71 replies to this topic

[Pht]

Lord Trogus, on 09 February 2012 - 11:06 AM, said:

This has been something I have been wondering about since MW2. I'm not sure how weapon impact was touched upon in the first game, but I noticed that firing multiples of the same weapon at a target did nothing to further disrupt the enemy's aim, but still contributed to knocking over a mech.

I'm not sure what effects you are discussing when you say "disrupt the enemy's aim" ... but I feel it ought to be pointed out that the reticule in a BattleMech is not "tied to" what it's weapons ports are being pointed at.

The relation between the reticule and the weapons is that the weapons are being manipulated by the 'Mech (programming, sensors, physical structures) to try and get them into the proper positions to hit whatever the pilot is indicating with the reticule; the reticule is not tied to the weapons, in programming or otherwise, to the aim point of the weapons; the purpose of the reticule is to indicate to the 'Mech what the pilot wants targeted; and having the reticule move it's position on the HUD in relation to incoming fire defies it's purpose; to indicate. What the reticule *does* do is usually to change color to indicate that the 'Mech is having trouble bringing it's weapons to bear.

Quote

For instance, consider a mech carrying a trio of UAC5's, firing all of them simultaneously. Then compare the impact of that to another mech using a single UAC10. In all three generations, the UAC10 caused far greater knockback and gyro instability when impacted, despite the fact the UAC5s are all grouped, and total damage is greater. Personally, I think that even if the "big brother weapons" still have more impact than a group of smaller ones, they sehould have a greater effect when firing together.

In the lore (and I mean the story lore, not the TT stuff), incoming weapons fire does cause some nasty vibration; it can throw the pilot around in his command chair - but it doesn't cause the 'Mech to have trouble hitting targets. "Knock" and "Knockback" - being shoved around by incoming enemy fire - just don't happen. What does happen that throws aim off is when you loose a lot of armor very quickly and you go off-balance. Now, someone may (rightly) point out that you could have enough people firing at you to knock you over - but that kind of damage will instantly destroy your 'Mech.

So, yes, knock can, in a sense, happen to battlemechs - when they absorb enough damage to slag them instantly. Short of that, even the lightest 'Mech has enough mass to stay on it's feet and "take it."

CapperDeluxe, on 09 February 2012 - 12:03 PM, said:

the melted armor doesn't fly away in the opposite direction necessarily, it probably dribbles down or something

Most of the time in the novels, when someone takes enough energy damage to their armor to go off balance, the effect is that the armor has been "vaporized."

[Nick Makiaveli]

Pht, on 10 February 2012 - 04:35 PM, said:

I'm not sure what effects you are discussing when you say "disrupt the enemy's aim" ... but I feel it ought to be pointed out that the reticule in a BattleMech is not "tied to" what it's weapons ports are being pointed at.

The relation between the reticule and the weapons is that the weapons are being manipulated by the 'Mech (programming, sensors, physical structures) to try and get them into the proper positions to hit whatever the pilot is indicating with the reticule; the reticule is not tied to the weapons, in programming or otherwise, to the aim point of the weapons; the purpose of the reticule is to indicate to the 'Mech what the pilot wants targeted; and having the reticule move it's position on the HUD in relation to incoming fire defies it's purpose; to indicate. What the reticule *does* do is usually to change color to indicate that the 'Mech is having trouble bringing it's weapons to bear.

I think here he is saying that if it moves the mech around that could force the mech's computers to have to recalculate how it is going to bring the weapons inline with the target.

Pht, on 10 February 2012 - 04:35 PM, said:

In the lore (and I mean the story lore, not the TT stuff), incoming weapons fire does cause some nasty vibration; it can throw the pilot around in his command chair - but it doesn't cause the 'Mech to have trouble hitting targets. "Knock" and "Knockback" - being shoved around by incoming enemy fire - just don't happen. What does happen that throws aim off is when you loose a lot of armor very quickly and you go off-balance. Now, someone may (rightly) point out that you could have enough people firing at you to knock you over - but that kind of damage will instantly destroy your 'Mech.

If the mech moves violently enough to cause the pilot to move, that would also cause the weapons to be suddenly, and forcibly, aimed in a different direction. Whether closer or farther away from the desired point of aim, I think that would make a difference.

Just because a writer says it in a novel, doesn't make it true. Revolvers with suppressors etc comes to mind.

