34 replies to this topic

[Yeach]

There is topic of making internal structure more expensive to repair
but I would like a thread mostly specifically describing internal structure and critcal hits.
(i suppose this topic is close)

I do not think the previous mechwarrior titles have addressed internal structure.

What is internal structure and does it act as a secondary armor?
An Atlas has more internal structure (31 points) than a 45-ton medium mech has armor (28 points)


What about the probability or critical hits?
from Pht's post
this link describes critical hits http://home.windstre...tratinghits.txt from this topic

Basically in TT rules are when you go past the armor and onto internal structure you have
44% chance to not hit anything critical
25% chance to take out 1 critical location
14% chance to take out 2 critical locations
3% chance to take out 3 critical locations
It doesn't matter where on the chassis you put a component but if you get a critical hit roll, you automatically hit something.

I prefer something along the lines of if you hit an unmarked area you don't hit a critical component. If you hit a marked location like an arm actuator then you hit it.

I also notice there is no internal structure for a shoulder on a side-torso to connect the arm to the center torso.

[Hammer Strike]

interesting, I also see they have not incorporated a Death from above move either, will be watching posts like this.

HS

[LordDeathStrike]

Hammer Strike, on 19 March 2012 - 02:40 AM, said:

interesting, I also see they have not incorporated a Death from above move either, will be watching posts like this.

HS

alot of IS mechs cockpits are armored to the above, clan mechs on the other hand have issues (timber wolf = easiest head shot ever, vulture = sunroof, thor = thanks for making it easy to spot at 800m, shadowcat = ***, half your front facing is your cockpit, way to kill yourself noob!)

but IS mechs, atlas = 2 small eye holes and a whole lot of mean, warhammer = tiney stripe in the middle of alot of weapons and overhead armor, catapult is kind of in the timerwolf camp though, its out on the nose not well covered from above, but the command and centurion plate it over fairly good for their weight classes hehe.

as far as the op topic, when you lose the armor, another hit to that section basically kills use of anything inside, arms get shot off, side torsos you lose use of weapons inside them, center you lose reactor and die, cockpit you die, leg you limp bad, but none of this happens till the armor on that area is gone and you hit it again after (internals are easily broken, hence the armor skin)

[Phos]

I'm curious about this need to repair stuff that I see being thrown around, when does this take place? Are we going to have persistent mechs that we have to pay to repair or is this something the TT purists are assuming will be there?

[Nathiel Surefire]

Phos, on 19 March 2012 - 03:42 AM, said:

I'm curious about this need to repair stuff that I see being thrown around, when does this take place? Are we going to have persistent mechs that we have to pay to repair or is this something the TT purists are assuming will be there?

This was answered in the Developer Q&A #4, the specific question copy pasted here:
Let's say you level up your mech and pilot through a series of battles, and then one fateful day you have your ride completely destroyed. Do you lose all mech XP and start over in a new mech, but retain your buff pilot abilities? –BarHaid

[PAUL] You will not be able to have your ’Mech destroyed but that being said, if you somehow lost your ’Mech you would not have to rework your way through the Mech Tree. You retain your XP for that chassis.
[DAVID] Your ’Mech can never be completely destroyed. Even when it’s shot to pieces, your team of mechanics and techies are skilled enough to restore it to a bare minimum, just barely functioning state. If you pay your repair bills, they’ll be able to repair it all the way up to a perfectly pristine condition. So you won’t lose any of your ’Mech XP or the ’Mech Efficiencies that you have unlocked with it. Also, keep in mind that the ’Mech Efficiencies represent not just the small tweaks and tuning that your tech team performs on the ’Mechs that you pilot, but also your ability as a pilot to squeeze the extra mile out of every system as you become more familiar with operating a particular model or variant.
[GARTH] To be clear, you could take a damaged ‘Mech into combat, if you wanted to.

So yes, you'll need to pay your repair bills. This will however be covered by the money you earn in game anyway, but you'll have more left over afterwards if you play well and don't take too many Arrow IV's to the left leg actuator.

[Yeach]

Since not many comments I am going to comment further.

An Atlas with zero armor and just internal structure equals has total internal structure & armor roughly the same amount as a fully armored 25 ton mech.
Can internal structure be interpreted basically "extra" default armor with the possibilities to get critical hits?

In regards to critical hits, I would like to see more hit-boxes showing the various critical components rather than random chance.

For example on an arm, lets say you destroyed all the armor, the shoulder actuator should be located in the upper portion of the arm and the hand actuator should be at the other end of the arm.
Not where you shoot at the lower portion of the arm (the hand) only to disable the shoulder.

