16 replies to this topic

[Felicitatem Parco]

I don't know enough about BattleTech to know how the Arrow IV is treated in TT.

From what I've gathered from Sarna, it's not treated like just a bigger and badder platform than LRM-20, but rather has many distinctive features: it's fired from "maps" away instead of mere hexes; the homing variety delivers AoE damage attack to all units in the hex it hits, and also could possibly deal it's "full" damage to the intended Target Vehicle depending on a down-stream roll value; the Homing Arrow IV also requires a forward unit to have a good TAG-lock on an intended target...

So, I don't know anything about how AoE damage is applied in TT, nor if the Arrow IV can be used for LOS targeting. I never played TT or any computer emulations of it. The reason I am asking is because MW:O might use the TT rules (to some extent) for inspiration while designing an in-game Arrow IV and I'd like to know what the original rules are. (Like, what bodyparts are the AoE damage points applied to?, etc.)

Does anyone have a link to a more thorough run-down of this system that I can pour over?
Thanks!

Edited by Prosperity Park, 28 January 2013 - 07:10 PM.

[MasterofBlasters]

I doubt there much more to it than what can be gleaned off of Sarna... but I've been known to be wrong sometimes.

[Cik]

it depends on the type of arrow, there are two types
note: arrows land on the turn after they are fired, and they are very imprecise, however they do do a 20 point hit on whatever they hit, location rolled randomly.
1. the regular artillery arrow


the regular artillery arrow encompasses standard ammo, inferno, smoke, and probably the nuclear ones. basically you fire it at a certain point and you have to roll very well to hit that point, if you do not hit it, the arrow scatters randomly. when an arrow impacts, it does damage or heat in a small radius around it's impact point. if it's smoke it deploys a small radius of smoke, if inferno it sets **** on fire ETC.

2. homing
homing arrows home based on a TAG signal. they land on the turn after they are fired, if no target is currently tagged on that turn, they don't do anything. if the target IS tagged, the arrows hit a random location on what is.

arrows can be pretty nasty if you set your force up to use them well, otherwise they are just annoying. if you are going to use homing, you need lots of TAGs as your opponent will focus fire them once they realize how threatening they are. otherwise you basically need either ludicrously good gunners or massive saturation fire to make them effective on a large map.

Edited by Cik, 28 January 2013 - 09:10 PM.

[Dragonslayer Ornstein]

I guess I can expand on that a bit. Arrow IV's do 20 damage to the target, and deal splash damage in all of the area surrounding the place hit. Also, before the match you can designate specific parts of the map for artillery that don't require spotters with TAG to hit. So, I could mark the center of the Caldera on Caustic pre-match and fire from anywhere and hit it with perfect accuracy, even without a spotter. Of course, you'd never know if there was an enemy there for sure, but what people used to do was pick obvious cover areas and forests for artillery and then fire on them when they suspected that the enemy was hiding in them or using them for cover. Arrow IVs can be fired from mechs (the one Catapult Variant, or the Clan Naga, for example) and they only require the TAG to fire indirectly. So if I have direct line of sight to a target, I can fire my Arrow IV at it. In order for the missile to be fired indirectly, somebody's TAG has to hit the target on the same turn that the missile would land. This is important, because you could have offboard Arrow IV artillery that takes several turns to arrive after being fired, and timing the TAG hits is important to its success. Also, certain Battletech games could take place on huge maps. For every "mapsheet" away that the Arrow IV firer is from the target, add an extra turn of travel time. If you are close to the enemy, it can land the same turn you shoot, but most Arrow IV fire is from farther away, since the system is so heavy and takes up so many critical spaces that there is rarely any room for serious weapons other than the Arrow IV and its ammo.


The actual TT rules for Arrow IV and other types of artillery are in the "Tactical Operations" rulebook if you want to read the official stuff.

