413 replies to this topic

[pyrocomp]

Snowbluff, on 02 August 2016 - 12:03 PM, said:

People who are saying that LBX should do 20-50% more damage, you are ********. No one would ever use an AC/UAC.

Your forgot major spread increase added there. So before insulting people better do read what they said.

[davoodoo]

Gattsus, on 02 August 2016 - 07:13 AM, said:

Just increase fire rate.

Yep lets make it into ac5 which at expense of 3 extra tons and 2 slots fires for roughly same dmg at whatever you aimed at around 250m and at longer ranges it does even less, 2dmg to adjacent parts are totally worth it.

Lets all ditch uac5 and get lb10x because lower cooldown.

Snowbluff, on 02 August 2016 - 12:03 PM, said:

People who are saying that LBX should do 20-50% more damage, you are ********. No one would ever use an AC/UAC.

It could do double dmg and i would still prefer regular ac/uac with the exception of clan lb20x because no ghost heat on 2 of those.

Edited by davoodoo, 02 August 2016 - 12:52 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Koniving, on 02 August 2016 - 12:14 PM, said:

But, is that option you speak of "viable" compared to the canister method, and likely to yield accuracy for hitting moving targets at the ranges LBXs are supposed to land fairly high 'pellet' counts at, without large waste?

This weapon is supposed to be accurate at longer ranges than standard autocannons. So, yeah. o.O; Welcoming the logic there. I've got the popcorn.

LBX 10: accurate to 540 meters without undo difficulty, with both Cluster-shot and standard ammunition.
Autocannon/10: accurate to 450 meters without undo difficulty, with standard ammunition.

Accuracy at the component level doesn't exist in table top without the aimed shot rules, and even the current MWO LB-10X can strike a Mech for 10 damage at 540 meters. If they were all TT scale, this would be trivial (and also asinine).

That said, I am in no way stating that the LB-X is fine as its is, only that there is nothing inherently wrong with the mechanic. Increased damage per pellet, increased rate of fire, tighter spread all have potential to add effectiveness while retaining uniqueness. We don't have to get fancy with proximity burst shells to satisfy game-play or fluff requirements.

[Mole]

I remember at one point in time thinking LBX cannons were good. Still think they are. Problem is, even though they are a good close up weapon, there is no reason not to take the LBX cannon's regular or Ultra counterpart instead. I remember on my Kodiak, which was my very first foray into the world of Clan autocannons, I put an LB-20-X on my Kodiak. My thinking was that it would be better than the Clan AC and UAC because, if used properly, it would function much like a IS AC/20 with all my damage going in with one shot instead of multiple projectiles that required face time to keep on target. It worked. It really did. But then I decided "You know, let me just try these clan UACs. I don't like the way they work, but I haven't even really given them a try." So I stuck a UAC/20 on my Kodiak thinking I would probably hate it and dump it for a return to the LB-20-X. Well, as it turns out, the UAC/20 was far superior to a weapon system that was working quite well. So I kept it. I'm not gonna sit here and say that LBX cannons suck, because they don't. What I am going to tell you though, is that in almost every instance taking the regular or ultra variant of the same cannon is superior. They need to do something to make it to where this isn't always the case, and no, quirking certain 'mechs with LBX cannon quirks is not the answer.

[dwwolf]

Yeonne Greene, on 02 August 2016 - 10:48 AM, said:

For the record, some shotgun shells contain all of the shot inside the wad, so the don't technically release the submunitions until after they exit the barrel. The effect would still be similar to what we already have in the game.

The descriptions you cite do nothing to preclude this mode of operation.

Yes it does.
Because in TT the damage an LBX does is constant over range...as is the to hit bonus.

A true shot shell spreads immediately from the barrel or a short distance from the barrel when the wadding comes loose. In TT terms that would mean an increasing to hit bonus as range goes from s>m>l but a penalty on the missile hit chart as range bracket increases. ( pellet distrubution spreads out...larger area, but lower density )

Game design usually works this way : Designer has rules or equipment idea.....it gets playtested and adjusted....and only then does the fluff get written for it. Fluff doesnt mean anything as far as rules go. The fluff writer might not even know proper military terminology. So for translating weapons it pays more to keep the rules in mind than to look at the contradicting fluff.

The only thing that makes sense from a TT rules perspective is either a proximity fuse or a timed fuse.
Think bofors 3P ammo fusing. Probably with some kind of EFP forming explosive shell.

MWO also gets SRMs wrong as they should feature a limited guidance model. (If SRMs are not guided then listen kill or heatseeking SRM versions make no sense at all.).
Deadfire and MRMs also would make no sense because they specifically are missiles without guidance. And nothing would differentiate them from Current SRMs except range.

