14 replies to this topic

[Bohxim]

Hello and good evening fellow mech warriors
Sorry it's me again enquiring on some mechanics. Here's the situation.
Was running my mauler in the faction play event and was engaging some clanners near my spawn point as they were pushing into the Base and I had a good firing angle on them. My mauler has very high front loaded armor as it's a dps build with uac5 and a couple tonnes of ammo in an unarmoured arm. Was trading fire and moving in and out of cover when they blew my arm off. As I retreated back into cover I exploded and cause of death was ammo explosion. On my paper doll, all 3 torsos still had armor on but my ct was blown off.
Now from my understanding, ammo explosion can occur if ammo is critted in an exposed component, and the explosion will deal a fixed damage to that component and some fixed damage to the adjacent component right? So how did my mauler die?
Thanks in advance all. Would be good to know the mechanics so I can restructure accordingly

[Baulven]

Bohxim, on 13 September 2016 - 08:36 AM, said:

Hello and good evening fellow mech warriors
Sorry it's me again enquiring on some mechanics. Here's the situation.
Was running my mauler in the faction play event and was engaging some clanners near my spawn point as they were pushing into the Base and I had a good firing angle on them. My mauler has very high front loaded armor as it's a dps build with uac5 and a couple tonnes of ammo in an unarmoured arm. Was trading fire and moving in and out of cover when they blew my arm off. As I retreated back into cover I exploded and cause of death was ammo explosion. On my paper doll, all 3 torsos still had armor on but my ct was blown off.
Now from my understanding, ammo explosion can occur if ammo is critted in an exposed component, and the explosion will deal a fixed damage to that component and some fixed damage to the adjacent component right? So how did my mauler die?
Thanks in advance all. Would be good to know the mechanics so I can restructure accordingly

Ammo explosion bleed over can transfer to the next body part. Where you in override? It is possible you cooked off ammo in another location due to heat, which causes all the ammo in that location to go and then to transfer to other parts. Its not super common but can happen particularly on dakka builds.

[Bohxim]

Was in override, but nowhere near even half heat. Was firing a few bursts then went back into cover. Besides, if I did kill myself via ammo explosion due to overheat, it'll tell me I killed myself I think. This time it showed an opponent killed me

[Koniving]

First mistake is ammo in anything unarmored.

Damage taken without armor - Crit roll - up to 3 Crit possible per shot.
If an IS ac/20... 20 damage per Crit. Got three Crits from one shot? 60 Crit damage. You just lost 6 tons of ammo if you had that many in the arm.
With 10% chance to explode... that's 1/10(*6) versus 9/10(*6) chance to go boom.
Then of that 60 Crit damage, 15% becomes bonus structure damage, so in the case of a triple Crit from a single ac/20, 9 bonus structure damage for a total of 29 structure damage and 60 Crit damage ripping through and destroying precious ammo and actuators. Losing actuators doesn't have any real effect in MWO.

If you have say 3 full tons of ammo and one detonates it can set off the other two.. a single full ton of ammo has around 150 or so damage waiting to happen. You have in structure without quirks.... 126 health between the arm, side torso and center torso structures.

Basically you piloted a walking time bomb with a fuse that screamed "heavily doused in fuel, light me for fireworks!"

You can buffer your Crits with heatsinks or wear some armor or choose a better place to store ammo.

Edited by Koniving, 13 September 2016 - 09:59 AM.

[Aleksandr Sergeyevich Kerensky]

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...bb55191611aed52

Taken straight from metamechs. Please notice the location of ammo.

Edited by Aleksandr Sergeyevich Kerensky, 13 September 2016 - 09:46 AM.

[Bohxim]

Thanks for the mechanic breakdown
But it's still just in the arm which are relatively sacrificial. 150 is a lot of damage but does that bleed go from the arm to the ST then CT?
I have run that build many times Aleksandr, just find it very slow and lacking in CW.

[Koniving]

Baulven, on 13 September 2016 - 08:46 AM, said:

Ammo explosion bleed over can transfer to the next body part. Where you in override? It is possible you cooked off ammo in another location due to heat, which causes all the ammo in that location to go and then to transfer to other parts. Its not super common but can happen particularly on dakka builds.

