17 replies to this topic

[PoohPuss]

So I've spent weeks trudgeing through outdated information, picking up small scraps of actually useful up-to-date info along the way. I'd really like to know if there are anywhere I can get up to date on all the hidden mechanics of the game? You know, all the things you'd just assume all new players magically knows.

Example: Why is Light Engine a thing? Why is ballistic weapons a thing? Why is MRM a thing? (they all look really bad on paper). What's the deal with hitboxes, do they not confirm to what I see on the mech-model? Etc..

Smurfy does not have such info.
The MWOwiki has some, but is outdated.

Edited by PoohPuss, 18 January 2018 - 08:25 AM.

[Koniving]

"Battletech"
Basically.

Side note: PGI has taken liberties, for example autocannons in MWO are actually "Rifles" aka tank cannons, which in Battletech were phased out because single shot weapons were largely inferior to gigantic machine guns of exploding death. But since the explosions are pretty meh, and damage ratings are mostly per shot in MWO where its over time in Battletech...yeah, many things from BT are non-viable like standard heatsinks.

LE is an inbetween for XL and standard engines with less fragility compared to the IS XL version, though the Clan XL version is comparable in durability. This would be relatively less important with through armor criticals, but... that didn't make it in.

The real hidden mechanics, though... include Heat Retention (constant fire of one or more weapons without ceasing or letting go of the button). Old thing introduced to do away with certain abusive tactics of amassing lots of low heat weapons and firing constantly for little heat. Affects many weapons, most notably small/medium class lasers and OLD flamers. (New flamers have a new mechanic). Testing examples include designing a guaranteed heat neutral (can't generate heat faster than it cools) build and firing non-stop. Sometimes it takes 20+ minutes, but despite having a build that is IMPOSSIBLE to overheat... you will, in fact, overheat and explode (if you have it overridden to keep from shutting down).

and include "Ghost Heat" also known as Heat Scale. Mix/match some weapons, fire a set number of them faster than 0.5 seconds apart, and boom you're punished with extra heat.

[The Basilisk]

I am not realy sure what you mean by "hidden mechanics" or "a thing"

There is a basic difference between IS and Clan XL engines.
IS eXtra Light engines have 3 slots in each side and clan only two.
A IS light engine has only 2 slots in each torso but is heavier than the extra light.
If you loose 3crt slots of your engine your engine dies.
So an IS mech with XL will die when he looses his side torso.

MRMs can be fired, like SRMs, without lock on and at decent speeds as well as having a better range than SRMs.

Hitboxes are a never ending story you should not bother about at the moment.
Let's just say that some mechs got....issues.... in positive or negative hinsight.

And regarding the place where to get the good info...head to the recruitment forum and get hooked up on TS with one of the Units and just ask some veteran how things work.

But actually there are very few "hidden" things in this game.
Some of the rules seem arbitary and unwieldy for a cumputer game but that is because they where (badly) ported from the Battletech Table Top game.

Edited by The Basilisk, 18 January 2018 - 08:45 AM.

[Koniving]

Ghost heat is well documented.
Most don't know about heat retention.

Old hidden mechanics.
In the original heat system, 80% heat would begin to systematically damage your gear. Exceeding 102% heat would instantly detonate any ammo you had. (Closed beta, early open beta. This system changed in January 2013).

My first fight after the change in heat system.

Rather than systematically damaging equipment, which monitors displayed ammo and heatsink status, it damages the mech's structure. It begins at post 100%, instead of at 80% with the old system.
Strange misses are from the old "Convergence" system, which required you to aim at a target for 1 second to get an accurate shot. This was removed and changed to instant due to lag increasing that to as long as 5 seconds to be accurate.

Videos prior to that, would all have me using chain fire tactics on even ballistic weapons to avoid hitting that suddenly death syndrome, as I had a couple of mech builds that would hit it without having the time to shut down.

And soon after that, the seeds for the current laser meta were sewn.

Its recently improved with the new skill tree, but it is still pretty bad since the new skill tree also has all these heat generation reduction nodes as well.

Edited by Koniving, 18 January 2018 - 08:47 AM.

[Tustle]

Well for questions like the first and third I refer to this website here, for all things MechWarrior and BattleTech. (Light Engines were made in response to the slimmer trimmer Clan XL's and MRM's...were made so that more missiles could be packed in per pod)

As for that second one, well...because humanity had many many years before even our present time and 3050+ to perfect firearms over freakin' laserbeams?

