15 replies to this topic

[Phoenix 72]

I never really had the money to use a lot of consumables, because I was always saving up for this Mech or that Mech. Right now I actually have more Cbills to burn, so I have some questions regarding Arty and Airstrikes.

I can never really tell if my strikes hit anything, aside from sometimes getting some cbills when I just used a strike, without shooting at a target. Is there any way to see whether I hit and how many shells when I am shooting at the target at the same time?

What happens when you target a Mech and deploy an Arty strike? I have the feeling that they do not actually hit anything, unless I target the ground in front / behind the Mech in question. Or is that just my imagination?

[CFC Conky]

If your strike hits, your reticule should flash red each time you hit.

[TheCaptainJZ]

The circle reticle (arm weapons) are where the smoke will go. If you are aimed at a mech, the smoke will land at its feet (not terrain behind it). Since you could hit between an arm and a torso or something, it's best to aim low at the ground to be safe. There is not any way to know exactly how much damage you did in a strike or how well you placed it. You'll either get a lot of red flashes like you hit something with your weapon or one or two or none. Damage will be added to your score at the end but not broken down by weapon.

Edited by TheCaptainJZ, 10 December 2018 - 01:57 PM.

[Mechwarrior 37]

I understand they Nerfed the Airstrike which was my favorite.

When you drop an Airstrike, the bombs land in a straight line. With an Arty Strike, they fall in an area (a circle maybe?).

I use them to suppress an enemy mech or two when I need to move etc. And I love putting one right behind a couple of the enemy mechs where they cannot see it. And it will kill lights. This morning we could not kill this commando. Someone put an arty strike down and finished him.

I've seen the same thing happen with two Piranhas attacking one of our assaults a few days ago. A few of us were trying to give long-range help (he got by himself) and finally I said: "Strike Out on the Piranhas".

I laid an Arty strike and 5-6 seconds later so did someone else. My idea was that the strike might hurt our teammate but it will kill those lights and it worked.

While in an assault or heavy, I've laid one at my feet to help me against a small light.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Yes, Arty strikes are a circle with the drop location being the focal point. Air strikes are a rectangular area that originate at the drop point and draw away from you another 150 m or so. The orientation of the air strike is critical to its proper use. Remember, the bombs start where you placed the smoke and land farther out from you along your sight line at the time you placed the strike. There is also an airplane that flies overhead when the bombs drop.

[Koniving]

Note: The following facts may have changed since they were discovered quite some time ago.
This is explicitly about how they work.
Edit: The first sentence in "Airstrike" proved I can't Engrish, so I fixed it.
Airstrike: Once you make the command for this a series of explosions with no projectiles will appear the instant the craft passes the designated point. These are made presumably from an autocannon (as that would be the hardest non-missile punch any Aerotech fighter/bomber unit could launch to have such an effect). At the last time I used one (2016, maybe early 2017), the explosions start at the point of the marker and continue onward. (This always struck me as weird, they should start prior to and end shortly after the marker if we're comparing it to how marking targets work in real life. My MOS was 13 Mike and my specialty was artillery....)

This said: here's some fun things to note.
If you fire an airstrike underground, the explosions will occur above it as one might expect.
If the firing pattern still starts at the point you make the mark, you can make the mark before a structure or obstacle and nail a hit on the guy behind it; positioned right and against the right kind of hitbox you could nail an instant kill headshot...before they 'fixed' that.
The aircraft will always come from behind you when you deploy the red smoke (press the button to launch the strike). As such, face such that wherever you place the marker will be in front of the intended target when they are in cover. If they are moving, don't bother using airstrikes. Contrary to the tabletop, there's no way to update the location of the strike you've issued.. (Also those would've been carried out by Arrow IV missiles and gone where your TAG pointed.)

Artillery:
When on the receiving end of artillery, the safest spot is dead center on the smoke screen. The bomb placement is not random and follows one of approximately 7 patterns. Of these two of them have one bomb in the center, the other (presumably five if seven patterns) do not. As such dropping one on myself was a common emergency tactic when trying to level up my Dire Wolves in 2015/2016.

Most bombs will drop in a circular pattern around the smoke bomb, though actual distances from the middle vary depending on the pattern that actually occurs. The rotation of the pattern depends on which direction you face when deploying it (as such if you try to count patterns among your 23 friends in private matches, be sure everyone is standing in approximately the same spot and facing; making a mech stack works well for this. It doesn't appear to be weighted in any specific direction

Explosions do not cause actual splash damage, but do appear to have a set exaggeration to the hitbox of the explosion. This is because splash damage as explained by PGI in 2013 using Cry Engine's grenade script would multiply damage allowing a 2 damage missile to do 27+ damage, here's a mech firing maybe 100 to 200 damage worth of missiles and getting 500+ damage. And here it is after PGI removed splash damage.