[CrashieJ]

well seeing it's basically artillery it is fired over at a sharper angle than LRMS

LRMS vs ARROW
1. LOCK on capabilities
-Stock LRMs have lock-on, stock Arrow may not (clan does methink)
-accuracy equipment is more "expensive" for Arrow (artemis semi-works for Arrow)
2. Trajectory
-Arrow is fired at a sharper trajectory, ARROW can be used to "flush out" anybody camping under cover at the cost of accuracy and flight time
-LRMS have a more shallow Traject, but is more accurate and a bit faster reaching the target
3. Range
-LRMs can have longer range
-Arrow has shorter range

ARROW is basically the little brother missile version of the LONGTOM we all know and love, it's devastating but inaccurate and quite expensive, it may be able to benefit from Artemis.

------
I say, give us some Arty pieces to blast those cowards from under their beds

[gilliam]

First of all, to get numbers down. A hex is 30 meters across and a map is 17 hexes across (510m), and a turn is 10 seconds.

Arrow IV is a type of artillery (there's also conventional tube artillery). It has guided rounds and several types of unguided rounds (some do damage, others do thinks like lay smoke or minefields). The guided types are aimed at a specific mapboard, while the unguided rounds are aimed at a specific hex.

If you are firing at a hex on a different mapsheet, it will take 1 or more turns to arrive, 1-8 sheets takes 1 turn (10 seconds) 9 (which is the max range of clan Arrows, which is exceeded by all of the artillery guns) sheets away takes 2 turns to arrive. When the shell arrives, if it is guided, it will home in on any target that has successfully been TAGged, and hits it from the side facing the launcher. If nothing has been hit by TAG, the round explodes harmlessly. You have to roll to see if the round actually hits the target, if it does, it does 20 damage do it; regardless of if it hits, everything in the targets hex takes 5 damage.

The standard non-homing round, when it arrives, you have to roll to see if it scatters and where, once you know where it hits, everything in the impact hex takes 20 damage and everything in the adjacent hexes take 10 damage. Cluster rounds do the same damage but strike from above making head hits more likely.

You can fire artillery at units under 17 hexes (which equates to on the same map roughly) which is less likely to miss and hits the same turn, but the effects are otherwise the same (homing needs TAG, and damage is the same), but artillery has a minimum range it can't attack at of 6 hexes.

You can also aim certain types of rounds at airborne units as a flak attack.

THe location that takes damage is determined randomly the same way normal damage is, targets in the hex the rounds land in are treated as the damage came from the direction of the launcher, while surrounding hexes use the direction of the hex directly struck.


Also, the launching unit does not need to see a hex to fire at it, so indirect is always an option (and is the only option past 17 hexes)

Edited by gilliam, 28 January 2013 - 09:35 PM.

[CrashieJ]

What we could do if ARROW IV get implemented in MWO is have it act like Artillery that can be used in a variety of ways

may be used under "safety-zone" at the cost of FF or backblast
Artemis adds semi-tighter grouping
Tag adds semi-guidance
Sharper trajectory to get "under" cover
small amount of splash damage to force people out
Bulkier than LRMs (easy to shoot apart)
heavier than LRMs (limits ability to carry)
more inaccurate than LRMs
more expensive to maintain

may use the tacmap to "point" where the rounds should go
---

that's how I'd look at it,

use ARROWs to free them up, then use LRMs to soften them up, then use LONGTOMs to blow them away

UP, UP ,AND AWAY!!!

[gilliam]

Arrow IV cannot use Artemis.
Also there is no grouping as Arrow IV fires a single, large missile. It is NOT an MLRS system.

[KalebFenoir]

I always figured that, if you need a visual reference, if standard LRMs are missiles a couple of feet long, then Arrow IV missiles are absolutely giant. I mean, they're missiles big enough to do 4 OR 5 damage per missile. That's the really interesting part. You can choose whether your launcher fires a cluster of 4 missiles, at 5 damage apiece, or 5 missiles (slightly smaller) at 4 damage apiece.

When me and my friends tried using Arrows in our games, we used optional rules for AOE mine-laying, even though the missiles weren't being used for that. We just figured that if you were in any hex adjacent to the target hex, you'd catch splash damage from these monsters. If being hit by a missile is like someone pelting you with paintball guns in real life, being hit by a single Arrow would be more like having a brick or concrete block thrown at you. One that breaks on impact. It'd hurt like hell, but you might walk away from it. And getting hit with the cluster of them would hurt just the same. LOL.

gilliam, on 28 January 2013 - 10:40 PM, said:

Arrow IV cannot use Artemis.
Also there is no grouping as Arrow IV fires a single, large missile. It is NOT an MLRS system.

