146 replies to this topic

[WithSilentWings]

Johannes Falkner, on 10 April 2012 - 08:53 AM, said:

There have been numerous threads about ACs and whether they should do all of their damage to a single location, how fast they should refire and whether the shells should drop in flight. Few of the discussions have addressed fire rate itself. In many of the fluff books an AC (particularly the AC/20 and AC/10) fires a stream of shots for a short time.

What would you think of having an AC fire several shots over approximately 0.5 to 1.0 seconds? This would allow us to walk fire over the target mech and address accuracy concerns by making it more difficult to CT spam.

For a hypothetical AC/20 we would see a salvo of say 100 shots over 1 second, each doing a small fraction of the total damage. There would have to be tracers so we could see mech X getting blown to smithereens by Hunchback Y.

Basically you're saying you want it to work like Mechwarrior 3: (go to 2min)

Sven Svenson, on 10 April 2012 - 10:43 AM, said:

I would like to see both kinds of autocannons in the game. Let the player choose if they want a single shot that does point damage or a rotary that fires a stream .. tracers would be cool ..and try to hold it over a location if they want . would look great and good for straffing down that pesky Jenner. As for regiment having trouble supplying so many diff guns ammo .. you do know this is a game right.

I agree. It's a free to play game and more and more content will hopefully be introduced over time. Why not simply make two or 3 models per rating and allow them to behave differently? Just because it hasn't been done, doesn't mean it will suddenly blow up or unbalance the game. There's a tradeoff to be had--you can either rely on your aim/reflexes/speed of torso twist and the skills of your opponent's piloting, or you can have the opportunity to spray a little and still get a good amount of damage in where you would have otherwise missed entirely. Technically, it IS closer to the lore, and to a certain degree it DOES make sense.

In Mechwarrior 2 I used to be careful which weapons I gave my lancemates because if anything needed a reload or to be replaced on a longer contract it would be easy to run out of the appropriate parts--that covers the idea of "logistical" needs. Perhaps a lance would simply be fitted or have mech with similar weaponry and so they avert the need for 12 different types of AC ammo for 4 mechs.

Edited by WithSilentWings, 10 April 2012 - 05:40 PM.

[Solis Obscuri]

BarHaid, on 10 April 2012 - 05:21 PM, said:

There might not be much that can be done about damage spread with burst-fire, but if the burst length is kept to a second maximum, it wouldn't be too bad, IMHO.

Even a fairly slow 'mech can cover 15m in a second, and the fast ones can cover 32m or more. That's a lot of time to spread damage around. I'd prefer something on the order of a half-second or less.

[Kartr]

WithSilentWings, on 10 April 2012 - 05:32 PM, said:

I agree. It's a free to play game and more and more content will hopefully be introduced over time. Why not simply make two or 3 models per rating and allow them to behave differently? Just because it hasn't been done, doesn't mean it will suddenly blow up or unbalance the game. There's a tradeoff to be had--you can either rely on your aim/reflexes/speed of torso twist and the skills of your opponent's piloting, or you can have the opportunity to spray a little and still get a good amount of damage in where you would have otherwise missed entirely. Technically, it IS closer to the lore, and to a certain degree it DOES make sense.

In Mechwarrior 2 I used to be careful which weapons I gave my lancemates because if anything needed a reload or to be replaced on a longer contract it would be easy to run out of the appropriate parts--that covers the idea of "logistical" needs. Perhaps a lance would simply be fitted or have mech with similar weaponry and so they avert the need for 12 different types of AC ammo for 4 mechs.

That's why we have LB-X and Pulse Lasers and eventually RACs. If you want to vary the number of shots per burst depending on the make and model of the AC that's awesome, but at no point should it be a long drawn out burst like you would expect from a RAC. That blurs the lines between weapons and dilutes the unique role that AC/s have.

[Ranek Blackstone]

2mm shells, even fired 100 at a time, would need insane muzzle speeds to have any sort of power against a mech. A gauss rifle could probably pull off the need omph to get a round going that fast, but no explosive compound would ever work. Knietic energy, after all, is a function of mass and speed. A 2mm shell would have very, very little mass, so the formula is stacked against it from the get go.

