How exactly does damage vs armor work in this game? I've gotten behind stalkers and it seems like it takes forever to chew through their rear armor. Also just last game I turned to flee against a few enemies and was instantly cored through the rear torso.
Say if a mech has 10 armor on the rear torso and you hit it with an AC20. Does the mech instantly die? Or would it take two shots, one to strip the armor and another for the kill?
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Basic Damage Mechanics?
Started by Koujo, Jan 02 2013 12:40 PM
17 replies to this topic
#2
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Posted 02 January 2013 - 02:16 PM
Koujo, on 02 January 2013 - 12:40 PM, said:
How exactly does damage vs armor work in this game? I've gotten behind stalkers and it seems like it takes forever to chew through their rear armor. Also just last game I turned to flee against a few enemies and was instantly cored through the rear torso.
Say if a mech has 10 armor on the rear torso and you hit it with an AC20. Does the mech instantly die? Or would it take two shots, one to strip the armor and another for the kill?
Say if a mech has 10 armor on the rear torso and you hit it with an AC20. Does the mech instantly die? Or would it take two shots, one to strip the armor and another for the kill?
Depends on what's inside that location - AC20 round does 20 dmg, 10 pts will go into stripping the armor off, the other 10 will go into damaging internals. If that location has less than 10 internal hp left, it will be destroyed. Also, if you get a critical hit on somethign that explodes (like ammo), it can take out the remaining hp and destroy that location.
#3
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Posted 02 January 2013 - 02:37 PM
Ok well how many HPs does an engine typically have? How do you know when the armor is actually all gone? I know it goes through various stages with it being solid red last. Is the armor already gone when it's red?
#4
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Posted 02 January 2013 - 03:46 PM
Koujo, on 02 January 2013 - 02:37 PM, said:
Ok well how many HPs does an engine typically have? How do you know when the armor is actually all gone? I know it goes through various stages with it being solid red last. Is the armor already gone when it's red?
Currently all items have 10 HP except for the Gauss Rifle which has 3. Taking out an engine through crits doesn't actually do anything in-game at the moment.
Locations have a number of HP equal to half of the section's max armor.
#5
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Posted 02 January 2013 - 04:22 PM
nungunz, on 02 January 2013 - 03:46 PM, said:
Currently all items have 10 HP except for the Gauss Rifle which has 3. Taking out an engine through crits doesn't actually do anything in-game at the moment.
Locations have a number of HP equal to half of the section's max armor.
Ok so on a 50T mech with 54 armor in the front, I'd actually have to do 54+32 damage to the center torso to get to the engine?
#6
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Posted 02 January 2013 - 04:41 PM
Uhm, I'm not sure where the 54+ 32 came from Koujo... seems off. Rather, if I've understood right from others, say that the maximum armor that someone's right torso can have is 44. Usually that's balanced between the front and the back in some manner, such as 34 right torso, 10 right torso rear or such if the armor is maxed. Point is... the max for right torso period would be 44... which by the formula mentioned would mean that the internal "structure" of the right torso itself could take half that... 22 points.
So say you hit your target's right torso rear... and they have put 12 armor there. If you hit the rear with 20 points of damage from an AC 20... 8 would go through into the internal hit locations tables. It probably would damage what ever "critical slot" was randomly rolled there... if it was ammo, an ammo explosion would probably destroy the whole right torso... but if nothing went boom, and a weapon/item was not hit, then internals still would have 14 points left to them... so the right torso would still "BE" there. If you managed to hit that right torso again, from the rear... I think your new damage would be deducting from that 14 points... but it's also likely you might hit something else internal as well, again, like a weapon or another system located there that has it's own "hit points"... hitting those things are not going to be damaging internal structure - I think. I believe a "roll" on the critical table that actually hits a slot listed as "internal structure" or "dynamic internal structure" is how you're damaging the actual internal HP of that area, otherwise it's whatever else is in slots there... weapons, jump jets, heat sinks etc, all of which have thier own hit points (10 I think).
I'm thinking if you manage to get enough hits on the multiple "internal structure" slots rather than items like weapons, case, jump jets etc... then an area like a left or right torso could be destroyed very quickly. However if that left or right torso had lots of "things" in it then you might just be dumping damage into destroying those rather than "internal structure".
