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Losing Arms when Side Torso Destroyed


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Poll: If side torso is destroyed does the arm still function? (499 member(s) have cast votes)

Should you lose weapon functions on the attached arm when the associated side torso is destroyed?

  1. Yes, a destroyed side-torso should lose weapon functions in the attached arm. (as per TT, MW2 and MW3) (366 votes [73.35%])

    Percentage of vote: 73.35%

  2. No, weapons should still function FULLY on the arm if the same side side torso is destroyed (MW4) (31 votes [6.21%])

    Percentage of vote: 6.21%

  3. No, weapons should still function on the arm (but not at full power/efficiency) when the same side torso is destroyed. (84 votes [16.83%])

    Percentage of vote: 16.83%

  4. Other (18 votes [3.61%])

    Percentage of vote: 3.61%

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#61 renegade mitchell

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Posted 09 February 2012 - 05:46 PM

View Postcobrafive, on 09 February 2012 - 05:10 PM, said:

In tabletop (And this, I feel, is a valid case to implement tabletop rules) the damage was just transferred to the center torso if a destroyed side torso took damage.


Ok thanks for clarifying that, but would shooting a cored right or left torso lead to destruction of a mech, regardless of either arm?

#62 VYCanis

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Posted 09 February 2012 - 06:10 PM

View PostRenegade Mitchell, on 09 February 2012 - 05:46 PM, said:


Ok thanks for clarifying that, but would shooting a cored right or left torso lead to destruction of a mech, regardless of either arm?


yeah, in CBT it simply transfered over 1:1 to the CT

MWLL has an interesting way of handling it though

Most mechs in the game are assumed to have XL engines, however, they didn't want to have side torso core outs immediately kill off every IS mech that had one.

their solution was to have damage that hit a destroyed side torso get a multiplier for damage transfer. So shooting into the hole would core out a CT significantly faster than aiming at it directly.

However, mechs that are assumed to be using standard engines, such as the Atlas, Awesome, possibly more, i dunno, have a damage transfer that is closer to 1:1 making them considerable more liable to continue taking punishment zombie style.

Edited by VYCanis, 09 February 2012 - 06:12 PM.


#63 Kael Tropheus

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Posted 09 February 2012 - 06:57 PM

If you kill the torso, all the ammo feeds, power feeds etc to the arm are destroyed. The arm might for some reason not fall off but for all intents and purposes it is a club you will have to twist your torso to swing. The cool thing about coring a side torso was the fun of damage transfering directly to center torso's internal structure, thats somethign I hope continues with all the crit chances that entails.

Some mechs at this time had been refitted at the factory for XL engines but the majority of the IS is still using standard fusion engines. The next generation of IS battlemechs in 3055 start to really take advantage of XL engines and all the new equipment technology. Problem with refitting is the normal chassis are not designed with the XL in mind and like my problem with rampant customization in the first place, should be next to impossible without a PHD in engineering with a full engineering design team and definately not possible for a simple pilot with duct tape and super glue to pull off. It would be easier to start with a new chassis.

#64 Yeach

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Posted 09 February 2012 - 07:43 PM

View PostHATER-1, on 09 February 2012 - 09:47 AM, said:

this conversation is going on too long, and this poll is kind of borderline trolling. The only reason that limb destruction never really made it well in the other MW games is hardware/software restrictions.

now, i can't understand the logic behind any other choice in the poll other than what the rules say would happen... destruction of the torso means you lose the limb(falls off), and damage transfers to the CT. total warfare pretty much tells you that the terms destruction/destroyed are pretty much abstract, and what it means in the game is something is no longer usable. BEFORE anybody gets all huffy about "this isnt BT, its MW!!" recall that the BTU is the underlying rule system for MW, and if it doesnt follow it to some respectable level (remember, abstract is a key word here), it is not mechwarrior, but "WalkingTankWarrior".



Wow never expected someone to call this poll as trolling.
Nowhere in my poll do I have a contrived forced answer; heck I even left a response as other.
Secondly, I did not even state my opinion in my original post.

So after 4 pages these are my thoughts.

I don't think you should lose weapons in the arms if the adjacent torso is destroyed.