Edited by dwwolf, 02 August 2016 - 01:30 PM.

[Koniving]

Yeonne Greene, on 02 August 2016 - 12:49 PM, said:

Accuracy at the component level doesn't exist in table top without the aimed shot rules, and even the current MWO LB-10X can strike a Mech for 10 damage at 540 meters. If they were all TT scale, this would be trivial (and also asinine).

That said, I am in no way stating that the LB-X is fine as its is, only that there is nothing inherently wrong with the mechanic. Increased damage per pellet, increased rate of fire, tighter spread all have potential to add effectiveness while retaining uniqueness. We don't have to get fancy with proximity burst shells to satisfy game-play or fluff requirements.

Accuracy does exist and is down to 'just' the component level and no further, under the form of To Hit rules, which the lore and fluff does flesh out. But at the same time you run the 'To Hit' roll, you're factoring in for numerous factors including the assumption that your enemy might have taken evasive or defensive action despite being face to face at 240 meters with no cover between you.

If you'll indulge me.

Spoiler

Admittedly, it has the problem of being Front Loaded, while the lore and fluff does not front load damage for most of the weapons (in fact Mech Rifles would be useful despite their -3 versus armor issue when compared to autocannons, since ACs are not meant to be front loaded in a non-tabletop scenario while Rifles are. Rifles, since I mentioned this side tangent, also have the realistic 'the bigger it gets the longer its accurate range becomes', as Rifles are single shot cannons akin to "tanks of the 21st century." Autocannons have realistic diminishing returns on accuracy because the real difference between an AC/5, AC/10 and AC/20 when all three have an identical bullet caliber, is that the 10 shoots twice as fast as the 5, and the 20 shoots twice as fast as the 10 which is four times as fast as the 5, hence the horrific accurate range, despite how ACs have a 'real range' of 2 kilometers.

Forgive the image's emphasis, I'm recycling it.
Keep in mind this also means the LBX would be firing "shotgun blast" after "Shotgun blast" in rapid succession at roughly the same rate as its AC counterpart, possibly a little faster or slower. (This is why I made emphasis that they don't do "slugs" in the traditional sense, as that would make them incredibly overpowered compared to ACs, and impossible to take standard AC ammunition).

Back to "accuracy"


See "Limited Ranges"
In summary:
The Ranges listed are "Accurate Ranges" given to compensate for "an ECM-intensive battlefield," "Modern Armor", "High mobility" (aka Unless Incapacitated or Immobile, the enemy target can DODGE and it is automatically assumed that if you missed, it is because he dodged. If you hit something you did not intend to, it is because he BLOCKED or DEFLECTED the shot using his mech's extremities.)...

Quote

"Thus achieving a target lock (i.e. aiming at and hitting) a target at 2 kilometers, while possible, is difficult especially with a battlefield clouded by smoke, by rapidly moving mechs, by incoming fire and by electronic jamming."

I'm certain you will notice how preposterous it is to "exclusively" be able to aim when a target is knocked unconscious, dead, or immobile, right? The reason this ability is given is because the target you are "aiming" at cannot react. Thus, the misleading "aim" feature.

In any other circumstance, the "To-Hit" is to determine -- with all those factors in mind -- whether or not you hit the enemy and where, due to a myriad of possibilities including catching an enemy unaware (easier to get 'sweet spots' on the to hit table if behind the enemy or at the side than in front), enemy ability to dodge (you missed), pilot's incompetence (you missed), enemy deflecting fire (how else do you explain aiming for the arm? Seriously?), enemy torso twisting to spread damage (from front, you hit right rear torso; how the **** did you do that under any other circumstances while he's looking right at you?), etc., etc., etc.

Also, Manuals. Awesome things. Battletech Rulebook 4th edition defines To Hit as following.

"The player determines if the shot is more or less difficult (for the pilot or gunner per weapon) than normal by factoring in range, terrain, movement and other conditions."

Difficulty to land the shot = Accuracy.
To hit = Accuracy.
"Are you able to hit the target?" The ratio of which you would hit to miss would be an accuracy ratio, would it not? Also called a 'to hit' ratio? Hmm. Curious.

"Accurate range" is literally what the ranges are properly called when not short-handed.
PPC 90 meter "Minimum Accurate Range penalty."


