18 replies to this topic

[TooDumbToQuit]

I'm not sure....

[Insanity09]

None of the info sites list them as having such.
What pulses will do is deliver their damage in a shorter period of time in concentrated bursts (i.e., pulses).

[TooDumbToQuit]

I understand but honestly, it is not that much shorter so I wondered if more crits was also a plus.

[justcallme A S H]

No.

[Kwea]

no

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

They don't have higher crit rates in theory but they do in practice. The rates themselves are the same as other lasers but a pulse laser puts out more damage in a shorter period of time than a regular laser. This leads to it rolling crits with higher damage values than normal lasers which makes removing components rather quick.

[Koniving]

(In other words, their crits do more damage... but are not more frequent.)

[Koniving]

Far as beam times..
IS Pulse beam times range from 33.33% shorter duration down to 33% shorter duration globally for standard to pulse laser beam duration ratios.

Clan pulse beam times... 25.33% large, 26.09% medium, 33% small.

Note that by having shorter beam times, the pulse lasers also shoot again that much sooner, because the 'cooldown' period for the laser doesn't begin until the laser has finished firing. So in addition to higher damage both in laser and in crit damage, it has shorter time to deliver damage and thus incidentally has a higher frequency [rate] of successive fire.
Basically short of the range issues and higher heat over time due to higher rate of fire, pulse lasers rule.

Note all beam duration comparisons are base stats, quirks can change them.

Edited by Koniving, 07 April 2017 - 07:23 AM.

[Vlad Striker]

Pulse lasers seems to have crit recalculation at every pulse but regular laser calculates crit only once.

[Rogue Jedi]

Vlad Striker, on 07 April 2017 - 11:57 AM, said:

Pulse lasers seems to have crit recalculation at every pulse but regular laser calculates crit only once.

I could be wrong here but I thaught lasers, ER Lasers, Pulse Lasers and Machine guns all do a number of ticks (pulses of damage) over their burn tiime, and each tick does critical damage to one componant in an unarmored section, when an items health hits 0 that item is destroyed.

as far as I am aware other than the fact that the ticks are applied in a shorter ammount of time Pulse lasers work the same as ER and regular lasers for the sake of critical damage.

[Insanity09]

Yes, all lasers (pulse, ER, std) do their damage over time, so if you wave a laser back and forth across a target for the burn duration, it will piecemeal the damage across multiple areas.

Once the armor is stripped from a location, there is a chance to damage items inside that area (heat sinks, weapons, etc.), and hits on locations without armor deal structural damage (possibly destroying the area). That is internal damage.

Crit damage, however, is different from simple internal damage. Critical damage, as it is in many games, is a chance for a given weapon to do multiplied damage or increased damage. My understanding is that in MWO crit damage will only occur when you are doing internal damage, but again, they aren't the same. I also don't recall what the multiplier is, it might vary per weapon.
I also understand that any weapon has a chance for a critical hit (crit damage), but some have an improved chance.
Machine guns and LBX autocannons for certain, and checking smurfy.... AC2s, all PPCs, flamers, MGs, LBX ACs, and Gauss Rifles. Lasers, pulse or otherwise are NOT on the list.

Edited by Insanity09, 07 April 2017 - 03:55 PM.

[Rogue Jedi]

Insanity09, on 07 April 2017 - 03:55 PM, said:

Crit damage, however, is different from simple internal damage. Critical damage, as it is in many games, is a chance for a given weapon to do multiplied damage or increased damage. My understanding is that in MWO crit damage will only occur when you are doing internal damage, but again, they aren't the same. I also don't recall what the multiplier is, it might vary per weapon.
I also understand that any weapon has a chance for a critical hit (crit damage), but some have an improved chance.
Machine guns and LBX autocannons for certain, and checking smurfy.... AC2s, all PPCs, flamers, MGs, LBX ACs, and Gauss Rifles. Lasers, pulse or otherwise are NOT on the list.