1. The whole idea of losing the arm to a torso loss gives another reason for not mounting weapons in the arms where in my opinion I think they should belong.
Arms were severly punished in MW2 and MW3; you could lose a arm just by walking into a building in MW2. In MW3, it was easier to lose your arm than losing weapons in the torso
In both games you saw placing ALL weapons in the torso and NO weapons in the arms because of the fragility of the arms. If you look at BattleTech mechs, you don't see many mechs that mount weapons ONLY in the torso; in fact (especially with Clan Mechs) you find that most have their primary weapons in the arms.

Again, losing the arm because the torso gets destroyed discourages mounting arm weapons.

2. I agree that "destroyed" may have been too broad term to be used in the post. Perhaps a better word would be the side torso being disabled.

3. I imagine that the BattleMech frame is similar where a skeleton connects the legs to the torso and the arms to the torso. Although you may remove all the armor and most of the critical sections from a torso section, the skeleton of the BattleMech remains intact; the skeleton being far too small to accurately shoot off in normal gameplay (unless you have a hatchet to chop it off)

4. I think the question is similar to legging in which MW2 and MW3 stuck to TT rules.
In MW2 and MW3, legging was encouraged because in MW2 you were essential disable and useless; in MW3 your Mech was destroyed when legged. This made gameplay unfun when either of these things happened to the victim.
And for the sake of gameplay in MW4, legging only made the leg disable and not destroyed; it made legging a valid tactic and did not completely take you out of the game.

5. As mentioned before, some want reasons for aiming for arms (and not making them useless); making the torso get the 2 for 1 deal and hence reducing the game into 2 less hit-boxes to aim for. I do not know what the roll-table for TT is (ATM) but aiming for the center of a mech is much much easier than aiming for the arms.

The implications may seem reasonable in BT TT but in MW2 and MW3, IMO was really flaw that was detrimental to gameplay.

#65 Kael Tropheus

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Posted 09 February 2012 - 08:11 PM

There are many reasons to mount weapons in arms. For one there is limited space for criticals slots in the torsos. Since torsos typically are more heavily armored than the arms and there is more space, ammo is typically stored there. Arms can and should have more aiming ability than the torso. Since more often than not the torso will be hit than the arms, you really do not want two boxes full of crits to blow up each time an internal structure is hit. Internal Structure is the skeleton, destroy it and there is nothing there any more.

How are you going to power your PPC in your arm when all the feeds have been cut along with the actuators not having power to aim and the list goes on.

#66 SilentObserver

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Posted 09 February 2012 - 10:10 PM

The main reason to mount weapons in arms in TT was the field of fire for arm weapons. With an arm weapon and torso twist you could shoot at someone directly behind you. So you didnt have to mount rear facing weapons and fast mechs couldnt camp out in your rear firing arc. This still worked in MW3 when you could look out the side window and fire those arm weapons. I hope you can do the same in MWO.

If you cant look out the side windows and shoot then it really doesnt make sense to put weapons in the arms. Put the ammo in the arms and put the weapons in the chest where it is safer.

Either way when a side torso takes so much damage that its internal structure rating drops to 0. the arm on that side should be non functional. There is no way the power and control lines should have survived.

#67 HATER 1

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Posted 09 February 2012 - 10:28 PM

View PostYeach, on 09 February 2012 - 07:43 PM, said:

Wow never expected someone to call this poll as trolling.


I apologize for that statement. It was pretty rude of me.... which can happen from time to time.

View PostMason Grimm, on 09 February 2012 - 11:21 AM, said:

Well in the TT rules I believe the arm goes with the torso however for "video game" purposes they could do this.

Torso reduced to 0 = arm on that side nonfunctional but still attached
Torso reduced < 0 = arm and torso both gone, cored out and blown out

Tricky bit of planning to implement something that is both fun and functional.


making the damage transfer from side torso to the center the trigger for arm loss would be pretty slick. it fits in the the TT rules, and still allows for the uncertainty of a live action game. degrading system efficiency would fall in line with potential critical hits.

Edited by HATER-1, 09 February 2012 - 10:51 PM.


#68 Mourning Shadows

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Posted 09 February 2012 - 11:26 PM

Plain and simple. If the torso goes, the arm goes. If the arm survives then you may as well be playing paint ball.
Objectively if your spend the time and damage to core out one side of the other mechs torso, all the weapons not in that side are going to be hitting you back just as hard. To still have to deal with the arm after that, to me, is almost as silly as a game of cops n robbers. "I shot you!", "nuh uh, you missed". "No way, I totally blew your arm of." "No you didn't." *sticks out tongue*.