That's actually incorrect. They fire as a cluster of 4-5 missiles, but the missiles themselves carry advanced targetting gear, allowing them to home in better on a target. Each missile does 4-5 damage depending on how many missiles are fired. You use standard LRM grouping to determine where EACH missile hits. (as each does almost a full LRM cluster's damage on its own). Allocate accordingly.

I suppose if you wanted to, you could say your launcher fires one absolutely MONSTROUS missile, but if that's the case, take the Arrow out, and replace it with an AC/20, or better yet, an Ultra or RAC. Your mech will thank you for the saved space, and the ability to have arms. (though there is something gratifying about imagining a missile the size of a mech's torso smacking into an enemy's forehead....)

[Volume]

Wish I could tell you, but I only really know the MW2 implementation of 'mech-mounted arrow iv.
MW3 had a tag laser where you could call in Arrow IV support from off the level to hit your target after you paint it, and MW4 let you mount it on 'mechs as well, but I don't think I ever actually did. There were a couple different kinds too, Arrow IV, Arrow IV Cluster, and some other things...inferno maybe? I remember having sometihng called the Inferno-IV. Or maybe that was just LRMS...

MWLL has it working nice >.>

Anyway I found a couple things from the errata which imply to me that it might not even hit in the level we're fighting in, lol.

Edited by Volume, 29 January 2013 - 08:50 AM.

[Egomane]

I'll simply post the game rules for guided Arrow-IV here. Unguided Arrows work like normal artillery and posting those rules would be a bit much.

Quote

Arrow IV Homing Missle

Rules Level: Advanced
Tech Base (Ratings): Both (E/E-F-E)
Game Rules: Only units carrying an Arrow IV artillery missile launcher may carry Arrow IV Homing Missiles.
An attack using an Arrow IV Homing Missile is treated as standard artillery weapon attack (see p. 179), with the following exceptions:

• The Arrow IV Homing Missile does not make its own to-hit roll. Instead, the homing missile may only attack units that have been successfully designated by a friendly TAG unit in the turn of the missile’s arrival. If there are no successfully TAG-designated targets on the board when the missile arrives, the homing missile explodes harmlessly. (Undirected or misdirected Arrow IV Homing Missiles do not scatter.)
  
• If multiple units are successfully designated by friendly TAG on the turn of an Arrow IV Homing Missile’s arrival, the player controlling the unit which fired the round must choose which target the missile will attack.
  
• When attacking a successfully designated target, the player controlling the missile launcher must roll 2D6. On a result of 4+, the missile hits the target with its full rated damage. This is treated as a hit from a direct-fire ballistic weapon, resolved against the unit’s facing relative to the TAG unit that designated it. An additional 5 points of artillery damage applies to all other units in the target’s hex (treated as an area-effect weapon, if these other units include infantry). If the missile’s 2D6 roll is 3 or less, however, the missile hits the hex itself, and inflicts 5 points of area-effect damage to all units in the target’s hex (including the target).
  
• A friendly TAG may designate targets for any number of Arrow IV Homing Missiles per round, with only one to-hit roll required to designate the target. However, a TAG-equipped unit may not designate multiple targets in a turn. If an on-board Arrow IV launcher using homing missiles also mounts TAG, the unit may designate a target and fire its homing missiles against it in the same turn.

[gilliam]

KalebFenoir, on 29 January 2013 - 06:42 AM, said:

I always figured that, if you need a visual reference, if standard LRMs are missiles a couple of feet long, then Arrow IV missiles are absolutely giant. I mean, they're missiles big enough to do 4 OR 5 damage per missile. That's the really interesting part. You can choose whether your launcher fires a cluster of 4 missiles, at 5 damage apiece, or 5 missiles (slightly smaller) at 4 damage apiece.