Overheat hasn't been able to kill via ammo explosion (or more specifically cause Crits) since December 2012, though ammo could explode when the limb is destroyed via overheat damage so you probably meant that.

Ammo does indeed transfer inward, though damage is reduced by 60% each time so contrary to what I said earlier a single ammo explosion wouldn't be enough as it would be reduced by 60% and then going to the CT whatever was left would be reduced again by 60%. But the chain reaction of several... boom.

[Koniving]

Bohxim, on 13 September 2016 - 10:24 AM, said:

Thanks for the mechanic breakdown
But it's still just in the arm which are relatively sacrificial. 150 is a lot of damage but does that bleed go from the arm to the ST then CT?
I have run that build many times Aleksandr, just find it very slow and lacking in CW.

All explosions go inward with final destination being CT.

Legs go through side torsos before center torso.

Each time all damage is reduced by 60% before making the shift. This would happen twice (arm to st. st to ct.) so several tons of ammo detonated (2 full tons would be sufficient, 3 just to be sure).

Alex's build reference is for safer ammo placement, so this boom won't happen again.

[Aleksandr Sergeyevich Kerensky]

Bohxim, on 13 September 2016 - 10:24 AM, said:

Thanks for the mechanic breakdown
But it's still just in the arm which are relatively sacrificial. 150 is a lot of damage but does that bleed go from the arm to the ST then CT?
I have run that build many times Aleksandr, just find it very slow and lacking in CW.

(I dont mean to tell you to run the build, just to take note of where the ammo is located).

Koniving stated perfectly how ammo explosions work, i just wanted a visual representation showing that people would rather put ammo in the CT then in an unarmored expendable location.

Getting ammo explosions is very dangerous. So the side torso that has ammo, also has case. Since the arms have no armor, that would mean those arms are literally dead arms, so putting ammo in there is just asking for a catastrophe.

[Bohxim]

I see I see. Since 4 uac5 allows much more ammo carrying I should consider case as well as dropping some ammo to armor up the arm.
Thanks you two for the insights
Much appreciated as this is the first time I've had a instant death from losing an arm

[justcallme A S H]

Instead of going 4UAC5, try this.

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...0ebd87226eb9240


Remember HD / CT are first places for ammo to get used. LINK
That particular order is :
HD --> CT --> RT --> LT--> LA --> RA--> LL--> RL (---> HD again in image rotation )


I mean really you don't need the ammo in the arms as without it, on paper, you are still capable of doing well over 1k damage even allowing for 25% of shots missing targets.

If it was me, I'd run something like THIS
Drop engine/swap ammo around as needed for more legs/arms or whatever, it's just a base to go off. You really do not need near max amour on legs... I cannot recall the last time I was legged in an assault in a FP match.
QP, different story. I ran around in a brawler KGC last week just legging assaults for the fun of it and had excellent success lol.

Edited by justcallme A S H, 13 September 2016 - 03:33 PM.

[Bohxim]

I tried a mixed ac5 uac5 build before on my cyclops to mess around with builds. I tend to prefer 4X uac5 to make max use of the modules, or ac10 ac5 combination for a solid mid range alpha that continuously uses the ac5 to pelt while the ac10s reload

[justcallme A S H]

As in to make use of range modules? Just use cooldown ones. It's about the DPS, not the range, especially when AC5s have good range already.

Plus you ideally wanna be firing at the maximum damage range or just outside it. Range module and another 150m more just means it's taking all the longer for the shell to get there to do damage, harder to hit the target, more spread damage etc etc.

That's just my view at least anyway.

Edited by justcallme A S H, 13 September 2016 - 04:22 PM.

[Bohxim]

I'll load if up with only cool downs and see whether there's any improvement. Coz I'm already using cool downs for the uac5 and if you use double tap it's already double the dps of the ac5 so I assumed naturally 4 uac5 would be higher dps

[justcallme A S H]

It's more about the extra torso crit slots, CASE in the torso as well for added protection and then less ammo in the arms as well. All basically helping you live longer, to do more damage etc.

No point being able to fire a little faster if you are getting ammo explosions and dying from it. Plus added speed, I'm guessing you're not a STD300/taking ammo outta arms/armour and prob a lot slower. 5-8km/h helps massively