14 replies to this topic

[Mir 17]

To be more specific, if something has, theoretically, a 45 percent chance to crit, and one point of reinforced casing gives four percent crit resist, does it reduce the chance to crit by four percent of the chance to crit, or by four percent of the full hundred percent of possibilities? In the first case, it would reduce it by four percent of 45 percent, which is 1.8 percent, for a final crit chance of 43.2, and in the second case, it would reduce it from 45 to 41. And as a follow-up, is reinforced casing worth running? I've gone poking around with search engines and I haven't been able to find the mechanics behind this. Thanks for your time, folks.

[martian]

Mir 17, on 16 December 2023 - 09:41 PM, said:

To be more specific, if something has, theoretically, a 45 percent chance to crit, and one point of reinforced casing gives four percent crit resist, does it reduce the chance to crit by four percent of the chance to crit, or by four percent of the full hundred percent of possibilities? In the first case, it would reduce it by four percent of 45 percent, which is 1.8 percent, for a final crit chance of 43.2, and in the second case, it would reduce it from 45 to 41. And as a follow-up, is reinforced casing worth running? I've gone poking around with search engines and I haven't been able to find the mechanics behind this. Thanks for your time, folks.

I think that rather than talking about one percent here and there, it is more important to know what your priorities are.

Essentially, you can invest either in the Firepower branch or in the Survival branch of the Skill tree. If you boost your firepower (Range and Cooldown skill nodes), you can overwhelm enemy 'Mech before your 'Mech dies. On the other hand, if you spend your Skill points on those Reinforced Casing nodes, your 'Mech will have weaker firepower, but it will last longer in combat.

Also, your preferred role is worth considering: A sniping 'Mech can reasonably expect that it will not be the enemy team's first target and it can invest in Firepower. On the other hand, a brawling 'Mech will have to eat some damage, so resistance against critical hits can be useful.

[Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie]

^
in a nutshell: what martian said.


try to stick to the role you want your mech to be in:
an assault-leading Atlas might wanna buff the survival-tree
a sniping MarauderII wants to buff different stuff.
a stealth-flea.. no, don't be that guy
an 24/7idf-lurmer: don't be that guy, either. srsly. but if you must, invest in offense, and offense only.
no need to buff the "never being shot at"-armor.


on top: think of what your mech does in a QP environment, or if you bring it to faction and what it does there.
as faction uses roles and actually HAS teammates and teamplay, things are VERY different here than in QP.

if you're doing only QP; personally, I rather invest in things that help me "kill stuff"; the best defense is when everybody's dead and I didn't need ALL that armor/internal stucture anyway

the good thing: you can change your skills anytime: your mech dies too often? go for defense-skills. you take too much time to kill stuff? go "best-defense"


in the end, those skillpoints are nice to have and certainly make a difference against people on the same actual skill-level; all the other stuff that you learn - how and when to shoot, what to shoot, when NOT to shoot, WHERE to move and WHEN.. it counts for FAR more.

Edited by Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie, 17 December 2023 - 11:04 AM.

[Spheroid]

It pretty much sucks, you can test in the Academy testing grounds.

Go take a Supernova and blow off its armorless sidetorso with or without the nodes.The best crit weapon, an I.S. machine gun goes from something like 425 rounds to 385 rounds.

Now blow the other torso with a normal crit role chance chance weapon like a small laser. Barely noticeable difference if at all.


Is it worth the nodes? Depends on your use case. For me, generally no.

Edited by Spheroid, 17 December 2023 - 12:40 PM.

[Vorpal Puppy]

Reinforced casing is one of those skills that just doesn't do enough versus other options. As others have said offense-related skills >> defense related skills. If you want to experiment with it, the only use case where I would consider taking reinforced casing on a mech is a short range, brawly-mech that is heat neutral, with weapons that have negative consequences (explode) when critted out. For example, a dual heavy gauss Cyclops with no backup lasers. You have no need to purchase any of the heat reduction related nodes for such a build.

[Mir 17]

Thanks for the answers everyone. On all of my current builds I run max or near max armor, and max armor health and structure health skills, but no crit resistance. I was just trying to find out how it actually worked so I could decide if I wanted to try including it. With these answers I'm pretty inclined to ignore it. Except maybe in case of the dual heavy gauss thing. Remind me to build one of those actually...

But...I AM still very curious. How does it actually mechanically work? I've never been able to find a hard answer and that lack of knowledge in and of itself bothers me.

Oh, one more thing. I was told by someone I consider reliable that light mechs ignore two thirds of all damage or thereabout as long as they're moving, even a little. Is this documented anywhere? And are there any more exact details to know about it?

Thanks for your time again!

[foamyesque]

I believe reinforced casing stacks additively with the basic chassis quirks (as cooldown and heatgen do), and so -- also like them -- it gets far stronger if the mech already has a pre-existing chassis quirk. Hitting 0% critical chance is possible on certain mechs and you do actually feel that.

Otherwise I wouldn't bother on most machines. Maybe on a gauss bird.