AC/20 should have a shell roughly 185mm in size, and if modern autoloaders in tanks are anything to judge with, fire roughly once every 2.5-3 seconds. Assuming of course we didn't do something stupid like make the gun function like a giant belt feed machine gun.

IMO, ACs should deal soild damage, but have a fire speed low enough to make you not want to shoot unless your sure of a hit.

[Solis Obscuri]

WithSilentWings, on 10 April 2012 - 05:32 PM, said:

Basically you're saying you want it to work like Mechwarrior 3: (go to 2min)

MW3 had great weapons design. I wouldn't mind seeing something closer to that. Though I think the ACs in MW3 actually did a little heavier damage than TT, to compensate for the spread you got most of the time.

[WithSilentWings]

We all also need to keep in mind that the whole battletech turn thing where "1 turn is 10 seconds" doesn't mean that an AC 20 fires once in 10 seconds, or a medium laser fires once in 10 seconds. It's a simplification for the game's purposes. The best way to "read" this is to use it as a guideline for DPS.

The game did not put all of an AC20's damage in one place for lore, it did it for simplification...we all know what happens when a table top game takes 7 hours to play--everyone gets bored and starts spazzing.

I believe the previous suggestions for types are all fantastic.


Type 1: Fires a burst of several shots at a time and has a long recycle. Let's say burst of 5 high velocity rounds every 5 seconds. This lets you clip faster moving targets at the expense of concentrated damage. 10 seconds worth of firing does TT equivalent of 20 damage, or 10 damage per cycle (2 damage per round).

Type 2: Fires a single round every 5 seconds doing equivalent damage, perhaps being lower velocity as an additional trade off. This makes it easier to concentrate your damage, and so if you were expecting to face an assault mech toe to toe this is what you'd want.10 seconds worth of firing does TT equivalent of 20 damage, or 10 damage per cycle. (This example is because I think it would be ridiculous to have a 10-second recycle for an AC)

Type 3: Fires a single shot that's weaker than type 2 but stronger than type 1 with a short recycle. This fires a single round every second, with a velocity and damage output between the two types listed above. 10 seconds worth of firing does TT equivalent of 20 damage, or 2 damage per cycle.

These are just generalizations of course and it could certainly be mixed up, but this would lead to the same damage potentials in different ways and give the weapon set more versatility.

....I never understood why the AC2 is always depicted as firing rediculously fast and yet the AC20 is always BAM!........BAM!...... like other have said, the lore, as well as MW2 and MW3 depicted all of the AC weapons as.... "AUTO?!"cannons.

Kartr, on 10 April 2012 - 05:52 PM, said:

That's why we have LB-X and Pulse Lasers and eventually RACs. If you want to vary the number of shots per burst depending on the make and model of the AC that's awesome, but at no point should it be a long drawn out burst like you would expect from a RAC. That blurs the lines between weapons and dilutes the unique role that AC/s have.

I feel very differently about this. The more "similar" weapons the better--it leads more dynamics on the battlefield. An AC and a laser will ALWAYS have the major difference that one is ammo bound and one relies on better cooling. The harder it is to decide on one weapon over the other, the better!

I'm willing to bet this, along with the idea of "keeping things fresh" is why there are so many variants of the "same" weapons in the fiction. I know the devs only have so much time, and I'm sure they will make good use of it, but all things being equal and if we could count on everything being of the highest quality, why would you want less? It would be like having the choice between 50 mechs or 100 mechs. As long as you could be confident in the comparison of quality, why would you want LESS to choose from? I think confining a Mechwarrior game to a Counter-Strike like methodology is a really bad idea.

Edited by WithSilentWings, 10 April 2012 - 06:12 PM.

[Belisarius1]

Ragotag, on 10 April 2012 - 09:30 AM, said:

An AC/20 uses roughly a ~200mm shell; can you really envision a stream of one hundred 200mm shells firing in a second? Or are you suggesting turning a weapon systems that fires a ~200mm shell into a weapon system that fires one hundred 2mm shells? I'd prefer to stick as close to BattleTech TT as possible on this one.

I prefer the idea of AC's being direct-damage weapon systems; with missiles and the way standard lasers have been described to work as spread-damage weapon systems (damage over time or multiple impacts spread over the target's chassis), I still want to see a few weapon systems do direct-damage (all damage focused in a specific location) -- AC's, PPC's, Gauss Rifles, and Pulse Lasers traditionally fit this bill.

