5 replies to this topic

[Hunka Junk]

So, if each piece of armor/body section has a set value, why do people recommend lasers to open a mech up and ballistics to finish it off?

Does that mean that different kinds of weapons do less damage to the armored shell compared to the innards?

[Koniving]

Hunka Junk, on 18 July 2016 - 10:54 AM, said:

So, if each piece of armor/body section has a set value, why do people recommend lasers to open a mech up and ballistics to finish it off?

Does that mean that different kinds of weapons do less damage to the armored shell compared to the innards?

Not quite.

They recommend "Machine guns" or "LBX" for the "finish it off" bit, usually, because it has a higher success rate of doing critical or "Crit" damage, which is damage to the critical components (i.e. weapons, equipment, actuators, etc) of their mech. This can be crucial in disabling enemy weapons and detonating enemy ammunition before you even destroy the body part.

Sometimes a laser then autocannon combination is suggested because lasers are hot -- and autocannons are not. So you get hot blasting away with lasers to do away with the armor and while probably too hot to keep firing, instead of cooling down you follow up with a few autocannon salvos to finish it as you cool.

Now...
Far as innards, they're about the same in what they can deal to the actual structure as no matter how crit damage is divided up, it will all pool as a "15% of the total crit damage dealt is given as additional structural damage." However crit damage itself is handled differently between weapon types.
Beam weapons have a duration, and each "tick" of this duration could 'hit' something else, spreading damage among different things inside. (At least this is the most plausible theories, it isn't really explained beyond "there's 1 check each time it is fired"). Meanwhile a single shot autocannon is "Bam", hit or miss, all the damage of a successful crit is applied to a single piece of equipment. Since all weapons could crit up to 3 times per use, this means that an AC/20 could do a total of 60 units of crit damage, applied to 3 pieces of equipment, destroying 3 equipment instantly (since each one only has 10 health or less). Quite devastating.

Clan autocannons have their crit damage divided up "per bullet" of each burst; each one does get its own roll so there's some saving grace to it but a single bullet will never 'destroy' a component of full health (even a Gauss Rifle; though ECM is a possibility to be destroyed in a single shot of a UAC/20).

Clan ER PPC has a very weird trait, in that it does 3 crit checks (one at the point of impact [with 10 damage per crit here], one to the left and one to the right [each of these have crits worth 2.5 damage per crit]). Hit detection can be wonky though if the damage splits between armored and unarmored sections which is why people tend to say to avoid the PPCs altogether.

(An LBX has a crit check and can triple crit for each of its 'shells' per shot, this plus its higher than normal chances means that they can really fry something quick, especially if you can get all the shells into a single body part).

The real reason lasers are generally suggested is you can "scan" the armor by 'creasing' it with lasers; any body parts that start to turn red faster than others are especially easy to destroy, giving you a way in.

I hope this helps.

Edited by Koniving, 18 July 2016 - 11:41 AM.

[Plastic Guru]

You know...I'm in a conversation about 23rd or 31st century computer power in another thread.

While not openly discussed...armor has layers. Like "Chobham" Laminate Armor the Brits use that is supposed to be better at defeating HEAT rounds. Or the American "reactive" armor that uses expendable explosive plates to also defeat incoming rounds.

Mechs, at least in the technical readouts, have some differences in armor structure and application. Like the Spider and it's distinctive red armor sealing. Maybe Lasers are good all around since they can defeat the outer surface...they're not a 'thing' but a beam. Maybe AC's are good because it can defeat 'ablative' (laser diminishing) armor?

Again, this is a game...as I keep getting told So you have to have some..ok...a lot of commonality in cause and effect. Otherwise you'd need a supercomputer to figure things like angle of round deflection, structural integrity, type of round or beam, ablative ability, ballistic ability, atmospherics..etc. So we wind up with very simplified combat results. Real world? A 20mm shell at 1300 meters 'should' have a LOT more punch than a 2.1 megajoule laser in atmosphere. In the real world a 20mm shell has a much bigger problem of being deflected at a lot of engagement angles. Real world 12.7mm machine guns are great against a lot of things but not armor (which kind of has game effects since they're used once armor is breached).

These things bug me till I jump in Mr Ouchy (Locust 1v with AC2) and shoot up the world...then I forget about reality and just enjoy the Daka Daka...

Plastic Guru

Edited by Plastic Guru, 18 July 2016 - 12:16 PM.

[Hunka Junk]

Thanks Koniving!

Plastic,

We are definitely, at this point, playing one of them games based on what the poor plebes who lived before internet thought about the future.

It is exceedingly clear that they could see into the future about as far as 1993, and that was wayyy far off.

On the plus side, the actual weaponry of the 30th century will not involve any skill in its use, and the damage will be instant vaporization. It just wouldn't be a very fun game.

Actually, they do have one real 30th century weapon in MWO. It's called the long tom, and it's about to get dialed back to the 23rd century or so.

But I totally get where you're coming from.

[S 0 L E N Y A]

Extra crit chance has little value in the current meta.
Who cares about destroying individual pieces of equipment when you can just destroy the entire body component altogether?

[Koniving]

Hunka Junk, on 18 July 2016 - 12:50 PM, said:

Thanks Koniving!

Plastic,

We are definitely, at this point, playing one of them games based on what the poor plebes who lived before internet thought about the future.

It is exceedingly clear that they could see into the future about as far as 1993, and that was wayyy far off.

On the plus side, the actual weaponry of the 30th century will not involve any skill in its use, and the damage will be instant vaporization. It just wouldn't be a very fun game.

Actually, they do have one real 30th century weapon in MWO. It's called the long tom, and it's about to get dialed back to the 23rd century or so.

But I totally get where you're coming from.

