26 replies to this topic

[ManDaisy]

In the last topic, brown outs, the kicking up of a dust screen with the use of jump jets was suggested.

I think brown outs should be able to be caused by other things such as firing machine guns into the ground, missiles, and other rapid fire ballistics.

I do not think lasers should be able to cause brown outs.

Edited by ManDaisy, 27 February 2012 - 07:50 PM.

[TimberJon]

Well. Lasers vaporize. What would they vaporize / atomize? plastics. insulation. glass. styrofoam. someones library on the 2nd / 3rd floor. a couch in the lobby. If you have an environmental mechanic in place that would allow clouds of dust and debris to be created then you should be able to pretty much vaporize anything that already has a destructive value. If a 'Mech is peeking around a corner harassing you, and you see his arm, you should be able to fire at the edge of that building to blow a cloud of concrete dust in his face to try to obstruct his view. In a RL combat situation like that, you would use anything around you as an advantage. Collapse a building on a 'Mech if you could.

I agree that ballistics will chew and grind and spark and therefore be a better choice for creating brown outs.

Will the ares conventions be enforced in any way? Buildings get blown up, but will we maybe be penalized for excessive damages to the city?

[Ghost]

You left out artillery impacts (they even have smoke shells) and building destruction, although that's really another topic altogether. I predict that it's doable, but it will absolutely murder framerates.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Ghost, on 27 February 2012 - 12:33 PM, said:

You left out artillery impacts (they even have smoke shells) and building destruction, although that's really another topic altogether. I predict that it's doable, but it will absolutely murder framerates.

Which is why it should not be done, or if it is scaleable in the graphics options.

[Kenyon Burguess]

when you super heat rocks they explode. explosions kick up smoke and dust clouds. theres your laser induced brown out

[Aegis Kleais]

Jump Jets makes sense to me.

As for missiles, maybe in a small circle of smoke BEHIND the firing Mech, yeah. The smoke trails they would cause would be more of an obscurant to the pilot than any dust it kicks up.

As for ballistics, yeah, larger calibers would cause a very very localized unsettling of dust, but nowhere near where it would cause any kinda of LOS interruption.

Can't see lasers as doing any of that as their emission doesn't require explosive propellants or the burning of highly-unstable fuel.

[Dlardrageth]

DV^McKenna, on 27 February 2012 - 12:57 PM, said:

Which is why it should not be done, or if it is scaleable in the graphics options.

Jump jets at the most. If at all. I'd rather not have to play "Mech Lag Online" due to some largely irrelevant single feature that can easily be exploited as a lag trigger. Or simply implement the option to turn it off (particle cloud effect etc.), so those who fancy lagging themselves to kingdom come can have at it, but me needn't keep up with that.

[TimberJon]

It's a walking tank. It just needs a 'nade launcher pack mounted somewhere that can pop smoke. Agreed on framerate slaughter. I would really rather avoid the presence of smoke on every single battle. Once someone could generate lots of smoke, every team will designate someone the smoke guy. My only thread of hope there is that the game mechanics will not allow smoke to move around with a wind pattern.

[wwiiogre]

multi meter tall mechs, splash damage upto our knees maybe, blind a tank or a gun crew, but a mech? really? Steam from water being continually vaporized could cause it, but dirt being kicked up by ballistic fire, for a split second perhaps or if they continually fired into the dirt, but not for much longer than that and more than likely not high enough to get anywhere near blinding a multi story Atlas, unless it has a big building on it with a garden and dirt and you shot the dirt right in front of its face. Any explosion big enough to send a wall of debris high enough to blind a multi story mech is going to have a concussive wave powerful enough to actually damage the mech.

shouldn't even be in the game as tactical use, should be mere window dressing. The trailer had this effect, yet the trailer looked like horrible actual in game play and merely a theatrical gotcha moment designed to be dramatic more than anything else.

chris

[ManDaisy]

well there are some good examples, just don't want to look for em but they are there to prove you wrong chris.

[wwiiogre]

prove me wrong how?

Where in the world are there mechs? Where in the world are there continual gun fire that causes a total loss of vision by shooting the ground in front of someone?