Most games (including this one) have a system where it is possible for a hit to inflict bonus damage, that is refered to as a critical hit

now with the case of the MechWarrior series this is where things get confusing

Every Mech has the same number of critical locations, 12 in each arm and torso, 6 in each leg and the head
if you hit an unarmored componant one of the critical locations in that componant takes damage, which is subtracted from the health of what is in that location (assuming it is not empty), a critical hit is when something (e.g. a Gauss Rifle) health is reduced to 0 and destroyed, some weapons have more critical health than others and that is a total health pool for the piece of equipment, not for each individual critical slot..

this is diferant to getting a critical hit in the way other games describe it, as in getting 2x (or whatever) damage, MWO also uses that description just to confuse things, so Machine guns LBX autocannons and Flamers have improved chances of getting the lucky heavy hit against a componant

[Void Angel]

OK. Here's how critical hits work in MWO:

First, they do not multiply the base damage done to internal structure. If I get a crit with an AC/20, I'm not doing double damage (or even necessarily 15% extra damage; I'll get to that.) The terminology is confusing, which is - if you'll pardon the tautology - why people tend to be confused.

The simple explanation is that whenever structure damage is inflicted, the game rolls to see if equipment in that location is also damaged or destroyed, then applies the consequences: possible ammunition explosions, loss of capabilities - and in most cases a little bit of bonus structure damage.

The thorough explanation for the detail-inclined follows.

---

When you do any amount of structure damage in with any discrete damage impulse (this would be a laser tick, individual missile, LB-X pellet, etc,) you have a chance to inflict a crit. This crit does "critical damage" to a random piece of equipment in the affected location; the critical damage is usually equal to the damage of whatever inflicted the crit - again, this could be anything from a single damage tick in a pulse laser burn all the way up to 20 points for an IS AC/20. Each item you can stick in your 'mech, from jump jets to large-caliber autocannons, can accept a critical hit, and has its own internal "health" pool. In general, larger items have more hit points, though some are fragile by design: most "common" items have a pool of 10 health points. If the item's health pool is depleted, the item is destroyed. In any case, whenever you deal damage to that health pool, 15% of the damage actually dealt to that item is applied as bonus structure damage: thus, if I destroy a 10-health Heat Sink with an AC/20 crit, I will inflict 1.5 points of extra structure damage. Additionally, some weapons have increased chances to inflict critical hits, as well as increased damage when they do so.

All of this is more complicated to explain than to understand. =) The flow of events in the game looks like this:

• Damage X, a single impulse, is dealt to a location such as the left torso, and inflicts some amount of internal structure damage.
  
• The game "rolls" for critical hits - anywhere from zero to three critical hits may be generated, with zero being the most likely and 3 being vanishingly small. These chances are modified for some weapons. If there are no criticals, the process is over.
  
• Any critical hits generated are randomly assigned to items inside that location.
  
• Damage X (not just the part that penetrated the armor) is applied to the current health pool of each item assigned a critical hit (weapons, jump jets, targeting computers, etc.) Some weapons multiply Damage X by various amounts before it is applied.
  
• If the health pool is depleted, the item is destroyed, and the game processes the effects: rolls for ammunition and Gauss Rifle explosions, disabled weapons, loss of jump capacity, etc.
  
• Finally, the game awards 15% of whatever damage was actually dealt to item health pools is applied to the internal structure of that location as bonus damage (which cannot cause a critical hit.) This is similar to RPG life-draining spells which cannot heal the caster for more hit points than the target actually has.

So that's a fairly in-depth overview of how crits work. I've omitted extraneous information that I can't recall (such as how XL engines - which cannot be destroyed by crits - interact with the system) but none of what I've left out affects the basic process.

[R E S P E K]

Dont chase crits, go for kills.

[B L O O D W I T C H]

Pulse have less damage ticks, if a crit is rolled it does more damage then a regular laser tick.
Their critrate is the same. Tho, practically, they kill off equipment faster because when they do crit, they roll higher.

