54 replies to this topic

[Felicitatem Parco]

By definition, Automatic weapons can be fired one-shot-at-a-time, you just release the trigger before the next shot is chambered. I doubt the pilot in that video depection had to repeatedly pull the trigger during those sustained bursts because they came out too regularly.

[Aegis Kleais]

There's a pro/con to semi/full automatic fire in AC2/5 vs. AC10/20, and it has to do with rate of fire.

With an AC2/5, they fire so fast that:
Semi Auto - Allows for finite ammo use control and better accuracy, though it takes longer to put more lead on target.
Fully Auto - Allows for wild spraying of ammo down range for a lack of accuracy.

With an AC10/20, they fire slower that:
Semi Auto - Allows you to better ensure that you are aimed before committing a shot, but you have to wait til the round is chambered before you fire.
Fully Auto - Allows for you to stream shots as soon as their ready, as soon as they are, with less risk of a loss of accuracy because of the sheer time it takes between rounds allows you to get your adjustment in before the next round.

So with larger AC, Full Auto sounds better, IMO, and burst fire is not possible.
With smaller AC, you choose between ammo-saving, less damaging, better aiming semi (which is greatly enhanced via burst fire) vs. auto which chews through ammo, has less damage potential due to its wide accuracy issues.

Pro/Con in full effect.

[Semyon Drakon]

From the novels, autocannons originally didn't feed from linked rounds like machine guns. they had ammunition cassettes that loaded automatically into the breach before firing. The shells ejected as per normal and then the next clip loaded. The larger cannons, such as the AC20 on the Victor, or any other arm mounted cannon fed from a belt, There are numerous references to mechs AC's being crippled because the ammo feed was damaged.

I would suggest that the reason short bursts are standard is twofold. 1 is to prevent jamming, any automatic weapon fired continuously will eventually jam, you prevent this by firing short controlled bursts to keep breech and barrell heat down. 2 to make it easier for the weapon to be kept on target. If you hold down the trigger on a machinegun it climbs and is very hard to keep on target. Again, fire short bursts and it allows you, or your mech, to compensate and keep the point of aim locked in.

Long wild autocannon bursts are just going to chew through ammo and punch holes in the sky over your target.

Semyon

[MaddMaxx]

here is a 57mm cannon that uses differing Ammo in the video but shows what a cassette (assume a 10 shot) based firing mechanism could operate like. I believe that unit is belt fed but it could use a cartridge (2-5-10 shot) system.

57MM auto-cannon

Edited by MaddMaxx, 08 February 2012 - 03:03 PM.

[Aegis Kleais]

Semyon Drakon, on 08 February 2012 - 02:53 PM, said:

From the novels, autocannons originally didn't feed from linked rounds like machine guns. they had ammunition cassettes that loaded automatically into the breach before firing. The shells ejected as per normal and then the next clip loaded. The larger cannons, such as the AC20 on the Victor, or any other arm mounted cannon fed from a belt, There are numerous references to mechs AC's being crippled because the ammo feed was damaged.

I would suggest that the reason short bursts are standard is twofold. 1 is to prevent jamming, any automatic weapon fired continuously will eventually jam, you prevent this by firing short controlled bursts to keep breech and barrell heat down. 2 to make it easier for the weapon to be kept on target. If you hold down the trigger on a machinegun it climbs and is very hard to keep on target. Again, fire short bursts and it allows you, or your mech, to compensate and keep the point of aim locked in.

Long wild autocannon bursts are just going to chew through ammo and punch holes in the sky over your target.

Semyon

Right. Akin to a clip-fed system. When a mechanic such as a spring-load was used to push single rounds into the chamber for firing and cartridge ejection.

With any quality ammunition, the failure in firing is most commonly the loading mechanism or the ejection system. When holding a gun, holding it improperly can actually increase the chance of a round failing to chamber. Same deal with the brass not ejecting. A failure to do so usually does not result in damage to the gun (that's a misfire), but instead, the "jam" has to be cleared.

I always pictured ballistics as having automated subsystems that could clear a jam. The weapon would be unavailable for the duration of the clearing, but afterwards, it would auto-load the next round and you'd be good to go.

Now, a MISFIRE would spell doom. The chances of a misfire setting off other rounds is extremely low, but a misfire will often result in a deformation of the barrel or a destruction of the internal mechanics, requiring repairs before the weapon can be used again.

[Slyck]

MaddMaxx, on 08 February 2012 - 03:01 PM, said:

here is a 57mm cannon that uses differing Ammo in the video but shows what a cassette (assume a 10 shot) based firing mechanism could operate like. I believe that unit is belt fed but it could use a cartridge (2-5-10 shot) system.