#69 Lorcan Lladd

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Posted 10 February 2012 - 12:53 AM

What concerns me is the potential silliness of having an arm torn off by small arms fire - say, like having an Atlas' torso or arm blown clean off by the machineguns on a Piranha, or another 'Mech.

I can accept the armor being shaved off by the small impacts, but not the internals being cut through like butter.
The internals of a 'Mech are not armored, true, but they still sustain a multi-ton structure for years and years worth of service, so they can't be treated as if they were made of paper in damage calculation.
It is alright to have XL or XXL fusion engine components being destroyed and going critical, but they're volatile in the first place, unlike the inert metal of an endo-steel chassis.

I say, even if the arm is rendered useless by damage dealt to the torso, hell, it should stay there.

Nothing short of AC20 or Heavy Gauss fire should blow any 'Mech appendage off.

#70 Kragmore

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Posted 10 February 2012 - 01:36 AM

View PostHunter McGee, on 09 February 2012 - 06:21 AM, said:

Don't even really see a need for this poll except to allow the Scientifically Challenged to spout some drivel about how they want to keep the arm mounted PPC's even though they couldn't even protect the torso they were hung on.

Come on peeps... Using the laws of physics can you realistically explain to me how in the world you could keep the arm? Okay, analogy time:
Take a tree... blow the Trunk to tiny pieces, now is the branch still there? Sure it is... on the freakin ground!

No contest, no torso, no arm.


Well, you could still damage the stuff inside the torso to the point where the moduels are destroyed, striped of armor etc. But the structure itself is still intakt.

Now I don't have huge knowledge about the univers so the example weapons might be wrong, but if you were to shot with an autocannon, gaussgun, laser or similar weapons with a very concentrated area of effect,you wouldn't totaly obliderate the side torso.

Of course, if you were to destroy the side trosoe with high explosive or weapons with a large area of effect I see no reason to why the arm couldn't be destroyed or blasted off at the same time.

Therefor I find it more logical that if you were to destory the side torso, the arm would still be operational unless the side torso was destroyed with catastrophic failiur to the structure at the same time. Or the arm was damaged by spalshdamage from the hit.

I would also like to highlight what others have said in the thread. That if you can destroy both arm and side torso by targeting the sidetorso, then targeting the arm become less important and most pilots will just go for the torso in every fight.

#71 Mourning Shadows

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Posted 10 February 2012 - 02:55 AM

View PostKragmore, on 10 February 2012 - 01:36 AM, said:


I would also like to highlight what others have said in the thread. That if you can destroy both arm and side torso by targeting the sidetorso, then targeting the arm become less important and most pilots will just go for the torso in every fight.


I have won one on one, and team matches to this tendency. The weapon-fire pings off my left and right torso armor, while my weapons are safe in the arms. Just cause people got used to targeting torso first.

I think this is more a question of what is a balanced solution, not what people are likely to do, given a certain game mechanic.

Edited by Mourning Shadows, 10 February 2012 - 02:56 AM.


#72 Thorolf Kylesson

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Posted 10 February 2012 - 03:17 AM

I could not see keeping the arm. Case may offer some protection in the event of munitions exposion. With out that, at best it would hang lifeless.

Edited by Thorolf Kylesson, 10 February 2012 - 03:18 AM.


#73 Mautty the Bobcat

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Posted 10 February 2012 - 03:41 AM

Well here's how I see it. You have the side torso itself being 'crippled' causing it to stop protecting the central torso and have any functioning weapons on it. In this case I believe the arms/arm weapons should still be in working order.

However, if the side torso is 100% destroyed, I'm definitely in favor of at the very least causing the arm and weapons to basically become severed from the controls.

#74 Zerik

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Posted 10 February 2012 - 06:19 AM

While I have already summed up my 2 cents on the matter in other posts, I might also add...
Assuming when a side torso is 100% destroyed and gone the arm stays there and continues to, along with the 'Mech's other weapons, tear into my own 'Mech; why not from the very beginning just focus all fire on the much easier to hit center torso? After all, I kill it, and everything on the enemy 'Mech dies. And it should be a simple matter if I have the weapons precision to take out a side torso as quickly as many seem to fear. :D

#75 Mana211

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Posted 10 February 2012 - 07:45 AM

Destroyed had muliple meanings/interpretations. I voted keep the arm with reduced functionality but I wouldn't cry or argue if the arm works fine or is destroyed along with the torso.

