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Possible Ammo Switching Solution


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#1 Xumtiil

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Posted 22 May 2018 - 02:42 AM

I've heard time and again that ammo switching isn't possible, but I was just wondering:

If you add a C-ATM9, and have three types of Ammo for it (short, medium, long), could you not simply drop with three ATM9 weapons in your loudout in the game with the respective ammo count? Make it so that they are linked and can't be fired at the same time (which is a mechanic that exists for gauss, you can't fire the third if you have two already shooting)

If you want to go full ATM short range, you'll just have a no-ammo medium and no-ammo long ATM weapon in your loadout (much like the one time I forgot to switch my rac2 ammo into rac5 ammo on my king crab. Fun times.)

You can also go for two ways of implementing: you pick yourself which gets fired, or the game decides, but it would also free up some of the really fast light mechs to run outside the range of the missile's detonation, and therefore get no damage rather than being splattered at first shot.

The same could be done for incendiary LRM ammo etc. (or remove the no-ammo weapon from your weapons list if you decide not to take any ammo for it)

Ammo count would obviously have to be rebalanced per tonnage, specifically for ATM's, and to avoid invalid builds there may need to be a "mixed ammo" to replace the current ATM ammo to ensure that people who don't know drop without their ATM ammo.

#2 50 50

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Posted 22 May 2018 - 02:51 AM

To my knowledge, ATMs were never a weapon that used ammo switching.
Think of them more like multistage rockets.

The ammo switching was a feature of the LBx autocannons in the table top game allowing a switch from scatter shot to solid slug.
At the time of the implementation of the weapons in MWO it wasn't catered for and instead of redoing the work on the weapons the clans ended up with the clan standard AC.

Or something like that.

#3 cougurt

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Posted 22 May 2018 - 03:19 AM

the biggest problem i see with this is that treating a single launcher as three separate weapons (which also may not be possible for all we know) would effectively allow you to fire three times as often, since presumably there's no way to tie their cooldowns together.

#4 Toothless

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Posted 22 May 2018 - 03:27 AM

View Post50 50, on 22 May 2018 - 02:51 AM, said:

To my knowledge, ATMs were never a weapon that used ammo switching.
Think of them more like multistage rockets.

The ammo switching was a feature of the LBx autocannons in the table top game allowing a switch from scatter shot to solid slug.
At the time of the implementation of the weapons in MWO it wasn't catered for and instead of redoing the work on the weapons the clans ended up with the clan standard AC.

Or something like that.



No, ATM's had three types of ammo that let you choose what you wanted the ATM to function as, Extended Range, Short Range, Regular. Hence the 'Tactical' part of their name.

http://www.sarna.net...actical_Missile

#5 Black Fish

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Posted 22 May 2018 - 04:32 AM

I had similar ideas in regard to how to make stuff work with currect mechanics, and I came to the unfortunate conclusion that it'll just look really wierd, unintuitive and unfinished...
I like the idea and it could probably work but PGI won't go with something so patchy...

#6 Stridercal

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Posted 22 May 2018 - 09:11 AM

View Post50 50, on 22 May 2018 - 02:51 AM, said:

To my knowledge, ATMs were never a weapon that used ammo switching.
Think of them more like multistage rockets.

The ammo switching was a feature of the LBx autocannons in the table top game allowing a switch from scatter shot to solid slug.
At the time of the implementation of the weapons in MWO it wasn't catered for and instead of redoing the work on the weapons the clans ended up with the clan standard AC.

Or something like that.


Wrong. They use three different missile loads.

#7 FupDup

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Posted 22 May 2018 - 11:23 AM

It kind of defeats the point of the weapon system's intended versatility. You're supposed to be able to adapt to changing battlefield conditions in real time during the fight, not between battles. For between-battle adapting we can already change the entire loadout.

#8 LordNothing

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Posted 22 May 2018 - 01:06 PM

i think i want ammo switching more for things like e-pod, inferno srm, and mmls. e-pod would make a 3t narc launcher acceptable as you can use it as an actual weapon when the narc is not needed.

Edited by LordNothing, 22 May 2018 - 01:07 PM.


#9 evilauthor

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Posted 22 May 2018 - 05:58 PM

View Postcougurt, on 22 May 2018 - 03:19 AM, said:

the biggest problem i see with this is that treating a single launcher as three separate weapons (which also may not be possible for all we know) would effectively allow you to fire three times as often, since presumably there's no way to tie their cooldowns together.


The easy solution here is to just code it that when you hit the button to switch ammo, the weapon goes into its cooldown cycle. Because you know, you're pulling out one type of ammo from the weapon and replacing it with another.

The real question is the front end; what does a player need to do to switch ammo? Frankly, I'm partial to the idea of Shift+(Weapon Group Trigger) to make every weapon in a weapon group change cycle ammo types. It's simple and intuitive.

#10 Khobai

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Posted 22 May 2018 - 07:06 PM

im not convinced there isnt a workaround for ammo switching

while I dont believe its possible to have multiple fire modes and multiple ammo types on the same weapon. I do believe they can have multiple fire modes and a single shared ammo type. all that requires is a state change similar to ECM going from disrupt to counter mode.

LBX should be able to change states from slug to cluster. but both states would have to use the same ammo type.

View Post50 50, on 22 May 2018 - 02:51 AM, said:

To my knowledge, ATMs were never a weapon that used ammo switching.