(This has been updated since to be due to a delay caused by "Charging" the weapon as it makes a bit more sense, since an ER PPC has the same weight yet having no minimum range according to this means it is easier to swing around which makes no sense. This was written when 50% or more of the mechs carried ACs and PPCs in their hands as disposable guns such as Phoenix Hawk, Wolverine, Griffin, Battlemaster, Wasp, etc.).
--------

Also true, we don't have to get fancy, but it would literally fix all of the issues with the LBX without having to inflate damage, range, etc. A real fix instead of a bandaid, and it would be nice if once, just once, PGI would give us a real fix for something without us having to pioneer for 2-3 years to get a few bandaids.

[Y E O N N E]

dwwolf, on 02 August 2016 - 12:59 PM, said:

Yes it does.
Because in TT the damage an LBX does is constant over range...as is the to hit bonus.

The damage an MWO LB-X deals is also constant over its optimum specified range, just not at the component level. The accuracy also doesn't change, it technically gets easier to score a hit from afar. Because it is easier to repeat the effect, precision is good.

So in absolute terms, the LB-X is doing exactly what it should be with cluster munitions.

Quote

A true shotgun pellet shell spreads immediately from the barrel or a short distance from the barrel when the wadding comes loose. In TT terms that would mean an increasing to hit bonus as range goes from s>m>l but a penalty on the missile hit chart as range bracket increases. ( pellet distrubution spreads out...larger area, but lower density )

Game design usually works this way : Designer has rules or equipment idea.....it gets playtested and adjusted....and only then does the fluff get written for it. Fluff doesnt mean anything as far as rules go. The fluff writer might not even know proper military terminology. So for translating weapons it pays more to keep the rules in mind than to look at the contradicting fluff.

The only thing that makes sense from a TT rules perspective is either a proximity fuse or a timed fuse.
Think bofors 3P ammo fusing. Probably with some kind of EFP forming explosive shell.

No, that still doesn't fly. A variable choke on the LB-X would have the same effect as an air-bursting round if what we are concerned with is maintaining a constant dispersal of shot at any point within the weapon's range bracket. That said, the entire point of the cluster munitions is to spread on the target and increase the chance of a hit. The very thing that increases the chance of a hit also decreases the total damage it can do to one location. That's the trade-off. What you described in the first sentence of your post implies a weapon where every pellet does 10 damage. That is bogus.

[Koniving]

dwwolf, on 02 August 2016 - 12:59 PM, said:

Spoiler

Yes it does.
Because in TT the damage an LBX does is constant over range...as is the to hit bonus.

A true shot shell spreads immediately from the barrel or a short distance from the barrel when the wadding comes loose. In TT terms that would mean an increasing to hit bonus as range goes from s>m>l but a penalty on the missile hit chart as range bracket increases. ( pellet distrubution spreads out...larger area, but lower density )

Game design usually works this way : Designer has rules or equipment idea.....it gets playtested and adjusted....and only then does the fluff get written for it. Fluff doesnt mean anything as far as rules go. The fluff writer might not even know proper military terminology. So for translating weapons it pays more to keep the rules in mind than to look at the contradicting fluff.

The only thing that makes sense from a TT rules perspective is either a proximity fuse or a timed fuse.
Think bofors 3P ammo fusing. Probably with some kind of EFP forming explosive shell.

MWO also gets SRMs wrong as they should feature a limited guidance model. (If SRMs are not guided then listen kill or heatseeking SRM versions make no sense at all.).
Deadfire and MRMs also would make no sense because they specifically are missiles without guidance. And nothing would differentiate them from Current SRMs except range.

Always nice to see someone thinking. I do however think it pays to look at both, and note that when it boils down to it in the "original game" the fluff is what needs adjusting, and in subsequent derivatives of the game (i.e. MWO), the derivative design is what needs adjusting rather than the conflicting fluff or original design mechanics.

(Unless the original design mechanics just absolutely does not make any sense.)

[Brain Cancer]

As a proximity-detonated round it'd work like TT.

Think of a TT cluster round being like a "smart" flak shell. When it gets close enough to a target, it detonates and sprays the general area with it's submunitions. That's why in TT a cluster shell has a predictable range of pellet hits that doesn't change regardless of how far the shell travels because it doesn't form a cluster until it's X damage away from a target.

Given PGI that is likely tough to manage, but certainly not impossible. Similar weapons have been made with this engine.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Koniving, on 02 August 2016 - 01:35 PM, said:

Always nice to see someone thinking.

I like how you think only the people who agree with you are "thinking".

[Y E O N N E]

Koniving, on 02 August 2016 - 01:35 PM, said:

Always nice to see someone thinking. I do however think it pays to look at both, and note that when it boils down to it in the "original game" the fluff is what needs adjusting, and in subsequent derivatives of the game (i.e. MWO), the derivative design is what needs adjusting rather than the conflicting fluff or original design mechanics.

