113 replies to this topic

[Nesutizale]

I think I just got more information about BT weapons in one posting then I did in years of playing..wow.

As for your mod, good luck with it. I hope you will be happy with the result. Haveing worked on a mod in the past I know that it can be hard, espacialy when you are a very ciritcal person or perfectionist.

About the simulation aspect...well I am 50/50 on that. Means 50% realism to 50% fun. While I like to have some realism and simulation going on I think it still needs to be playable and managable.
For example if I would see two weapons that are very close in stats and end result I would scrap one of them.
Other example would be is the weapon fun to use and adding something to the game. If it can be justified, then yes. Else it just clutters up the work that needs to be done and in case of other people playing it, it would start to become overloaded.

Since you are doing this for youself you can surely go as far as you like. For a release....maybe you want to have some testplayers to see what the favorits are and what people tend to sell as soon as it pops up in their inventory.

Well lets see what you can do when MW5 finaly ships. I have a feeling it will be interesting.

[Unleashed3k]

Koniving, on 24 November 2019 - 03:35 PM, said:

It is true that there will be those that won't appreciate it. I know that simulators aren't for everyone. But that's the beauty of a mod. It isn't forced on everyone. It just makes changes or corrections to things. Like realistically ugly people in Skyrim, or that unique sword made thousands of years ago that looks like every other sword and does literally the same thing but weaker.

Besides, the mod is being made for me. I'm just gonna release it after I'm reasonably happy with it for those that wanted as true an experience as possible without having to have the money to develop one from the ground up myself.

Tbh, I really like your approach and all the work you invest into it.
Sure, people can play MW5 the "arcade-way", but I am a big BT and simulation fan and having so much different choices and beeing able to use more than the standard options is what I am really looking forward to.

I think what you are doing will make everyone that has passion for the lore really happy, when you can release your mod.

So keep up the great work and I really hope that MW5 will give you all the options needed to succeed!

Edited by Unleashed3k, 24 November 2019 - 06:52 PM.

[carl kerensky]

Koniving, on 21 November 2019 - 02:56 PM, said:

They did that but dropped the names.

Now it's level 5 burst ac/20, level 1 single shot ac/5,...

Though I havent updated my threads on it I'm well on my way doing the pre-planning and organizing for my lore-rooted weapons mod which is part of my battletech sim overhaul of mw5. So we'll have those brand name weapons true to source material including the Crusher Super Heavy Cannon (ac/20 artillery piece), chemjet gun (a charge up chemical injection ac/20 with high powered rounds that can be fired directly or indirectly), Defiance Mech Hunter (high caliber high impact semi-auto ac/20), etc. (And not just acs, everything from MGs to lasers to missiles. Just gonna be weird to get used to red and yellow medium lasers, green large lasers and blue small lasers...)

Really looking forward to your SIM/MOD overhaul Koniving. I was a founder way back for MWO and I lost interest after the game was essentially turned into a FPS/arcade experience. I did enjoy this MECH 5 video. Tons of potential. Hopefully the modders can really re create the SIM experience that Battle tech needs.

[Nesutizale]

@Koniving
Just a thought when speaking about the Sim aspect. Will or do you also plan on working on aiming and movement? I mean we know that originaly BT is notoriouse for you not beeing able to aim straight and weaponfire spreading everywhere before you hit what you want or need to hit.
Also ACs could use some form of balistic trajectory.

An idea that I had a while back was "What if the game wasn't designed with the limit of the boardgame behind it?"
Weapon ranges in particular where limited by what is practical in a boardgame.
So what if you would take todays weapons and their ranges and transfere that to BT weapons?
For example base the AC10 on the Abrahams or Leopard 2 120mm canon with a range around 5km and extrapolate from there the ranges for all other ACs.
LRM racks, I would imagne, would be more like a "stalin organ" for era bombardment. SRMs would be closer to streak missiles and so on.

Have you ever thought about something like that?