As such, weapons such as the Clan ER PPC doesn't do actual splash damage as most games would define it but instead has a scripted spread of damage, i.e. if you hit the left arm damage only goes to the left torso. If you hit the front torso it spreads to the left and right torso. If you hit the right leg, it goes only to the right torso. If you hit a left torso from the side, it only goes to the front CT and nothing goes to the rear LT, unless you hit the rear LT in which case it goes to the rear CT but doesn't spread to the front LT, as real splash actually would. (Note that last sentence is assuming there's no left arm).

So each "artillery" and "airstrike" hit has a hitbox that's larger than it appears, it doesn't matter how if it actually missed you visually if you're within its octagonal-prism/cone-shaped hitbox. The hitboxes have a height of approximately 14 meters, meaning if you're higher than this even if it lands directly under you, you'll be unscathed. It is unknown if the hitbox applies damage to a random body part in range or if it has a priority, after all they were able to simply turn off headshots supposedly in which I believe it was described as a chance, potentially a percentage chance?

Please note: Most of these discoveries were made in 2015/2016 and haven't been actively tested again since with 280+ mechs I'm eternally space poor on the cbills due to how frequently I change up gag designs, as such changes may have been made since then. Take these facts with a grain of salt and don't get salty or ashy.

Edited by Koniving, 13 December 2018 - 07:27 PM.

[Koniving]

Am reminded of something reading JZ's post: No, you cannot shoot down the plane in any way. (You can "hit" the plan with a projectile weapon, namely autocannons, but there's no actual effect other than the AC shell exploding in the air.)

[Phoenix 72]

Probably a bit late, but that you all for that information.

[Barkem Squirrel]

Remember to be sneaky when dropping them.

Have seismic when under on crimson straights, rubilite oasis or HP manifold to nail the people above you. If behind someone in a light like a direwolf. hit him in the back start to watch him turn and drop the arty on him as he turns or if he keeps on going drop an airstrike on his back. and keep firing.

Use the other teams UAV's as the target of the arty or airstrike.

hide the airstrikes by firing on the top of buildings or infront of them if the other team is hiding behind them. The same goes for cliff faces, drop on top or at the base.

I use to run the Jenner Oxide with 740 LRMs using 4 LRM5 launchers, but still managed to get more than 740 damage a few times. Why, what is a better way to learn LRMs than close support LRMs at less than 300 m. Then having one air or arty strike at the time with a UAV. This forces you to pick your shot. Once I had a direwolf, highlander and atlas in the arty strike. The cross ears stayed red and I got 856 damage that game.

Remember use the vertical or terrain to hide the smoke when dropping air or arty strikes.

[Mechwarrior 37]

What now is the damage difference between the Air and Arty strike?

[TheCaptainJZ]

I thought the shells did the same amount of damage but that might have changed?

[Mechwarrior 37]

I few patches back, I believe that they took around some of the strikes from the Airstrike option.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Yeah, that's right. And they shortened the distance. Still, as far as I can remember, the amount per strike should be the same.

[Bloodwitch]

This is not 100% confirmed, it's just my knowledge about strikes.

• Upon match start, there is a 1 minute cooldown on all strikes.
  
• Target designator is the arm accuator cursor (circular curso) and NOT the torso cursor (rectangle crosshair.)
  
• Cooldown is shared between all team-members.
  
• Both, artillery and airstrike use the same cooldown.
  
• There is no minimum or maximum range.
  
• Time from issuing to first impact is 7 seconds for both strike types.
  
• Each mech can field on strike (air or artillery) into battle if it was asigned to a consumable slot BEFORE the match.
  
• Consumable feature an auto refill funtion IF the checkbox was checked, if not the strike needs to be replaced after usuage.
  
• With the auxiliary skill node "expanded reserves+1" it's possible to field 2 strikes at once (art+art, air+air or art+air) provided the 2nd strike was assigned to a different consumable slot BEFORE the match.
  
• Each Slot must independently either be checked for auto refill or reloaded after usage.
  
• Strikes can issued on all moving objects, be it mechs (friendly and enemy), UAVS (friendly and enemy) and even enemy aircraft units! The vertial postion does not matter as the strike will always hit from the sky to ground level.
  
