17 replies to this topic

[Oogalook]

Hi all,

I'm not a new player by any means, but I have an ancient question which has long nagged me.

Do critical hits (extra instances of damage applied to internal components) also deal that many instances of damage to the internal structure?

Say you have a Hunchback with 42 structure on the left torso. Supposing it has no components stored within - no heat sinks, ammo, nothing - will machine guns or LB10s still deal extra damage to that component when the armor has been ablated to kingdom come?

Further, the Targeting Computer increases the chance of critical hits with lasers (along with other weapons). Does this increase the net damage dealt by lasers to internal structure?


The trouble I'm having is that there is no single go-to source for technical details on the game. All first-resort sources are badly outdated: the Gamepedia and the Wiki are woefully obsolete. Patch notes mention when things are changed, but one would have to sift through acres of text to find mentions of these statistics.

If anyone can refer me to a primary source on these stats, I'd be max grateful.

Thanks.

[Doctor Dinosaur]

If you call experience a primary source, then here we go:
I took some lasers and a flamer to the testing grounds. Shot away the armor of the Atlas standing around there. Shot the structure with the flamer.
The structure did barely get any damage.
This means that it did only the 0.1 damage to the structure, as critical hits would (should) have wrecked the structure rapidly.

And yes, PGI is really stingy about mechanics.

Best regards
Doc

[The Basilisk]

As usual GIYF or better the forums search function

I do not know if the values are still correct but the basic prinzipal of crits in MWO is still the same.

https://mwomercs.com...-a-brief-guide/

[Rogue Jedi]

critical hits do deal additional damage to structure

if however there is nothing in the componant except armor/structure slots you cannot get a critical hit, to have a critical hit there must be equipment in the componant.

The improved crit chance is just that, an improved chance at a critical hit, as a critical hit deals more damage to structure then yes improved critical hit chance does usualy resualt in improved damage to structure.

sorry but I know of no single source for that information.

[Koniving]

Lost the stuff I wrote a second time. Frustrating.

Okay, everyone kinda answered and yet failed to do so... So here we go.

You have three types of damage. We're going to use an LBX because it is very straight forward. LB-#X, where # is the damage class whether 2, 5, 10, or 20 operate identically for both sides and it is 1 damage per "pellet" or whatever you want to call it.

Base damage: 1 per pellet.

• This is the damage delivered per hit, and is however much damage the hit is supposed to make (PPC, 10, Clan ER PPC 15 divided into 10, 2.5 and 2.5, Clan AC/UAC, burst fire several shots that altogether equal the damage class.)

Critical Equipment Damage: Base damage * number of crits earned (up to 3 per hit) divided into an equal number of slots as crits earned.

• So if you get 1 base damage + 3 crits on your hit, you get 3 critical equipment damage divided into 3 slots (they can be the same slot; these are chosen at random within the body part you hit).
  
• This is officially called Critical Component Damage but considering that MWO calls legs arms head torsos as components, too, this is very confusing as this type of damage is EXCLUSIVE to equipment within the body parts and DOES NOT apply to the body parts directly.
  
• In MWO, you can only get critical hits on sections without armor.

Structure damage: Base damage + 15% (crit damage dealt) = Structure Damage.

So the base 1 damage for an LBX pellet and a triple crit would get you 1.45 damage. A single crit would get you 1.15 damage. Zero crits would just get you the base 1 damage.

Lets take an entire LB-20X into account, so 20 pellets of 1 damage each.
BANG!
Against armor: Base damage. 20 damage.
BANG!
Against structure: Equipment damage dealt (assuming Triple Crits on all) = 60 damage total, divided into 60 allotments of 1 damage per slot randomly assigned to 60 slots.
Determining the structure damage in this case: 20 damage + 15%(60 equipment damage) = 29 structure damage.

Now this is true of all weapons.
"Crit seeking weapons" imply have a considerably higher chance of netting crit damage per hit, so while an AC/20 might have a total of 42% chance to get a crit (of which 25% for a single, 14% for a double and 3% for a triple), an LBX would have over 67% chance of netting some critical hit (39% for single, 22% for double, 6% for triple).

What's more is according to Smurfy, LBX weapons now net 2x base damage per crit. So to correct the LBX-20 example, if every hit dealt a triple crit for all 20 pellets, that'd actually do 20 hits ( 1 damage +15% ( (base damage *2) *3 ) = 1.9 ) = 38 maximum possible damage from an LB-20X.

Again keep in mind there's only a 6% chance of each LBX pellet getting triple crit, and 20 of them at the same time, and getting 20 of them to hit the same body part... is very unlikely. But that's how much power 'could' be there.