Edited by Nesutizale, 25 November 2019 - 01:29 AM.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

te Boardgame simulated the high agility of Mechs in his Universe ..ducking ,running , sprints ,going in Cover , crouching, and the metal and Physical problems of the Pilots ..Stress, Heat , Wounds etc etc ...thats all aspects you not can in all way smulated in a PC game ...many Aspect of Battlefield Infuence of the Soldiers Mind you find in Battlefield 3...Noise, stun by explosions, dazzled by flashes of light
in MWO (and his stupid Climb System ) the Mechs lost her great Advantage against wheeled Vehicles ,and can not walk over a Pebble with 100t .

and the Ranges of Boardgame was limited by the Minds thats the Range muss have place of a little Table ...its give better systems, seeing WH40k or many Warsimulation Boardgames .

Edited by MW Waldorf Statler, 25 November 2019 - 03:14 AM.

[Koniving]

Nesutizale, on 25 November 2019 - 01:29 AM, said:

@Koniving
Just a thought when speaking about the Sim aspect. Will or do you also plan on working on aiming and movement? I mean we know that originaly BT is notoriouse for you not beeing able to aim straight and weaponfire spreading everywhere before you hit what you want or need to hit.
Also ACs could use some form of balistic trajectory.

Not at first for movement. Aiming is a bit of necessity considering that in addition to two fire-over-walls capable AC/20s, one of which with a charging mechanic and a need for accuracy while the other is just spray and pray. There's also the fact that PPCs and Gauss would have the most powerful single projectiles you can field and the intention to add Mech Mortars and Arrow IV...

Basically, none of that would work without addressing aiming mechanically.

However, the reason why BT is notorious for "not aiming straight" actually has nothing to do with the aiming. You're allowed to "Call shots" (aka "aim") under 4 conditions.

• The target is unable to move (Specifically the condition immobile, even if the mech is unable to leave its hex if not listed as immobile it can still move within the hex and thus you can't call the shot).
  
• The target's pilot is unconscious and thus cannot react.
  
• The target is unaware of your presence and you have spent a full turn after calling your target aiming from an unknown position, under BattleTechnology sniper shot rule (which also gives you double range for a single weapon).
  
• The target has no power.

In all four of these cases, the circumstances are factored by the target not by the person targeting. This is because in the lore, mechs can and will try to automatically evade anything it detects as incoming, so long as it does not interfere with the intentions of the pilot.

Lets go through each scenario.
1) Mech is unable to move due to immobile status. Doesn't matter what the pilot intends, the mech can't move. You can call the shot and "aim" because the target cannot do anything about it.

A mech that cannot leave the Hex but is not considered immobile, in the BattleMech Manual (2018), a mech still has 30 meters in which it can evade and attempt to deflect incoming fire.

2) The pilot is unconscious. Although the mech performs minor evasive and defensive action automatically when permitted/not already engaged in its own attacks, it will not act without the helm being able to read user intent. This is actually rooted in an early issue of BattleTech called "robotic warships" in the 2300s, in a scenario very similar to the episode Natural Enemy from Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex. The limited crew died during a jump accident, the ship assumed it was under attack and anything that tried to recall it was recognized as a threat. As such, mechs are not permitted to do anything without the pilot's intent.
3) The target is unaware of your presence. No hits on sensors, no visual, no nothing. Your attack is a surprise. Supposedly by the time the machine recognized the threat, it'd be too late to react. It needs time to anticipate the attack. Much like John Wick can do amazing stuff if he knows where an enemy is, but when they get the drop on him just clunk on the head and he's out.
4) Target has no power... well, duh, what's it gonna do sit there?

In every situation, the ability to "call the shot" and thus indicate where you intend to hit relies on the enemy's inability to react.

In real time, that ability to react is you torso twisting, you throwing your mech's arm in the way of the shot (which was a thing before HSR, because between the lag for firing and most weapons operating on 4 seconds, every four seconds you can throw your arm in the way of an AC/20 shell and take it all in the arm while free to nail them with your own, it's how I stood toe to toe against an Atlas in a Cataphract one on one in a slug-fest that lasted almost 3 minutes before I discovered his legs barely had any armor. Every AC/20 I threw at him he'd visually appear to swing his arms and catch it in the fist or forearm. Each one he slug at me I'd catch in one of those bulky droopy arms of mine. Eventually I was down to a medium laser and that's when I discovered his leg by a fluke when I was still trying to take out his big guns.