(Unless the original design mechanics just absolutely does not make any sense.)

I see your post ahead of mine and I'll give you a decent response later ( I've had it with trying to do it on my phone), but I will put it out there right now that I find all of the technical (and a lot of the story) fluff in BT to be hot garbage, and I find MWO's implementations to be a total snore.

[Mcgral18]

Snowbluff, on 02 August 2016 - 12:03 PM, said:

People who are saying that LBX should do 20-50% more damage, you are ********. No one would ever use an AC/UAC.

When the alternative is double, more precise damage...yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and laugh at you

[Koniving]

Yeonne Greene, on 02 August 2016 - 01:31 PM, said:

No, that still doesn't fly. A variable choke on the LB-X would have the same effect as an air-bursting round if what we are concerned with is maintaining a constant dispersal of shot at any point within the weapon's range bracket. That said, the entire point of the cluster munitions is to spread on the target and increase the chance of a hit. The very thing that increases the chance of a hit also decreases the total damage it can do to one location. That's the trade-off. What you described in the first sentence of your post implies a weapon where every pellet does 10 damage. That is bogus.

Isn't this self-defeating? You've pointed out the very reason why your method cannot work as being the reason why the canister delivery method cannot work (when in terms of physics the opposite is true.)

A shotgun cannot maintain a constant dispersal pattern regardless of range, unless the range is always the same. Once things start to spread from each other, there is no 'reconverging' that could happen, and therefore as the 'shotgun' style burst travels, the likelihood of hitting a target decreases. To Hit does account for this, true, but it fails to allow for hitting adjacent targets as would be required for this method of delivery as the shots would spread to others.

Also, it still requires that a shotgun is as accurate at any given range as an automatic weapon, when both can be fired at the same rate with the same caliber of ammunition. Furthermore, it requires that this shotgun somehow outperform the AC/10 for accurate ranges, given that both have a stated maximum range of slightly under 2 kilometers and can be used with the Sniper pilot quirk to land accurate shots at targets of 1080 meters with exactly the same dispersal pattern expected of making the same shot against a target of 540 meters.

With a canister-style delivery system, the clustershot (and yes it would be comparable to an airburst system) will detonate at a specific range from the target, keeping the range "Always the same" for when it releases its 'cluster', thus keeping the ability to have the same rate of hits to misses whether it's 200 meters, 90 meters, 540 meters, or 1080 meters.

-----

I will say again, the tabletop rules does have the issue of "front loading" damage, there actually would/could/should be damage dropoff as range increases beyond 1,000 meters, but this is entirely dependent on the speed of shots fired and isn't something we could measure or hope to calculate; tabletop summarizes it much like "Dodging" and "Blocking" as assumed, due to being and I quote: "An expedited summary of events within a unit of time."

[dwwolf]

Battletechnology magazine is Third Party Fluff.
It also directly contradicts BT game rules with regards to LRM and SRM and their special guidance options.

[Koniving]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 02 August 2016 - 01:44 PM, said:

I like how you think only the people who agree with you are "thinking".

Not true. I could have been wrong, and someone could have pointed out something that I didn't account for, and I would still applauded that person for thinking.

But when a dispersal pattern spreads over time, it cannot hold the same accuracy and therefore it cannot happen in the form that Yeonne described within the laws of physics.

(For example I misspelled applauded as applied and someone pointed it out, hence the edit.)

Edited by Koniving, 02 August 2016 - 02:10 PM.

[Koniving]

dwwolf, on 02 August 2016 - 01:49 PM, said:

Battletechnology magazine is Third Party Fluff. It also directly contradicts BT game rules with regards to LRM and SRM and their special guidance options.

It's first party fluff. You are aware that it is written by First Battletech Novelist William H Keith Jr. (and one other person for later ones) and with stories, edits, etc. by the people responsible for the second and third edition rulebooks? (Edit: It is also released by FASA, the original makers of the game.) One issue even posted a correction against Keith's statements of how lasers were measured, as Keith had errorneously given power in amounts that would result in forces similar to nuclear explosions rather than feasible laser systems.

It didn't contradict the rules of the time (1986-1991). Those rules have since changed, as new generations of rulemakers have entered the fray and modified things. I gave one such example with the PPC minimum range, how before "It's heavy and hard to swing around" written before ER PPCs existed in Battletech rules has now become "(Some logical explanation of how the weapon would explode if it just fired and so newly invented ruleset 'Field Inhibitor' explains it away as forcing the weapon to charge gradually before firing and having the option to turn it off so it can blow up in your face."