Some notes:

• Lasers have 4 to 12 ticks per shot. Whether it determines the entire crit per tick or it just decides on this crit modifier for the whole shot and applies it to each tick... in general we're talking about decimal points of structural damage. (5 and 1 crit = 0.75 divided across 4 ticks = 0.1875 per 'tick', across 12 ticks is 0.0625 per tick.. Long as you keep them on the same body part, lasers are good. If you do something stupid like "laser swirls," you're just wasting your time and effort. -- Laser swirling was a technique to defeat bad hit detection in 2012.)
  
• MGs check per 'bullet' and is technically also a tick system where each bullet is its own tick. Crits are heavily scattered and thus this is much more effective against "large" equipment with lots of slots than small equipment. This said you can shred an AC/20 within less than 2 seconds with 4 MG.
  
• IS ACs and UACs are "all or nothing" since each shot is a single hit.
  
• Clan ACs and UACs might have smaller 'direct crits' since instead of 20 damage per shot, their AC/UAC/20 is 5 damage per hit across 4 of them per 'trigger pull'. Since they have a higher number of hits potential hits, they have a stronger likelihood of some crit damage and thus, a higher likelihood of delivering additional structure damage than IS ACs... which works well in exchange for the lack of front loaded damage.
  
• Crits only occur if there is equipment to 'crit'. If all equipment present (including actuators, engine, etc.) are at "0" HP, crits can no longer be successful and bonus damage cannot occur. (Note: The engine has 15 health. Reducing the engine to 0 health does absolutely nothing).
  
• The maximum number of Crits each hit can get is 3.
  
  • Gauss and PPCs have been changed to a single crit limit. This is because in addition to their front loaded damage, these weapons have very long range and are often carried in 2s, 3s or 4s and thus in the example of standard PPCs could (potentially) net 40 base damage, 120 equipment damage and against structure, it'd be 58 damage. Yeah. Plus the ghost heat on 4 PPCs is a laughable joke, so you're hardly given a slap on the wrist. Now the maximum potential of the same 4 IS PPCs is 46 structure damage and 40 equipment damage. On the plus side... instead of 25% chance to do single crits, it's the full 42% chance...

So to answer the questions:


-----------

Do critical hits (extra instances of damage applied to internal components) also deal that many instances of damage to the internal structure?

As explained above: No. It delivers 15% of critical damage delivered for that hit as additional damage to the structure, resulting in base damage + 15% of accumulated critical damage for the hit. (This is exclusive to each hit, so stacking 3 lasers doesn't give you 15% of the overall total, but 15% of each weapon's individually delivered crit damage calculated individually).

Say you have a Hunchback with 42 structure on the left torso. Supposing it has no components stored within - no heat sinks, ammo, nothing - will machine guns or LB10s still deal extra damage to that component when the armor has been ablated to kingdom come?

No. If it does not have an XL or LFE engine and no equipment (which would put 'something' in there), there will be no bonus damage what-so-ever. Note: "Structure" and "armor" slots do not count, as they result in 'rerolls'. If there's nothing to 'land on' the bonuses cannot occur, as 15% of zero damage is still zero damage.

Further, the Targeting Computer increases the chance of critical hits with lasers (along with other weapons). Does this increase the net damage dealt by lasers to internal structure?

So long as you're getting critical hits.

-----
Sources: Accumulated knowledge of Patch notes, Smurfy, Karl Streiger (PGI employee), math, "Crits and You."

Edited by Koniving, 21 July 2017 - 09:35 AM.

[Koniving]

Doctor Dinosaur, on 20 July 2017 - 11:56 PM, said:

If you call experience a primary source, then here we go:
I took some lasers and a flamer to the testing grounds. Shot away the armor of the Atlas standing around there. Shot the structure with the flamer.
The structure did barely get any damage.
This means that it did only the 0.1 damage to the structure, as critical hits would (should) have wrecked the structure rapidly.

Flamer does 0.14 damage per tick, 4 ticks per second.

0.56 damage per second.
Crits: Single, double, triple *0.14 per tick
Structure: 0.14 + 15%(Crit) = anything from 0.14 to 0.203 damage per tick.

So per second it is 0.56 to 0.812 damage.

You shouldn't use flamers to deal damage. They are adding 4.5 heat per tick (that's 18 heat) per second on the enemy.

Most enemies have between 40 and 120 heat threshold, meaning 18 per second is almost half their maximum heat for mechs sporting 10 single heatsinks and almost 1/5th of their threshold if they're a "double heatsink boat." with Maximum Heat Containment skill nodes.