Once internal structure's 22hp was gone though, even if you had items still contained in that area that were unhit... you know those items are gone too. That's another bad point of using an XL engine... even if you're lucky to get a bunch of internal structure hits, rather than the engine, once the structure's gone - then "that's all she wrote". The irony to me is that a mech that literally has nothing but internal structure in it's left or right torso may be more vulnerable to having that torso demolished than a mech that has a bunch of weapons (but no ammo) there, because it seems to me those weapons will act as "damage sponges".
So say you hit your target's right torso rear... and they have put 12 armor there. If you hit the rear with 20 points of damage from an AC 20... 8 would go through into the internal hit locations tables. It probably would damage what ever "critical slot" was randomly rolled there... if it was ammo, an ammo explosion would probably destroy the whole right torso... but if nothing went boom, and a weapon/item was not hit, then internals still would have 14 points left to them... so the right torso would still "BE" there. If you managed to hit that right torso again, from the rear... I think your new damage would be deducting from that 14 points... but it's also likely you might hit something else internal as well, again, like a weapon or another system located there that has it's own "hit points"... hitting those things are not going to be damaging internal structure - I think. I believe a "roll" on the critical table that actually hits a slot listed as "internal structure" or "dynamic internal structure" is how you're damaging the actual internal HP of that area, otherwise it's whatever else is in slots there... weapons, jump jets, heat sinks etc, all of which have thier own hit points (10 I think).
I'm thinking if you manage to get enough hits on the multiple "internal structure" slots rather than items like weapons, case, jump jets etc... then an area like a left or right torso could be destroyed very quickly. However if that left or right torso had lots of "things" in it then you might just be dumping damage into destroying those rather than "internal structure".
Once internal structure's 22hp was gone though, even if you had items still contained in that area that were unhit... you know those items are gone too. That's another bad point of using an XL engine... even if you're lucky to get a bunch of internal structure hits, rather than the engine, once the structure's gone - then "that's all she wrote". The irony to me is that a mech that literally has nothing but internal structure in it's left or right torso may be more vulnerable to having that torso demolished than a mech that has a bunch of weapons (but no ammo) there, because it seems to me those weapons will act as "damage sponges".
Edited by Mad Porthos, 02 January 2013 - 04:48 PM.
#7
Posted 03 January 2013 - 02:10 AM
Damage to structure (which keeps the torso/arm/leg/head from falling off) and damage to criticals (heat sinks, weapons, boolets, BAP, ECM, AMS, engine) are separate entirely and do not interact. You can hit structure without damaging criticals, it depends on an internally random chance roughly equal to rolling an 8 or better on two 6-sided dice.
Baseline notes. You cannot touch criticals or structure until the armor on a location is gone. After that, every strike to the unarmored location (keeping in mind front/back of a torso [left/right/center] are different locations for armor, but their structure is the same object) strikes structure, dealing normal weapon damage.
After this is where things go sideways. Bear with me.
When a weapon strikes armor..armor goes away. When a weapon strikes structure, structure goes away too, basically the exact same as armor.
IN ADDITION, when your shot strikes structure, you earn a chance to inflict your weapon's worth in damage to their critical stuff (weapons/bullets/tasty bits), which almost all have 10 hit points (the Gauss rifle has 3HP, engine has 15HP) worth of chewiness to them (this does mean that AC10/AC20/PPC/Gauss critical will instantly destroy a weapon/ton of ammo/heat sink that they land on). Inflicting your weapon's worth of damage to a critical does not mean you do less to their structure, it's quite entirely a bonus.
The chance of earning one of these criticals is remarkably similar to TableTop battletech, where on 2-count 6-sided dice, result of 8-9 was one critical, 10-11 was two criticals, and 12 was three (and in TableTop, could instantly sever a leg/arm/head, but does NOT in Mechwarrior Online). This means there's about a 42% chance of earning any criticals at all, and varying degrees of chance getting more than one. Keep in mind that ACs do their damage in one blow for a single chance, missiles are chanced per-missile, and lasers do many many many tiny strikes (I'm told to the tune of .1-.25 damage 'hits' or so, you get the idea). I can't be arsed to calculate it right now, but the more you know.