...but those are just my opinions.

As much as I hate people who do this, I'm going to bust out the fluff and point out that an AC20 in CBT actually uses a variety of different calibers depending on which author is writing the piece. The almighty sarna (http://www.sarna.net...i/Autocannon/20) gives a few examples for an AC20 and says that autocannons in general range from 25-203mm, with those differences balanced by altered rates of fire.

While I think that's pretty much retarded, it's certainly not a done deal that they fire a single slug. I would like them to fire a short burst precisely to differentiate them from PPCs and gauss.

And by short, I mean half a dozen shells over 200ms at most. If you were good, you could still focus all their damage on one location.

EDIT: ie. yes, exactly like MW3. I think that game got standard ACs dead-on.

Edited by Belisarius†, 10 April 2012 - 06:26 PM.

[Kartr]

Ranek Blackstone, on 10 April 2012 - 05:53 PM, said:

2mm shells, even fired 100 at a time, would need insane muzzle speeds to have any sort of power against a mech. A gauss rifle could probably pull off the need omph to get a round going that fast, but no explosive compound would ever work. Knietic energy, after all, is a function of mass and speed. A 2mm shell would have very, very little mass, so the formula is stacked against it from the get go.

There are no 2mm AC weapons, they range from 30mm to 203mm IIRC. Secondly they're not designed to take out a 'Mech or even do significant damage to a 'Mech with a single round. The idea is that you use multiple rounds to crater or "sand down" the enemy armor. As the armor ablates away you eventually will achieve penetration and start damaging the soft innards. Again this why it makes more sense for HEAT rounds then kinetic kill rounds.

Ranek Blackstone, on 10 April 2012 - 05:53 PM, said:

AC/20 should have a shell roughly 185mm in size, and if modern autoloaders in tanks are anything to judge with, fire roughly once every 2.5-3 seconds. Assuming of course we didn't do something stupid like make the gun function like a giant belt feed machine gun.

IMO, ACs should deal soild damage, but have a fire speed low enough to make you not want to shoot unless your sure of a hit.

AC/s are not auto-loaders, though they do have an auto-loading function. Rather they are burst fire weapons probably using a clip style design in which the auto-loader feeds ammunition into the clip and then when the weapon fires it chambers a new round every time the recoil drives the breech back. In this way it would function much like an M-16 or any other magazine fed rifle with the ability to fire bursts.

And yes AC/s are supposed to do "solid" damage with shorter ranges, less ammo and most likely slower rates of fire due to the need to load the clip after every firing. As for belt fed machine gun style, thats more like a RAC, though that is technically more of a Gatling gun.

WithSilentWings, on 10 April 2012 - 06:06 PM, said:

The game did not put all of an AC20's damage in one place for lore, it did it for simplification...we all know what happens when a table top game takes 7 hours to play--everyone gets bored and starts spazzing.

Actually it is for game balance, you need some reason to mount weapons that have such a huge space and mass requirement. Packing a huge amount of damage into a single location every time you hit is that incentive.

Also it makes sense from a realistic stand point. If you have to take multiple shots on a single location to ablate away armor, then you want a method to deliver as many shots as possible onto a small area. If you can do that you will defeat the armor much much faster. Hence the design of burst firing heavy weapons. If you take that away from them by making the rounds spread out all over the place then you take away the AC/s one advantage.

WithSilentWings, on 10 April 2012 - 06:06 PM, said:

Type 1: Fires a burst of several shots at a time and has a long recycle. Let's say burst of 5 high velocity rounds every 5 seconds. This lets you clip faster moving targets at the expense of concentrated damage. 10 seconds worth of firing does TT equivalent of 20 damage, or 10 damage per cycle (2 damage per round).

How about no. This totally negates the whole point of using an AC/20 as you'll be doing 5pts here, 5 pts there, 5pts there and 5pts missed. It has literally become an LRM with very short range. Just keep the 20pts of damage on a single location, and because it has to load around 7-10rds between shots and the rounds are very large and heavy it makes sense for a 10s reload.