Edited by Nick Makiaveli, 10 February 2012 - 04:48 PM.

[Tannhauser Gate]

@Pht

How dare you soil this thread with facts and lore references. There was some real potential for confusing misinformed posting here.

[aDuck]

In terms of lasers, we need to remember that the only reason pilots get "knocked back" by laser fire is due to the imbalance of losing great amounts of armour to a specific spot. So there wouldnt be any immediate knock back, but after the barrage, some overbalancing could be implemented

[Pht]

Nick Makiaveli, on 10 February 2012 - 04:48 PM, said:

I think here he is saying that if it moves the mech around that could force the mech's computers to have to recalculate how it is going to bring the weapons inline with the target.

Yeah, he quite possibly could have been - that's why I didn't assume he wasn't. It just triggered something in my memory that usually surfaces in threads about knock and targeting.

Quote

If the mech moves violently enough to cause the pilot to move, that would also cause the weapons to be suddenly, and forcibly, aimed in a different direction.

No, not really. The Pilot is mashed against his harness because his mass is so very small in relation to the mass of the 'Mech that what merely is "vibration" at 'Mech scale is, at human scale, some pretty nasty rattling.

Quote

Just because a writer says it in a novel, doesn't make it true. Revolvers with suppressors etc comes to mind.

Normally I would agree, but the lore is created by the writers; in this case, what they say does go. It's their creation, we only get to play with it.

LakeDaemon - that was HILARIOUS!

Edited by Pht, 10 February 2012 - 05:17 PM.

[Thor77]

In general, I think that giving Autocannon and Gauss rifle the biggest aim disruption on the target mech is good for game play and seems realistic. Projectile weapons require a little more finesse to aim due to their flight time as opposed to the simple 'fire when the aimer turns red' protocol of lasers. Your reward for marksmanship is disruption of your opponent's equilibrium. It also gives the feel that these weapons do damage via kinetic impact.

We could get really nitpicky about A/C caliber and whether the long-range, smaller bore guns, which are probably firing at a higher velocity (this would explain their longer range) transfer energy in the same way as a big fat 'slow' (I'm assuming it's slow due to the short effective range) shell like an AC20 (go to any forum about real guns and watch these debates go round and round to get an idea). But lets not go there. Giving 2 AC5 hits in one location a similar but slightly smaller impact as 1 AC10 feels about right.

With regard to missiles, they should give a screen jiggle type effect, maybe with some flashes and debris obscuring your view on front impacts. The 1 big missle Arrow IV system would probably be treated more like a gauss or A/C hit. Interesting point raised about whether the missles fire all at once or sequentially. I'd favor all at once. When you see an LRM20 on a Mad Cat for example, it has 20 missiles all cued up and ready to go sitting on each shoulder. No reason those can't all go at once.

[Gunmage]

I don't really understand, Pht, why do you think that mech would only "vibrate" from the incoming fire. Modern tanks rock pretty hard from shot that just ricochet off their armor - and mechs have armament appropriate to their size, so why can't it have the same effect?
And in the tabletop mechs get knocked over by incoming fire really often.
The weapons being directed off-target is another thing tho - in our time we have inertial compensators so tank cannons stay directed to the same place no matter how hard the vehcle rocks.
Offtopic: Revolver sound suppressors do exist:

[Pht]

Thor77, on 10 February 2012 - 05:36 PM, said:

In general, I think that giving Autocannon and Gauss rifle the biggest aim disruption on the target mech is good for game play and seems realistic. Projectile weapons require a little more finesse to aim due to their flight time as opposed to the simple 'fire when the aimer turns red' protocol of lasers. Your reward for marksmanship is disruption of your opponent's equilibrium. It also gives the feel that these weapons do damage via kinetic impact.

Here's the thing, though - yes, pilot skill does factor into aiming; I am NOT saying that it doesn't - but it is the 'Mech that's trying to do the aiming. MechWarrior is (shockingly! ) ... all about piloting a BattleMech - not about the pilot straddling a giant bunch of wielded together weapons with a single reticule stuck on top of them. In fact, it takes *more skill* to pilot a battlemech in combat than if the game is yet another fps.