The rules aren't there to detract from reality and real-time but to try and recreate it as best as one can, as simply as one can.
However, they are not intended to replace reality.

Much like accurate range, min accurate range, etc. The accurate range isn't the limit of what the weapon can do (ACs can pump out to 2,000 meters), but for an AC/20 you'd be hard-pressed to accurately deliver up to a hundred 40mm into a specific spot on an enemy that's actively trying to evade or defend against your attack while also moving yourself, so 270 meters is the range expected of an average pilot against a foe under combat conditions. This is why the range of weapons double or triple with certain quirks or specific conditional rules such as "Ambush Snipe" and "Sharp-shooter".

ACs in MWO and MW5 actually do have a ballistic trajectory already...

Shortly after praising the snake I try some long-range sniping, note the ballistic trajectory.
Due to the locked ranges of "oh well that's the range" without understanding why that's the stated range, you'll hardly ever use it far enough to notice that it exists.

Quote

An idea that I had a while back was "What if the game wasn't designed with the limit of the boardgame behind it?"
Weapon ranges in particular were limited by what is practical in a boardgame.
So what if you would take todays weapons and their ranges and transfere that to BT weapons?
For example base the AC10 on the Abrahams or Leopard 2 120mm canon with a range around 5km and extrapolate from there the ranges for all other ACs.
LRM racks, I would imagne, would be more like a "stalin organ" for era bombardment. SRMs would be closer to streak missiles and so on.

Have you ever thought about something like that?

Already addressed.
The long and short..
The average AC projectile has a maximum possible range of 2,000 meters.
(No map from MW5 appears to be beyond 3,000 meters square but I may be mistaken, and the largest map in MWO not counting the Faction Warfare maps was something shy of 4,000 meters across.)
Numerous factors will affect the overall accurate ranges such as recoil and such, all covered in lore and reality naturally.

For example, the Crusher Super Heavy AC/20 is a 10 shot burst artillery piece that's intentionally designed to be inaccurate in order to allow the turret-less cheap vehicle it's mounted on to saturate a wide area with virtually no skill involved. As such if you're fine with saturating an area you can get into some pretty good ranges. But if you're trying to accurately hit something specific without collateral damage, you better get close.

In real life, the larger the caliber of the bullet, the farther it tends to go when given enough power to actually be used as a bullet.
In Battletech, this is true of Rifles as these fire one or two projectiles per use, with a span of 4 seconds apart. (I wasn't kidding when I said MWO gave us Rifles instead of autocannons).
The reason it isn't true of autocannons, is, firing volume making a shot grouping more difficult, spread from recoil and movement, etc. (If you ever take an assault rifle to a range, you'll note semi-automatic shots are much easier to group than going full auto.)
So larger calibers will have longer ranges than lower calibers. In return, lower calibers will have fewer issues with accuracy during sustained high volumes of fire than a large caliber that also has high volumes of fire in a short period.

One thing to remember, is the Leopard cannot see the target at 5km except under certain conditions, there's a lot of GPS, networking, and spotting factors involved to achieve that and many planets do not even feature satellites (and one of the first things to do when invading a planet is to destroy the satellites). Another important thing to remember is that 120mm cannon is not an autocannon. It's a tank cannon. In BT that isn't an autocannon but a Rifle.

At the moment, the canonical ranges are:
AC maximum range of the 120mm is 2,000 meters (ACs; with so little accuracy you can't reliably hit anything to that range). It also notes that even if you hit something at that range, unless it's BAR is 5 or under, the explosive component of an AC shell isn't enough to damage the mech without the kinetic energy to penetrate enough into the armor to get partially under the plating...basically meaning at 2,000 meters you'd do no damage to tanks and mechs, but could still hurt lower armored vehicles.

Rifle maximum range slightly over 3,000 meters. For every 400 meters after 2,000 though, an additional point of damage is lost. (So at 4,400 meters the 190mm Heavy Rifle would be ineffective).