WithSilentWings, on 10 April 2012 - 06:06 PM, said:

Type 2: Fires a single round every 5 seconds doing equivalent damage, perhaps being lower velocity as an additional trade off. This makes it easier to concentrate your damage, and so if you were expecting to face an assault mech toe to toe this is what you'd want.10 seconds worth of firing does TT equivalent of 20 damage, or 10 damage per cycle. (This example is because I think it would be ridiculous to have a 10-second recycle for an AC)

Again no as this makes your basic AC/s into Ultra AC/s that do half damage. Also the number of rounds you're firing doesn't correspond to the Fluff. Every AC/20 fires a number of rounds roughly equal to (10*155)/caliber.

WithSilentWings, on 10 April 2012 - 06:06 PM, said:

Type 3: Fires a single shot that's weaker than type 2 but stronger than type 1 with a short recycle. This fires a single round every second, with a velocity and damage output between the two types listed above. 10 seconds worth of firing does TT equivalent of 20 damage, or 2 damage per cycle.

No because now you have an SRM launcher. 2pts of damage here, 2 there, 2 over there, etc.

WithSilentWings, on 10 April 2012 - 06:06 PM, said:

These are just generalizations of course and it could certainly be mixed up, but this would lead to the same damage potentials in different ways and give the weapon set more versatility.

Actually it totally destroys the point of having AC/s. With their weight and critical requirements, not to mention the ammo which can be depleted or blown up, you'd be much better off taking all energy weapons. Using your examples:
1. a) 4 medium lasers grouped in pairs, does the same damage in a similar fashion at the same range generates 5 extra heat but saves you 6 criticals and 10 tons.
b ) 2 PPCs gives you the same damage at twice the distance and saves you 4 critical slots, but generates an extra 13 heat.

2. same reasons as 1.
3. 4 medium pulse lasers act in a similar fashion, do more damage save you 6 tons and 6 criticals and only costs 9 extra heat.

Oh not to mention that laser weapons have instant "flight" times as opposed to ballistics (though at MW ranges they're practically instant as well) making it easier to hit what you're aiming at.

Again the only reason to have AC/s is to get as much damage in a single location as possible with one shot. Any modification to that paradigm makes them completely worthless thanks to their high costs in terms of resources, their extreme vulnerability and the very short ranges.

WithSilentWings, on 10 April 2012 - 06:06 PM, said:

I feel very differently about this. The more "similar" weapons the better--it leads more dynamics on the battlefield. An AC and a laser will ALWAYS have the major difference that one is ammo bound and one relies on better cooling. The harder it is to decide on one weapon over the other, the better!

Funny, you are advocating the opposite. By altering the AC/s to your ideas it takes away their one big advantage over beam and missile weapons. To make the choice as hard as possible you have to make the AC unique so people have to choose whether they want the massive damage in one location with all the drawbacks or do they want to go with less damage in a location and reap the benefits of other weapon types.

WithSilentWings, on 10 April 2012 - 06:06 PM, said:

I'm willing to bet this, along with the idea of "keeping things fresh" is why there are so many variants of the "same" weapons in the fiction. I know the devs only have so much time, and I'm sure they will make good use of it, but all things being equal and if we could count on everything being of the highest quality, why would you want less? It would be like having the choice between 50 mechs or 100 mechs. As long as you could be confident in the comparison of quality, why would you want LESS to choose from? I think confining a Mechwarrior game to a Counter-Strike like methodology is a really bad idea.

Like I said I'm all for there being variation in the types of AC/s. Perhaps one fires 10 rds per burst and another fires 7 rds, it would feel different and look different, maybe even play a little different. However all AC/s must put all their rounds on target in such a quick succession that all their damage is done to one location.

[Der Kommissar]

The size of the autocannon's shell (and burst length) varies by the make of the autocannon. As I recall, the biggest-bore autocannon is the Cauldron-Born/Ebon Jaguar's 203mm model. Close behind those are the Demolisher's twin 185mm Chemjets. One might expect guns with high caliber for their class to only have a few or a single shell per firing.

But autocannons are usually fluffed as firing streams of shells, usually three rounds or more.

[Kartr]

Der Kommissar, on 10 April 2012 - 07:26 PM, said:

The size of the autocannon's shell (and burst length) varies by the make of the autocannon. As I recall, the biggest-bore autocannon is the Cauldron-Born/Ebon Jaguar's 203mm model. Close behind those are the Demolisher's twin 185mm Chemjets. One might expect guns with high caliber for their class to only have a few or a single shell per firing.