Gunmage, on 10 February 2012 - 05:38 PM, said:

I don't really understand, Pht, why do you think that mech would only "vibrate" from the incoming fire. Modern tanks rock pretty hard from shot that just ricochet off their armor - and mechs have armament appropriate to their size, so why can't it have the same effect?

This is going to read weird - but it is that way because the people that create the lore say so. As far as the comment about modern tanks - tanks fire a round that carries a far larger amount of Kinetic energy in relation to their mass than BattleMechs do; and BattleMechs have more options to suppress recoil and knock than tanks do - movable limbs, legs that can alter balance by using different stances, "muscle" control, and a massive gyro.

Quote

And in the tabletop mechs get knocked over by incoming fire really often.

No, they don't get knocked over - they go "off balance" because their gyroscopic mechanism can't compensate quickly enough for unpredictable losses of weight due to what amounts to instantaneous damage chopping off weight.

It would be like a hiker with a heavy backpack going up an incline suddenly having his backpack removed.

Quote

The weapons being directed off-target is another thing tho - in our time we have inertial compensators so tank cannons stay directed to the same place no matter how hard the vehcle rocks.

For a single weapon, yes, somewhat; but that is not the same thing as getting multiple weapons with massively varying behaviors to hit the same exact point.

Accuracy:hitting what you aim at with one weapon. Precision: hitting what you aim at with a bunch of weapons.

[FaustianBargain]

On the subject of lasers: as far as I know (which isn't very far) the lasers as seen in MechWarrior games only fire for some fraction of a second. Any laser powerful enough to melt a mech's armor in that space of time will also superheat the air it travels through and that superheated air will rapidly expand and collapse not unlike a thunderclap. So while there wouldn't be any force acting along the path of the laser fire there would be a kind of concussion, technically even with a near miss.

Though this is a game afterall so I feel that any "knockback" that a laser weapon delivers should be much less than say a kinetic weapon that delivers equal damage, as the lower skill required to fire a laser would imbalance the game very fast.

TLDR: Lasers should go boom and make the cockpit rattle, but not as much as an AC5

[Nick Makiaveli]

Pht, on 10 February 2012 - 05:16 PM, said:

No, not really. The Pilot is mashed against his harness because his mass is so very small in relation to the mass of the 'Mech that what merely is "vibration" at 'Mech scale is, at human scale, some pretty nasty rattling.



Normally I would agree, but the lore is created by the writers; in this case, what they say does go. It's their creation, we only get to play with it.

I don't scale matters here. If the gun barrel is moved, it is now pointing in a different direction. Then scale kicks in to make that "small" movement a very big deal down range.

I see your point. However just being a writer chosen to write for the franchise doesn't mean they are experts, especially in something like this. I don't think we are way off on this, just seeing it from different angles.

**edit**

Oops...@Gunmage Of course you can put a silencer on a revolver. It will indeed make it quieter. But it will not make it "silent" as is often portrayed.

Edited by Nick Makiaveli, 10 February 2012 - 07:47 PM.

[Pht]

Nick Makiaveli, on 10 February 2012 - 07:45 PM, said:

I don't scale matters here. If the gun barrel is moved, it is now pointing in a different direction. Then scale kicks in to make that "small" movement a very big deal down range.

"knock" that would toss the pilot around would not toss the gun barrels around, especially counting the various systems and programming in 'Mechs built to counter knock.

Quote

I see your point. However just being a writer chosen to write for the franchise doesn't mean they are experts, especially in something like this. I don't think we are way off on this, just seeing it from different angles.

Actually, if you look @ a lot of the prologues and epilogues of writer info and such in the novels, quite a lot of them thank someone or the other for helping them get their stuff straight as pertains to battlemechs. I suspect there may even be a built in process pre-publication that helps the authors get their stuff straight...

Edited by Pht, 10 February 2012 - 08:00 PM.

[EDMW CSN]

It depends. If lasers vaporized armor then yes, there will be knock back since that force is explosive.

[Halfinax]

Lasers shouldn't cause any kind of "impact" beyond melting away armor, and undoubtedly more ballistic or missiles hitting should have more "impact". Inertia should still be a factor. I really don't want to see some kind of hollywood action movie thing where a 1 ounce (10 bl) slug hitting a 'Mech causes it to fly back 20 ft. (20 Meters). The firing 'Mech should suffer as much recoil as the target 'Mech (except in the instance of missiles) when it comes to recoil. It's physics!