Where a critical result will actually land is still slightly a mystery to me though. I know several things:
Criticals that are struck are chosen similarly to the layout of the mechlab (the larger an item is the more likely it is to be struck [gauss, AC20 etc are highly likely] over other items [you can use this to your advantage by putting less important items next to more important items, like the large Double Heat Sinks next to your small Medium Lasers to 'protect' them])
Actuators, Gyro, Cockpit, Sensors, Life Support, and the Hip (which is an actuator) don't seem to be valid locations for a critical to be chosen. I think this means that anything you put in the leg for instance is the only valid item to be struck, and will then obviously be struck repeatedly once the armor on your leg is gone. Same for the Head. I have no basis for this presumption other than repeated casual observance. Feel free to correct me if someone notes differently. I'll be testing this with a friend very shortly.
Engine, XL and standard alike are valid locations for a critical to be landed (and they both have 15 hit points for what it matters) but this currently does nothing. Practical uses for this include putting ammo counterintuitively in the center torso, where the huge engine may act as critical-location flak against the ammo that otherwise would instantly kill your mech. Even moreso if the Gyro is a valid location. NOTE THOUGH that the presence of an XL engine will still mean your destruction if a side torso is lost, even though striking the side torso's Engine critical slots does nothing. No, this doesn't make sense to the vets either, don't worry too much about it.
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The way to calculate internal structure, is to examine the maximum armor value possible in a location (for torsos, remember that maximum armor is shared between front and back), and know that strucure points are exactly half of that. There need be no rounding.
Here's a quick reference for you. Mech maximum armor (and structure) points are always (except head) tied exactly and proportionally to their tonnage. Any 25 ton mech (ie Commando) may (in Mechwarrior Online) have:
16 points of armor (and 8 structure) in an arm
24 points of armor (and 12 structure) in both side torsos AND LEGS
32 points of armor (and 16 structure) in center torso
Any 50 ton mech (Hunchback, Centurion, Yen-Lo-Wang) follows the same rules: exactly double everything.
32 armor (16 structure) in an arm
48 armor (24 structure) in both side torsos AND LEGS
64 armor (and 32 structure) in center torso
Head is the oddball. It may always have up to 18 armor, and 9 structure, no matter mech. No higher maximum, no maximum, regardless of mech tonnage.
Of course what someone decides to armor their mech with is an individual decision, but you CAN calculate the maximum punishment to take out any mech part using this knowledge. Remember that torso armor can be split in any fashion between front and back, but added up, they will never equal higher than the number listed above.
Baseline notes. You cannot touch criticals or structure until the armor on a location is gone. After that, every strike to the unarmored location (keeping in mind front/back of a torso [left/right/center] are different locations for armor, but their structure is the same object) strikes structure, dealing normal weapon damage.
After this is where things go sideways. Bear with me.
When a weapon strikes armor..armor goes away. When a weapon strikes structure, structure goes away too, basically the exact same as armor.
IN ADDITION, when your shot strikes structure, you earn a chance to inflict your weapon's worth in damage to their critical stuff (weapons/bullets/tasty bits), which almost all have 10 hit points (the Gauss rifle has 3HP, engine has 15HP) worth of chewiness to them (this does mean that AC10/AC20/PPC/Gauss critical will instantly destroy a weapon/ton of ammo/heat sink that they land on). Inflicting your weapon's worth of damage to a critical does not mean you do less to their structure, it's quite entirely a bonus.
The chance of earning one of these criticals is remarkably similar to TableTop battletech, where on 2-count 6-sided dice, result of 8-9 was one critical, 10-11 was two criticals, and 12 was three (and in TableTop, could instantly sever a leg/arm/head, but does NOT in Mechwarrior Online). This means there's about a 42% chance of earning any criticals at all, and varying degrees of chance getting more than one. Keep in mind that ACs do their damage in one blow for a single chance, missiles are chanced per-missile, and lasers do many many many tiny strikes (I'm told to the tune of .1-.25 damage 'hits' or so, you get the idea). I can't be arsed to calculate it right now, but the more you know.
