5 replies to this topic

[Phoenix 72]

Okay, I know that when your armour is gone and your structure is open, certain weapons have an improved crit chance, which will result in a chance to kill your internal gear, like heat sinks, weapons, etc.

What I do wonder about is how quickly I lose my equipment sometimes. I was just under fire by machine guns and lost the 2 LBX 10 in my torso, which are supposed to have 15 HP each. I was under fire for like 2-3 seconds. Can't say for sure, but I think the enemy only had 2-4 MGs. Even if it was 4, at 4 damage per second, shouldn't it take at least 4 seconds to kill each LBX? Also seemed weird to me that I lost both of them at the same time.

Does anybody have any information beyond what I posted above? Enemy components sure do not die as fast when I am firing with any of my MG based Mechs on them... What am I doing wrong?

[Tier5ForLife]

MGs and LBX's do more crit damage.

Not that much unless your armor is already stripped.

[SilentScreamer]

Darakor Stormwind, on 12 August 2018 - 03:16 AM, said:

Okay, I know that when your armour is gone and your structure is open, certain weapons have an improved crit chance, which will result in a chance to kill your internal gear, like heat sinks, weapons, etc.

What I do wonder about is how quickly I lose my equipment sometimes. I was just under fire by machine guns and lost the 2 LBX 10 in my torso, which are supposed to have 15 HP each. I was under fire for like 2-3 seconds. Can't say for sure, but I think the enemy only had 2-4 MGs. Even if it was 4, at 4 damage per second, shouldn't it take at least 4 seconds to kill each LBX? Also seemed weird to me that I lost both of them at the same time.

Does anybody have any information beyond what I posted above? Enemy components sure do not die as fast when I am firing with any of my MG based Mechs on them... What am I doing wrong?

As you said, some weapons have higher crit chance by default, like LBs and MGs. Beyond that:
- Equipment like targeting computers improve crit chance.
- Survival Skill Tree can make your mech less vulnerable to crits
- The Random Number Generator is involved and it does favor some pilots more than others

Edited by SilentScreamer, 12 August 2018 - 09:18 AM.

[WrathOfDeadguy]

Nothing deals any crit damage at all until your armor is stripped. MWO's crit system doesn't come into play until your internal structure is exposed; there are no through-armor crits in MWO like there are in tabletop BT.

While it is true that MGs and LBX have increased crit chances, they mainly rely on volume of fire to get crits, and would roll them at an increased rate compared to other weapons anyway simply because of how many projectiles they throw downrange. Equipment destruction reveals how much volume of fire really matters- only a crit will damage the equipment mounted in a section before the total destruction of that section. Because weapons, heat sinks, ammo bins, etc. have fairly low health, a large volume of low-damage crits from crit-boosted weapons will wipe out the equipment in a section very quickly and quite reliably, whereas nailing a particular piece of equipment with a single crit from a more powerful weapon is totally down to luck.

I don't know offhand what the percentage is for MG crit chance, but consider this: a single MG fires ten times per second. On an 8xMG Mist Lynx or Flea, that's 80 crit rolls every second. On a 12xMG Piranha, that's 120 crit rolls every second. At that point, statistically, you're more likely to suffer crits than not because of the massive number of crit rolls going on. Likewise, every time you get hit by a 4xLB10X Annihilator, you're being sandblasted by 40 individual projectiles at 1 damage each. Even if only one or two of the pellets in each shot crit, once you're in close enough for weapon spread to stop being a major factor, you're going to start losing equipment from that section. You will still sometimes see the equipment in an exposed section survive sustained LBX and MG fire, but that's a matter of luck as well.

So, basically, whether or not your equipment is likely to get critted out when you lose your armor is mostly down to how many projectiles are striking that section, rather than the damage of each individual projectile (correct me if I'm wrong here, number-geeks- this is just my understanding of the mechanics). SRMs and MRMs are also good crit-machines because of the large number of hits they generate per shot, even though each individual projectile deals little damage.

The corollary to all this, of course, is that few of these weapons are individually all that effective. A single LB10X will, most of the time, be much weaker than a single AC10, because despite the higher base crit chance, each individual crit deals pathetic damage, and it's only when you pump those low damage hits out in massive volume that you'll really see a difference. LB2X and LB5X are only valuable because of their rate of fire and low heatgen, not because of their crit rolls; an equal tonnage in larger-bore LBX yields more projectiles, and therefore more crits (2xLB10X for 22 tons fires 20 projectiles, whereas 3xLB5X for 24 tons only fires 15, and 6xLB2X for 36 tons only yields 12).

MGs don't really start paying for their mounting cost until you can bring them in multiples, and they don't get truly powerful until you've got 6 or more because until then the crit damage boost amounts to a rounding error... but after that you can start to see damage spikes that wipe components out quicker than you'd expect.

[Vlad Striker]

Critical hit means your weapon can hit not internal structure but also an equipment. When you hit equipment you hit it's healthpoint. Usually equpment have 10 hit point. Every strike have chance to hit multiple critical slots with equipment up to 3 with different chanses. When critical slot hitted then some damage goes to the structure. It produce additional structure damage. So MG have 6 or 7 multiplier on critical slot damage so they destroy weaponry wery fast. You can disarm mech without it's destruction.

[Steel Raven]

MG's are annoying right now because MG boats gets a 1-6% chance of critting something on your mech per projectile. So 1-6% chance X 10 projectile per second X 4 MGs = somethings getting crit if that punk gets in range.

I get it, it's the only way to make MGs useful in a game with no infantry but I get really tiered of winning a showdown with an Annihilator just to have a 12X MG Piranha PIR-1 hug my crouch and crit my everything (but that because PIR-1 formula is 1-6% X 10 X 12 = I hate those things so much, I'm loading my LB-X with all the Salt! )

All the same, AC still do more damage with more range. Just got do like Han and always shoot first... especially when you see a Piranha.