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[Koniving]

There was a note earlier in the "I think its a mistake" thread about MW5 about the issues with managing so many weapon groups at once. This post was originally going to go there as a way of showing how design could have been done to greatly mitigate that by just using the weapon variant system, but I've decided it would be more useful as its own separate discussion as it bleeds into weapon/equipment variants and Battletech fluff and MW5 mods.

This gives the backstory, if you want the briefest view of the thread, skip to "This thread has several" and read from there.

Spoiler

One problem every Mechwarrior game has had is that basically we have this. Warning: Numerous pictures and animated gifs.

Spoiler

I'll be using pictures of bullets, but this technically applies to everything but missiles PPCs and most Gauss Rifles. It can, in theory, apply to every weapon system however.

In Battletech, 1 use = 5 damage.
Underneath the surface, 1 use is a rating of expected damage, heat, accuracy (range) and period of time.

So while tabletop shows us that one shot is 5 damage and applies to one location in the rules.



and that your ton of ammo is a whole magazine. That's on the surface for the layman just getting into it without doing any digging.
What it doesn't outright say in just the rules is that in order to simplify and expedite play, its front loaded, and representative of firing all these to get that 5 damage, and that your ton of ammo is actually...

a bin full of magazines, while each use is again a full magazine.


Another common misconception is that two mechs in tabletop are doing this.

Standing still to fire and blasting away at random without any real semblance of aiming.

In reality its more like this. They're shooting while still, shooting while moving, twisting, aiming, etc.

(because not only are they shooting, they're moving)
and in between shooting while being shot at

they're dodging shots when possible and

blocking them.
(Which is why shots hit the arms so often in tabletop). (Its also one of the reasons why the Rifle became obsolete, its easy for a mech to dodge or parry [to reduce damage] a single projectile, especially a large one flying at sub-sonic speeds. Autocannons shoot many projectiles. Its also why pulse lasers have an increased chance to hit anything, it fires many more shots than normal lasers so as to be more effective against smaller or faster targets.)

Every mechwarrior game ever has ignored the blocking, leaving you only with torso twist as a defense and prior to MWO and Mech Assault, even THAT was difficult to do due to how obscure the buttons often are or how fast they shoot.

Even then... They take that first look at tabletop and see 1 use = 5 damage
and then do this.


1 shot = 5 damage. And then give you a ton of ammo filled with super bullets... But then you don't have nearly enough bullets since when you miss there's all that lost damage potential so they inflate how many super bullets you get per ton, which then requires that armor be inflated. And it is not just the ballistics, everything gets this treatment except the missiles. As such the great siege cannons (PPCs) and Gauss Rifle feel pretty pathetic against an AC/10 and an AC/20 and the reduced range of the AC/20 makes no sense (when it makes perfect sense considering it shoots 4 times faster than an equivalent AC/5.)
AC/20

Just imagine in addition to the bigger magazine per volley its firing mechanisms and short barrel are heavily reinforced. I know in this case, the faster firing is basically because the example for the AC/5 would have to be reloaded 4+ times to match the same result.

AC/5

Generally longer barrels. (This is assuming that both are using the same caliber of ammo for comparison, such as 120mm which is the highest common shell size between AC/5, AC/10 and AC/20).

In the long run, every Mechwarrior game's insistence on making the weapons to be like tabletop at face value but faster shooting has led to a large number of issues, such as but not limited to having to heavily inflate armor values, making having several weapon systems feel impossible to manage as well as forcing the gravitation to the most efficient min/max when systems of fluff should be a lot more cohesive and cooperative with one another. Stock armor on light mechs which carry 1 or 2 tons feel like suicide, but in tabletop mechs wielding armor like this can, in pairs or greater, take down an Atlas with skilled enough pilots.... no matter how much skill a pilot has, in MWO one of these mechs can be killed in a single shot of just lasers. Mechwarrior 2 took autocannons into account but nothing else.