But autocannons are usually fluffed as firing streams of shells, usually three rounds or more.

The Crusher fires 10 150mm shells per burst, if we're assuming HEAT rounds then you'd need 1500/caliber to get the number of rounds for any other AC/20. Or you can take 1500/(number of rounds) to get the caliber. So unless you have a 1.5m caliber cannon you can't be firing single shots out of an AC/20 and getting 20pts of damage.

[UncleKulikov]

Kartr, on 10 April 2012 - 05:52 PM, said:

That's why we have LB-X and Pulse Lasers and eventually RACs. If you want to vary the number of shots per burst depending on the make and model of the AC that's awesome, but at no point should it be a long drawn out burst like you would expect from a RAC. That blurs the lines between weapons and dilutes the unique role that AC/s have.

Racs will show up in 10+ years. Do you confuse machine guns with rotary cannons now because their rates of fire are "fast"? Because I don't think the lines will be blurred by having a fully automatic autocannon (thud thud thud thud thud thud) next to a RAC (BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR).

[Vollstrecker]

The novels tend to advertise them as short bursts that can be 'walked' over a 'mech. In almost every description I have seen in the novels, the description referred to the AC/20 "vomiting a cloud of metal" or some such similar description.

In fact, if you look at the amounts of ammunition available to ACs in the Tabletop, it appears that 100 munitions are equal to a ton, which would explain why an AC/5 gets 20 shots (firing 5-round bursts), AC10 gets 10, and AC/20 gets 5. AC/2 is the odd man out getting only 45 rounds.

It works the same way with LRMs and SRMs (120 LRMs = 1 ton and 100 SRMs). I personally am in favor of short bursts as it kinda makes "sniping" and such more difficult to accomplish. Canonically, only the absolute best were able to make precision shots in combat.

[UncleKulikov]

Vollstrecker, on 10 April 2012 - 08:27 PM, said:

The novels tend to advertise them as short bursts that can be 'walked' over a 'mech. In almost every description I have seen in the novels, the description referred to the AC/20 "vomiting a cloud of metal" or some such similar description.

In fact, if you look at the amounts of ammunition available to ACs in the Tabletop, it appears that 100 munitions are equal to a ton, which would explain why an AC/5 gets 20 shots (firing 5-round bursts), AC10 gets 10, and AC/20 gets 5. AC/2 is the odd man out getting only 45 rounds.

It works the same way with LRMs and SRMs (120 LRMs = 1 ton and 100 SRMs). I personally am in favor of short bursts as it kinda makes "sniping" and such more difficult to accomplish. Canonically, only the absolute best were able to make precision shots in combat.

That would slide each autocannon into it's range based role as well, with AC20s and AC 10s being similar to assault rifles while the AC5s and AC2s would fit into battle rifle and sniper rifle settings.

[Johannes Falkner]

Conversation, this is good. I had forgotten how MW3 did ACs, but that was definitely on my mind as one version, a short burst and pain. The canon art (however good it is) definitely shows different AC/20 calibers, which would support different fire rates/durations by implication. The artists did not know guns though...

Hunchback: Right torso AC/20. Estimated 3m barrel plus receiver assembly with 750mm projectile based on 13m height. This would be a 750mm/L4 at most gun indicating a VERY low velocity. The hunchback might be able to throw the shells faster.
Shootist: Left arm AC/20. (I should post this one in the lefty thread.) Estimated 7m barrel plus receiver assembly with 500mm projectile for a 500mm/L14 barrel that might actually beat pitching the munition.
Victor: Right arm AC/20. Estimated 4m barrel plus receiver assembly with 250mm projectile for a 250mm/L16 gun.

