125 replies to this topic

[Talon Thorn]

From Decision at Thunder Rift:

" The Marauder's autocannon, a tree-sized barrel mounted across the 'Mech's left shoulder, was spewing 120 mm high-explosive destruction in three-round bursts that shattered the street behind the burning carrier, and transformed clumps of running green uniforms into bloodied shreds of rag. "

[Mike Silva]

Talon Thorn, on 10 May 2012 - 07:38 AM, said:

From Decision at Thunder Rift:

" The Marauder's autocannon, a tree-sized barrel mounted across the 'Mech's left shoulder, was spewing 120 mm high-explosive destruction in three-round bursts that shattered the street behind the burning carrier, and transformed clumps of running green uniforms into bloodied shreds of rag. "

William Keith was fond of describing autocannons as "burst fire weapons." I'd be rich if I was given a dollar for every time he mentioned "a new magazine slamming home" in an autocannon. But that isn't the only way autocannons have been described.

[Fetladral]

neodym, on 07 May 2012 - 12:59 PM, said:

auto means automatic............. if something fires burst it can fire full auto too,even m4a1 of usa army with its 850rounds per minute full auto is used in bursts,not becose they cant fire full auto,but becose of heat,recoil and ammo


what I want to say is,that when something is used 99% of time in burst style doesnt take away fact that its fundamentaly FULL AUTO weapon,not semi auto.... theres nothing like burst auto,burst is just control of full auto,if you have any brain its clear as sun that these autocannons are full auto capable,but I would still burst fire

I don't think there is a single rifle in use by the army that still has the automatic setting still because of ammo reasons. The gun can physically fire in auto but the settings they have are only single or burst (some 3 round others 5 round I believe) the only infantry weapons that can fire in full auto still are Squad Automatic Weapons.

[Mike Silva]

Fetladral, on 10 May 2012 - 08:37 AM, said:

I don't think there is a single rifle in use by the army that still has the automatic setting still because of ammo reasons. The gun can physically fire in auto but the settings they have are only single or burst (some 3 round others 5 round I believe) the only infantry weapons that can fire in full auto still are Squad Automatic Weapons.

The M4A1 carbine has a fully automatic setting rather than burst.

[Tremor]

Canon states that there are different kinds that operate in different ways. Neither bother me.

[Okie135]

I'll have to keep this quick since I have a final in a few hours.

I liked the idea of autocannon ammo being cartridges or something similar. It was an auto-loading cannon that fired a stream of rounds. Sometimes it used caseless ammunition and sometimes not. Personally I think Mech 3 did it best. I mean you fired an AC-10 in that game and you felt POWERFUL. That grinding sound reminiscent of a thousand pounds of heavy chain crashing to the ground made firing the gun fun.

Canon wise, different AC's used different techniques. Some of the AC-20's were noted for firing a single massive shot.

In all honestly though, we are jumping the gun. We have only seen the AC20 in the videos I think. We haven't seen what an AC-5 or 10 acts like... Maybe a nice dev will read this and demo one in a video? Garth?

Edit: My spelling was off.
Canon - What is considered to be included in a system, story, or mythos.
Cannon - A piece of artillery.

Edited by Clark, 10 May 2012 - 09:47 AM.

[Ursus_Spiritus]

Was there any descritption in a novel or the novels of mechs like the Wolverine or maybe a Griffin that was equipped with a hand held AC-5/10 and that the mech having to functional hands, the pilot could clip-relead the weapon?


I could be way off but for some reason that thought rings a bell.

[AH Warhawk]

Its a cannon. like a 120mm gun strapped to a mech. its feels great to shoot one shot that does a whole lot of damage!
KABOOOOM!!!! The Ultra Auto Cannons would be like a burst of high explosive shells hitting with less velocity but greater HE.
KaBAM! KABAM! KaBAM!

[Fetladral]

I thought (I could be wrong) AC20s ranged from 120mm -300mm and the 300mm were a single round while the 120 were burst. I want to say all the ACs are like that and are of varying calibers. Some books mention ACs (or maybe its the ultra ACs) going through 1,000 rounds in a few seconds which to me says a single round would do very little damage by itself but they would shred armor at those speeds and kinetic force transferred would be insane.