• Attempts to jump over a bombardment zone are pretty much useless as a mech still can get hit while being airborne.
  
• There is no audio indicator when a strike is issued
  
• There is a visual indicator (flash and start of cooldown) if you have any typ of unused strike equiped yourself.
  
• When issued, Red smoke appears, designating the starting point of an air bombardment or the the center of an artillery bombardment.
  
• The same red smoke is used for both bombardment types, there is no way to tell from the smoke alone what kind of bombardment will occure.
  
• Afaik, bombs and artillery shells do not roll critical damage.
  
• Bombs and shells do not damage head components.
  
• Bombs and shells are considered "splash" damage as they damage every component within blast radius rather then doing single component damage.

Airstrike specific:

• An airstrikes drops linear from the direction it was placed.
  
• The bombardment duration is somewhat short with roughly a second.
  
• The first bomb of an airstrike will always hit exactly where the strike was issued.
  
• An airstrike consists of 7 bombs which drop in a 125 meter line.
  
• The total damage of all 7 bombs combined is 165 points (23,57 each).
  
• The pattern appears to be slightly randomized and can be anything from a straight line to a very subtle curve or zig zag pattern.
  
• It can be enhanced by the auxiliary skill tree "advanced salvo" 1 and 2, each providing 15% more bombs (translates to 1 additional bomb per skill node) and 15% longer bombardment duration.
  
• It is not in the tooltip but i would assume it increases the overall damage output as well (by 15% or 23,57 damage for each additional bombs).
  
• Advance salvo does NOT increase the range of an airstike, the additional bomb(s) will drop somewhere between the initial 125 meter line of bombardment.
  
• Where the additional bomb(s) hit appears to be random.
  
• Unlike artillery, an airstrikes comes with an actual aircraft delivering the strike, the aircraft can not be harmed or prevented. It does react to ballistic typ weapons but it will not take any damage.
  
• The aircraft can be used to determate the direction of the strike (in combination with the red smoke).
  
• The aircraft can be used to issue an air/artillery strike on its position at any moment it is visible on the map (only opposing team as the cooldown prevents the other time to issue a 2nd strike within 1 minute). It is 1 of 3 ways to indirectly place a strike (beside airborne 'mechs and UAVS).

Artillery Strike specific:

• The duration is 3 to 4 seconds (initial duration + 15% each advance salvo node (0,45 seconds).
  
• Artillery consists of 10 shells with a combined damage of 165 points (16,5 damage per shell)
  
• Enhancing the strike via auxiliary tree skillnodes "advance salve" 1 and 2 gives 15% extra shell count and 15% bombardment duration.
  
• I am assuming 1 skill node gives 1 to 2 extra shells (likely only 1) while both nodes alway give 3 exta shells.
  
• It is not mentioned in the tooltip but i would assume the damage is also increased by 15% each node (respectively 10% or 30% depending on shell count).
  
• Artillery srikes drop in a roughly circular shape around the targeted designation, the radius is somewhat random but shells can hit up to 80 meter beside the center point.
  
• Most impacts occure towards the center point.

While the damage values are fixed, it is possible to get additional damage rewarded by destroying allocated components (arms when side torso is destroyed) or gauss explosions as those roll independly upon destruction (only IS gauss, Clan gauss explodes always although built in c.a.s.e. II prevents damage migration)

Edited by Kunato Developments, 23 December 2018 - 04:55 AM.

[Mechwarrior 37]

Nice, Thanks!

[Mechwarrior 37]

Dang, I forgot to mention this. Doing this one thing will help you and your team use strikes better and with taking less damage while laying one down.

There is a 5-second count when someone on your team lays a strike. So you might be ready to pop up and throw a strike and suddenly your strike is delayed for 5 seconds.

The thing to do is and I'm hearing it a little more and more is for you to say clearly on your mic (I KNOW YOU BETTER HAVE ONE):

STRIKE OUT! when you lay one.

You can add where also. When I'm with others facing and attacking an enemy mech I will say out loud "strike out on the Madcat". If I do that, I also tend to say it it is an Air or Arty strike so my teammates have an idea where the shells will land.

But the main reason to say STRIKE OUT is so your team knows (and YOU know when one of your teammates says it) That there is a 5-second delay coming. This can save a decent amount of damage to your team.

If really needed or wanted, I will also ask for the next strike and even say everyone please let me have it if needed.