When me and my friends tried using Arrows in our games, we used optional rules for AOE mine-laying, even though the missiles weren't being used for that. We just figured that if you were in any hex adjacent to the target hex, you'd catch splash damage from these monsters. If being hit by a missile is like someone pelting you with paintball guns in real life, being hit by a single Arrow would be more like having a brick or concrete block thrown at you. One that breaks on impact. It'd hurt like hell, but you might walk away from it. And getting hit with the cluster of them would hurt just the same. LOL.


That's actually incorrect. They fire as a cluster of 4-5 missiles, but the missiles themselves carry advanced targetting gear, allowing them to home in better on a target. Each missile does 4-5 damage depending on how many missiles are fired. You use standard LRM grouping to determine where EACH missile hits. (as each does almost a full LRM cluster's damage on its own). Allocate accordingly.

I suppose if you wanted to, you could say your launcher fires one absolutely MONSTROUS missile, but if that's the case, take the Arrow out, and replace it with an AC/20, or better yet, an Ultra or RAC. Your mech will thank you for the saved space, and the ability to have arms. (though there is something gratifying about imagining a missile the size of a mech's torso smacking into an enemy's forehead....)

Where the hell did you get that from? Artillery is divided into 5 point groupings for gameplay reasons since it's treated as area of effects damage rather than a direct hit, not because it has multiple missiles, Long Toms also do damage in 5 point groupins, are you going to tell me a single tube lobs multiple shells at a target as well?. If a homing round directly strikes a target, it does its entire damage to a single location (rules state it is treated as if it were a direct fire ballistic weapon. Essentially, it's the equivalent of being struck by an AC/20 for gameplay purposes). That would seem to indicate one big missile to me.

Regardless of how many missiles are fired, Arrow is incompatible with Artemis since it uses a different tracking system much as how SSRMs can't use artemis (also, more importantly, because the rules say Artemis affects LRMs and SRMs only)

[KalebFenoir]

gilliam, on 29 January 2013 - 02:52 PM, said:

Where the hell did you get that from? Artillery is divided into 5 point groupings for gameplay reasons since it's treated as area of effects damage rather than a direct hit, not because it has multiple missiles, Long Toms also do damage in 5 point groupins, are you going to tell me a single tube lobs multiple shells at a target as well?. If a homing round directly strikes a target, it does its entire damage to a single location (rules state it is treated as if it were a direct fire ballistic weapon. Essentially, it's the equivalent of being struck by an AC/20 for gameplay purposes). That would seem to indicate one big missile to me.

Regardless of how many missiles are fired, Arrow is incompatible with Artemis since it uses a different tracking system much as how SSRMs can't use artemis (also, more importantly, because the rules say Artemis affects LRMs and SRMs only)

Arrow IV might be an artillery system, but it's a missile artillery system. I made the mistake of assuming that, since you normally have to do the five-point groupings, that it implied the launcher itself is firing several heavier missiles, rather than one incredibly huge missile from a single tube.
In defense of my idea of the multiple-tube, large-but-not-giant Arrow IV system, I present the following battlemechs in their primary variants.

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Bowman (Five-tube Arrow IV launcher)
http://www.sarna.net...28BattleMech%29 (Five tube Arrow IV launcher)
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/O-Bakemono (Four-tube Arrow IV launcher)

and the LGB-8V variant of the Longbow ( http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Longbow) carries a pair of Arrow IVs, though there is no artwork design to show how these are arranged.

Unless EACH TUBE on these mechs represents a single, 20-point damage missile that fires when the weapon is fired, it suggests that the Arrow IV system on these mechs is a multi-missile system, with missiles larger than LRM or SRMs, with a heavier payload, but smaller than, say, an ICBM or Thumper or Long Tom or Sniper round.

In addition, one of the last things in the Artillery section of Master Rules Revised, in the Arrow IV homing missile section, says that after a target has been TAG designated by a spotter, "Only one roll to spot is required to designate the target. However, the player must make a seperate to-hit roll for each missile to determine whether or not it successfully homed in on the signal". So you can still miss with the Arrow IV.