With the misconception of Tabletop's front loading being how it is supposed to work now debunked as just a summary of events and that shots between weapons aren't truly random but spread to help represent the inaccuracies of real time action (misses, not hitting where you want due to elevation change or the mech's movement or defensive actions or pilot incompetence), we know that instead of 8+ damage per large laser shot its more like 2 to 4 per shot within an amount of time to get 8.

As such, if designed well the weapons do not need to be so vastly incompatible, making the use of so many weapon systems and blending of them much more tangible, especially in a system loaded with weapon variants.

For example, You could take a look at weapon variants can be oriented over hard hitting short duration attacks. Combining several of these could allow you to fight in a more cover-shooter / crack-shot fashion. Or for missions with lots of smaller, weaker targets or a need to be able to shoot with minimal downtime, or just needs to run cooler by stretching out fire times for less thermal impact...whatever the case, you could opt for more spray-oriented weapon variants such as lasers with longer durations or more shots per volley on the cannons, etc. As such, one could use all the weapons without having to micro manage them for every little scenario.

To point out a canonical example, we have the King Crab 000 and 0000. They are virtually identical. The difference is mostly fluff and a little armor difference. Both have twin AC/20s, a large laser and an LRM-20.

Spoiler

The 000 has 120mm Deathgivers with 12 shot cassettes. These 12 shots are actually fired in 3 round bursts, but can be fired to depletion within a very short time span (approximately 2 seconds) and takes a slightly longer span of time to eject-and-replenish the next cassette from the bin. (Pictures are for getting you on the same understanding of a concept, not representative of exact caliber). It also has sweeping Exostar long beam duration large laser for dealing with smaller threats, and a different LRM system which we won't get into. (Obviously the ballistics are the really heavy hitters and the laser killing numerous infantry in its arcs

(Image of Metal Gear Rex's laser included to give the basic idea to anyone that's ever played a Metal Gear game with Rex in it; it sweeps across a large area to kill infantry and small targets that are unworthy of the ACs or a salvo of missiles).

The 0000 has Imperator-D Autocannons [80mm], (note the largest AC/2 caliber is 90mm and it does 1 damage per shell while 120mm does 1.67 damage per shell). Imperator ACs are known to be semi or fully automatic and does not use cassettes, instead it has a direct-feeding belt with only barrel overheating cutting its potential firing rate down rather than reload down times. Its Magna Mark III large laser, consequentially, is selected less with anti-infantry/small vehicles in mind and more with delivering a heftier laser punch with more power in significantly shorter duration shots. In this case the ACs are good for pretty much any target, while the laser's a hard hitting addition to the spray-worthy ACs.

Since both King Crabs are visually identical until they fire, this was used in the strip-long short-story (similar to this one) called the Hangar Queen's Gambit (though have also seen it as the hangar queen's bluff), in which a what if scenario is introduced by one pilot to another in a bar.

(Extremely Shortened version)
"A King Crab 000 has fired at you and somehow missed with underwhelming fire from its autocannons though it tagged you with its laser. You're behind cover but the King Crab has closed its claws, waiting for you. Your mates are busy and the objective is just right there behind its legs."
"Did it close them to be defensive to protect its cannons?"
"You'd hardly have the time to aim for it let alone destroy it before being ripped apart so doubtful."
"Is it because it is reloading then?"
"If it was running low, why did it miss so bad in the first exchange? Is the pilot toying with you?"
"I'd think maybe he was inexperienced and panicked?"
"In a King Crab?"
"You're right, nobody'd ever give one to a greenhorn. But that doesn't mean the pilot isn't freaking out though.."
"It's calmly waiting with its weapons down. Your objective's right behind it, do you run or do you shoot? Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.."
"Or could it be letting the heatsinks do their job?"
"It wouldn't need to close its claws for that, be better to leave 'em open to air 'em out."
"Then it's has to be reloading. Well then I pop out and shoot, gotta get paid and I can run after before it can shoot, that laser doesn't scare me."
"You're dead."
"How?..."
"The Quad-Oh doesn't have a down time for reloads, its fully automatic...plus we'd never see a high end relic like the Triple-Oh. Shouldn't try to rambo it. Play it safe, live longer."