57MM auto-cannon

In my mind one of these would translate to an AC/5. A longer barreled version capable of firing only short bursts would fall into the AC/2 class.

[Harrow]

Prosperity Park, on 08 February 2012 - 08:57 AM, said:

I would like to note that the autocannons in Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries treated a burst of bullets as a single bullet, with a single point-of-impact, despite the animations of many bullets on screen and the multiple empty shell casings being discharged from the weapons. Firing an AC/20 made a stream of little yellow specs shoot from your gun, but a single POI was attained. This made me sad.

You might recall from the old Video Demo for MW:Reboot that the Atlas's AC/20 fired a near-continuous stream of large-caliber slugs at about 1/second in a full-automatic firemode. This is a great contrast to MW4:M where every autocannon was depicted as a high-rate-of-fire weapon system, like a giant machinegun, that fired a short burst and had to wait for a reloading period between bursts.

So I have a poll about autocannons. Should they have these mystical reloading periods? Should they even be burst-fire? What about jamming. Let's hear.

Stick with the original btech source for this stuff. Then make it work mechanically in the game with balance. Typically a single shot, single point of impact, fixed reload time is what you would be dealing with.

There is another post in this thread about how different manufacturers build an AC/20 for example. Some using low caliber high velocity and others using high caliber low velocity. If they both use single round, fixed reload time then the outcome and implementation is the same. If the devs introduce models that use either a single or burst mechanic to achieve the same result, and argument could be made that the burst models would be better if they indeed 'walked'. But that would feel like a machine gun. I am in faovr of the single shot, fixed recycle time.

Another post mentioned the benefits of an AC/20 as opposed to energy weapons because of its heat profile. Keep in mind that an AC/20 traditionally has a fair long recylce time in line with the amount of damage it does. The benefit as was pointed out is indeed the almost minimal heat these weapons produce.

Ballistic Weapons (AC/5, AC/20, etc) are typically favored for the following reasons:

1. Planet environment prevents decent heat sink efficiency.

2. Mech design is heat sink deficient. So an AC is used to keep offensive capability up while keeping heat problems down.

3. The mech force is question has strong and readily available re-supply. Typically your garrison defense / urban defense or supply line defense forces. Due to the most glaring weakness of the AC/20 for example which is its limited supply of ammo which can run out you have to be able to resupply. Now wether or not they introduce this into the game in some meaningful way is up in the air and might not be practicaly but it was a major concern in the canon universe.

Energy weapons on the other hand offer 'operational longevity'. They don't need to be resupplied and there is no additional ammunition that might explode if you get hit in the wrong spot. But they create lots of heat and must be managed to ensure maximum offensive capability.

We'll see how the maps affect choices in the game.

[Outlaw Wolf]

Autocannons were actually designed to fire a burst of rounds to add a porportionate amount of damage to the size of the round and how many rounds fired. Also, the jamming aspect was most likely corrected at this point in time but does not mean that anything is perfect, but it does mean they have alot of precautions to prevent that from happening. The automatic rate of fire autocannons and jamming are more likely to occur to the Rotary Auto-Cannons since they shoot very fast and constantly.

I do agree however that even though a burst is fired, each round should impact a different spot (even if only slightly off due to the high rate of fire per round).

And touching base on the "selectable" overide so to say, that is somewhat similar to an Ultra AC concept as they could technically fire at a normal pace or allow it to fire at the higher rate of fire (this caused increased fire rate and reload speed at the expense of faster ammunition usage and heat generation).

[Yeach]

One question I have is for an instant headshot should an AC20 do it in one shot, one burst, or one substained burst (10 seconds)?

[wolf74]

Doing these on a cell phone at work, so forgive the bad typing please.


Now AC I am in favor of a burst system. Aka you pull the trigger and the weapon fires the 3-8 rounds in under a 2.5sec (MAX time) burst. Than the weapon goes in to a reload cycle to load the next burst of Rounds in the holding clip. Now the weapon is ready to fire the next burst. Most if not all of the damage will hit the same location on a target with this system



I think the above would give the best of fluff & cbt game play flavors.

[Mautty the Bobcat]

First off, semi-related. I'd read about a weapons that sounded like an AC and LBX combined, it was able to toggle between ammunition types and either fire a slug(s) or a flak-like shot (like an LBX), and I would love to see this weapon ingame. I would assume you would have to balance ammo usage and on top of that maybe it takes a cycling time to change and there is a chance to jam when switching ammo? I don't know much beyond the switching ammo part.