Edited by Toha Heavy Industries, 08 April 2017 - 02:24 PM.

[Boulangerie]

Toha Heavy Industries, on 08 April 2017 - 02:06 PM, said:

Pulse have less damage ticks, if a crit is rolled it does more damage then a regular laser tick.
Their critrate is the same. Tho, practically, they kill off equipment faster because when they do crit, they roll higher.

The currently, the most reliable equipment destroyer is the IS AC 10 and the IS AC 20. This is because they reduced the crit damage for PPCs and Gauss. The ACs will deal their full damage to a piece of equipment, destroying (for anything with 10hp or less) that piece with a single crit. Most other weapons, even "crit seeking" ones will end up spreading their damage around over potentially multiple pieces of equipment. The "crit seeking" weapons, will however still deal their extra structure damage to the exposed internals on crits, and can end up destroying that section much faster, assuming the same amount of damage/hits occur on the same section.

Either way, it's much easier to just blow off that section and if a crit happens good on you.

[B L O O D W I T C H]

Boulangerie, on 09 April 2017 - 09:55 AM, said:

The currently, the most reliable equipment destroyer is the IS AC 10 and the IS AC 20. This is because they reduced the crit damage for PPCs and Gauss. The ACs will deal their full damage to a piece of equipment, destroying (for anything with 10hp or less) that piece with a single crit. Most other weapons, even "crit seeking" ones will end up spreading their damage around over potentially multiple pieces of equipment. The "crit seeking" weapons, will however still deal their extra structure damage to the exposed internals on crits, and can end up destroying that section much faster, assuming the same amount of damage/hits occur on the same section.

Either way, it's much easier to just blow off that section and if a crit happens good on you.

Sure, not going to argue here. I was just under the impression that the question was about critrate difference between pulse and "normal" lasers.

[Pilotshark]

Don't discount monkey see, monkey do with regards to popular load-outs and so called "meta",

Watching other players in game and observing their load-outs can cause observing players to perceive effectiveness of builds without necessarily considering the effectiveness of the observed player independent of the build (the reverse is equally true). Sites like Metamechs dot com and smurfy are very popular and very informative sites. On smurfy, you can see under the statistics tab what the masses are piloting in chassis and load-out. This will usually show you what the FOTM is.

Pulse lasers are great and do fill a role. they are a bit overused in mechs at them moment. but as game play changes continue, the flavor of the month (FOTM) weapons shift. Take the reemergence of the ppc/gauss builds again. At one time. that used to be a problem build copied and pasted on every possible chassis and it overwhelmingly dominated the game, it went away as a FOTM for a while and now it is back in a slightly less problematic and different form.

Trends will come and go. Don't limit yourself to following the perceived easiest path using what is popular or perceived to be the most effective weapons based build. Experiment and build what is fun to play. There is so much variety to play with in the mechlab. If KDR is the singular goal, disregard everything above and just follow the FOTM "Meta".

As a final note, Clan mechs can add targeting computers which do improve, among other things, crit chance on certain listed weapons. IS will have this optional equipment when the civil war update rolls out this summer.

[Satan n stuff]

Rogue Jedi, on 07 April 2017 - 12:27 PM, said:

I could be wrong here but I thaught lasers, ER Lasers, Pulse Lasers and Machine guns all do a number of ticks (pulses of damage) over their burn tiime, and each tick does critical damage to one componant in an unarmored section, when an items health hits 0 that item is destroyed.

as far as I am aware other than the fact that the ticks are applied in a shorter ammount of time Pulse lasers work the same as ER and regular lasers for the sake of critical damage.

We've had this clarified by someone on staff before, can't find the post right now but all lasers supposedly only roll for crits once per shot. I have no idea if it's actually true or what happens if you hit multiple components with one laser shot though. If at some point I'm really bored I might test it.