Side note: Flamers stop adding heat to enemies when they hit 90% heat so that you can't 'stun lock' an enemy into a powered down state.

(If they shoot during this, they shut down. Smart ones override to be able to fight back. I did this yesterday as an annihilator and kept firing, he died in three seconds but in doing so, I destroyed 4 of my own body parts despite having almost full armor on all of them and left the rest cherry red. Lost both arms, a side torso, and a leg. He had one flamer.)

Edited by Koniving, 21 July 2017 - 09:49 AM.

[Koniving]

Side note:

This has me wondering. Hellslinger (Battlemaster Hero) and Night Gyr have "external heat" quirks that reduce by half (Hellslinger) or nullify them completely (Night Gyr). Does this include "Flamers"?

I'm curious, but I lack one of my own to test it.

It'd add another plus to them... which helps mend the drawback that they get reduced (Hellslinger) to no (Night Gyr) benefits from the cold and the water.

[Kaethir]

Koniving, on 21 July 2017 - 10:46 AM, said:

Side note:

This has me wondering. Hellslinger (Battlemaster Hero) and Night Gyr have "external heat" quirks that reduce by half (Hellslinger) or nullify them completely (Night Gyr). Does this include "Flamers"?

I'm curious, but I lack one of my own to test it.

It'd add another plus to them... which helps mend the drawback that they get reduced (Hellslinger) to no (Night Gyr) benefits from the cold and the water.

I was under the impression that it was only environmental effects... but I also lack the mechs to test, so I don't know.

[Koniving]

That's likely the case, but external heat 'technically' shouldn't exclude flamers. Technically.
Just like two weapons that generate the same amount of heat shouldn't generate 600% more heat when fired simultaneously... but I digress.

Then again, in terms of why they are what they are.. temperature isn't supposed to affect the Night Gyr's heatsink cooling rates (due to "laser heatsinks"), but that doesn't mean that the mech itself shouldn't get hot.

Now I wonder if lava still heats them up? It shouldn't affect the cooling rate, but heat is still heat.

If lava does still heat them up (without reducing their cooling rate), then fine, flamers should heat them up.
If lava doesn't heat them up (which makes no sense), then flamers shouldn't either.

Edited by Koniving, 21 July 2017 - 10:54 AM.

[Kaethir]

Koniving, on 21 July 2017 - 10:50 AM, said:

Just like two weapons that generate the same amount of heat shouldn't generate 600% more heat when fired simultaneously... but I digress.

They don't even have to generate the same amount of heat! Two weapons that generate almost no heat + two weapons that generate a bunch of heat = ZOMG NUCLEAR EXPLOSION!

[Koniving]

Kaethir, on 21 July 2017 - 10:58 AM, said:

They don't even have to generate the same amount of heat! Two weapons that generate almost no heat + two weapons that generate a bunch of heat = ZOMG NUCLEAR EXPLOSION!

There's actually a decent explanation from that combination; power draw. In BT lore most mechs couldn't even fire 2 Gauss Rifles at the same time (though were able to fire them within half a second of each other), and firing multiple lasers at once reduced their output (requiring them to fire the lasers multiple times to net the total damage they are rated for). The exception being the infamous alpha strike (all power delivered at once... but "firing all weapons within 10 seconds" and "Firing all weapons at the same time" got a little jumbled in Battletech and translations into real time. A proper Alpha Strike in many cases will fry multiple heatsinks and multiple weapons in the best case scenario, with pilot death being likely if the overall heat is 60 units above the cooling ability for the 10 seconds after firing.)

But twin AC/20s has no explanation, regardless of how 'slight', for what happens.
....of course it wouldn't be necessary if we had AC/20s...instead of Super Mech Rifles.

Edited by Koniving, 21 July 2017 - 11:17 AM.

[Doctor Dinosaur]

Thanks Koniving for the clarifications, it explains my findings
I used the flamer for my test because I already knew how good Machineguns were and I wanted to know what would die faster: The enemies structure or my mech via heat induced death.

Turned out it was my mech which was to die... and now I know why.

Best regards
Doc

EDIT: I'm pretty sure Night Gyrs don't care whether you are playing on Terra Therma or Polar Highlands. This should make them immune to flamers, which I again am pretty sure is not the case.

Edited by Doctor Dinosaur, 21 July 2017 - 11:18 AM.

[Koniving]

Doctor Dinosaur, on 21 July 2017 - 11:14 AM, said:

EDIT: I'm pretty sure Night Gyrs don't care whether you are playing on Terra Therma or Polar Highlands.

This is correct.  They are 100% unaffected by environment in cooling power and maximum heat threshold.
This means they suck on cold maps and are awesome on hot maps... but no matter what map they are on, they perform the same.  (Unlike...everyone else.)