Nik Van Rhijn, on 08 February 2012 - 09:07 AM, said:

I prefer the effectively single shot autoloader style. It justifies the single point of damage. I also voted for no jamming due to limiting rate of fire. This seems to me to be a needless further handicapping of AC's. Option 4, full auto, will see a lot of newcomers out of ammo in a few seconds.
I'm not sure how many people it will affect because, going by the posts, many people are of the rip everything out and put as many ERLL's and double heatsinks as I can fit persuasion

Any auto-load system is susceptible to malfunctions. I prefer the single shot style myself, as it makes the most sense. I hate those stupid magic 'string' bullets that MW4 used. My suggestion though, would be to stick with the actual BT lore on this one though.

Oh, and they had jamming on AC systems (not sure about the Clan ones) even during and after the Clan invasion, we just magically never experience them in the MW games. (not counting RACs)

Slyck, on 08 February 2012 - 12:34 PM, said:

I'd like to see various models in each class of autocannon. That way you can have high damage single POI and rapid fire machinegun-like autocannons. Then you can customize based on gameplay styles and mission specific needs.

This is closer to canon though it's never been modeled in game play.

Rotary Auto-Cannon, there's your machine gun AC and it already exists. =3 It fires at a high and constant rate but is prone to jamming more the longer the burst is held.

Edited by Mautty the Bobcat, 09 February 2012 - 02:20 AM.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

Traditionally the AC20's main advantage (other than low heat) was that all damge was done to a single point. Whereas (using the usual comparison) 4 ML's could hit anywhere. This advantage was lost in the shift to PC games where all weapons mounted on a mech (in range) hit the same spot. What I would like to know is how PGI will make it worthwhile to carry AC's in the game. Why would nyone want to play the standard Hunchback with only 10 shots for the main weapon and the chance of ammo explosions rather than the Swayback variant which does more damage, doesn't run out of ammo or have explosions? Yes you can lose weapons/heatsinks to damage, but in general you can fight harder for longer. I prefer AC's and always used them where possible. In MW3 & 4 single player with heat and ammo on it was always more difficult to play rather than using energy weapons. I will be interested to see how PGI do it if we are limited in customisation and have to run fairly "standard" mechs.

[Mautty the Bobcat]

My personal hope is that they make Mechs less accurate, like they are in the BT Universe normally. One of the problems with the still existing MW4 leagues is that all laser and Ballistic weapons that fire straight have a pinpoint accuracy where your reticule lays. This causes alpha strike to hit the SAME spot with 100% of its damage, on top of which someone will never miss if they can line their reticule up for a split second and fire in that time every time.

I would love to have the accuracy factor come into play with targeting computers, possibly being able to upgrade yours to be more accurate...but I wish that 100% accuracy didn't exist in MW.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

@Mautty - they will be getting out the pitchforks and torches for you Personally I agree with you but there are a number of people here who inist that this must be a twitch based game, where the whole skill is getting that reicule over a target for a split second and squeezing off that alpha to hit exactly where they aimed, due to their awesome skill. I hope that they will be disappointed. If torso mounted weapons are not fixed then the "turrets" will need time to move and converge on the target. The problem is that this was not simulated in previous games. To borrow someone elses phrase, thay assume that all weapons fire out of the reticule. ie multiple weapons in different locations all automatically acy as if you are carrying a single rifle in an FPS. Just have to wait and see.

[Mautty the Bobcat]

Lol, I don't care. That's how it is in just about every fiction/novel I've read, hell even the show had this. I call bullshit that each and every player in the game is an 'expert' mech pilot and can aim every weapon at once perfectly. =P

Even veteran pilots don't always hit their intended target every single time.

Heck, when Clan Shadow Jaguar retreated after their home world was invaded by the IS, the one attempting to rally them together and become the new Khan even had less than perfect accuracy, and he was supposedly the best clanner they had on planet. If a clan Elite doesn't have perfect accuracy, I will again call bullshit that any of us should have it.

[Felicitatem Parco]

I think that ballistics should have their advantage shifted from "all the damage is in one place, so it's better than lasers" to something like "ballistics put firepower downfield more rapidly than lasers" and that would help solve the problem. The solution might have to violate BT rules, though.

BT rules say an AC/20 should deal equal total firepower as 4 medium lasers [combined] during a given timeframe (say over 15 seconds of continuous fire) because AC/20 does 20dmg per unit of time and Medium Lasers do 5 dmg per unit of time.

