24 replies to this topic

[sycocys]

Just curious on this, 1/2 ton of guass ammo takes up a crit slot.

So if you have a mech with free tonnage and excess crit space how would using guass ammo as an hp buffer work out since it does zero damage when blown?

Might be only 1 hp, but it's still forcing you to place that 1 hp of damage there before another component or internal.

[Christof Romulus]

It's called Crit padding - and if you're bringing a Gauss Rifle, it's a good idea to bring half ton increments of ammo if you have the extra crit space.

However, I PROMISE you, Sycocys, if you have a mech and have any allotments of .5 tons available, you are better served by putting something on your mech that matters.

Got 1.5 tons free? Bring BAP. Got 3 tons free? Bring more heatsinks till you have 0 tons free.

[sycocys]

It would be likely without the guass, and I've got more than a few mechs with 1 slot open on each ST, Arm, and Head after DHS and weapons. Rather than toss in a CC, a few 1/2 tons of guass ammo might be just as useful.

[Lynx7725]

... What are you guys thinking of, a pinata with steel balls?

Think about it, even if you just crit pad a slot in each torso location, it's 1.5 tons -- easily a BAP or ammo or even heat sinks. I can understand it if your main weapon is gauss rifles, but deliberately crit padding...?

[Roadkill]

sycocys, on 14 December 2015 - 12:36 PM, said:

So if you have a mech with free tonnage and excess crit space

Sorry, you lost me at this point. What indecipherable space alien concept is this?

[Christof Romulus]

sycocys, on 14 December 2015 - 12:42 PM, said:

It would be likely without the guass, and I've got more than a few mechs with 1 slot open on each ST, Arm, and Head after DHS and weapons. Rather than toss in a CC, a few 1/2 tons of guass ammo might be just as useful.

So, you should be naturally crit padding already in your mech designs using heatsinks.

Honestly, do the math - let's assume you're in a 50 ton mech - so that gives you something like 43 tons to work with.

Now drop nearly half of that for engine, leaving you 21 tons.

Bring 4 double heatsinks, that will give you 18 tons. Now put on armor. You're down to approximately 9 tons for weapons and ammunition.

If you're bringing nothing but medium lasers, then you MAY have weight left over - and if you do, you should put whatever remaining weight you have into double heatsinks, which can crit pad for the medium lasers.

Bringing Gauss ammo to crit pad at the cost of .5 tons per 1 crit slot means you need 1.5 tons to crit pad the same amount as a single double heatsink - and it provides you no benefit beyond being crit padding.

It's just not worth it unless you're bringing a Gauss rifle to begin with.

[LORD ORION]

When you shoot me, I'll be moving fast, in the air, and rolling damage.

I AM INVINCIBLE

[Tyler Valentine]

sycocys, on 14 December 2015 - 12:42 PM, said:

It would be likely without the guass, and I've got more than a few mechs with 1 slot open on each ST, Arm, and Head after DHS and weapons. Rather than toss in a CC, a few 1/2 tons of guass ammo might be just as useful.

Time for a bigger engine...

[Christof Romulus]

LORD ORION, on 14 December 2015 - 01:28 PM, said:

When you shoot me, I'll be moving fast, in the air, and rolling damage.

I AM INVINCIBLE

I facepalmed so hard I nearly put my eye out.

Well done, sir. Well done.

[sycocys]

Tyler Valentine, on 14 December 2015 - 01:55 PM, said:

Time for a bigger engine...

My Preferred Wubmaster for example - ends up with 2 free slots and 2 free tons. Currently I chop off 1 ton of armor and put a CC in the head. But I could just as well put inert guass ammo in there to suck up a hit as when you are firing from MPL range the CC isn't really earning its 3 tons.

Not going to be hugely life sustaining, but if you can glance a blow into a wasted shot destroying ammo, that can give you one more hammer to drop before you go down.

[sycocys]

Also just as an exercise in expanding the notion of crit padding - from what I can tell DHS and Guass ammo have the same HP.

DHS takes up 3 slots - so 1 crit to one of those slots eliminates the DHS and all 3 slots.

If you had 3 slots of 1/2 ton guass rounds you'd to my understanding have 3 separate entities that would need to be crit instead of one.

So it would have to damage all 3 before it could move along. Correct or no? Seems like this is how it works with weapons going down when you have multiple stacked.

[Revis Volek]

sycocys, on 14 December 2015 - 03:50 PM, said:

My Preferred Wubmaster for example - ends up with 2 free slots and 2 free tons. Currently I chop off 1 ton of armor and put a CC in the head. But I could just as well put inert guass ammo in there to suck up a hit as when you are firing from MPL range the CC isn't really earning its 3 tons.