(Making a few quick corrections and additions) ; may be worth a re-read

There are some things that a lot of people don't seem to realize when it comes to Battletech's rich lore.

Sometime before the "popular" years of Classic Battletech, in the 2800s, began war after war after war where no target was untouchable. Military targets, of course. But along the way, office buildings, children, religious centers, entire races and cultures of people, food, water, even technology itself was targeted in mass campaigns to essentially annihilate each other for over 200 years. It came to the point that the ability to produce the high tech computers of the 2700s just wasn't really possible between most of the best minds being taken, libraries eliminated and campaigns set out to wipe out technology.

• NARC Missile Beacons are wiped out in 2872 or close to it.
  
• The ability to produce or repair double heatsinks went extinct in 2865 (Unless you were Marik or Comstar; ever noticed how no matter what the year is, almost all "M" [Marik] variants of any mech will have double heatsinks and often an XL engine? Mariks stayed out of the Succession Wars.)
  
• The AMS went extinct in 2796, meaning that in addition to the turret/detection/automatic firing systems, the ability to keep producing the computer systems and intelligence required to detect, react and shoot down incoming missiles had become lost.
  
• The last XL Fusion Engine factory was destroyed in 2865.
  
• In 2845, the last Streak missile in all of the Inner Sphere was fired. ...And it missed.
  
• Also in 2845, the last ECM unit (worth detailing as part of a mech) was destroyed. (I would have found it funny and ironic if it was in the same battle that the last Streak was fired, but no it wasn't).
  
  • Throughout the Succession Wars and during the Age of War before it, ECM in lesser forms have and continued to exist, in a sense it is stated that ECM is almost always in use by mostly every force and facility. However these lesser ECMs aren't even worth mentioning in Battletech rules and even LRMs/SRMs are written as having "Keep it simple stupid" unsophisticated and dirt cheap locking mechanisms to keep missiles cheap. (They're not dumbfired, they are just 'simple' and easy to trick. On the easy to trick standpoint, there's even an instance where due to Guardian ECM interference, Artemis SRMs flying too close together lost the signal from the launcher that fired them, and due to proximity the missiles decided to attack each other's thermal signatures; meaning they intentionally collided because "SQUIRREL!")
    
  • 
    
  • See limited range and the collapse of civilization for ECM note.
• Ten years earlier (2835), the ability to produce new Beagle Active Probes was destroyed.

The list just goes on and on.

(Ancient. Battlemechs.)




Consider this. Remember film? Kodak, Polaroid, etc? Their reduced demand has reduced the need to learn the craft, support their development, and before too much longer about the only place you might find a "Dark room" is in a museum exhibit. How long before no one really knows how to produce or develop film into photographs? Now imagine that an entire war campaign is sent with the resources from a dozen or so planets -- including nuclear weapons -- just to make sure no one ever uses film again?

By the Third Succession War, available technology on the average world is knocked back to the 21st century. On hundreds of planets, the technology level is pre-16th century save for some relics that people still use. On maybe a total of 60 worlds, there are technologies as high up as the 24th century, and on about 11 worlds in the entire Inner Sphere, technology up to or surpassing the 27th century which was the height of tech before **** hit the fan.

Comstar has the most advanced stuff of all on and around Terra, but this is because they've been hording it. The Clans on the other hand never lost their technology, never sought to wipe it out. Instead whenever something new was developed, other Clans would put in bids to Batchall the right to obtain or produce the technology to spread it among those who proved themselves worthy.

But that's getting way off topic.

Also the Long Tom in PGI's MWO... is basically the Gustav.
This.

Firing this.

Which was 5 tons and only ever fired once. In World War II we discovered the futility of building "Big."
And so...
Battletech's mechs aren't nearly as big as MWO portrays. (Note on the right is MWO's old scale; the rescale is still pretty huge but suitable for MWO's purposes; the middle is based on Battletech's scale illustration for a 2D Shadowhawk; note that the 5th gen, i.e. "5-series" is quite a bit larger than the smaller, 'softer' 2's which scarcely have armor suitable for 20 to 30 ton mechs.)

Spoiler

Battletech's Long Tom ammo is 10 shots (not magazines which is what autocannons have; magazines of dozens to hundreds of bullets) and does a maximum potential of 270 damage to a total of 19 mechs in a 90 meter radius (or 180 meter diameter) (with the heaviest damage being within 30 meters of the point of the impact; for 6 lots of 5 damage each or 30 damage). (That 270 is spread across those 19 mechs. So between 30 to 60 meters away from the epicenter of impact, any mech in this zone would get 4 lots of 5 damage or 20 damage each, and finally 60 to 90 meters away they would get 2 lots of 5 damage each or 10 damage per mech. Also the likelihood of 19 mechs being that stupid is pretty slim.).
PGI's MWO Long Tom deals up to 1,320 damage maximum, per enemy mech in the area within 200 meters (was 300 meters), with the maximum damage dealt in the epicenter of 30 meters in the impact area (was 50 meters).

So yeah.... MWO's rendition of the Long Tom is a quite extreme considering that the actual weapon in BT is 30 tons, has a range of "20 maps", and is effectively slapped on either a 90 ton-or-up mech or as part of a mobile field artillery vehicle-and-trailer-and-trailer-and-trailer-(and trailer?) system where the vehicle is 60 tons and another 30 tons in trailers is dedicated to ammo, cooling and other needs at a whoppingly fast 28.6 kph. Wow, something that makes the Urbanmech feel like a jack rabbit! (Should also note; despite user-made-references on Sarna.net, there are no Battletech ACs with a single shot for full effect; not even the Cauldron Born's 203mm UAC/20 [the largest caliber of AC to exist in Battletech].

Edited by Koniving, 19 July 2016 - 12:42 PM.