Where a critical result will actually land is still slightly a mystery to me though. I know several things:
Criticals that are struck are chosen similarly to the layout of the mechlab (the larger an item is the more likely it is to be struck [gauss, AC20 etc are highly likely] over other items [you can use this to your advantage by putting less important items next to more important items, like the large Double Heat Sinks next to your small Medium Lasers to 'protect' them])
Actuators, Gyro, Cockpit, Sensors, Life Support, and the Hip (which is an actuator) don't seem to be valid locations for a critical to be chosen. I think this means that anything you put in the leg for instance is the only valid item to be struck, and will then obviously be struck repeatedly once the armor on your leg is gone. Same for the Head. I have no basis for this presumption other than repeated casual observance. Feel free to correct me if someone notes differently. I'll be testing this with a friend very shortly.
Engine, XL and standard alike are valid locations for a critical to be landed (and they both have 15 hit points for what it matters) but this currently does nothing. Practical uses for this include putting ammo counterintuitively in the center torso, where the huge engine may act as critical-location flak against the ammo that otherwise would instantly kill your mech. Even moreso if the Gyro is a valid location. NOTE THOUGH that the presence of an XL engine will still mean your destruction if a side torso is lost, even though striking the side torso's Engine critical slots does nothing. No, this doesn't make sense to the vets either, don't worry too much about it.
______________________
The way to calculate internal structure, is to examine the maximum armor value possible in a location (for torsos, remember that maximum armor is shared between front and back), and know that strucure points are exactly half of that. There need be no rounding.
Here's a quick reference for you. Mech maximum armor (and structure) points are always (except head) tied exactly and proportionally to their tonnage. Any 25 ton mech (ie Commando) may (in Mechwarrior Online) have:
16 points of armor (and 8 structure) in an arm
24 points of armor (and 12 structure) in both side torsos AND LEGS
32 points of armor (and 16 structure) in center torso
Any 50 ton mech (Hunchback, Centurion, Yen-Lo-Wang) follows the same rules: exactly double everything.
32 armor (16 structure) in an arm
48 armor (24 structure) in both side torsos AND LEGS
64 armor (and 32 structure) in center torso
Head is the oddball. It may always have up to 18 armor, and 9 structure, no matter mech. No higher maximum, no maximum, regardless of mech tonnage.
Of course what someone decides to armor their mech with is an individual decision, but you CAN calculate the maximum punishment to take out any mech part using this knowledge. Remember that torso armor can be split in any fashion between front and back, but added up, they will never equal higher than the number listed above.
Edited by Kobura, 03 January 2013 - 02:14 AM.
#8
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Posted 03 January 2013 - 09:04 AM
Kobura, on 03 January 2013 - 02:10 AM, said:
Head is the oddball. It may always have up to 18 armor, and 9 structure, no matter mech. No higher maximum, no maximum, regardless of mech tonnage.
Head is actually 18 armor and 15 internal in MWO, regardless of the mech.
#9
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Posted 04 January 2013 - 08:49 AM
Koujo, on 02 January 2013 - 12:40 PM, said:
How exactly does damage vs armor work in this game? I've gotten behind stalkers and it seems like it takes forever to chew through their rear armor. Also just last game I turned to flee against a few enemies and was instantly cored through the rear torso.
Another thing to consider would be the effects of lag on aim and weapons fire. You may think (and see ingame) that your weapons are hitting a certain location but may be actually hitting a different location or missing altogether.
IE you aim and shoot at the rear LT but due to movement (yours and the target's) you may be hitting CT or LA instead. I've had this happen to me a few times where me and another atlas were circle strafing each other. I was aiming for and hitting his CT but the damage was actually going RT/RA as indicated by the enemy damage paperdoll (and the fact that those sections blew up first).
#10
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Posted 04 January 2013 - 11:13 AM
Another aspect to this conundrum is that it will take a bit for any one mech to destroy any one other mech, even if hitting straight to CT - but 3 mechs hitting CT are going to kill you fast.
"Going 1 on 1" in this game is not the ideal - the mechs are designed in this game to be able to stand up to 2-3 other mechs at least long enough to give them a black eye for their effort.
"Going 1 on 1" in this game is not the ideal - the mechs are designed in this game to be able to stand up to 2-3 other mechs at least long enough to give them a black eye for their effort.