Not going to be hugely life sustaining, but if you can glance a blow into a wasted shot destroying ammo, that can give you one more hammer to drop before you go down.

This mech would benefit more from two DHS then 4 1/2 slots of ammo it cant use.

[AEgg]

sycocys, on 14 December 2015 - 03:56 PM, said:

Also just as an exercise in expanding the notion of crit padding - from what I can tell DHS and Guass ammo have the same HP.

DHS takes up 3 slots - so 1 crit to one of those slots eliminates the DHS and all 3 slots.

If you had 3 slots of 1/2 ton guass rounds you'd to my understanding have 3 separate entities that would need to be crit instead of one.

So it would have to damage all 3 before it could move along. Correct or no? Seems like this is how it works with weapons going down when you have multiple stacked.

Technically, yes. Practically, no, not in the vast majority of mechs.

Generally, once you've taken enough damage to lose a component, you'll probably lose the entire section before you lose another. Assaults (and mediums/heavies with as much structure as assualts) are really the only exceptions I can think of.

If you have exactly half a ton free, and aren't running any ammunition based weapons, sure, I guess it's OK to throw on some gauss ammo or CASE. But it's definitely not worth dropping armor to equip something you won't use. And at more than half a ton free, take AMS and a half ton of ammo, another heatsink, BAP, or whatever else you can fit somewhere.

[Roadkill]

asdf

sycocys, on 14 December 2015 - 03:50 PM, said:

My Preferred Wubmaster for example - ends up with 2 free slots and 2 free tons.

Drop some armor and upgrade one MPL to a LPL. They've fixed the bug that was allowing MPLs to avoid Ghost Heat, so you can only safely fire 6 now (just like ML). Ideally you'd want to switch 2 MPL over to LPL, but that's a much larger rework.

sycocys, on 14 December 2015 - 03:56 PM, said:

So it would have to damage all 3 before it could move along. Correct or no?

Sort of... not really.

Each 1/2 ton of Gauss would have to be randomly hit separately, so you might lose one and then something important and then another one, etc. But you are correct that a single hit would take out the DHS as padding.

[AEgg]

DarthRevis, on 14 December 2015 - 04:14 PM, said:

This mech would benefit more from two DHS then 4 1/2 slots of ammo it cant use.

He doesn't have the space for two DHS. It could fit one more if he dropped BAP, but that leaves even more free tonnage.

I'd say just mount either an SRM2 with a ton of ammo or AMS. Neither is going to help very often but either would be more useful than ammo you can't use.

[Roadkill]

AEgg, on 14 December 2015 - 04:24 PM, said:

I'd say just mount either an SRM2 with a ton of ammo or AMS. Neither is going to help very often but either would be more useful than ammo you can't use.

Honestly, he doesn't need full armor on that thing either. Drop half a ton of it and then mount an SRM-4 with half a ton of ammo.

[Mcgral18]

sycocys, on 14 December 2015 - 12:36 PM, said:

Just curious on this, 1/2 ton of guass ammo takes up a crit slot.

So if you have a mech with free tonnage and excess crit space how would using guass ammo as an hp buffer work out since it does zero damage when blown?

Might be only 1 hp, but it's still forcing you to place that 1 hp of damage there before another component or internal.

No...because when you get Crit, you can't prevent that 15% extra damage.
If that's what you mean, I'm not entirely sure.

Even if you have nothing in a component (The Ghost Torsi being a good example), they still take Crits and deal 15% extra damage. Hence how I destroyed 64 IS+A with 3 AC20 rounds, I got 3 Crits, dealing 6 extra damage, but there's nothing in those Ghost Torsi.

On the other hand, if you have a Full torso, you still take that 15% extra damage, but you also can lose items inside the torso from Crits. Crit padding protects items inside, if RNGeesus likes you, but it doesn't prevent any damage.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

I prefer using ac20 ammo for this. At least it buffs the guy that kills me's damage when I eventually go up like a roman candle

[sycocys]

Roadkill, on 14 December 2015 - 04:29 PM, said:

Honestly, he doesn't need full armor on that thing either. Drop half a ton of it and then mount an SRM-4 with half a ton of ammo.

I tried both for a while, and honestly it makes the ghost heat unmanageable for me.

Mostly I was curious on the notion of just crit padding with guass rounds because you can put them places you can't put case. Most of which was answered, I suppose I'll probably just stick with the CC on this guy - not really worth its weight but faster info is faster info I suppose.

[Troutmonkey]

LORD ORION, on 14 December 2015 - 01:28 PM, said:

When you shoot me, I'll be moving fast, in the air, and rolling damage.

I AM INVINCIBLE

lol. Too bad you'd be better at rolling damage if you put armour on the arms instead...