[shadowoflight]

I would think that the AC is similar to Metalstorm, but instead of lauching all the projectiles at once, it does it as a sudden burst as opposed to comparatively lengthy machine gun bursts.

Andrew Start, on 10 May 2012 - 09:57 AM, said:

Its a cannon. like a 120mm gun strapped to a mech. its feels great to shoot one shot that does a whole lot of damage! KABOOOOM!!!! The Ultra Auto Cannons would be like a burst of high explosive shells hitting with less velocity but greater HE. KaBAM! KABAM! KaBAM!

That...would be the gauss rifle

Edited by shadowoflight, 10 May 2012 - 10:42 AM.

[Zervziel]

I like the LL way with the autocannons. The lighter the autocannon the faster the rate of fire. The larger ACs fire so slowly it's just one big bullet every now and then that does a crap ton of burst damage. However something like the Huitzilopochtli Prime with 4 UAC 2s, and 2 UAC 5s, becomes basically, an extended range chainsaw. With that many it becomes a threat to anything smaller than it and to anything that flies.

[Alexander Fury]

I know I will be crusified by most of you for this: but I kinda like the way Autocanon's worked in MW4. A stream of shells that strike the target so quick that there is not much in the way of a burst like a pulse laser but gives the impression that it fires a stream of multiple shells. Kinda like the 25mm cannon on a Bradley does. BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!

[shadowoflight]

Alexander Fury, on 10 May 2012 - 10:43 AM, said:

I know I will be crusified by most of you for this: but I kinda like the way Autocanon's worked in MW4. A stream of shells that strike the target so quick that there is not much in the way of a burst like a pulse laser but gives the impression that it fires a stream of multiple shells. Kinda like the 25mm cannon on a Bradley does. BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!

that - mw4-ish ACs. Agreed.

But the bradley's a bad comparison. Done live firing with a weapon system using the bradley's bushmaster, it's actually quite slow.

[Fetladral]

Actually I like the MW4 AC setup also (at least witht he ultras) where it was a stream and you could track it across an enemy mech. Sometimes I could get it where if enemies right arm and torso were pretty much gone I could take out the arm right torso and end on center torso.

[Varjen]

Voted for Other.

I would love to see both kinds of cannon as an option for the pilots. Let the effect and damage be the same over time but the mode of fire be a variable.
If you have a semiauto cannon with an autoloader youd have a single powerful shot. Good if you hit but a bit of a bother if you miss.
A rotary smaller calibre cannon might be fun to shoot and a bit more easy to hit with but the damage is a little smaller per hit.
I cant help thinking about the "ED-209" from robocop here...

I think it might add a bit of flair and variety to the game.

[Johann Devalis]

I don't like the single shot AC. That fight where the atlas downs the K2 didn't seem right, and here's why: the atlas fired what, three AC20 rounds, all three hitting the center torso for the kill? This setup for the AC is completely opposite of the system they have established for lasers. Laser fire over time so that the damage is more likely to be spread out over a mech and not be so pinpoint. This seems to make the AC crazy powerful and easy to use as well. A weapon that is so powerful should be kind of hard to use. I think a three round burst with heavy enough recoil to force aim to drift off to either side makes for better play. Just my $0.02

[Varjen]

Well, sure, its easy to use if the target is stationary 3 meters in front of you. But try and hit say, a Raven, going at an angle and at full speed. Good luck with that!

The thing is as always, location location location. Dont stand in front of assaultmechs. Ever.

[Saiph]

I've always been happy with AC/2 as rapid fire (basically a single 20mm anti-air cannon, *thumpthumpthumpthump*) while AC/5 is the 40mm cannon (*Thump! Thump! Thump!*).

AC/10 moves into the 105-120mm (~5-inch) class, which fires maybe every 3-5 seconds (like the shipboard autocannon above and is basically equivalent to the main gun of a modern battle tank).

AC/20 is like a 10-12 inch battleship cannon. Huge blast, earsplitting bang, immense damage, long reload.