[PoohPuss]

Super! Thanks alot

Regarding heat retention, would I be correct in assuming that wpns that are set to chain-fire sustain alot of heat-retention? And that if possible, all weapons to be used in a certain situation should be fired all at once if at all?

[Koniving]

PoohPuss, on 18 January 2018 - 08:47 AM, said:

Super! Thanks alot

Regarding heat retention, would I be correct in assuming that wpns that are set to chain-fire sustain alot of heat-retention? And that if possible, all weapons to be used in a certain situation should be fired all at once if at all?

No. Because the weapon "ceases" to announce itself as trying to fire when the black square switches between weapons.

You can find an artifact in this with Ultra autocannons. If you press and hold the button it should not jam. (Which gradually adds about 1% extra heat per shot after 3. I don't mean 1% on the heat bar, but if your gun generates 1 heat, then after 3 shots it generates 1.01 heat, which gradually climbs. Takes about 10 minutes to overheat from one weapon doing this at a decent firing rate so it isn't even worth mentioning... but it is there. If you tap, however, or chain fire, it can jam even if you had not fired anything at all.)

[PoohPuss]

Tank Man, on 18 January 2018 - 08:43 AM, said:

As for that second one, well...because humanity had many many years before even our present time and 3050+ to perfect firearms over freakin' laserbeams?

What I ment by this question is "what makes ballistic weapons good?", considering they yield very little damage per ton when compared to energy-weapons and (in the case of clan-weapons altealst) missiles? On paper, that is.

Indeed, when trying out the various machine-guns and the Rotary AC5 they seem very poor.

Edited by PoohPuss, 18 January 2018 - 08:53 AM.

[Koniving]

The gradual addition of heat is "heat retention."


Here's an example using old flamers, where heat retention was the most obvious.
Compare chain fired to "hold fired."
First firing is chain fired.
Keep in mind, old flamers did 0 heat to the enemy, and 0.14 damage per second.

A single flamer on a mech with 26 DHS could overheat the user's mech and cause it to explode in around 19 minutes. On paper it is impossible. But heat retention

Also fun:


Due to chain fire use, heat retention is nowhere to be found. But... 35 PPCs in 18 seconds before exploding went to show how broken the system was, when in 2012... firing 6 PPCs at once BEFORE the ghost heat system even existed.. could instantly kill you.
After the change in the heat system to have override prevent shutdown and how damage was done to you, doing 6 PPCs resulted in a slap in the wrist, and then this started...

because the punishment for this was much softer than 6 PPCs.
That's because at a certain point instead of specific damage numbers, it became "reduce health by 99%."
Rinse and repeat, so long as you waited until it powered on its own you could do it infinitely... If you hit override you probably had a minute at most before you died. Fired while overridden and you died.
(As opposed to firing 6 to 8 ER PPCs at once, which could instantly kill you).

This only got fixed last year...meaning it ran for maybe 4 years before PGI picked up on the error.

Edited by Koniving, 18 January 2018 - 09:04 AM.

[Koniving]

PoohPuss, on 18 January 2018 - 08:51 AM, said:

What I ment by this question is "what makes ballistic weapons good?", considering they yield very little damage per ton when compared to energy-weapons and (in the case of clan-weapons altealst) missiles? On paper, that is.

Indeed, when trying out the various machine-guns and the Rotary AC5 they seem very poor.

Firing rate.

Machine guns by themselves are bad, until the armor is gone. Their higher rate of getting critical hits, and 15% of critical hit damage translating into bonus structure damage, makes them a lot deadlier against structure.

Rotary AC/5 is pretty poor compared to an AC/5, since the jam rate and other factors play into giving it a lower DPS when you consider the down time and a prolonged time slice.
But if you grind them into somebody for the entire duration til the jam, you'll rip someone to jams. Best if you have two. If you can drill into someone with good accuracy, you'll outdo AC/5s. If there's missing, jamming, and a prolonged fight, twin AC/5s will run circles around the twin RAC/5s.

[PoohPuss]

Thanks for all the info guys, this is great! It answers alot of unknowns.