With this logic in place, 60+ brand name variants of UNIQUE standard IS medium lasers may suddenly make sense and feel less like

crappy off-brand lasers.

Examples range from the extremely powerful yet heavily flawed, user-damaging and thus rare Arcturan Arms Rassal Blue Beam...

Spoiler

(this weapon is completely extinct by the Clan invasion, but is noteworthy in that it causes EM Interference has a degrading cooling jacket, is exceptionally accurate (due to its incredibly short beam duration and single shot full damage nature), and has is prone to the laser equivalent of jamming the "Malfunction." Sarna, sadly, doesn't record any of this. It actually has a total of four negative quirks and only two positive [accurate] and one that's never been made official outside of BattleTechnology magazine [Hard hitter] (which actually gave it 6 damage).

(Among friends, we've changed this to "Never Glancing Blow" meaning instead of a glancing blow it flat out misses and "Direct Blow+" if it scores a normal hit, it does minimum direct blow damage, and when it does direct blow it does minimum direct blow + the direct blow...when you play with all four of the penalties this weapon likes to blow up in your face in addition to making you sensor-blind in a double blind fight in addition to having to wait a full turn without using it before you can use it again; well technically we have to declare we're preparing to use it and then on the next turn [Solaris time scale so 2.5 seconds] we fire, and then where a ML is ready to use again in 5 seconds, this one has a 7.5 second delay).

Basically this thing is a glass cannon, a wildcard, it's gonna jinx both you and your enemy and you never know when this thing is gonna go boom and screw the user or devastate the enemy.
Sadly its reintroduction much later in the 3070s somehow fixes the flaws and loses the benefits.

...to the never-used-in-greater-than-a-pair Martell Medium Lasers (seriously you'll never find more than 2 Martell lasers on any single canonical mech, its like some kind of hidden rule. I challenge you to try! The Gray Death triology makes a single Martell laser to be more intimidating with both shorter beam durations and its faster rate of fire than a rival enemy with 4 ML, also for some reason Martell medium lasers have RED beams. It is also noteworthy that a Martell ML's beam duration can vary slightly at will, allowing for shorter lower power but quicker shots in examples for a Locust and heavier hitting somewhat longer durations for a Shadowhawk 2H wanting more umph.)
...to the far more expensive but "top quality" Aberdovey Mk III
....to others such as the Kurita-common Angra 3L, the Intek ML (which never used in fewer than 2 or greater than 4, though intek small lasers can appear as a single), Hellion B-II (always appear to be compact) (which also makes Hellion V interesting as it always appears as a protruding barrel with a cone-like narrowing tip.), etc.

This thread has several purposes and will probably be renamed soon.

One is to find, host, discuss, and share any details known about any fluff-based weapon variant as well as bring up, share and clear up any misconceptions about the way weapons work (for example the Light SRM shoulder, Heavy SRM one barrel launcher, Heavy SRM two barrel launcher, Man-portable SRM launcher and the vehicle/mech standard SRM which all do 2 damage, despite one end having 5 lb missiles and the other end having 16 lb missiles..) (Detail 1. Detail 2. Will bring that over to this thread later.)

Two, share ideas for how to tweak MW5/HBS BT's (likely in MW5's case) flat upgrade system into a side-grade system where weapons have both advantages and disadvantages over each other, rather than being flat out superior.

Three, add some potential flavor to weapon variants that simply lack anything distinguishing them out in order to fill some niche or purpose.

Four, to find lore-based solutions to any issues that weapon variants either have or may have that could break them.

And all of this without outright replacing them with unlore-friendly modern day systems (I'll leave that to Karl's thread which does that very well and have little doubt Karl may make his own mod/set of mods to bend MW5 in his own way. Myself, I'm going for a true-to-fluff Battletech sim).

(I will populating the thread with more posts between today and tomorrow.)

Edited by Koniving, 02 March 2019 - 05:01 PM.