Going into LB-X autocannons, we have things that are more like shotgun rounds. Single shot, different ranges and clustering. LB 2-X is the mech sized 4-10 shotgun, going down to 20-ga, 16-ga, then 10-ga. Bigger cluster munitions, tighter grouping, more damage.

Ultra ACs are sort of like chainguns. UAC-2 is gatling 20mm (vulcan cannon), up to gatling 30mm (Avenger minigun from the A-10) for UAC-5. UAC-10 has a few huge barrels for rotary fire, while the UAC-20 has fewer, larger barrels.

[XTRMNTR2K]

Well, there's one thing that partly restored my hope that' we'll at least be seeing higher rates of fire for autocannons in the final game. Had a look at the first released trailer for MW(5) back when it was still supposed to be SP and based on the UE3. There scene where the Atlas - equipped with an AC20 - is attacking the Warhammer clearly shows a much higher rate of fire than seen in the latest vids. The Atlas is hammering out like 60 shots per minute, so I still have hope that we'll at least be seeing higher rates of fire for the smaller ACs (though I'm still hoping for a burst option).

I know MWO isn't the same as MW5, but everything released so far - including the now obsolete MW5 trailer - shows how dedicated the devs are to bringing BT/MW to life as it should be, keeping fluff and canon alive as much as possible.


By the way, a lot of people have been saying that spreading AC damage by having them fire in bursts would make them useless. How so? Lasers will work just like that and I am sure they will be far from useless (although probably running much hotter overall than we're used to). Battles will not simply be short skirmishes that are about taking out the CT with one or two Alphas like it used to be in MW4; from all that has been shown and said to far battles are more likely to last much longer. Even spreading the damage somewhat won't make ACs useless, as long as their overall damage potential is still sufficiently high.

That aside, ACs have never really been about pin-point accuracy in MW; I think that is a misconception created by the gameplay mechanics of MW4...

Talon Thorn, on 10 May 2012 - 07:38 AM, said:

From Decision at Thunder Rift:

" The Marauder's autocannon, a tree-sized barrel mounted across the 'Mech's left shoulder, was spewing 120 mm high-explosive destruction in three-round bursts that shattered the street behind the burning carrier, and transformed clumps of running green uniforms into bloodied shreds of rag. "

Nice quote, by the way.

[Pvt Dancer]

It is very hard to explain things to someone who was shown the wrong way first how the weapons really were ment to work. Those MW games? They did to Battletech what Michale Bay did to Transformers. Those books? Usally written by someone who is hired to write a story, not to know or understand the mechanics of the game.

What your asking is to reduce the damage of a AC to make it DoT vs a single damage packet. Small packets of damage hosed over a mech may be neat looking, but is a primary reason why Laser Boats dominated those MW games. Why use a AC 20 when 4 medium lasers do the same thing?

You can not use those games as any sort of basis to this game. The Devs have stated, several times, that they are going off of TT Battletech, not those games. TT Battletech is not their bible either, but as the recent weapon range posts, the aspects of the mechlab (barring the hardpoint system) are all pretty faithful to TT. Really, the big difference might be recycle times, but till beta comes out, we really don't have enough info to make a decent guess to cheer or argue one way or another.

Fluff is fluff... it means nothing. It is a desperat attempt to justify something that doesn't exsist anyways. The rules of the game were balanced a certain way not because of fluff, but because that makes the game fair. In the game the AC 2 does 2 damage at 24 hexs and a MG does 2 damage 3 hexs away. The stats between the two are huge, along with tonnage and everything else... now create a fluff to discribe them to new players and expain why there is such a huge difference... you link it to something familure people will not only wrap their brain around, but you make it sound cool too. MGs are not a .50 cal or something else, they are 20mm /Gatling guns/! That AC 2 is really a huge 7 ton cannon...soooo a 120mm cannon that fires a stream of shells! Ignore the fact in game they do a minimum amount of damage in a single packet. Then a guy would say a AC 10 was five 120mms in a gatling gun configuration or would fire 5 rounds so fast and accurate that all 5 shots would hit the same location... ect, ect, ad nausium.

You can not base or balance a game off of fluff. As I said, fluff is fluff... it means nothing.