So in this game, missles cannot be manually shot down? Assuming your connection doesn't lag and you really are that damn good?

Nope, no manual shooting of LRMs.

Consider, they're teeny TINY things compared to the 'mechs. Each one only weighs, like, 5kg or 10kg, I think.

Consider since there quite a few of them and some of your weapons aren't just a tiny laser beam. For example IIRC an LBX round functions like shotgun rounds, so while most people can't shoot down individual LRM missles, you are essentially putting a wall of particles to intercept those missles. Or if you are shooting at the missle rack with, say a PPC, when the missles come out, could it not be physically possible that the missles run into the PPC blast? And since like you say those things are teeny tiny, it wouldn't take much to destroy them, would it?

If they are keeping to the pnp rules, then those missles are essentially invisible invulnerable objects that can only be shot down by your various antimissle systems. One of the many reasons why I wasn't all that into the Battletech pnp game.

it does not work. full stop.
the only two things that work against missles are the AMS and the LAMS.
the one that is in right now sucks and the other that is not in yet will suck.

Why would you be able to manually shoot down missiles? Consider that IRL, the only systems capable of shooting down a missile in flight are fully automated point-defense systems like CIWS... which is exactly what AMS is.

Because the missles are small, slow and fly in tight enough clusters that an arm thick laser beam could be expected to cut through several of them . .

Bought an HBK-4G Hunchback. Named it "Boom Boom."

I wants a 4SP. Oh, and did the LRM hotfix go in?

There was another patch earlier today. Not sure what it did.

Took care of the problem with missiles dropping straight down onto their targets making cover useless and scoring to many upper torso hits I think.

reduced lrm damage from 2.0 to 1.7, artemis spread increased by 5% and the arc bug was resolved

why do LRMs even GET 2.0/1.7 Damage?
It should be 1 per Missle.

No clue why they deemed it necessary, but I like the reduced damage. At the moment, LRMs still feel like a threat, but I don't think they would if they were scaled down to 1 again. Too many ways to dodge them, I guess, so they need to make the weapon viable. For example, in one of my scout mechs I rarely get hit at all, even if multiple Cats fire at me.
In TT, the constant movement isn't a factor, so maybe that's where they're coming from. Ask the developers, I guess

I love you guys. I get all the fun of bitching without any of the personal aggro from having to deal with it myself.

Some clarifications.

PAX is right on the arty thing. Oddly enough, Arrow IV is a missile.

The other odd thing : Many direct fire weapons have no actual maximum range. They can deal damage out to the horizon of the planet. Tournament rules don't take that into account for the most part, since the modifier is fairly high, and rarely do you feel the need to take a pot shot at 20 maps out.

Still, as possibly the biggest fan of the board game here on dumpshock, it's got some fairly egregious mechanical errors. A complete lack of overwatch is terrible, and not being able to target an enemy while it's moving is another glaring mistake.

It seems the online game makes plenty of it's own bizzare and dubious decisions. Shutdowns being a big one. First of all, it's not a shutdown. It's putting the mech in a sleep-like state. The timing required to actually shut the reactor down takes far longer then most combats allow for. Shutting down should be reserved for the most dire of circumstances. Having multiple heat inducing hits to the engine rising heat past sink capacity would be a good one. Suddenly and miraculously breaking missile lock? Please.

Shutdown targets are a -4 to hit. In the battletech world, that makes a very low odds shot become a better then average shot at hitting.

Anyway, I'm annoyed these fuckers went from playing in the 3025 universe to all this extra clan/star-league bullshit. So fuck em all.

Ah . . no?
ALL CBT WEAPONS HAVE A MAXIMUM RANGE.
One Hex outside of that Range(30m) and you don't take any damage at all.
While you take full damage if you are 30m closer.
At least if you don't use the damage drop-off over reach rule.
A shut down target does not become easier to hit in CBT either O.o
Only if it does not start up does it become an immobile target in the next round.
And then it's just that.


Arrow IV is basically a Tomahawk Missle.

Yes. Which is around the horizon line. TacOps for source.

I *think* that wierd tac manual book introduced it, or at least the concept of extended range past long range. Not sure if MaxTech carried it on, but I'm positive TacOps dealt with basically infinite range for some weapons that would logically have them. (Lasers and PPCs. Possibly Gauss. Bit fuzzy on it.)

Further, there exists no option to shut down and start up in the same turn. Therefore any shutdown unit receives the -4 immobile penalty.

Yes... the same ML you use on an aerospace fighter goes multiple MAPSHEETS... each mapsheet is defined as 18 hexes.

They basically pull some mumbo jumbo about ground clutter... and electronic warfare keeping ground ranges rather small to keep the game within a playable surface area.

For most ground units the horizon isn't all that far away. Though I don't know how tacops words it. There were some old extreme range bits where it was a -8 to hit IIRC in prior rules. Again optional advanced stuff that almost never got seen.