I say we have a choice: 1.) We can make Heat Buildup more of a concern than previous MechWarrior titles and that would help balance the lightweight MLs against the very heavy AC/20. 2.) We can scrap that damage/time rule, and rather make AC/20 deal 20-damage per shot, and make Medium Lasers deal 5-damage per shot. That way the developers can make any needed balance adjustments for the weapns based on tweaking their firing rate. Autocannons should have a higher firing rate than lasers, in general, because it's easier to spark-up a satchel of gunpowder than it is to charge up a capacitor bank while your reactor is busy doing everything else it does. So, 4 Medium Lasers should deal the same total damage as an AC/20 per volly, but you can time those volleys to be fired at different rates so the AC can get an edge ofver Medium Lasers...

Edited by Prosperity Park, 09 February 2012 - 08:12 AM.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

@Prosperity - unfortunately increasing fire rate for AC's doesn't help because you just get through your limited ammo even quicker. At BT firing rates a standard Hunchback gets through its 2 tons of ammo in 100 secs - in a match that is expected to last 20 minutes. Even if it's only 5 or 10 minutes of fighting it doesn't work. Thats why given the choice most people will go for the Swayback - it does more DPS and can keep doing it all match. The only way it would work is to hope that you and the rest of the team kill the opposition before you run out of ammo.
Unfortunately there is no easy solution. Improve AC's too much and it's unbalanced. The only time I ever saw AC mechs was on servers with unlimited ammo.

[MaddMaxx]

Yeach, on 08 February 2012 - 09:01 PM, said:

One question I have is for an instant headshot should an AC20 do it in one shot, one burst, or one substained burst (10 seconds)?

My take (from reading) on that is that it would not matter. The AC20 is designated as such for its Damage done. The only difference is does the ammo used fire a Slug, a Cluster or a stream. All provide the same 20 damage when a Hit is recorded and if that 20pts is a head shot kill value, the enemy goes away.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 09 February 2012 - 08:59 AM.

[Slyck]

Mautty the Bobcat, on 09 February 2012 - 02:15 AM, said:

Rotary Auto-Cannon, there's your machine gun AC and it already exists. =3 It fires at a high and constant rate but is prone to jamming more the longer the burst is held.

Autocannons were meant to have varying rates of fire well before the introduction of ultra and rotary ACs.

http://www.sarna.net...non#Description

For that matter every "weapon" in BT is supposed to represent a whole class of similar weaponry much like we tend to identify light and heavy machine-guns. I don't see why we can mine down into the lore and start representing these different models as different weapons with slightly differing characteristics. For example there are at least 4 different kinds of AC/10 (not counting ultra, LBX and rotary), why not represent each of them with varying rates of fire and damage per shot.

[canned wolf]

Aegis Kleais™, on 08 February 2012 - 11:22 AM, said:

I'm confused.... automatic fire?

"Automatic" fire simply means that you press a button and a shot is fired. This is opposed to manual where you may have to do an action manually with each round fired (like cocking back the hammer on a revolver)

Automatic fire can be semi (where 1 bullet is fired for each pull of the trigger) or full (where bullets continually fire as long as you hold the trigger down). Burst is a mode of semi-automatic where 1 pull of the trigger fires out usually 3 rounds and is used as an optimal mode to put more than 1 bullet's damage accurately on target without the loss of accuracy that fully-automatic fire has.

With that out of the way, when would we EVER see full, semi or burst mode fire on AC10's and AC20's? Their reload time is so great that it really doesn't exude any form of automated fire.

As for lower caliber AC, I'm fire with you being able to set a firing mode from semi or full, because that just deals with how it behaves in firing when it becomes able to do so (semi means fire once with a trigger pull, load next round, wait for another pull on trigger vs. full meaning fire as long as you see the trigger held and fire the next round as soon as it loads if the trigger is still down)

Only for lower caliber AC (2/5) would there be an option for burst mode, so yeah, you could toggle it on, but you wouldn't really see the AC10 or AC20 utilizing it.

High rate of fire A/C 10's and 20's are on of the easiest ways to explain their awful ranges. Recoil and low damage per shot prevent you from doing significant damage at long range. MW3 did it this way with a burst/ reload mechanic. I like the idea above setting characteristics based on the individual cannon. I see no reason not to give people the choice of high or low rate of fire. Low rof and clip fed burst cannons could have vow jam probabillity while higher rof cannons could do more damage over time but also heat up and jam more. I love the board game, but I see those rules more as a guideline than a noose.