#11
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Posted 04 January 2013 - 06:07 PM
nungunz, on 02 January 2013 - 03:46 PM, said:
Currently all items have 10 HP except for the Gauss Rifle which has 3. Taking out an engine through crits doesn't actually do anything in-game at the moment.
Locations have a number of HP equal to half of the section's max armor.
Just a correction. All engines have 15 item HP.
#12
Posted 05 January 2013 - 05:31 AM
IceSerpent, on 03 January 2013 - 09:04 AM, said:
Head is actually 18 armor and 15 internal in MWO, regardless of the mech.
If that were the case, my buddy's Hunchback shouldn't have been one-shotted by a Gausscat a few weeks ago...but he was. From behind nonetheless.
I'll do some testing on this.
#13
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- Urban Commando
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Posted 05 January 2013 - 10:03 AM
Kobura, on 05 January 2013 - 05:31 AM, said:
If that were the case, my buddy's Hunchback shouldn't have been one-shotted by a Gausscat a few weeks ago...but he was. From behind nonetheless.
I'll do some testing on this.
It could be that the guass cat didn't have full armor on the head. Or there could have been a critical hit of some sort involved. Or a number of other things.
#14
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Posted 05 January 2013 - 10:39 AM
Kobura, on 05 January 2013 - 05:31 AM, said:
If that were the case, my buddy's Hunchback shouldn't have been one-shotted by a Gausscat a few weeks ago...but he was. From behind nonetheless.
I'll do some testing on this.
You can simply look this stuff up in game files - the lines in question look like <Component Name="head" Slots="6" HP="15" RenderFlag="2">
#15
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Posted 05 January 2013 - 11:01 AM
So does any damage left from a shot after stripping armor to to internals?
Example: I fire my ac/20 at a RT with 12hp left. Does the internal structure take the remaining 8 damage that's left from blowing off the armor? If so, does it roll for crit? If so, is it rolling for 20 point crit or 8 point crit?
Thanx. Never played any version of MW, so I'm trying to grasp the mechanics of how everything rolls still.
Example: I fire my ac/20 at a RT with 12hp left. Does the internal structure take the remaining 8 damage that's left from blowing off the armor? If so, does it roll for crit? If so, is it rolling for 20 point crit or 8 point crit?
Thanx. Never played any version of MW, so I'm trying to grasp the mechanics of how everything rolls still.
#16
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Posted 05 January 2013 - 11:29 AM
Fallout23, on 05 January 2013 - 11:01 AM, said:
So does any damage left from a shot after stripping armor to to internals?
Example: I fire my ac/20 at a RT with 12hp left. Does the internal structure take the remaining 8 damage that's left from blowing off the armor? If so, does it roll for crit? If so, is it rolling for 20 point crit or 8 point crit?
Thanx. Never played any version of MW, so I'm trying to grasp the mechanics of how everything rolls still.
Example: I fire my ac/20 at a RT with 12hp left. Does the internal structure take the remaining 8 damage that's left from blowing off the armor? If so, does it roll for crit? If so, is it rolling for 20 point crit or 8 point crit?
Thanx. Never played any version of MW, so I'm trying to grasp the mechanics of how everything rolls still.
Internal structure will take reamining 8 pts of damage in your example. Not sure how exactly crtits are implemented though - I guess that it will roll for 8 pts crit, but not 100% positive.
#17
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Posted 05 January 2013 - 02:56 PM
Koujo, on 02 January 2013 - 04:22 PM, said:
Ok so on a 50T mech with 54 armor in the front, I'd actually have to do 54+32 damage to the center torso to get to the engine?
not necessarily. You have to do 54 with low damage weapons to expose the internals, and then you can crit items inside it after that at random. So there's still a dice roll controlling criticals, since that's how all games with CHANCE work.
VIrtual dice rolls Rule all games with percentages and chance.
#18
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Posted 06 January 2013 - 01:55 AM
It could be a latency issue. The netcode is not perfect yet and either (1) mechs can already twist or move in the server without you seeing it but the server will calculate shots based on what the other mech did in the server as opposed to what is in your screen or (2) your own shots are delayed if you are lagging. If your crosshairs just reached the target on your screen when you fire, the server will think it's still not quite there. It's always safe to wait until your crosshairs turn red (with TAG or laser fire) before you unload your whole alpha.
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