Under the prior incarnation of the rules they have redone the 'oppurtunity fire' rules. Basically you take your turn and you declare oppurtunity fire instead on your weapons phase. Then on the next round you can't move but can shoot interupting units movement if need be. I made a name for myself using this to blast ASF's using movement on mapsheets rules out of the air... since I'd pick them off when they got close or when their firing arc would suddenly change from side to back (+2 to hit side, vs 0 to send one up the tailpipe, or +1 head on). I don't know the new rules as well as I did the old ones though.

Those rules were also murder on light mechs... because the movement mod was based on how far it moved before you shot. Oh you moved your dinky sucker right in front of me with a massive to hit mod... cool off and declare op fire... next round... oh you moved 1 hex... *BLAM* smoking ruin left in front of assault mech.

Some things like LRM's again when used in space/atmospheric combat also have a range of about 20 mapsheets... so it comes down to the problem of guidance against ground clutter again.

That said... the real value in the ELRM. Was their IDF capability. With artillery anything over 18 hexes takes a full round of flight time. ELRM though could hit things instantly when fired from 37 hexes... so you'd pull up an ELRM carrier tank and park it way in the back and it would provide far more accurate and timely fire support than any artillery piece could. So there's bit of difference between LRMs and the 'true' artillery.

How do you set a group to ripple fire instead of simultaneous?

Highlight the group and press backspace.

And you tabletop guys, mind starting your own thread to quibble over rules in or something? Makes it hard to talk about MWO in here.

You realize we ARE talking about the computer game and how it implements the game. Especially as how their changes adversely break game play... and how they make it better.

Example... I like how they did the beam lasers with the long hold on an area. I don't like the heat system at all... then again I haven't played in a week so what do I know.

I have found that the built-in chain or ripple fire doesn't seem to work that well with fast firing weapons. Like the AC/2 firing rate is actually a little faster than the ripple fire allows.

I set two out of my three AC/2s on ripple fire, and the third on it's own weapon group, and the resulting total rate of fire if I shoot both groups at once is visibly faster than just putting all three in the same group. I imagine it would be even faster if I put each on in it's own group and stagger-fired them manually.



-k

I find that ripple fire also makes you less effective against fast targets. You often have small windows in which to fire, so you have to make them count.

I had a five or six Medium Pule Laser setup, and found the same thing. I briefly considered setting up some ohte G keys on my G510 keyboard to handle a faster one-by-one rate of fire ... but, eh, that's more involved than I generally like to get.

It would be very, very nice if MWO would let you set up more-detailed weapon groups. Specify firing delays, tricks like "chain fire in pairs", and so on. I'm sure a lot of pilots would appreciate that sort of thing.






Depends on the weapon, and the pilot. With lasers, chain-fire can often mean that you end up with what amounts to "a permanent beam of hurt", and tracking that along across a skittering light was easier for me, than trying to pot-shot an entire array of beams at them. All-or-nothing shots, for me, came up "nothing" more often than they came up "all", or even just "some".

Yeah, lasers as DOT Weapons are one of the few good ideas they used . . i wonder where they got that from . .

Apologies then Falc. I glanced at them briefly and started seeing negative numbers and didn't bother reading them in their entirety. Carry on.

DoT lasers are fun, but then you realize you can also just play with pulse lasers. Pulse lasers on my Jenner are FUN! Of course, if I ditched them I could probably fit those SRMs back on it...
As to heat, again from a light mech point of view, but it doesn't seem to be an issue for me. But, when you're just running 3xMPL and a TAG with DHS and an XL 300 engine (heat efficiency of 1.24 if I remember right) on any map except stupid volcano boom surprise, I don't have to worry about heat. So I can't really speak about heat issues.

Well, it eliminated the LL boats from MW4 and gave us SL boats...

yeah, because they are not using the COF from WOT as they should . .

I'm finding I actually make less money with owned 'Mechs than trial 'Mechs. Repair and rearming nearly always costs more than the 20% penalty imposed by trial 'Mechs.

sounds about right

What're you reloading? You get 75% of your loadout free from the get go. Since it's a "feature" as claimed by the admins, you can go into mechlab and turn off auto rearm. Save yourself a good hunk of change. Granted, on my Jenners where ammunition isn't really a concern, I don't start earning sub-trial mech rates unless I play poorly or I stick ferro-fibrous armor on the mech. At this point, I'd say the FF isn't worth it.

Streak SRMs for my Commando and AC/20 rounds for my Hunchback. The Commando also has ferro-fibrous armor.

On another note, I'm loving the AC/20. Boom Boom is death against other mediums (except the Cicada) and heavies. Assaults have the armor to soak up hits, though. Once in a while I even get a light 'Mech whose pilot is dumb enough to stand still so I can put a 20-point shell in his torso.

Hardpoints are still stupid. If you're going to allow on-demand reconfiguration of non-OmniMechs, don't be a half-assed pansy about it. If you want the classic 'Mechs to keep their roles, don't be a half-assed pansy about it. Instead, they chose to be half-assed pansies on both counts.

I really, really wish they'd kept to 3025.