What about mechs that don't have human looking arms? My TT memory is way gone and dead but in MW4 the Vulture/Mad Dog had no arms as such and the part that looked like left torso to me was labeled left arm in the diagram. Was that just a typo or is the design different enough that the arms are solid to the torso? If a mech deviates far enough from the human body why should you assume the "arm" area falls off or is damaged along with another part of the "torso"?

#76 Mchawkeye

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Posted 10 February 2012 - 07:58 AM

This is an oddly tough subject.

I'm still not sure. Part of me, a big part of me, wants to see bigbaddaboom explosions when you hit the sweet spot and the torso and arm gets ripped right though, lots of little explosions and sparks. really satisfying.
on the other hand, it seems a little harsh to remove someone's primary weapons.

So I take into account a few things. weapon accuracy? will people be able to pick off a torso on purpose, easily? if you believe talk of weapon divergence, the answer would be no, not easily. a good pilot with good skills should be able too, and that's just fine by me.

What would be the point of targeting the arms as opposed to the torso and getting a twofer. well, arms should hold for the most part, the big guns. They are also, in general, not as well armoured as the torso attached to them. I can see it being worthwhile picking off arms to disable a mechs hitting power as opposed to whittling away the greater armour whilst your target gets to hit you back hard.

So assuming it's done in a right and balanced way, I now thing it's correct that blowing off a torso should eliminate the arm too. it's more realistic and frankly, I think it's be more visceral and more fun.

But it has to be done RIGHT.

Obviously.

#77 Hunter McGee

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Posted 10 February 2012 - 08:10 AM

Wow, did this get CRAZY or what? People, listen, some of the suggestions I have heard in here are either completely Un-doable with the current state of computer programming, or totally insane in the amount of coding it would take, or so not mechwarrior like anymore to have left it's roots.

Plainly put, let somebody shoot you in the right side of your chest with a shotgun, (ie. your right torso.) Now, try to use that right arm to punch the guy with, or even try to raise a pistol or weapon with it.

I rest my case. Those of you that have other arguments are just trying to re-make Mechwarrior 4. Or trying to split hairs. Everyone needs to remember that the simpler the game is, the easier it will be to maintain and improve through time. K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple Stupid.

Also you need to pay close attention to the Dev. Blogs. Especially the ones were they state that they are going to stay as true to the original cannon Battletech as possible with this game. Hence... torso gone, corresponding arm gone. Whether gone means on the ground smoking, or hanging useless is irrelevant right now. Still not usable.

#78 VYCanis

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Posted 10 February 2012 - 10:17 AM

so let me see if i get this right

just so i don't strawman anything here. But assuming we go PURELY by TT, and there are people that from the sound of it, absolutely want this to be the case.

Side torso destruction, based off other discussions in these forums

-makes the attached arm fall off
-instantly kills IS mechs with XL engines
-is likely to catastrophically and instantly set off any ammo within with no opportunity to mitigate once it's begun, and usually side torsos is where ammo is stuffed.
-external torso "ear" pods like on a bushwacker or timberwolf count as side torso hitbox

meaning a mech like a bushwacker can be killed outright (and have it's adjacent arm dismembered) by shooting at it's L/T lrm 5 pod, if the rules are to be taken verbatim.

So is there any reason at all to aim for anything else other than side torso short of zombie mechs? Cause it seems like anything that is still alive after that is just for mopping up. Sticking purely by rules with no consideration for gameplay literally would flip the MW4 problem where there was often no reason to shoot at anything other than CT, and L/R Ts could be popped with almost no consequence, into, everyone shooting at L/R Ts all the time as a shortcut to victory

Edited by VYCanis, 10 February 2012 - 10:21 AM.


#79 Tannhauser Gate

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Posted 10 February 2012 - 10:20 AM

"Destroyed" can mean different things. Mechs are very good at using redundant and rerouted systems to stay in the fight. A penetrated, flaming and blacked side torso would not knock out an arm at all as long as its structurally connected and still has some system connectivity to the mech.

Short of massive localized damage resulting in seeing daylight through large parts of a shredded torso, I think it would take alot to indirectly knock out a limb. It would be far easier to target the limb itself. So, yes of course its possible and logical but given the ability of a mech to reroute command and control of its systems, I would say that its difficult to achieve because the mechs are designed for such things.

#80 Pht

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Posted 10 February 2012 - 04:19 PM

When the part that the arm is attached to is blown off; the arm falls off.

I never understood why anyone would do it differently...





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