31 replies to this topic

[Strum Wealh]

Alan Davion, on 05 May 2016 - 08:10 PM, said:

Didn't someone just recently say that LBX ammo consisted of the standard slug round and "air burst" rounds that don't actually act like buckshot until they're within a few meters of the target, whereupon they explode and the sub-munitions do the actual damage?


Pretty sure that's what they said.

Why not just have the LBX function like a PPC bolt does right now? Probably easier for PGI to code.

If they said that, they'd be wrong.

Every description of the LB-X cluster round from BT lore, canon, and rules describes the cluster rounds as behaving like a canister round (that is, a "gigantic shotgun shell") rather than a Shrapnel shell (named for its inventor, a British Army officer named Henry Shrapnel) or any other form of timer-detonated or proximity-detonated system.

As one of several examples:
"The LB-X autocannon can fire cluster munitions, which act like an anti-BattleMech shotgun in combat. When fired, the ammunition fragments into several smaller submunitions. This improves the attacker’s chances of striking a critical location but disperses total damage by spreading hits over the target area rather than concentrating the damage on one location. Cluster munitions can be used only in LB-X autocannon, not in standard or Ultra autocannon types." - Classic BattleTech Master Rules, pg. 132

As such, PGI's current "shotgun mechanic" is true to BT lore/canon/rules, and there is neither need nor justification for any sort of "airburst mode".

JustEvil, on 05 May 2016 - 08:53 PM, said:

Hm... How about turning every LB-X into perma slug firing and turning every AC into burst firing like in lore? Would spare PGI time for developing switching mechanics (which is so hard to do because?) since it is just a copy & paste to different weapon.


What was the primary ammunition used in LB-X anyway?

The LB-X AC munition types consisted of standard AC ammunition where each "round" is actually a cassette containing multiple individual shells that are fired in a single burst with each pull of the trigger (each cassette contained as few as 3 individual shells (as was the case with the Marauder's "GM Whirlwind" AC/5) or as many as 100 individual shells (as was the case with the Victor's "Pontiac 100" AC/20) per cassette, with 10 shells per cassette being a fairly common number), and the special LB-X cluster munitions where a single shell fragmented upon firing & released a number of explosive submunitions (that is, each LB-X pellet is actually more like a bomblet or grenade, rather than solid shot).

[Strum Wealh]

Andi Nagasia, on 05 May 2016 - 08:04 PM, said:

Thoughts, Comments, Concerns?

Personally, I'd like to see a true-to-BT implementation of the two firing modes:

• "Slug mode", where the LB-X fires in a burst of shells similar to the current implementation of the C-ACs
  
• "Cluster mode", where the LB-X would retain the current "shotgun-style" implementation

With regard to the cluster mode, I'd like to see PGI continue their embrace of lore-supported quirks and introduce an "adjustable choke" function to the LB-X ACs, attributed to the weapon's "Mercury-VII targeting system" and behaving as follows:

• If there is no target selected, the LB-X will default to an Atlas-sized spread at the weapon's listed optimum range.
  
• If there is a target selected, the spread will adjust itself so that the spread will match the height of the target at any range between point-blank and the listed maximum range.

The two modes would essentially become "pinpoint, but not front-loaded" (slug mode) and "front-loaded, but not pinpoint" (cluster mode), while being lighter, less bulky, and longer-ranged than the same-class Standard AC.
Conversely, the Standard ACs would retain the advantage of being both pinpoint and front-loaded in terms of their damage profile, while having the disadvantages of being heavier, bulkier, and shorter-ranged.

Thoughts?

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

LordNothing, on 06 May 2016 - 12:35 AM, said:

variable geometry blunderbuss. who builds such a weapon?

Remington.

[LordNothing]

one of my old quake c mods had an ammo switch. a toggle sets a flag, and then the weapon firing code spawns the correct projectile based on that flag, consuming the correct ammo. and surely whatever they are coding in is better than quake c (you couldn't even define custom data types).