[martian]

Mir 17, on 17 December 2023 - 03:45 PM, said:

Oh, one more thing. I was told by someone I consider reliable that light mechs ignore two thirds of all damage or thereabout as long as they're moving, even a little. Is this documented anywhere? And are there any more exact details to know about it?

Many heavy and assault pilots with bad aim and bad positioning complain about this, yes.

But seriously, the hit registration has improved over the years and now it is quite reliable.

[foamyesque]

martian, on 17 December 2023 - 09:46 PM, said:

Many heavy and assault pilots with bad aim and bad positioning complain about this, yes.

But seriously, the hit registration has improved over the years and now it is quite reliable.

I can't speak for anyone else but personally I am extremely adept at whistling shots in between a 'mech's legs.

[feeWAIVER]

I would think it's worth taking if you're worried about getting an ammo explosion.

[ScrapIron Prime]

I'll add a voice to the above comments, Crit Chance is not something worth spending points on except for a rare few mechs. You're going to get a lot more milage out of spending points on seismic sensors and hill climb than you will on adding a few points to crit reduction, unless you've got a well quirked mech.

For example, an Awesome Pretty Baby with its 70% crit reduction... if you take skill nodes to add to that you can get almost 100% reduction... meaning internal structure is the same as armor and there are no critical hits at all.

The only other mechs that have over 50% crit resistance baked in with quirks are the Kodiak 3 at 60% and the Charger Number 7 with 100%. That last one needs no skill points spent, it never takes critical hits at all. Anything with 40% or less crit resistance could be pumped up, but its not really worth the skill point investment if you're not getting close to 100% reduction.

[martian]

foamyesque, on 18 December 2023 - 03:26 AM, said:

I can't speak for anyone else but personally I am extremely adept at whistling shots in between a 'mech's legs.

Great! That is a nice skill to have!

[CrustyMech]

Not to flog this too much, but I am reskilling all my mechs after an absence... did this skill used to have a higher priority? I have it maxed out for some reason on a couple of mechs (like the D-DC Atlas). Or did I originally do it wrong (very possible)?

[MechMaster059]

Mir 17, on 17 December 2023 - 03:45 PM, said:

...
With these answers I'm pretty inclined to ignore it.
...

The people telling you crit reduction is bad are wrong. I get a minimum of 3 point into it on nearly every mech.

There are certain weapons that will absolutely tear your mech up once the armor is gone. Anything that fires a large number of small damage hits will shred through structure due to extra crit damage. Examples: Machine Guns, LBXs, MRMs, LRMs, X-Pulse lasers. Machine Guns and LBX weapons have large crit chance/damage bonuses that many players don't know about. There are skills and quirks that improve missile crit damage.

3 points vs 0 points is VERY noticeable. Adding a 4th or 5th point is also noticeable but the skill starts to become expensive at that point. My advice to you: try to get 4 points into it if possible but 3 is usually good enough. DO NOT LEAVE IT EMPTY.

The only situation I don't put any points into Reinforced Casing is on certain light mechs that have so little structure that crits don't really matter, the light mech is pretty much guaranteed to lose the component once the armor is gone anyway.

Mir 17, on 17 December 2023 - 03:45 PM, said:

But...I AM still very curious. How does it actually mechanically work? I've never been able to find a hard answer and that lack of knowledge in and of itself bothers me.

Your 1st explanation is correct. A 4% reduction comes off the 40% crit chance, or a net of -1.6%. That doesn't sound like much but crit chance is a very sensitive stat. Avoiding even just 1 crit can mean the difference between a weapon being destroyed or not.

Mir 17, on 17 December 2023 - 03:45 PM, said:

Oh, one more thing. I was told by someone I consider reliable that light mechs ignore two thirds of all damage or thereabout as long as they're moving, even a little. Is this documented anywhere? And are there any more exact details to know about it?

It took me a long time to figure this out, but light mechs can be surprisingly tanky if you fire at their torso. This is due to the small component size on light mechs making their arms, side torso's, and center torso a very compact target that is easy for them to spread damage across by twisting as they move. Yet another reason to aim for their legs instead.

[Navid A1]

Mir 17, on 16 December 2023 - 09:41 PM, said:

To be more specific, if something has, theoretically, a 45 percent chance to crit, and one point of reinforced casing gives four percent crit resist, does it reduce the chance to crit by four percent of the chance to crit, or by four percent of the full hundred percent of possibilities? In the first case, it would reduce it by four percent of 45 percent, which is 1.8 percent, for a final crit chance of 43.2, and in the second case, it would reduce it from 45 to 41. And as a follow-up, is reinforced casing worth running? I've gone poking around with search engines and I haven't been able to find the mechanics behind this. Thanks for your time, folks.

The reinforced casing nodes are multipliers not additives.
a -50% crit chance means half chance for a crit compared to stock.

As an example, a normal weapon (like lasers) have a 25% chance of doing a single crit, 14% of doing two crits, and 3% of doing three crits.
Having a -50% crit chance skill/quirk will make them 12.5% chance of single crit, 7% two crits and 1.5% three crits.


Only case when crit chances are additive are the bonuses provided by targeting computers.

Edited by Navid A1, 08 January 2024 - 02:45 AM.