53 replies to this topic

[William Petersen]

Alizabeth Aijou, on 16 April 2012 - 11:54 AM, said:

Really, if a laser is powerful enough to evaporate half a ton of armour (eg Large Laser) when it hits is powerful enough to cause some knockback.

No? Because it's light? And even focused light has very very very little (not none, but darn close) kinetic potential?

If I use a magnifying glass to roast an ant, I'm 'melting' his 'armour', but the light isn't causing any physical force to act on him. It's the same principle.

EDIT: The only plausible reason for any 'rocking' due to laser fire would be the re-balancing of the mech making up for having lost the armour, but I imagine that would be minimal at best, and not comparable to the recoil from absorbing a kinetic impact like a gauss round of an AC round or burst.

Edited by William Petersen, 16 April 2012 - 12:05 PM.

[UncleKulikov]

Thomas Hogarth, on 13 April 2012 - 01:20 AM, said:

I'm guessing we won't see a SRM system with efficiencies higher than the SRM-6. It's already fairly easy to boat them - you don't see it too often in MW due to the unguided nature of SRMs, but it's quite common on tabletop.

In tabletop they are supposed to be guided. Was that not the case in the electronic games?

[Gun Bear]

I thought this would be about killstreaks and I was going to be very angry.

Carry on.

[Alizabeth Aijou]

That's melting, I'm talking about evaporating. Explosive evaporation.
Even if a Large Laser evaporates only 1/4th of a ton of armour in a second or so (the remaining damage is caused by melting/explosive effect of the evaporation) we're still talking about a laser strong enough to almost instantly (relative for humans, at least) evaporate 250kg of metal.
And the composition of standard armour is pretty well known, mostly. So one could do the math to mostly figure out the amount of energy needed to evaporate that stuff.

Standard armour is primarily boron-nitrate (and) steel). So assuming an equal mix of both would mean you'd need 195 Megajoules to melt one point of armour (~60kg). So if we assume that half of the damage done is by melting and the remaining by other means, we're still looking at about 1.21 jiggawatts worth of energy for a single large laser. And the fluff supports the notion that a Large Laser is powerful enough to evaporate that armour. So we're probably going to need at least twice that amount of energy, if not more.
And when you're throwing that much energy around to evaporate metal, you'll be causing some knockback.

A PPC blast is definitely fluffed as evaporating some of the target's armour, and a PPC is only slightly stronger than a Large Laser.

Oh, and yes, that notion is supported by one of the writers who happens to have actual knowedge about that sort of things (materials engineering degree).

Edited by Alizabeth Aijou, 16 April 2012 - 12:33 PM.

[UncleKulikov]

Alizabeth Aijou, on 16 April 2012 - 12:32 PM, said:

That's melting, I'm talking about evaporating. Explosive evaporation.
Even if a Large Laser evaporates only 1/4th of a ton of armour in a second or so (the remaining damage is caused by melting/explosive effect of the evaporation) we're still talking about a laser strong enough to almost instantly (relative for humans, at least) evaporate 250kg of metal.
And the composition of standard armour is pretty well known, mostly. So one could do the math to mostly figure out the amount of energy needed to evaporate that stuff.

Standard armour is primarily boron-nitrate (and) steel). So assuming an equal mix of both would mean you'd need 195 Megajoules to melt one point of armour (~60kg). So if we assume that half of the damage done is by melting and the remaining by other means, we're still looking at about 1.21 jiggawatts worth of energy for a single large laser. And the fluff supports the notion that a Large Laser is powerful enough to evaporate that armour. So we're probably going to need at least twice that amount of energy, if not more.
And when you're throwing that much energy around to evaporate metal, you'll be causing some knockback.

A PPC blast is definitely fluffed as evaporating some of the target's armour, and a PPC is only slightly stronger than a Large Laser.

Oh, and yes, that notion is supported by one of the writers who happens to have actual knowedge about that sort of things (materials engineering degree).

Based on all the advantages that laser weapons maintain in terms of mechanics (no time to target, no ammunition, no chance of ammunition explosion, small crit space, low tonnage) I don't feel lasers should have knockback, unless the ballistic and missile weapons are good enough to warrant the additional advantage.

Gameplay over Lore, Realism, anything.

[Skylarr]

Lasers would not cause Knockback to the unit firing the weapon. The unit receiving the light emited by the Laser would experience Knockback. The Knockback caused would depend on the laser used.

[Paladin1]

Alexander Fury, on 12 April 2012 - 10:18 PM, said:

Never really understood this one. Whats the big deal with not being able to build SSRM-4 and 6 when you can build SSRM2's?? Like fine the Helm memory core only contained scematics for the 2's. Fine, dandy, but did it really take the NAIS and other oganizations who would have been working on this to say: ''Duh!....lets stick a couple of these toghter!'' Cummon. It took us less than 20years to go from a phone the size of a brick to phones that are a chocking hazzard to small children, the best R&D guys in the IS could not figure this one out in 20years.

Just saying!