For reference
M16A2 - 5.56mm with 508mm barrel (5.56mm/L91)
muzzle velocity = 948 m/s
Low pressure to keep barrel weight down
M1(A1) Abrams (skip to 8:20) mounts an M256 smoothbore - 120mm/L44 (Leopard 2A6 uses 120mm/L55 version of the gun)
muzzle velocity >= 1580 m/s
High pressure, note the staggering in the diameter of the barrel
Mk 19 Grenade Launcher - 40mm/L10 - Note the arc he is firing at to hit the target and the delay time between firing and hitting (~3-4 sec at ~400m)
muzzle velocity = 240 m/s
Medium pressure, balance between range and portability
Battleship (Iowa Class) - 16 inch/L50 (410mm/L50)
muzzle velocity = 762 m/s
Range ~30 miles (48km)
Med.-Low pressure to control weight/balance/safety (Volkswagens are not generally intended to be travelling at Mach 2+.)

Edited by Johannes Falkner, 10 April 2012 - 09:16 PM.

[LordDeathStrike]

Johannes Falkner, on 10 April 2012 - 08:53 AM, said:

There have been numerous threads about ACs and whether they should do all of their damage to a single location, how fast they should refire and whether the shells should drop in flight. Few of the discussions have addressed fire rate itself. In many of the fluff books an AC (particularly the AC/20 and AC/10) fires a stream of shots for a short time.

What would you think of having an AC fire several shots over approximately 0.5 to 1.0 seconds? This would allow us to walk fire over the target mech and address accuracy concerns by making it more difficult to CT spam.

For a hypothetical AC/20 we would see a salvo of say 100 shots over 1 second, each doing a small fraction of the total damage. There would have to be tracers so we could see mech X getting blown to smithereens by Hunchback Y.

stock ac 20, 1 massive shell, short range.

ultra ac 20, 2 less massive shells, .25 second burst of fire, short range.

rac ac 20, shitload of small shells, will continuous gatling fire until trigger released or weapon jams.

lbx ac 20, option of fireing multiple ammo types, cluster rounds shotgun the target, longer range = more shell spread, sabot slug rounds = standard ac 20 hit, can use armor piercing/heat/flechette(spread) rounds

ac 10s, the same as 20s but half the dmg, so forth and so on for 5 and 2s.

this is canon, in its truest, game making sense. authors may have abused literary license but we dont want 100 different makers all with snowflake unique ac weapons. we just want balanced consistency.

Johannes Falkner, on 10 April 2012 - 09:15 PM, said:

Conversation, this is good. I had forgotten how MW3 did ACs, but that was definitely on my mind as one version, a short burst and pain. The canon art (however good it is) definitely shows different AC/20 calibers, which would support different fire rates/durations by implication. The artists did not know guns though...

Hunchback: Right torso AC/20. Estimated 3m barrel plus receiver assembly with 750mm projectile based on 13m height. This would be a 750mm/L4 at most gun indicating a VERY low velocity. The hunchback might be able to throw the shells faster.
Shootist: Left arm AC/20. (I should post this one in the lefty thread.) Estimated 7m barrel plus receiver assembly with 500mm projectile for a 500mm/L14 barrel that might actually beat pitching the munition.
Victor: Right arm AC/20. Estimated 4m barrel plus receiver assembly with 250mm projectile for a 250mm/L16 gun.

For reference
M16A2 - 5.56mm with 508mm barrel (5.56mm/L91)
muzzle velocity = 948 m/s
Low pressure to keep barrel weight down
M1(A1) Abrams (skip to 8:20) mounts an M256 smoothbore - 120mm/L44 (Leopard 2A6 uses 120mm/L55 version of the gun)
muzzle velocity >= 1580 m/s
High pressure, note the staggering in the diameter of the barrel
Mk 19 Grenade Launcher - 40mm/L10 - Note the arc he is firing at to hit the target and the delay time between firing and hitting (~3-4 sec at ~400m)
muzzle velocity = 240 m/s
Medium pressure, balance between range and portability
Battleship (Iowa Class) - 16 inch/L50 (410mm/L50)
muzzle velocity = 762 m/s
Range ~30 miles (48km)
Med.-Low pressure to control weight/balance/safety (Volkswagens are not generally intended to be travelling at Mach 2+.)

barrel length of auto cannon is moot, when you can have the shells rocket themselves after they leave the barrels. and with the barrel strength of such weapons, they can have a large explosion launch them initially as well (we arent dealing with weak carbon steel tech here)

[Thomas Hogarth]

Or how about this:

All AC fire a burst of four shells over the course of .25 seconds. Yes, canon says that different AC fire different amounts of shells at different rates, but for gameplay purposes, lets keep them all the same.