[Gunmage]

@Pht
OK, so mechs don't get knocked over, they just go off-balance and fall down. The result is the same - mech lying on the ground. Right?

[Nik Van Rhijn]

Actually if the mech "knock" only moves the mech slightly but the pilot is shaken about so that he is temporarily unable to focus/fire it is having the desired effect. Whatever the reason that mech is temporarily unable to return fire which is the required effect is it not?

[MaddMaxx]

Nik Van Rhijn, on 11 February 2012 - 09:45 AM, said:

Actually if the mech "knock" only moves the mech slightly but the pilot is shaken about so that he is temporarily unable to focus/fire it is having the desired effect. Whatever the reason that mech is temporarily unable to return fire which is the required effect is it not?

It is indeed and will have to heavily balanced to assure that one pilot can totally prevent another pilot from responding to some weapon(s) that knocks him/his/her Mech about to much.

As long as the affected Mech can recover before said weapon(s) can fire again then OK, knock can be dealt with.

Like Heat, like Customization and a myriad of other things, they all have to be Balanced, otherwise certain game aspects get used, and cancel out so many others so much, as to suck the FUN out of the game.

just saying

Edited by MaddMaxx, 11 February 2012 - 10:24 AM.

[Trogusaur]

Remember guys, the first BT novels came out in 1984, when high energy lasers with enough power to actually cause damage were a far thing into the future (in the real world). Not trying to rip on the lore, but the tech is outdated, even to our standards. Perhaps the newer Tech Readouts have better clarified weapon mechanics, but energy weapons especially are a very gray area.

Also note how many of the books are written by various authors. Yes, they probably collaborated very closely to get the facts right, but there still are some glaring inconsistencies, especially in the weapons department. One author may portray a six-pack of micro lasers "a damaging assault" while another says a trio of medium lasers do nothing more than "bubble the paint off some armor".

If we keep going back to the lore, how will the Battletech Universe ever expand? Many diehard fans have already denounced the Dark Age series as non-canon because it didn't "fit to their standards". Perhaps this game is a good chance for a bit of a rewrite on the minor things that just don't make sense in today's world. I am not suggesting changing any history, nor editing any of the primary mech variants. All I am saying is that certain weapons do need a bit more clarification.

Hence, the very existence of this thread

Edited by Lord Trogus, 11 February 2012 - 10:51 AM.

[Nick Makiaveli]

Pht, on 10 February 2012 - 07:59 PM, said:

"knock" that would toss the pilot around would not toss the gun barrels around, especially counting the various systems and programming in 'Mechs built to counter knock.

Umm.....didn't we just cover this? The mech moves 1 foot and barely "notices" right? While the pilot is tossed around the cockpit. That means the barrels moved a foot as well. Which means unless said systems wait until the mech reorients itself and returns to it's original position before continuing to converge (which would take time) they will have to attempt to compensate and that will take time.

Pht, on 10 February 2012 - 07:59 PM, said:

Actually, if you look @ a lot of the prologues and epilogues of writer info and such in the novels, quite a lot of them thank someone or the other for helping them get their stuff straight as pertains to battlemechs. I suspect there may even be a built in process pre-publication that helps the authors get their stuff straight...

I would be shocked if there wasn't some form of checking just to make sure no one screws up the timeline etc etc. So it's entirely possible they decided this is how things work so that is how it is in all the books. Just because it's canon doesn't mean I have to like it

[Tizzer]

Missles must have the same knockback , based on number hitting the target (being it 4 lrm5 or 1 lrm 20) . Lasers are concentrated blasts of High Energy Photons (in theory taking into account dodgy science). So they should have no Kockback whatsoever however To counter this they should be pin point accurate compared to Ballistics which won't be precisely accurate but have the knockback. This may need a lot of tweaking to balance (it will give lasers more range but first shot will matter less compared to ballistics or Missles which will once they start hitting reduces the hits the Ballistics player recieves). (braces for Rage XD ).

[UncleKulikov]

Lasers need some weakness to counter their hitscan. One way to do that would be to have them deal no knockback. That would make weapon choice more tactical, whether it's worth it to have the knockback or the efficiency.

Weapons should knock back as if they were fired singly, so combined. 2 LRM 5s should hit with the same force as a LRM 10 and so on.