As a visual device for in game and window dressing this is ok, but as a real world tactic based on diameters of ballistics where what is being fired from mech AC cannons are armor penetrating weapons and not HE, I see very real world possibilities of these causing splash of dirt continuously by shooting AP rounds into the dirt at a mechs feet. When in canon and the novels they describe the size in someplaces of the true size of some of these cannons being real world equivalents of what we have currently.

So a modern tank firing an AP round out of a sabot shell from a 120mm smoothbore isn't going to shoot up a blanket of debris high enough to blind anything except under the most favorable atmospheric conditions (low gravity, no wind, fine powder surface) so in some intances might work, usually shouldn't work. Destructible debris off of a building, yeah sounds great. Long Tom hits causing dirt mushrooms bigger than mechs, yep brown out works for me. SRM's LRM's, AC's never, Lasers or PPC's into water, yeah I could buy that if a continual discharge was caused, like multiple mechs chain shooting into the water. But a single per clan mech couldn't pull it off without special circumstances. The are just to tall, weapons are designed to be armor penetrating so if they hit dirt, they would penetrate and do little exploding (not HE rounds), inferno rounds would disperse across top of water and burn, but send up black oily smoke not steam.

So real world examples or hollywood examples? Since this is fiction I guess the Dev's can have license to do whatever they want. Just with the understanding that sometimes graphical license becomes in game tactical use. With mag sensors, motion sensors, heat sensors, dust and debris is so much window dressing, with good scouting, uav's, etc this still is a matter of window dressing. Shoot your AC rounds into the dirt, cause I will be using my mag sensors to target you, my scout mech to bracket you for indirect fire and putting all my rounds down range into your mech while you look for an advantage by shooting dirt or water.

So if you think it is important for the Dev's to take time and money so a person can shoot the ground and try to make that a good choice or a tactical decision I think it is a waste of time. The Hollywood trick where you take your foot and scoop up sand or dirt and fling it towards someone's face that has a gun pointed at you is just that, hollywood. A professional just shoots you before your foot even gets done moving far enough to get the dirt off the ground. A real professional would have already killed you, and made sure you were dead before you could have even thought about kicking dirt up to obscure their aim. Just saying.

I would much rather the Dev's used their time and amazing skills to make a better game, make each mech work better, make the game play better. Rather than to make someone's miss become a tactical advantage.

chris

[ManDaisy]

http://www.liveleak....=186_1205014266 around 2:54 * Warning Graphic * *machine gun example*

Another *missiles and machine guns*

Another *Missiles only*

Edited by ManDaisy, 27 February 2012 - 07:09 PM.

[wwiiogre]

ok you showed a clip of thermal vision at range in a desert in dry conditions of a 5' to 6' tall truck, where its own dust spilling out as it drove got upto about 2' high, while the 30mm rounds which appear to be HE as the visible mushroom of explosions shows cause the dust to go up perhaps 8' tall which only causes blindness for the firing helo or even the truck for a brief moment. Once again window dressing in specific atmospheric conditions using a non standard viewing platoform. I rest my case on your evidence.

chris

[ManDaisy]

*jump jet* Used downwars force of helicopter

*another machine guns its hard to see cause of all the dust*

Edited by ManDaisy, 27 February 2012 - 07:21 PM.

[ManDaisy]

Final one.
HA you still doubt me eh?! EH? WUT.

Edited by ManDaisy, 27 February 2012 - 07:26 PM.

[wwiiogre]

wow you showed a rocket attack with some 30mm chain gun that had secondary explosions, do you really know anything about the military and what is happening on these clips? or how the scale is different between a 5-6 foot man and a 40' plus mech and the way gravity will keep debris lower if you fire ap rounds as opposed to apHE.

showing a one thousand pound HE explosion has nothing whatsoever to do with this discussion. In the right atmospheric conditions exploding debris or dust could be raised, but lets say the Iraqi's in the first clip are driving in a rain storm, ground is soaked, no dust, no fountaining explosions, just a little fit of ground heave after the ap round penetrates a couple of feet into the mud. Or even better a high gravity environment where there is almost no dust or explosive cloud, or perhaps a cold environment where all moisture that turns into steam refreezes instantly and falls to ground as ice again. So many variations which the Dev's have already said they are going to visit. Yep multiple atmospheres and temperatures are already in the cards. So perhaps you will get your wish and in some of those places your intentionally wasting good bullets, cannon rounds or missiles into the dirt or water will give you a brief tactical advantage, but really any good pilot is gonna put his bullets into you while you shoot the ground.