One thing that lacks mention (unless it's outdated), is the component damage priorities. With the bigger components (measured in slots occupied) being damaged first. Another tidbit I picked up by accident, and which I don't know if still applies

[Koniving]

PoohPuss, on 18 January 2018 - 09:01 AM, said:

Thanks for all the info guys, this is great! It answers alot of unknowns.

One thing that lacks mention (unless it's outdated), is the component damage priorities. With the bigger components (measured in slots occupied) being damaged first. Another tidbit I picked up by accident, and which I don't know if still applies

Slot machine.
Every critical hit (which weapons get 0 to 3 per shot), runs a slot machine or dice to figure out where it lands.
Bigger stuff will likely be hit more often. There is no actual priority its pure chance. Just chances are higher if there's more slots.

Roll 2d6. 12 slots, and we get... 3 and 7.. Slot number 10, boom.

What's that, empty slot? Roll again champ!

Did your rolls hit 3 slots of the same weapon or the same slot over and over by chance? Stack the damage! (That's why bigger equipment tends to fry quicker).

Note: Clan equipment might have fewer slots but it has significantly less health, too.

[PoohPuss]

Koniving, on 18 January 2018 - 08:40 AM, said:

Its recently improved with the new skill tree, but it is still pretty bad since the new skill tree also has all these heat generation reduction nodes as well.

The vid shows off varying heat-tresholds. Is that still in the game? And if so, is it a function of heat-sinks? How would I abuse it?

I assumed heat-tresholds were a universal constant.

Edited by PoohPuss, 18 January 2018 - 09:21 AM.

[Koniving]

Quick side note: Sometime last year, LBX was changed to be somewhat unique.

Normally crit damage (which affects a separate HP pool for equipment from mech structure) does equal damage to the shot fired per crit. So an IS AC/20 fired does 20 damage per crit as it is 20 damage per bullet, capping out at 60 crit damage for a single bullet and 29 possible structure damage maximum. A Clan AC/20 or UAC/20 would do a burst of 4 shots at 5 damage each, so for a single bullet that'd be 5 damage per crit.

However, LBX has been changed. Although each 'pellet' or projectile that fires does 1 damage to armor or structure, they do 2 damage to "critical components" aka weapons, ammo and equipment per crit. Meaning an LBX-20 from either side has the maximum potential Structure damage of 38 per trigger pull.

[Koniving]

PoohPuss, on 18 January 2018 - 09:16 AM, said:

The vid shows off varying heat-tresholds. Is that still in the game? And if so, is it a function of heat-sinks? How would I abuse it?

Stack as many heatsinks as you can.
See the monitor in the upper right? That shows my heatsink count and their status (red is fried, yellow is healthy).

You have a base heat threshold of 30, + x per heatsink.
The heatsinks that come with the engine (and not those that you can 'add' to the engine or the mech) have a full 2.0/10 second cooling rate and 2.0 additional threshold, Each.
Those that you add after currently give the threshold and cooling power stated on Smurfy. http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/equipment
(Note Ghost Heat is found under "Heat Penalties Per Weapon.")
(Heat Retention is generally not shared on these good intention-sites because all the data is MWO server side, it can't be pulled from the client's XML files as everything else can.)

Those that you have to add will always be inferior. Internal heatsinks cap at 10, for any engine at or above 250.
Standard heatsinks at the time had no hidden mechanics and were straight 1/10seconds cooling and 1 threshold, and so shoving 42 or more on there was easy.
Now.. Standard heatsinks have a goofy way of working, its better if they are external as opposed to internal.

Abusing this system nowadays.. doesn't really yield much better results. It is a LOT harder to destroy 42+ single heatsinks than 21 doubles, though.

But it usually isn't worth the trouble now. So many nodes have to be dedicated to Operations and Weapons to really capitalize on it and the benefits are slight at best compared to just doing a lot of double heatsinks. Losing twice the amount of tons and requiring a small engine to capitalize on the external single superiority just compounds the losses to the gains... These weren't the case back in 2013 when the video was made.

[Koniving]

PoohPuss, on 18 January 2018 - 09:16 AM, said:

I assumed heat-tresholds were a universal constant.