Yeach, on 18 March 2012 - 08:01 PM, said:

I also notice there is no internal structure for a shoulder on a side-torso to connect the arm to the center torso.

Again can anyone else comment on this for constructions rules; all other areas such as head, arms, center torso and legs all have existing criticals assigned for something. Are we to believe that the side torsos are floating emptyboxes for weapons? What is the side torso connected to?

[Pvt Dancer]

Way it works is this... it is a flow chart. Lets say you clip a Raven RVN-3L (35 ton mech) with a AC 20 to the arm.
Right Arm armor = 8pts ... 12pts go to IS
Right Arm IS = 6pts ... 6pts go to RT Armor
Right Torso armor = 11pts ... RT now has 5pts of armor on the front, right arm is shot off, Pilot makes a pilot (balance) check for taking 20+ pts of damage to see if it falls over. No criticals are rolled since Right Torso was no penetrated.

Now, lets say this same Raven was hit in the Right Torso Rear and Right Arm trying to run away with 2 Medium Lasers. We will do the Torso hit first... (in TT you roll to hit with each weapon and resolve damage per hit).
Right Rear Armor = 3pts ... 2pts go into Right Torso IS
Right Torso IS = 8pts ... Right Torso IS is now down to 6pts. Attacker rolls 2d6 and a result of 8+ equals a crit hit.

Crit hit chart is the following...
2-7 = no crit, 8-9 = 1 crit, 10-11 = 2 crits, 12 = limb/head blown off/roll 3 crit locations for a torso location

Second hit hits Right Arm. Since Right Arm is destroyed, damage transfers to Right Torso. Since this is a rear shot, damage goes to Right Rear Torso. Since the armor is stripped off, it goes directly to IS.
Right Torso IS = 6pts (from 8pts) ... Right Torso IS is now down to 1pt. Attacker rolls 2d6 and a result of 8+ equals a crit hit.

As said Raven only has a SRM-6 (2 locations), TAG (single location) and (3) Engine locations in his Right Torso, any Crits rolled in the last two attacks will hurt, but the mech should survive unless at least 3 criticals are rolled and every engine location in the Right Torso is destroyed. 3 Engine hits automaticly shut down a mech, and the first two increase Heat generation by 5 and 10pts respectivily.

That Raven, if he took the AC 20 shot to the Right Torso, would have the Right Torso destroyed, as the Raven only has 11pts of RT armor and 8pts of RT IS for a total of 19pts. He would automaticly lose the Right arm, one point of damage would come off the front of the Raven's CT armor, but that doesn't matter as all IS in the Right Torso, thus all 3 Engine locations in the RT are destroyed, shutting down the Mech.

I hope this explains things for folk on how damage transfer works.

[Pvt Dancer]

As for side shots... in table top, it was a hex grid, with 6 hexs surrounding the mech. The front 3 hexs are 'front' arc, allowing you to hit anywhere in the front of the mech. The next hex, going from either side from the front hexs, gives the shooter a 'side shot' All this is is front shots on Center Torso to respective side (Left or Right) torso, and respective arm/leg. The Hex directly behind the mech are rear shots, where all fire goes to rear torso armor. Obviously arms and legs have no Front/Rear.

In a FPS the general model is to make an X (top down view) of the Mech, wear the front, left and right arcs all go against frontal armor and the rear arc goes against rear armor.

Unlike in a game like WoT, Battletech/Mechwarrior has no 'armor rating'. You /want/ to hit the same location repeatedly to strip off the armor and get nothing but internal structer hits to do damage. SRMs, in TT at least, were a fantastic methode to exploit 'holes' in armor created by larger, single packet damage weapons (PPC, AC 10, AC 20, and Large Lasers). This was because you rolled for how many missiles hit and then rolled for locations for /each/ missile... giving you several chances to sneak a crit in (hopefully). LRMs, on the other hand, were broken down in groups of 5 or less. So a LRM 20 that had 12 missile hit was two packs of 5pts and a single pack of 2pts.

The Battletech Compendium (if you can find one) has all of the mechanics broken down. Such as the number of IS points a mech of a given tonnage can have, to how much armor can fit on that tonnage based off of that IS. That book gives you all of the mechanics of building a mech. If other Compendiums were released aftewr the one I have, I would be pretty confident that most of the core mechanics still hold true.

[Penguinman]

Pvt Dancer, on 19 March 2012 - 09:59 PM, said:

The Battletech Compendium (if you can find one) has all of the mechanics broken down. Such as the number of IS points a mech of a given tonnage can have, to how much armor can fit on that tonnage based off of that IS. That book gives you all of the mechanics of building a mech. If other Compendiums were released aftewr the one I have, I would be pretty confident that most of the core mechanics still hold true.