Gauss Rifle's maximum range in the War of 3039 was "one map over." In TRO 3039, the Hunchback gives details of a prototype Gauss Rifle being fired from an astonishing range. Assuming I can do the same stuff in MW5 that I can do in Unreal Tournament 2004, you'll really like what some Gauss Rifles can do. See my consolidated mod thread tomorrow when it goes up; will be a solid summary of plans.

"Lasers have theoretically unlimited range" but are limited by things like atmosphere, particles, smoke, fire, etc. As you might notice from my previous post now edited with pics and links, I already have this in the works.

(Note a correction came in the next issue correcting the amount of energy used by lasers)
And ranges in general.

Note the AC range is specifically stated to be around 2k.



As for movement, planned to work on it with the engines. I'll be revamping the mechs and such, but it's on the backburner til the weapons are done.

[Koniving]

A quick note despite the "thereotically unlimited range," most lasers lose effectiveness against BAR (barrier armor rating) 10 between the long and extreme ranges of the laser weapon in atmosphere. The heftier a battlefield's particle debris and storms the more the lasers are affected both in BT lore (when authors remember...) and in real life.
Lasers admittedly would have the shortest max ranges by that extension. This said lasers easily make up for this in many ways.

Just, if you can, play some MW3 and when you think of pulse lasers, expect more variations to work like that than MWO's. The extra heat is easy to manage overtime but about impossible when it's so up front.

I've adopted an Excel spreadsheet a few months ago with numerous calculations built in. It isn't perfect by any means but with it I can plug in some basic info and get price per shell, shells per reload, time to achieve damage rating, time to get rating reload and immediately get rating, heat per projectile, time to overheat weapon, time to overheat weapon and fire immediately after firing, time til critical weapon failure, how many sequential overheats until critical failure chance hits 35%...

For range it also gives me range until kinetic velocity is insufficient as well as be able to plug an inquiry of range to get how much damage potential is lost per projectile (in acs from there the main damage would be from the explosive component). For lasers the important thing is bloom or beam degradation over range. Some lasers like the diverse optics 2 (one of the few green medium lasers to exist) is a particularly potent laser but after only 180 meters the beam will already start to degrade. Meanwhile the longest ranged lasers are Intek brand, but while energy efficient and able to meet ER ranges, the Intek brand requires twice as many shots compared to the average medium laser to achieve it's rated damage. (Canonical give and take, give up wallop per shot for range outclassing the competition. Every gain has a sacrifice, with no universally superior models).

[Nesutizale]

Frankly I didn't take my time to read all of it (sorry) but I see you have done your homework and put a lot thought into it.
Well it will be interesting to see if you can actualy translate all of this data and ideas into some interesting gameplay. I will definitly follow your progress.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

and the boardgame is very abstarct ...and aiming ist not a real feature in it , thast you not can hit a 3x3m big Cockpit or other big Parts in 10m is the great difference between abstarct Tabletop and Real time and many is pure Magic in BT (seeing the Size of Missles and the loading of it...ammo comes magical to Weapons ,etc)


its a great difference to play Cheese,play Chevalier on pC, to fight a Trainfight with showswords and historical Technics ,and fight a real Fight for life

Edited by MW Waldorf Statler, 26 November 2019 - 03:30 AM.

[Nesutizale]

Playing Cheese......sorry but is funy

[latinisator]

Beta keys are there!!!

Edit: 20.2 GB. Wow

Edited by latinisator, 26 November 2019 - 11:57 AM.

[Rinkata Prime]

Is there be Chinese localisation of MW5?
Friends from LIAO asking.

Edited by Rinkata Prime, 26 November 2019 - 11:52 PM.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

Nesutizale, on 26 November 2019 - 05:09 AM, said:

Playing Cheese......sorry but is funy

no Problem , its one of the oldest abstract strategic boardgames

Edited by MW Waldorf Statler, 27 November 2019 - 02:59 AM.

[Koniving]

For those following for my mod, I've updated my signature to include the new thread.