons (respecting weight and critical restrictions). We can then modify our mech as we want within those restrictions. Moving on :

Missile HP : LRM15 ---> SRM4
Energy HP : PPC ---> Medium Laser
Energy HP : small laser ---> Small Pulse Laser
Ballistic HP : AC20 ---> Machine gun

We can't for example, turn the AC20 into 4 machine guns, or the LRM 15 into 3 LRM 5s. You have 1 equip-able slot that can be traded for another of the associated weapon type assuming all weight and critical slot restrictions are met.

[Der Zivilist]

An addition to Minsc's good example:

Keep in mind that Mechs in MWO may have more hardpoints than weapon in one location. For example, I just read a few minutes ago that the Hunchback apparently has 3 ballistic hardpoints in its right torso, despite only mounting a single AC/20 there. You could pull the AC/20 out and put in 3 MGs. But not more than 3. And if there were only 2 hardpoints instead of 3, then you could only put 2 there.

This will vary a lot between different Mechs and their variants.

[Khanahar]

So a LRM-20 and an SRM-2 both use a single hardpoint? What about the example in the DevBlog about a Large laser being replaced with a small and medium? And doesn't the Hunchback in the MechLab video have 3 ballistics slots where the AC20 goes?

Edit: you posted while I typed. So the hardpoints are not, in fact, limited to the default loadouts?

Edited by Khanahar, 06 July 2012 - 08:53 AM.

[Minsc]

Der Zivilist, on 06 July 2012 - 08:50 AM, said:

An addition to Minsc's good example:

Keep in mind that Mechs in MWO may have more hardpoints than weapon in one location. For example, I just read a few minutes ago that the Hunchback apparently has 3 ballistic hardpoints in its right torso, despite only mounting a single AC/20 there. You could pull the AC/20 out and put in 3 MGs. But not more than 3. And if there were only 2 hardpoints instead of 3, then you could only put 2 there.

This will vary a lot between different Mechs and their variants.

Pretty much this. The video example on the hunchback looks like this:

Ballistic HP : AC20 equipped
Ballistic HP : (nothing)
Ballistic HP : (nothing)

The video then did the following :

Ballistic HP : AC20 ---> AC5
Ballistic HP : (nothing) ---> Machine gun
Ballistic HP : (nothing) ---> Machine gun

So as long as a hard point exists it is theoretically usable. Seeing as how the videos are old, I can only assume development has come a significant way since then and we can should assume the example hard points may have changed.

But yes, if a hard point exists (even if nothing is equipped there), you can slap weapons in that slot.

Edited by Minsc, 06 July 2012 - 08:56 AM.

[Khanahar]

So there's really no way of knowing what hardpoints a 'mech will have until release?

Thanks guys, btw, for the helpful answers.

[Minsc]

Not a problem, glad to be of assistance.

[Felicitatem Parco]

I don't know if you have seen the MechLab breakdown video.

http://mwomercs.com/...deo/dPoqjslGcO0

It might help put all this material into context.

[Name48928]

Khanahar, on 06 July 2012 - 08:55 AM, said:

So there's really no way of knowing what hardpoints a 'mech will have until release?

Not until PGI releases the specs anyway.

There's been some speculation that most mechs will have unused hardpoints (like in the Hunchback example). But we really won't know for sure. MWO is still in beta, and things can change radically between now and release.

[Latriam]

I did notice that they are sticking to the true 3025 variants well at least for the 4 founders mechs.
I have not checked out the others as thouroughly.
As in the AS7-D atlas here is the same (weapons mind you) as the 3025 TRO
you can read all the mechs specs here
http://www.mechgroun...=174&Itemid=186

this page will start you on the atlas but you can goto the mechground homepage to find different variants the list on the right should coincide with all the mechs they have released.

[Butane9000]

They did a very insightful developer blog on this.

You can find it here: http://mwomercs.com/...blog-6-mechlab/

[Khanahar]

So it seems it's uniformly 1 weapon, 1 hardpoint. Good to know.

Still seems weird with missile racks though...

[BoudahXL]

Nice thread, and informative. Thanks

[Khanahar]

For whatever it's worth, every section with hardpoints in the video seen had 3. Can't really extrapolate on that (for all sorts of reasons), but still interesting.

For anyone planning out a Hunchie variant:
RT: 3 Ballistic

LA: 3 Energy
RA: 3 Energy
CT: 3 Energy