I still have one in storage (the 2nd edition if i remember right, with the Timberwolf on the cover.) Wonder how much it would ebay for Of course that would mean I would have to part with it.

[Pvt Dancer]

Penguinman, on 19 March 2012 - 10:48 PM, said:

I still have one in storage (the 2nd edition if i remember right, with the Timberwolf on the cover.) Wonder how much it would ebay for Of course that would mean I would have to part with it.

Same one. Got mine at Gen Con.

[Hammer Strike]

LordDeathStrike, on 19 March 2012 - 03:22 AM, said:

alot of IS mechs cockpits are armored to the above, clan mechs on the other hand have issues (timber wolf = easiest head shot ever, vulture = sunroof, thor = thanks for making it easy to spot at 800m, shadowcat = ***, half your front facing is your cockpit, way to kill yourself noob!)

but IS mechs, atlas = 2 small eye holes and a whole lot of mean, warhammer = tiney stripe in the middle of alot of weapons and overhead armor, catapult is kind of in the timerwolf camp though, its out on the nose not well covered from above, but the command and centurion plate it over fairly good for their weight classes hehe.

as far as the op topic, when you lose the armor, another hit to that section basically kills use of anything inside, arms get shot off, side torsos you lose use of weapons inside them, center you lose reactor and die, cockpit you die, leg you limp bad, but none of this happens till the armor on that area is gone and you hit it again after (internals are easily broken, hence the armor skin)

Understood and thanks for a further illustration, my fault for being unclear but as I understand the mechanics at the moment there is no damage generated for coming down on any mech from above. If you have evidence to the contrary please post the quote.

Thanks

HS

[Nik Van Rhijn]

I don't see why IS can't be treated as "Internal Armour" for the damage model with actuators at the appropriate locations. Crit spaces could be applied to each mech and "filled" locations modelled for tha purpose of hits. As for damage transfer - base it on the angle of fire. Project the line and apply it to whayever it would hit. If you hit a damaged side torso and take out the remaining IS then if the strike is aimed into the CT it should go into the interior, as the armour is on the outside. Wether any shot inside the armour hits IS or crit space is down to the damage modelling.
This may well be too computationaly intensive, but I would like at least a simplified version. The other problem is armour. It is applied in "points" to sections without any reference to the surface area. Given that smaller mechs have smaller hit boxes they will effectively be "tougher" I would assume. I would like to know what others think.

[Suskis]

BT has always had some weak points in its rules. Internal slots is one of them IMHO.
Example: some mechs (IE: Marauder) have only 1 item in a side torso: AMMOS. That is, if you score a critical hit in said torso, you automatically DETONATE. That's why mechs built by players always place heat sinks and other stuff along with ammos.
Same goes for head. Why leaving 1 empty slot in the head? That increases the chance to be killed by a lucky shot.
I hope this issue will be fixed in this game too.

[Kay Allard Liao]

LordDeathStrike, on 19 March 2012 - 03:22 AM, said:

alot of IS mechs cockpits are armored to the above, clan mechs on the other hand have issues (timber wolf = easiest head shot ever, vulture = sunroof, thor = thanks for making it easy to spot at 800m, shadowcat = ***, half your front facing is your cockpit, way to kill yourself noob!)

but IS mechs, atlas = 2 small eye holes and a whole lot of mean, warhammer = tiney stripe in the middle of alot of weapons and overhead armor, catapult is kind of in the timerwolf camp though, its out on the nose not well covered from above, but the command and centurion plate it over fairly good for their weight classes hehe.

as far as the op topic, when you lose the armor, another hit to that section basically kills use of anything inside, arms get shot off, side torsos you lose use of weapons inside them, center you lose reactor and die, cockpit you die, leg you limp bad, but none of this happens till the armor on that area is gone and you hit it again after (internals are easily broken, hence the armor skin)

well i think even against a 20 ton mech, even the armored head of an IS mech, isn't save, when it's using the jump jets for a death jump

[Yeach]

Suskis, on 20 March 2012 - 12:36 AM, said:

BT has always had some weak points in its rules. Internal slots is one of them IMHO.
Example: some mechs (IE: Marauder) have only 1 item in a side torso: AMMOS. That is, if you score a critical hit in said torso, you automatically DETONATE. That's why mechs built by players always place heat sinks and other stuff along with ammos.
Same goes for head. Why leaving 1 empty slot in the head? That increases the chance to be killed by a lucky shot.
I hope this issue will be fixed in this game too.