[Andi Nagasia]

this idea is to give LBX weapons a Temp Solution to Ammo Switching,
with suddle XML coding this could be Implemented and work well,

[JustEvil]

Strum Wealh, on 06 May 2016 - 11:26 AM, said:

The LB-X AC munition types consisted of standard AC ammunition where each "round" is actually a cassette containing multiple individual shells that are fired in a single burst with each pull of the trigger (each cassette contained as few as 3 individual shells (as was the case with the Marauder's "GM Whirlwind" AC/5) or as many as 100 individual shells (as was the case with the Victor's "Pontiac 100" AC/20) per cassette, with 10 shells per cassette being a fairly common number), and the special LB-X cluster munitions where a single shell fragmented upon firing & released a number of explosive submunitions (that is, each LB-X pellet is actually more like a bomblet or grenade, rather than solid shot).

I know how it works in the lore, had read Sarna. I was asking if standard type used fo LB-X was slug or shotgun one.

Anyway I think I misinterpreted something since I've read somewhere on the forums that IS AC's, are behaving like LB-X slug mode, so... basically my first post doesn't make sense in the lore terms.

Edited by JustEvil, 06 May 2016 - 09:08 PM.

[Random Carnage]

You wouldn't need two physical types of shot. Use a mechanic that mimics "waxing" shotgun shells so the pellets hold form as a single "slug" until point of impact.

Such a system would not be as ballistic efficient, nor have the same penetration as a single projectile, but this could be mirrored by reduced range and more aggressive damage drop off over distance than a comparable AC version.

You could justify this mechanic in game by inducing a super magnetic firld into the rounds to get them to clump together. It really doesn't matter how you justify it, but consider the relative merits vs the dedicated AC round, which should remain superior in that function.

[Satan n stuff]

LordNothing, on 06 May 2016 - 02:32 PM, said:

one of my old quake c mods had an ammo switch. a toggle sets a flag, and then the weapon firing code spawns the correct projectile based on that flag, consuming the correct ammo. and surely whatever they are coding in is better than quake c (you couldn't even define custom data types).

It is, but their programmers on the other hand...
Also defining custom data types is generally not something game scripting languages support.

[LordNothing]

Satan n stuff, on 07 May 2016 - 01:37 AM, said:

It is, but their programmers on the other hand...
Also defining custom data types is generally not something game scripting languages support.

lua can do it. you stick everything in a table, and then create a metatable which defines the type, operators, member functions etc. its almost as good as a c++ class. i have the starts of a game engine written entirely in oop lua. as i understand mwo is mostly lua and a little c++ thrown in.

Edited by LordNothing, 07 May 2016 - 10:41 AM.

[Strum Wealh]

JustEvil, on 06 May 2016 - 09:07 PM, said:

I know how it works in the lore, had read Sarna. I was asking if standard type used fo LB-X was slug or shotgun one.

Anyway I think I misinterpreted something since I've read somewhere on the forums that IS AC's, are behaving like LB-X slug mode, so... basically my first post doesn't make sense in the lore terms.

That's like looking at the real-world dual-feed shotguns (like the Kel-Tek KSG or the UTAS UTS-15) and asking which round type (slugs or shotshells) is the "primary munition type" - the real answer to the question is "both, with selection at any given moment depending on the immediate need".

As far as the (mis)interpretatyion you'd mentioned, BT has nearly all ACs implemented as burst-fire weapons.