Once again, I ask why bother the Dev's to work on something that truly will only ever come into play in very few places and according to the Dev's if I have thermal or even mag view I can instantaneously switch vision modes or lock onto your mech and fire indirectly if I have a good scout and the correct modules. So I really see no point when in physics, in most real world situations this really doesn't happen. But hey since you want a good reason to actually intentionally miss your opponent and gain an advantage for doing that, then of course that should be in game.

chris

[wwiiogre]

wow you really, really like the desert and dust and no moisture or ground cover. You know there really are a lot more places in the world that have combat than the desert.

But thanks for sharing the clips, yep a dry desert with lots of dust should have dust clouds, yep agree with you totally on that. But my mech with magnetic detection is still gonna shoot you thru the dust and my uav instructions are still gonna drop LRM's on you while you hide in that dust cloud you are causing by wasting your ammo by shooting at your own feet instead of actually trying to put your ammo into the enemy where it belongs. You do know the concept of bullets right? put them in the enemy not the ground. But hey if you want the Dev's to spend time and energy and money making it look pretty while you shoot the ground instead of the enemy mech and you want them to make that a viable tactic that rewards your poor shooting abilities and choices then hey why not ask them for clan mechs before everyone else, cause hey you should also have 3067 mechs too and nukes, everyone should have nukes.

Me I just want the best game they can deliver with all money, time and energy going towards that goal, that rewards players for good shooting, good decisions, bringing the right equipment to the right map and using it correctly in cooperation with other players making people who try to use hollywood gimmick tricks and bad play decisions die gloriously in their own dust clouds.
But I am an optimist and the dust cloud is always half full of enemy mechs so I get to kill them.

chris

[ManDaisy]

All good points I'll summarize what you said without the hostility:

Brown Outs Works/ specific weapons and weather conditions:

1) Dry Environments, Wind, Heat, causes pickup (machine guns, Missiles, JJ)
*Machine guns do no pick up in wet environments*
2) Cold Wet Environment "Fog" (Lasers, Missiles, JJ)
*Lasers do not cause fog in hot environments*

Edited by ManDaisy, 27 February 2012 - 07:40 PM.

[wwiiogre]

nope, no hostility

and I agree brown outs should appear under certain limited atmospheric occasions

but should never be total and very rarely if ever confer any sort of advantage such that if you shot the ground intentionally you gained an advantage. Because the effect does not last long enough for you to move away or if you do stop firing you would still be recycling your weapons thus giving your enemy the drop on you

so really don't see the point of this discussion other than an effect it haves in a very few instances and almost never a good effect for the person causing the loss of their own visibility intentionally

my scheme for control has all vision modes being able to switch instantly with a single button hit which is less than a split second away while I maintain maneuverability while also maintaining targeting and weapons fire.

What you describe is a bad thing and why you would want to do it on purpose is a mystery other than some time somewhere you pulled this off on purpose because an older game made this seem like a good idea?

But I don't get it, not the physics, not the real world. Yep thousand pound bombs and arty will send up a big fountain that if you are close enough for it to blind you you also took real damage so don't see this as a good thing.

In certain instances I am sure this will happen and visibility will be gone because of debris, steam, smoke, clouds etc. But I don't stand still and I can switch vision and target modes and use my jump jets to jump above you and then land on your head while you are still shooting at the ground.

Not hostile, just trying to show that this is not a realistic or viable tactic for so many reasons I can't even list them all.

you need to add a none of the above to the poll, or a only under certain conditions, etc

chris

[ManDaisy]

how about running away? Your an atlas I'm a commando, I know my srms wont do jack. Might as well make a cloud up front and run into it. Cause THAT is what its used for. Dust clouds certainly wont make me any more accurate if that is what you think I'm getting at?

Edited by ManDaisy, 27 February 2012 - 07:47 PM.