I agree. What is the rest of internal structure/slots filled with? Please "roll again" slots?

[Pht]

Yeach, on 18 March 2012 - 08:01 PM, said:

There is topic of making internal structure more expensive to repair
but I would like a thread mostly specifically describing internal structure and critcal hits.
(i suppose this topic is close)

I do not think the previous mechwarrior titles have addressed internal structure.

What is internal structure and does it act as a secondary armor?
An Atlas has more internal structure (31 points) than a 45-ton medium mech has armor (28 points)

Internal stucture is not secondary armor.

Internal structure is actually the "bones" of a battlemech, which is actually an endo-skeletal structure.

Quote

What about the probability or critical hits?
from Pht's post
this link describes critical hits http://home.windstre...tratinghits.txt from this topic

Basically in TT rules are when you go past the armor and onto internal structure you have
44% chance to not hit anything critical
25% chance to take out 1 critical location
14% chance to take out 2 critical locations
3% chance to take out 3 critical locations
It doesn't matter where on the chassis you put a component but if you get a critical hit roll, you automatically hit something.

I prefer something along the lines of if you hit an unmarked area you don't hit a critical component. If you hit a marked location like an arm actuator then you hit it.

I also notice there is no internal structure for a shoulder on a side-torso to connect the arm to the center torso.

That file you linked to only describes the basic rules; the advanced rules that lay over the top of those rules expand the system and make a lot more sense.

For instance, the rules about how different weapons get an armor penetrating hit (through armor critical hit, in the boardgame language) more damaging weapons that do that damage in a single shot get a higher chance of a penetrating hit. For instance, a gauss rifle has a better chance of slamming a hole in a 'mechs armor vs hyper assault gauss, which, while they do a larger amount of damage, spread that damage out into many projectiles.

Than there's the rule that models a "close shave" against a piece of internal equipment vs a full on obliteration of that equipment.

Also, the normal usage rules do not allow armor penetrating hits against any section but torsos; the advanced rules allow for armor penetration all across a 'mech.

About cost of repair for the bones (internal structure) of a mech being higher ... I could see that, given that you have to pull the external structures off of the bone to get access to repair it.

Suskis, on 20 March 2012 - 12:36 AM, said:

BT has always had some weak points in its rules. Internal slots is one of them IMHO.
Example: some mechs (IE: Marauder) have only 1 item in a side torso: AMMOS. That is, if you score a critical hit in said torso, you automatically DETONATE. That's why mechs built by players always place heat sinks and other stuff along with ammos.
Same goes for head. Why leaving 1 empty slot in the head? That increases the chance to be killed by a lucky shot.
I hope this issue will be fixed in this game too.

You're misunderstanding the rule, I think. If you penetrate armor and damage something inside (or there is no armor on a section and you've shot that section) you than roll again, to determine if you have actually hit something besides the bones of the mech. If there is only one thing in that section, than obviously, you can only hit that one thing. If you get a penetrating hit or otherwise hit the bones (internals) and you don't get a roll for damaging something, you just blast off some of the bone.

Edited by Pht, 20 March 2012 - 06:53 PM.

[Yeach]

Pht, on 20 March 2012 - 06:49 PM, said:

Internal stucture is not secondary armor.

Internal structure is actually the "bones" of a battlemech, which is actually an endo-skeletal structure.

So do the right torso and left torso have any "bone" structure?
From the data-sheets (without an XL engine) there are no other attachment criticals?
What holds up the right and left torso?

[Seabear]

The bones analogy is correct. Armor is the covering of you mech, the clothes if you will. It's easy to change clothes or replace armor. The internal structure is the framework or skeleton of the mech. Think of a late medieval knight in plate armor. Hits to the armor may hurt the fellow inside but usually didn't damage him. Once the armor is breached, the soft squishy parts and hard bones start getting harmed. A tough fellow can keep going, but it's going to seriouly cost him in the long run. Same way with a mech.

[Pht]

Yeach, on 20 March 2012 - 07:44 PM, said:

So do the right torso and left torso have any "bone" structure?
From the data-sheets (without an XL engine) there are no other attachment criticals?
What holds up the right and left torso?

'Mech bone structure is roughly analagous to human bone structure.

The internal structure section in the link in my post in this thread will lay it all out for you.

[Yeach]

It doesn't seem that the right or left torso have "bone" structure as they are not indicated in the criticals.

If the internal structure was just the skeleton, then it would be much harder to hit (if you assume that the skeleton "bones" are small); yet once you strip off the armor of a mech, you are hitting into the internal structure.

Is it to believe that a mech with very few criticals (in the torsos) to be hollow inside?