The very short duration means that all the damage will more than likely strike one section.

All other stats canon.

Ultras merely recycle at twice the rate, as well as have longer range in accordance with canon.

LB-X have selectable ammo (if chassis has two tons of ammo that have been appropriately provisioned) - Cluster, which fires normally and detonates a given distance away from an object (think flak ammo - this keeps the spread consistent), or slug, which behaves the same as normal AC ammo. All other stats in accordance with canon.

[Corbon Zackery]

Auto Cannon Basics:
First group Normal Auto Cannons
AC/2
AC/5
AC/10
AC/20

2nd Group LBX Auto Cannon

LBX-AC/2
LBX-AC/5
LBX-AC/10
LBX-AC/20

3rd Group of Auto Cannons

Ultra-AC/2
Ultra-AC/5
Ultra-AC/10
Ultra-AC/20

So we will have at least 12 in game Auto Cannons So whats the differance?

A regular Auto Cannon fires one shot per turn
A LBX Auto Cannon is a shotgun firing small pellets all over a area.
Ultra Auto Cannons double the rate of fire/ At the cost of cooking off a round jamming the gun.

Each one has its pros and cons. weight, crits, ammo, slots on a mech.

So the graphics depend on the gun and the cool down time created for that gun.

[LackofCertainty]

To everyone in this thread who is complaining about how AC's need to do damage to a single spot in order to be balanced:

The devs already changed lasers to do DOT damage instead of instant damage to one spot, so they could easily do the same thing to AC's.

On the topic of Burst fire AC's, I know it's not very realistic, but I like the idea of my AC/20 being one huge shell shot every ten or so seconds. Maybe that wouldn't work for balance, so the devs could tune it down to 1 round/5 seconds or so, but I don't really want them to tune it all the way down to where it feels/functions exactly the same as a laser does in game.

Maybe it doesn't fit perfectly with cannon, but it's important for different weapons in a fps to have different feels. I don't want AC's to feel like reskinned lasers that have an ammo counter. (aka the stream of bullets some are suggesting) I want them to feel like I'm firing a cannon. Maybe it's a burst fire cannon, but it's still a cannon, not a machine gun.

[Johannes Falkner]

LordDeathStrike, on 10 April 2012 - 09:28 PM, said:

stock ac 20, 1 massive shell, short range.

ultra ac 20, 2 less massive shells, .25 second burst of fire, short range.

rac ac 20, shitload of small shells, will continuous gatling fire until trigger released or weapon jams.

Thankfully the RAC-20 does not exist...

LordDeathStrike, on 10 April 2012 - 09:28 PM, said:

lbx ac 20, option of fireing multiple ammo types, cluster rounds shotgun the target, longer range = more shell spread, sabot slug rounds = standard ac 20 hit, can use armor piercing/heat/flechette(spread) rounds

ac 10s, the same as 20s but half the dmg, so forth and so on for 5 and 2s.

this is canon, in its truest, game making sense. authors may have abused literary license but we dont want 100 different makers all with snowflake unique ac weapons. we just want balanced consistency.

Your comments exemplify a design paradigm that will have a large number of people rage quitting and leaving the game. Remember that this is not TT. Your accuracy and the location you hit will no longer be random (ie you will not hit arms/legs as often). This means players will have a much higher liklihood of coring targets. If you have weapons like an AC/20 that do a single massive alpha strike to and allow the firer to return to cover and hide for the next ten seconds, avoiding return fire from the target (hereafter known as the victim), you will destroy the fun for most gamers.

Imagine these scenes:

• You come around a corner and find yourself face to face with a Hunchback. *flash*
  Anything guaranteed death for 20 tonners and 25 tonners without full armor forward, highly probable death for most other lights and lighly armored mediums (Clints and such) (Urban mech has 1 structure left and dies to the Hunchback's lasers).
  Hunchback retreats around corner while you pick yourself up off of the ground.
  
• It's THAT map again.
  The Hunchback (Atlas/whatever else) always parks mostly behind the building with just their AC and arm showing and a firelane down the alley (good tactics on his part...). To get to objective X you have to go by/through the *******, but he can peek from behind cover and cripple you and prevent all meaningful return fire, sigh, should have brought my *insert mech here*, but the cover sucks going that way.