Edited by Koniving, 21 July 2017 - 12:08 PM.

[Koniving]

Test. (Tried to edit the post above twice by adding more info and nothing is showing up.)

Okay well that's just messed up.

Welp... To be complete, HellSlinger (the Battlemaster hero mech) is like half a Night Gyr with its 50% reduction to external heat influences.

Environments influence two things:
Maximum heat threshold with a 0 to 90% modifier (increase or reduction) with the typical cap around + or - 25%. (Polar Highlands is +25%, Tourmaline Desert is -25%).
Cooling rate, with 0 to 100% modifiers (increase or reduction) with the typical cap also around + or - 25%.

Edge cases of high percentages are in special places like the central Caldera in Caustic Valley [and cooling vats therein] and the lava in Terra Therma. Rain in Viridian Bog, blizzards in Frozen City also have special effects.
A special case is Water, which is the only special case and environmental edge case where Maximum Heat is unaffected, but cooling is given an additional 100% power (so 200% or double) but only to heatsinks considered "Submerged." Leg heatsinks count if submerged past the knees (doubles, second singles) and can count for the first set of singles by just standing on/in it. (Yep, that shallow swamp water on Viridian Bog likes your SHS). If you submerge the entire mech (need to be small enough obviously), you can completely double your cooling rate.

Great thing is all incoming fire is reduced by 50% as it passes through the water, and missiles explode on the water's surface. Bad thing is all your shots also get reduced by 50%... though nothing stops you from firing missiles out of the water or through it, so long as they don't 're-enter' the water. Their damage is still reduced. Even when it doesn't make sense (LRMs fire through the water, LRMs leave the water, hit enemy on land.. still amage as if exploding underwater)

Sadly, Night Gyr doesn't care if it's in water either, it won't pick up that bonus as it falls under external heat transfer (environmental) modifiers, which the Night Gyr removes 100% of the effects (positive and negative).

Edited by Koniving, 21 July 2017 - 12:34 PM.

[InspectorG]

Dont worry about crits. Just do damage. Damage > crits.

[Doctor Dinosaur]

InspectorG, on 22 July 2017 - 07:50 PM, said:

Dont worry about crits. Just do damage. Damage > crits.

This is a pretty sad view of things. Numbers have changed slightly with last patch, but before the average damage of a machine gun to an open component was 6.8 dps. Let that sink in.
No heat, almost no weight, close to 7 dps.
Machine gun had a crit multiplier of 9, damage of 1 (now 0.95) per second (if I remember correctly)

Light machine gun has a crit multiplier of 13, base damage of 0.7 per second.
Heavy machine gun has a crit multiplier of 6, base damage of 1.4 per second.

Do the math if you can find the formulas to find out what light and heavy do to unarmored components. But it should not be that far off of the "normal" machine gun.
Machine guns are at a pretty good spot right now, if you are able to peel off the armour beforehand, of course. And even with armour they do pretty much damage when boated and in close range.

Best regards
Doc

Edited by Doctor Dinosaur, 24 July 2017 - 01:37 AM.

[InspectorG]

Doctor Dinosaur, on 24 July 2017 - 01:37 AM, said:

This is a pretty sad view of things. Numbers have changed slightly with last patch, but before the average damage of a machine gun to an open component was 6.8 dps. Let that sink in.
No heat, almost no weight, close to 7 dps.
Machine gun had a crit multiplier of 9, damage of 1 (now 0.95) per second (if I remember correctly)

Light machine gun has a crit multiplier of 13, base damage of 0.7 per second.
Heavy machine gun has a crit multiplier of 6, base damage of 1.4 per second.

Do the math if you can find the formulas to find out what light and heavy do to unarmored components. But it should not be that far off of the "normal" machine gun.
Machine guns are at a pretty good spot right now, if you are able to peel off the armour beforehand, of course. And even with armour they do pretty much damage when boated and in close range.

Best regards
Doc

Crits for one class of weapons, that, until now were underpowered and are needed for the much neglected Lights.

The MWO crit system is convoluted and weak.

LBX and SRMs were the crit fishers in BT. Only took one damage to destroy equipment.

In MWO, those weapons are more like shotguns. Raw short range damage.

But still, raw damage usually is more efficient and less reliant on RNG to remove components.

[Davegt27]

I was just watching this again this morning

but I don't think he mentioned a tick is .25 of a second according to Koniving

Quote

Flamer does 0.14 damage per tick, 4 ticks per second

Edited by Davegt27, 24 July 2017 - 04:36 PM.