We also didn't have the Phone Company (ComStar) killing off it's competition by literally killing their engineers and blowing up their labs. The reason that it took years to come up with a Streak 4 or Streak 6 was because of ComStar's efforts at killing those engineers and scientists who would have understood how to do it. If ComStar would have succeeded at destroying the NAIS during the 4th Succession War like they tried to do, you wouldn't even have the Streak 2 to work with.

[Paladin1]

Spiralcrisis, on 13 April 2012 - 06:19 PM, said:

I almost feel like the fact that I'm talking about streak missles has been lost. Also part of why this has made me sad is because I want to make my Centurion an urban fighter and at least one streak lancher was going to be part of that. Just having the Streak 2 makes it just a tad bit more difficult. FYI my base variant if possible was going to be the CN9-D.

That fact hasn't been lost, but you're going to have to make do either with multiple SSRM2 packs or standard SRM launchers. I would suggest twin SRM4s and a NARC launcher when it becomes available, but that's just me.

[Skylarr]

Paladin1, on 16 April 2012 - 01:17 PM, said:

We also didn't have the Phone Company (ComStar) killing off it's competition by literally killing their engineers and blowing up their labs. The reason that it took years to come up with a Streak 4 or Streak 6 was because of ComStar's efforts at killing those engineers and scientists who would have understood how to do it. If ComStar would have succeeded at destroying the NAIS during the 4th Succession War like they tried to do, you wouldn't even have the Streak 2 to work with.

Let us not forget that when a house found out another house had a scientist who might be able to improve upon any thing they would send in a force to secure the scientist for themselves. If this was not posible the scientist would be elimintaed.

[Paladin1]

Skylarr, on 16 April 2012 - 01:24 PM, said:

Let us not forget that when a house found out another house had a scientist who might be able to improve upon any thing they would send in a force to secure the scientist for themselves. If this was not posible the scientist would be elimintaed.

Exactly! They did this though because ComStar was killing Engineers and Scientists in job lots during the earlier Succession Wars, to the point that technology took on an almost magic aura. People didn't understand how it worked, just that it did and if it broke you had to get another to replace it.

[Frantic Pryde]

In the fluff, the rapid loss of armor from the lasers burning it away caused the mechs' balance to be thrown off. Not really knock, but I think that should be in there somehow. Has to do a certain amount of damage though.

Back to streaks, I LOVE them! I use them like crazy in the TT and have always used them in the sim games to seek out the crits in the holes my bigger guns made.

I'm curious to see how they end up being implemented.

[Sylow]

William Petersen, on 13 April 2012 - 07:39 PM, said:

Yeah, but the SSRMs will splatter that damage over the whole Mech, the AC/20 socks it all in one section, which pretty much spells 'doom' for anything light and 'holy crap that hurt' for anything medium.

Bah! In the TT the AC/20 usually spelled: "dammit, that light/medium mech once again gave me a to-hit throw of 11 or 12 and i am already low on ammo". When i was in Mechforce, my machine was a Clint. (For info: Mechforce was the BT FanOrg and when you joined a chapter, dices were thrown and tables consulted and then a mech was assigned to you. If you lost the mech, you were blocked from official matches for 3 months, till a new mech was assigned to you. ) That i never lost my Clint (despite my chapter leader asking me to do so, so i'd be issued something better) at some times sure also accounted to luck, but i always loved to fight stuff like the hunchback or centurion AH. It were long fights, but if you hit them for some time without them ever damaging you, all pilots get desperate and start shooting at lousy odds. (Would they have waited till my AC/5 ammo ran out, they'd have had better odds, but i never met one who was ready to take the beating without trying to fight back for that long. )

That being said, the AC/20 really only spells doom to badly designed light and medium mech, means those with too low movement rates for their weight cathegory. Any halfway decent heavy is able to stand an AC/20 hit in any position but the head. Since you're not likely to hit the same position twice in a row in TT, the AC/20 sure costs the target a lot of armour, but very rarely kills. That's actually the job of the SRMs. Even if the AC/20 gets a penetrating hit, it gets one roll for a critical hit. SRMs are there to exploit the damage done by the big hitters, but no matter where the armour is penetrated, the shower spread of SRMs is likely to find those holes and bring in additional crit rolls. And since SRMs have plenty of salvos per ton of ammo, lower heat production per salvo (and higher potential damage per ton of ammo), pilots can use them more freely.

So, in the pinpoint accuracy world of MW2/3/4 the AC/20 is the better weapon. In the traditional TT world i'd trade it for SRMs any day a week.

William Petersen, on 16 April 2012 - 12:03 PM, said:

If I use a magnifying glass to roast an ant, I'm 'melting' his 'armour', but the light isn't causing any physical force to act on him. It's the same principle.

Two things to consider here:
1. You yourself sure don't feel the recoil. The emitter is the sun, so that one suffers of it.
2. The ant won't notice the impact force, that's true, the damage is inflicted by energy transfer. Now go ahead, take that magnifiying glass and try to burn a hole into just a simple tincan.

Now, we're speaking of a laser which can not only burn through a tincan, but evaporate half a ton of armour within mere seconds...

Skylarr, on 16 April 2012 - 01:14 PM, said:

Lasers would not cause Knockback to the unit firing the weapon. The unit receiving the light emited by the Laser would experience Knockback. The Knockback caused would depend on the laser used.