How many times will this happen before you quit?

Edited by Johannes Falkner, 10 April 2012 - 10:00 PM.

[Kartr]

UncleKulikov, on 10 April 2012 - 08:16 PM, said:

Racs will show up in 10+ years. Do you confuse machine guns with rotary cannons now because their rates of fire are "fast"? Because I don't think the lines will be blurred by having a fully automatic autocannon (thud thud thud thud thud thud) next to a RAC (BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR).

This has less to do with the animation and sound effects in game and more to do with how the weapon achieves balance. A fully automatic AC is functionally identical in effect to a RAC because both fire as long as you hold down the trigger. This means both weapons would have "streams" of rounds that could be walked around and would wind up striking multiple locations as the recoil and relative movement of the 'Mechs changed the aim point.

The whole idea behind using a burst instead is to get as many rounds into a single location before recoil and relative movement has a chance to cause the rounds to walk off target. If you make AC/s fire like machine guns they loose their unique profile and just become an early version of the RAC.

Vollstrecker, on 10 April 2012 - 08:27 PM, said:

The novels tend to advertise them as short bursts that can be 'walked' over a 'mech. In almost every description I have seen in the novels, the description referred to the AC/20 "vomiting a cloud of metal" or some such similar description.

This would be artistic license and flies in the face of the TT rules and the common sense reasons for having AC/s to combat ablative armor.

Vollstrecker, on 10 April 2012 - 08:27 PM, said:

In fact, if you look at the amounts of ammunition available to ACs in the Tabletop, it appears that 100 munitions are equal to a ton, which would explain why an AC/5 gets 20 shots (firing 5-round bursts), AC10 gets 10, and AC/20 gets 5. AC/2 is the odd man out getting only 45 rounds.

It works the same way with LRMs and SRMs (120 LRMs = 1 ton and 100 SRMs). I personally am in favor of short bursts as it kinda makes "sniping" and such more difficult to accomplish. Canonically, only the absolute best were able to make precision shots in combat.

This makes much more sense in realistic terms, the SLDF would have wanted to consolidate ammunition types to ease logistics. Picking say a 105mm round and simply firing more rounds per AC rating not only fits perfectly with what we see in the rules, but makes sense from a military perspective as well.

Unfortunately the canon fluff says that's not the case and so we have to live with 30mm-203mm caliber cannons.

LordDeathStrike, on 10 April 2012 - 09:28 PM, said:

stock ac 20, 1 massive shell, short range.

ultra ac 20, 2 less massive shells, .25 second burst of fire, short range.

rac ac 20, shitload of small shells, will continuous gatling fire until trigger released or weapon jams.

lbx ac 20, option of fireing multiple ammo types, cluster rounds shotgun the target, longer range = more shell spread, sabot slug rounds = standard ac 20 hit, can use armor piercing/heat/flechette(spread) rounds

ac 10s, the same as 20s but half the dmg, so forth and so on for 5 and 2s.

this is canon, in its truest, game making sense. authors may have abused literary license but we dont want 100 different makers all with snowflake unique ac weapons. we just want balanced consistency.

AC/s fire multiple rounds so that 1 massive shell doesn't work, however this is fairly close to the most sensible way to describe AC/s. See above.

LordDeathStrike, on 10 April 2012 - 09:28 PM, said:

barrel length of auto cannon is moot, when you can have the shells rocket themselves after they leave the barrels. and with the barrel strength of such weapons, they can have a large explosion launch them initially as well (we arent dealing with weak carbon steel tech here)

Actually the barrel length is extremely important. The longer the barrel the greater the accuracy, the longer the barrel the more time the gases from the propellent have to expand increasing the velocity of the round, etc. Furthermore having the shells "rocket themselves" once they leave the barrel will cause them to loose all the accuracy the barrel imparted. Your "rocket shells" would go careening off in random directions as the rocket motors kicked in. That's if you ignore the fact that they are "shells" and by definition shells do not have "rocket motors" nor are the described anywhere in the fluff as having rocket motors.

Also "weak carbon steel tech" isn't the issue, a larger charge is largely irrelevant if the barrel doesn't have sufficient length to allow the gasses to expand. Plus even if the larger charge gave it significantly greater velocity the short barrel would still mean it has horrible accuracy.