Or something like that.


theyre definitely ammo switching weapons. the whole point of ATMs was the ammo switching.

and ATMs should also not have a zero damage deadzone. that defeats the whole purpose of ATMs.

Edited by Khobai, 22 May 2018 - 07:19 PM.


#11 Xumtiil

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Posted 23 May 2018 - 12:48 AM

View Postcougurt, on 22 May 2018 - 03:19 AM, said:

the biggest problem i see with this is that treating a single launcher as three separate weapons (which also may not be possible for all we know) would effectively allow you to fire three times as often, since presumably there's no way to tie their cooldowns together.


Actually, drop a mech with four gauss weapons and try firing all of them at once - it won't let you, it'll only let you fire two. That same code can be used to do the exact same thing for ATM, except it'll only let you fire one, and you share the cooldown on all three (like flamers). The code is already there, that's why I'm suggesting to implement it this way. The alternative is adding an ammo switch button and writing the code to go with that and all the bugs that come with trying to shoehorn that into the existing client etc, that's going to be a lot more work for pretty much the same end result.

I'll see if I can't take a few screenshots and do mockup views of it.

#12 cougurt

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Posted 23 May 2018 - 04:06 AM

View PostXumtiil, on 23 May 2018 - 12:48 AM, said:


Actually, drop a mech with four gauss weapons and try firing all of them at once - it won't let you, it'll only let you fire two. That same code can be used to do the exact same thing for ATM, except it'll only let you fire one, and you share the cooldown on all three (like flamers). The code is already there, that's why I'm suggesting to implement it this way. The alternative is adding an ammo switch button and writing the code to go with that and all the bugs that come with trying to shoehorn that into the existing client etc, that's going to be a lot more work for pretty much the same end result.

I'll see if I can't take a few screenshots and do mockup views of it.

it would prevent you from firing them all at the same time, but you would still be able to quickly fire them in sequence. i'm unsure if the flamer code could be repurposed to link them all to the same cooldown, but i imagine that too would cause problems if you were to equip multiple ATM launchers.

another issue that just occurred to me is that i believe there's a hard limit of 16 weapons, which you could easily exceed if each launcher were to be multiplied by 3.

#13 Xumtiil

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Posted 23 May 2018 - 04:44 AM

I was also wondering on key bindings - you'd need to have at least three separate keys for the ATM's and ideally you should prevent them from being in the same group, because otherwise you're going to have a bad time either firing one type of ammo all the time or having to code in a detection algorithm to check which distance it is, and you'll end up with a complicated version of the situation right now - it automatically "picks the appropriate ammo for the distance" and you sort of gloss over the fact that if mechs walk between distances it retroactively will have fired the other type.
Does end up a lot more complicated than what I had imagined in my head

#14 Aidan Crenshaw

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Posted 23 May 2018 - 05:12 AM

View Postcougurt, on 23 May 2018 - 04:06 AM, said:


another issue that just occurred to me is that i believe there's a hard limit of 16 weapons, which you could easily exceed if each launcher were to be multiplied by 3.


imagine the ACW-1 with a full complement of ATM3s Posted Image

#15 B L O O D W I T C H

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Posted 23 May 2018 - 05:25 AM

View PostXumtiil, on 22 May 2018 - 02:42 AM, said:

If you add a C-ATM9, and have three types of Ammo for it (short, medium, long), could you not simply drop with three ATM9 weapons in your loudout in the game with the respective ammo count?


No, the game won't let you put more then 16 weapons on a mech (i've tried so some reason). 5 ATMs and already 16 slots filled.

#16 Xumtiil

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Posted 23 May 2018 - 11:36 PM

How can you have tried though, there are no mechs that have 16 hardpoints?

I can't amend the title, I wanted to edit it to say [abandoned] because I do think the effort put into making this work would now equal or surpass the effort put into making a "Switch ammo" button, with all the extra junk and limitations that you've informed me about (especially the 16 weapon limit etc)

Thanks for the discussion though!

#17 cougurt

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Posted 23 May 2018 - 11:47 PM

View PostXumtiil, on 23 May 2018 - 11:36 PM, said:

How can you have tried though, there are no mechs that have 16 hardpoints?

I can't amend the title, I wanted to edit it to say [abandoned] because I do think the effort put into making this work would now equal or surpass the effort put into making a "Switch ammo" button, with all the extra junk and limitations that you've informed me about (especially the 16 weapon limit etc)

Thanks for the discussion though!

the dire wolf and i believe a couple other omnimechs can have more than 16 hardpoints. i think it just gives you an invalid loadout error and won't let you bring it into a match.

#18 Aidan Crenshaw

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Posted 23 May 2018 - 11:56 PM

The Gargoyle -D can also mount 17 Weapon systems, in theory.

#19 B L O O D W I T C H

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Posted 24 May 2018 - 01:06 PM

View Postcougurt, on 23 May 2018 - 11:47 PM, said:

the dire wolf and i believe a couple other omnimechs can have more than 16 hardpoints. i think it just gives you an invalid loadout error and won't let you bring it into a match.


Correct.

Posted Image

#20 Spheroid

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Posted 24 May 2018 - 01:39 PM

Adding multiple ammo is pointless. Unlike tabletop there is no probability to hit difference in game for HE vs. Standard. That being you always take the round that will do the highest damage. There is no choice to be made.

Additionally if you segregate ammo types you further make ammo tonnage efficiency worse to the point that the only designs that would even take ATMs are garbage tier no hardpoint variants.





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