It was however made non-canon, due to its conflicts with current rules (as they have evolved to fix balancing issues and such; as any fluff should be set aside accordingly in favor of the evolving new game mechanics) and possibly more so due to a really simple fact that it is filled with Harmony Gold bait.

Over 70% of its statements on weapons and mechs are copied word for word OR paraphrased in very similar ways in the almighty Techmanual. It is just a hell of a lot easier to find and quote them in BattleTechnology than to do a search for "Range" in the Tech Manual to come up with over 2,000+ instances of the word, versus maybe 17 instances in a Battletechnology mag.

**** Harmony Gold.

Anyway.
Some things to note: Missiles were described as simplistic and minimally guided. You yourself said that they are minimally guided.

It is open to interpretation, whether LRMs are fired upward at a ballistic launch angle or "activated by a safety switch", both actually net entirely different interpretations of the resulting ruleset.
Example:

In Battletechnology's Era of Battletech, LRMs could blow up if the weapon was hit at any time if the weapon still had ammunition. Did not matter which side you were. IS has a minimum 180 meter accurate range to which you COULD hit your enemy and COULD have it explode at 30 meters, but it sure as heck wasn't easy! Bet that required bending down if fixed (which most LRM launchers at the time were drawn as 'fixed' with no pivots).

In the current era, IS LRMs do not explode when the launcher is hit due to a safety switch (that magically only stops them from going boom when inside the launcher) However you can Hotload your LRMs, fire them at 30 meters thusly circumventing the minimum 180 meter rule and get them to go kaboom, but they can blow up in the launcher if the launcher is hit. Clan LRMs will detonate regardless. Thing is, you could still -- with the safety on and not hotloaded -- hit someone at 30 meters and have the chance of them detonating and doing damage. It is the same chance as before.

Same result, different interpretations. The fluff was modified to suit the game mechanics (makes it safer for IS users, buff!) and new fluff art.

Edited by Koniving, 02 August 2016 - 02:14 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Koniving, on 02 August 2016 - 01:50 PM, said:

Not true. I could have been wrong, and someone could have pointed out something that I didn't account for, and I would still applied that person for thinking.

But when a dispersal pattern spreads over time, it cannot hold the same accuracy and therefore it cannot happen in the form that Yeonne described within the laws of physics.

It is true, otherwise you wouldn't have felt that "But...." portion of this quote to be necessary.

The point isn't that you would commend someone for thinking because they corrected you, the point is that you implied that someone who you don't feel corrected you isn't thinking.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 02 August 2016 - 02:05 PM.

[Brain Cancer]

Quote

I will say again, the tabletop rules does have the issue of "front loading" damage, there actually would/could/should be damage dropoff as range increases beyond 1,000 meters, but this is entirely dependent on the speed of shots fired and isn't something we could measure or hope to calculate; tabletop summarizes it much like "Dodging" and "Blocking" as assumed, due to being and I quote: "An expedited summary of events within a unit of time."

Past long range (varies depending on the LB-X in question), damage is supposed to drop off. I'd just have the shell autodetonate at maximum effective range much like an SRM, but instead of self-destruction it'd fire off it's pellets to spread naturally and thereby reduce it's potential damage.

[VitriolicViolet]

I use IS and Clan LBX's and i like them ,although i agree they are not as good as the AC10, but they are fun.

Someone else suggested earlier that to increase the amount of pellets and increase the spread. I think it could work really well to double the amount of pellets fired from each LBX ( LB2-4 pellets, LB20-40 pellets) and increase the spread by a third or more. Up close it would be a monster ( say at 150-200m with the LB20, 500-600m with LB2) and as you get further away the amount of spread would allow you to hit several mechs at once.

This would at least make it fairly unique and would hopefully not obselete the AC20 or UAC20 by having such short effective range

[Koniving]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 02 August 2016 - 01:59 PM, said:

It is true, otherwise you wouldn't have felt that "But...." portion of this quote to be necessary.

The point isn't that you would commend someone for thinking because they corrected you, the point is that you implied that someone who you don't feel corrected you isn't thinking.

Fair point.
I'm glad you're thinking as well.

I would actually -- under normal circumstances -- have said something along the lines of "I hadn't thought of that before," or "Huh, interesting, (repeats in a paraphrased way to show my new understanding of the subject matter and furthers the discussion)."

I love debates and while I like seeing if I can bring someone to the ground of understanding I'm on, I do also enjoy being proven wrong as I feel it helps me learn.

This does not mean, however, I'm not without flaws such as egotism, arrogance or in this case, "needing the final word."