In Battletech, they are. (Maximum heat before cooling is 30. Cooling is applied retroactively, as you would be cooling as you heat up. If you play with the extended heat scale then the limit is 50.)
In all other Mechwarrior games ever created, they are. (Mechwarrior 1: Unknown. Mechwarrior 2 and all denominations: 40 threshold. Mechwarrior 3: 30 [which is why it is brutal]. MW3 After you install the expansion pack Pirate's Moon: 40 threshold. MW4: 60 threshold.)

In MWO... and potentially in Mechwarrior 5 Mercs (since it is also being made by PGI), they are not a universal constant.

MWO 2012 minimum: 40. Maximum (prior to skill tree) : 73. MWO maximum 2015: 135.? [can't recall the decimal place using Clan DHS boating]. Fluctuated n 2016 and 2017 due to a series of heatsink tweaks. Currently its barely over 110.)

Because the PC "Battletech Game" is turn based like the Battletech tabletop game, it is heat threshold at a set amount minus cooling per turn. So while exactly how much heat shuts a mech down may vary, the threshold aspect of the two to three part equation (if you count environment as a separate part from cooling) is indeed locked.

If you compare any Mechwarrior to tabletop, provided you know each individual game's own heat and fire rate values, you can determine the comparison with the appropriate tweaks to tabletop and get identical results.

If you do this with MWO, you'll find that despite the inferiority of external DHS, if you stay under 17 DHS each individual one cools better than a normal double heatsink from tabletop. After 17 DHS there's a slight decline, due to the stacking "reduced" external DHS even after boosting with the skill tree in "Opeartions" (Keep in mind 17 is the number determined with the old skill tree which did 15% better cooling and 20% better heat threshold when maxed, with each DHS being approximately equal to 2.01 cooling per 10 seconds per heatsink, as opposed to tabletop's 2.0 cooling per 10 seconds per heatsink). If you just compare MWO's DHS and threshold for 10 straight DHS with no changes to straight tabletop, MWO might as well have "triple and a half heatsinks." Which is necessary, since MWO has at minimum 3 times the firing (and consequently damage) rate of tabletop, and currently just over 19 times the damage rate for certain weapons. In addition to 2x or greater armor/structure...which makes mech die a lot faster than they normally would.

Edited by Koniving, 18 January 2018 - 09:57 AM.

[PoohPuss]

Koniving, on 18 January 2018 - 09:09 AM, said:

Slot machine.
Every critical hit (which weapons get 0 to 3 per shot), runs a slot machine or dice to figure out where it lands.
Bigger stuff will likely be hit more often. There is no actual priority its pure chance. Just chances are higher if there's more slots.

Roll 2d6. 12 slots, and we get... 3 and 7.. Slot number 10, boom.

What's that, empty slot? Roll again champ!

Did your rolls hit 3 slots of the same weapon or the same slot over and over by chance? Stack the damage! (That's why bigger equipment tends to fry quicker).

Note: Clan equipment might have fewer slots but it has significantly less health, too.

Does Endo-steel structure and FF-armor fill slots for the purpose of absorbing crits, or are they considered empty in regards to the slot-machine?

Edited by PoohPuss, 18 January 2018 - 09:57 AM.

[Koniving]

PoohPuss, on 18 January 2018 - 09:57 AM, said:

Does Endo-steel structure and FF-armor fill slots for the purpose of absorbing crits, or are they considered empty in regards to the slot-machine?

Empty. Any "structure" or "armor" slot result in rerolls.

Actuators do not generate rerolls. Each actuator has 10 health. Destruction of an actuator hasn't done anything since late July 2012. Too many complaints of a glitch where arm weapons wouldn't fire at the reticle and mechs drift-tuning as they moved with no discernible reason: the cause was actuator damage. But the game had no implemented way of "TELLING YOU", which is crucial. So PGI removed its effects. Still has health because of the old repair and rearm system.

Also of interest: Your life support, sensors, gyro and engine also have health.
Nothing happens when destroyed, just legacy for the R&R system they removed.
the engine has 15 health.
When the gyro did do something, you were "easier to knock over" as opposed to when it wasn't destroyed.



Note at the time of uploading that video nearly a year after recording, the Centurion AH was removed from the game following the release of the similar Wang... and wasn't reintroduced to the game until 201...6? 2015 or 2016. Pretty sure the latter. This is before "HSR" or Host State Rewind" which is lag compensation, as such you had to shoot the air in front of your target... to barely even hit the opposite side of your target because no one was where they were. This was recorded in closed beta.