• "Rather than firing at a single target, any type of autocannon can be 'walked' across two targets close to one another. An LB-X autocannon firing a cluster shot and Ultra and Rotary autocannons firing at multiple targets are a special case." - Tactical Operations, pg. 100
  
• "Ardan ran a hurried check on his Victor's main armament The right arm Pontiac 100 autocannon had the best chance of scoring a crippling hit on the Thunderbolt, but he was afraid that his swim in the mud might have fouled its feed mechanism. The autocannon was a devastating weapon. It fired high-speed, rapid-fire streams of explosive, armor-piercing shells from cassettes or carousels fed into the gun one at a time by a complex and occasionally balky autoloader mechanism. Each cassette held 100 shells, and by a widespread but commonly accepted looseness of terminology, each cassette was itself considered to be one round. One cassette round was already loaded. Nineteen more were stored in the autoloader chamber high up in his Victor's right torso. He would have to use that single round carefully, because if the loader jammed, he would not get another chance." - The Sword and the Dagger, ch. 13
  
• "And ammunition. The infantry was down to a few tens of rounds per man for some weapons. Just after a major battle, special rounds such as inferno warheads were vanishingly scarce. The shortage ran right up to the projectile weapons of the various 'Mechs. Grayson himself had fired fourteen 'rounds' of a hundred 120mm shells each. That left him with eleven ammo cassettes - enough, if he conserved his shots, for one battle. He had already checked with Davis McCall and found that the Bannockburn, the Scotsman's Rifleman, was down to six cassette rounds - 600 shells - for each of its autocannons. And the way a Rifleman went through AC ammo..."- The Price of Glory, ch. 13

Even very large caliber ACs fired in bursts. For example, each of the 185mm "ChemJet Gun" AC/20s of the Demolisher tank needed to fire a burst of four shells to deal 20 units of damage per firing (as stated on page 98 of Era Report: 3052), so even standard IS ACs were not single-shell weapons in BT lore/canon/rules.
Additionally, TRO 3026 (published in 1987) indicates specific burst sizes for several AC examples, including the Mechbuster's "Zeus 75" AC/20 ("...a four-round burst of hyper-velocity depleted uranium armor penetrators (HDUAP)..."), the Hetzer's "Crusher SH Cannon" AC/20 AC/20 ("...the burst of ten hyper-velocity slugs that the Crusher fires..."), and the Warrior H-7's "SarLon AutoCannon" AC/2 ("...firing a ten-round burst of 30mm hypervelocity slugs with each pull of the trigger...").

BT TT gameplay mechanics are designed for simplicity (e.g. "Nobody wants to roll 100 to-hit rolls for a single salvo from a Pontiac 100 AC/20, so it was simplified for the board game to one roll per cassette."), and assumes that the combination of the MechWarrior's Gunnery skill & the 'Mech's Targeting-Tracking System were generally good enough to put all of the shells in a relatively small area (high precision/consistency, variable accuracy; see here and here).

In other words, all ACs are actually "supposed to" behave like the current C-AC implementation, but PGI chose to use a single-shell implementation as a game design decision.

[wanderer]

dervishx5, on 06 May 2016 - 02:24 AM, said:

True IS LBX10 makes IS AC10s even more pointless than they are now since they weigh 1 ton less and would have the ability to switch ammo types.

Same deal as Clan weapons- you make the IS LB-10X fire slower than the AC/10, maybe even change it's rate of damage falloff to a higher rate to compensate for it's longer base range. You could even tweak it's heat up a bit.

But honestly, LB-X cluster munitions should function like a flak round, not a blunderbuss that translates increased range into increased useless scatter. That is, they do break into submunitions- but near the target, not when leaving the barrel. In TT, you can fire an LB-X and hit with every pellet at long range, which in most cases isn't happening in MWO...

Edited by wanderer, 07 May 2016 - 01:46 PM.

[Andi Nagasia]

then a simple solution,
add the Charge mechanic, as i said its half a sec,
it ether Fires like a shot gun(click, or hold and charge but not enough Charge before release)
or its charged and fires like a Slug(0Spread)(hold Charge, the Weapon always fires at Full Charge)
Add +1second to all LBXs coolddowns if they need to be balanced out more,
Edit- Spelling

Edited by Andi Nagasia, 08 May 2016 - 10:48 AM.