What that means is if you fired a 'big 20' missile, a one-shot missile, from off-board or whatever, that entire missile could miss the target completely, wasting a rather large, expensive, and damaging missile on that pile of rocks over there. Meanwhile at least with the multi-missile version of the system, each missile would have to be rolled for, increasing the odds of doing a minimum of 5 (or 4 in the five-missile launcher's case), to a maximum of 20 damage.

Edited by KalebFenoir, 30 January 2013 - 05:13 AM.

[gilliam]

I always figured those mechs had 5 missiles in the launcher because a ton of ammo is 5 missiles. Art and rules never did correlate very well. Did you know the elemental stat sheet has the battle claw on the same arm as the primary weapon, and you never can tell from the art if a mech has lower arm actuators.

You can have multiple launchers fired at a map in a turn, so that's probably where the roll for each missile comes from. Sometimes the rules can be confusing. The current rules are worded differently.

[Escef]

Just a note: Firing any artillery weapon from more than 17 hexes away is considered 1 map sheet of distance for determining what round it hits. At 17 hexes and closer it hits the round you fire it. As an area weapon, Arrows are good for hitting fast movers. Other weapons good for that are Thunder-FASCAM rounds (LRM and Arrow varieties exist, they lay minefields) and LRM mine clearance rounds.

Edited by Escef, 31 January 2013 - 04:30 AM.

[KalebFenoir]

gilliam, on 30 January 2013 - 08:19 AM, said:

I always figured those mechs had 5 missiles in the launcher because a ton of ammo is 5 missiles. Art and rules never did correlate very well. Did you know the elemental stat sheet has the battle claw on the same arm as the primary weapon, and you never can tell from the art if a mech has lower arm actuators.

You can have multiple launchers fired at a map in a turn, so that's probably where the roll for each missile comes from. Sometimes the rules can be confusing. The current rules are worded differently.

Usually a ton of ammo is five salvos, not five individual rounds (unless we're talking Gauss). For bookkeeping simplicity, they crunched the missile ammo down to just how many salvos each ton carried, just like they crunched the machinegun ammo down (a machinegun with only 200 shells would be empty in a few seconds, but a machinegun with 200 salvos of 50 or 100 shells lasts consistently longer.) When I think of the Arrow IV's five rounds of ammo per ton, I don't think of five missiles, but five rounds of missiiles.

I will say though, again, if the art is suggesting there's five tubes, and each tube represents a single use of the Arrow IV system, then that could totally work. Heh....it'd also mean that for optional rules, if for whatever reason your ammo was dumped or blown away, and all you had left was the ammo in the weapon itself to use (as one round is loaded for firing no matter what), that'd mean with the Arrow you'd have up to FIVE more rounds to fire, because they're preloaded into those missile tubes. They just need to be fired.

That'd be a bad day for anyone that thought they got the upper hand on an artillery user by taking out their ammo supply. Five full rounds, or four full rounds (whatever) of missiles coming down on ya. XD

[Karl Streiger]

As every weapon Arrows are devasting when massed.
For example 4 TAG mechs and 4 ArrowMechs with 2 systems each. They should be as devasting as 4 3L TAG ravens and 4 LRM boats with 60 or more LRMs each.

However when i "saw" arrows for the first time i thought that they were crap.
I have read "Close Quarters" before i saw the rules. To be true i was really upset to see that a single Arrow does just 20dmg.
I was upset to see that i need spotters so i never wanted to use them.

But together with all the nice electronic warfare stuff the blessed word of blake was able to field - i started to test them.
I don't know how many C3i guided TAG spotter i used. Actuall i'm not sure if it was legal to use a RedShift to close and a Raijin at some range to spot. Even used tanks and BA to use TAG.
4 Arrows was for the most part enough to cripple at target mixed with guided LRMs.

Because i was a munchkin at this time - i forced my victims to accept that the arrows have to fired 34 hex away not to hit in the same round... simple because i forced them to use extreme range...(well they believed it was a good idea - thanks to their clan tech) and my LRM carriers could fire 28 hex and still the LRM would hit in the same round.

i believe when i would have used davy crockets the outcome wouldn't have been worse. while my mechs were only light armed...my fire support vehicles slew 1 to 2 omnis per round.