Based upon which theory? It's not without reason that lasers are under consideration as propulsion aggregates for future space missions. It's not without reason that present day welding lasers need a solid mount to operate. They have recoil. Due to dispersion and reflection, the target object actually suffers a bit less of impact than the laser has recoil. (The beam itself is absolutely directional when being emitted, the effect is dissipated in different directions on the receiving object. )

Of course, we're not speaking of recoil in the dimension of a tanks gun here. But hey, we're also not speaking of lasers capable of burning through a tank in a single short pulse of laser energy.

To say anything for sure, we'd need to have actual numbers, on how much the energy output of a MW laser would be. Just reading one of the old technical readouts (most prominently 3025) provides several varying numbers, but most of them indicate that any mech can be destroyed by an array of old fashined lightbulbs. So, we can use those numbers for amusement and no more. So just saying "evaporates half a ton of present day industrial steel within 3 seconds", which is beyond any present day laser, would result in quite some rocking both on the emitting and receiving side. Indeed, atomizing the same pile of steel with conventional explosives would result in way more rock and roll, but the laser would already provide ample ammounts of it. (Including the already mentioned explosion-like evaporation. )

Edited by Sylow, 17 April 2012 - 05:16 AM.

[Dayuhan]

Gigaton, on 13 April 2012 - 07:05 PM, said:

You can't trade ballistic weapon for energy weapon in MW:O.

This is not entirely true.

Quote

Each location on a BattleMech, such as the Right Arm or Center Torso, may include a number of hard points. The number of hard points in a given location is determined on a per variant basis, and is based on the weapons included in the variant’s default loadout. For example, a ’Mech that, by default, comes with 2 Medium Lasers and an Autocannon/2 in its Left Torso may actually have 3 energy weapon hard points and 2 ballistic hard points in that location. So, if the player is able to satisfy the weight and critical slot requirements, they could equip an additional energy weapon and ballistic weapon into that Left Torso, or swap out the Medium Lasers for other energy weapons, etc.

Edited by Dayuhan, 17 April 2012 - 06:43 AM.

[William Petersen]

Sylow, on 17 April 2012 - 04:49 AM, said:

Bah! In the TT the AC/20 usually spelled: "dammit, that light/medium mech once again gave me a to-hit throw of 11 or 12 and i am already low on ammo". When i was in Mechforce, my machine was a Clint. (For info: Mechforce was the BT FanOrg and when you joined a chapter, dices were thrown and tables consulted and then a mech was assigned to you. If you lost the mech, you were blocked from official matches for 3 months, till a new mech was assigned to you. ) That i never lost my Clint (despite my chapter leader asking me to do so, so i'd be issued something better) at some times sure also accounted to luck, but i always loved to fight stuff like the hunchback or centurion AH. It were long fights, but if you hit them for some time without them ever damaging you, all pilots get desperate and start shooting at lousy odds. (Would they have waited till my AC/5 ammo ran out, they'd have had better odds, but i never met one who was ready to take the beating without trying to fight back for that long. )

That being said, the AC/20 really only spells doom to badly designed light and medium mech, means those with too low movement rates for their weight cathegory. Any halfway decent heavy is able to stand an AC/20 hit in any position but the head. Since you're not likely to hit the same position twice in a row in TT, the AC/20 sure costs the target a lot of armour, but very rarely kills. That's actually the job of the SRMs. Even if the AC/20 gets a penetrating hit, it gets one roll for a critical hit. SRMs are there to exploit the damage done by the big hitters, but no matter where the armour is penetrated, the shower spread of SRMs is likely to find those holes and bring in additional crit rolls. And since SRMs have plenty of salvos per ton of ammo, lower heat production per salvo (and higher potential damage per ton of ammo), pilots can use them more freely.

So, in the pinpoint accuracy world of MW2/3/4 the AC/20 is the better weapon. In the traditional TT world i'd trade it for SRMs any day a week.

I'm right with you. That's kinda what I meant in the medium case. You rip a hole in the armour with the AC/20 which you can then fil lwith SRMs. Mmm, toasty. But if a Light takes an AC/20 hit, he's lost (or very nearly lost) a location. CT is obvious oblivion. A leg means next turn he's toast, since he can't move significantly. a side toso and/or arm is less crippling, but probably took out a weapon or two, of which lights don't tend to have that many to spare. Of course, with an XL engine, losing a side-torso is destruction (IS) or nearlyso (clan).

And yes, for the most part a light can make sure it's pretty safe from AC/20 fire, but every once in a while he's going to hit his 11 or 12 and then "ouch". >.<


I happen to love SRMs, too, and I tend to prefer lasers (or AC/10s) as my 'can-openers'. I respect the power of the AC/20, but it's too heavy bulky and carries such limited ammo per ton. Not really my kind of weapon. I would say something about the range, but then I realize it has the same range as SRMs. XD

LB-10X ACs with at least a ton of slug and a ton of cluster would probably bwe the best to team with some SRMs, it can join in the crit-seeking once a hole or two is open.