So say we all.

No, we don't

I will restate my original idea of how Hardpoints should have been dealt with. It would allow some customisation, actually quite a lot of it, but it (in combination with normal TT rules for tonnage and crit slot spacing) would still restrict things so that mostly, people would stay in-role for the chassis they were working from.

I don't like that idea either; it lacks the virtue of simplicity. Changing the weapons loadout on a non-OmniMech is, canonically, an enormously difficult and expensive undertaking, because you're basically rebuilding part or all of the chassis. I propose a "labor cost," in both money and time: every time you add something to your 'Mech, you pay the cost of the item plus 50%, to reflect the cost of having the thing installed, and it takes twelve real-time hours for every critical slot occupied. Sure, you can put an AC/20 in an Awesome, but it'll cost you CB 300,000 on top of the CB 600,000 to buy the cannon; and it'll take five days to complete the work, during which your Awesome is "in the shop" and cannot be used.

In this way, people can have their customization, but it is no longer a casual thing to be done between matches.

From a game-play perspective, hardpoints are basically a tool for game-balance and overhead control. Without the hardpoints, you have to design separate places for weapons mounted on every location to be drawn and calculate physics from. With hardpoints, you restrict that necessity somewhat and create less processing overhead.
In terms of game balance, you dont get an atlas with 40 medium lasers that all hit the same location on a mech when fired and core him in a single shot. I HAVE SEEN THIS ON THE GAME TABLE BEFORE.

No you haven't. The Atlas doesn't have 40 tons of free space for weapons, and can't possibly mount 48 critical slots on it's chassis. (As it will take another 8 tons and 8 crits to house the TarComp to even give you a possibility of all 40 hitting the same location)

Actually quite doable... rip out the engine and put in a smaller one if need be. Or turn it XL and assuredly the weight is there...
You've got about 20 tons of armor max frame. (19.5 IIRC away from books)
10 tons of frame
19 tons 300 size engine is again (easy engine size to remember... 6/9 50 tonners, 4/6 75 tonners, and 3/5 100 tonners all use the same engine)
3 tons gyro
3 tons cockpit

Sum total: 55 tons, leaving 45 tons for toys. So we could actually stuff 45 medlasers on this monster not a mere 40....
Put 2 extra DHS in the engine... then put an extra 3 ML's in the CT & Head. Still 4 crits left free in the legs. For max in heat dissipation... trade out 2 ML's for 2 more DHS... one in each side torso.. and move 2ML's from torsos to legs. No crits left open (14DHS, 41ML).

Free Crits:
Arms: 2x10 (rip out hands and lower arms)
Legs: 2x2
Side torso: 2x12
CT: 2
head: 1

Even without taking out hand and lower arm actuators... that's 40 crits in the side and arms alone for 40 MedLsers...

That still leaves 5 tons and a few crits.

Yes all those lasers fired at once will melt things... 40x5== 200 point damage volley. Enough to completely melt most light mechs into a puddle of slag. So no you're completely wrong almost normal.

That's no longer an Atlas. You kind of missed the point there. He also contended that every single laser fired hit the "The Same Location". Barring the other limitations imposed, this necessitates having a TarComp, adding another 8 tons and 8 crits.

You're also assuming that all 40 lasers will hit, which in tabletop CBT is a big, big assumption. Moreover, each medium laser generates 3 points of heat. 40 x 3 = 120, which means you get to fire that salvo exactly once... and then your 'Mech explodes.

But we're NOT talking board game... we're talking computer game. Where all those lasers are pinpoint slaved to your twitch mouse skills. Translation they should practically never miss. And they will all hit the same location at the same time.

Hence the comment above... about how weapon class based hardpoints restrict mech design and keep assorted mech designs to certain constrained roles (such as missile boat... be it short or long... or gausskat where merely swaps its ineffectual PPC's for Gauss rifles (using the 2 ballistic MG points of all things, fills same role, just slightly differently though still constrained to the same type of weapons in roughly the same locations as the original).


Again... people don't realize the TT rules for heat... *sigh*

The TT rules for heat give a max overheat of +30. If you have 28DHS in... you fire alpha you shut down... in the one turn it takes you restart you're at a mere +2 heat... All that extra heat just disappears through the magical shutdown cycle Yes it's a weirdness in the rules. The mech itself has no ammunition... it doesn't blow up, it merely fires an alpha strike every other round slagging a target or severely wounding it each time.

Your last paragraph is also in error. The simplified heat chart leaves off at +30, as after 30 is hit, there are no new penalties. Heat still gets tracked, per the rules.

No, this was actually addressed by the BT line developer for the prior edition. Unless the total warfare rule set has explicitly changed this. The heat scale only defined and tracked between 0 and 30, never any higher or lower.


But that's all a diversion from the main point of the thread... the video game and all it's problems. If you allow people full customization, you will get discoball mechs like this which load nothing but tons of the most crit/weight/damage effective weapons... and as many as they can. And then they will volley fire them using the magic of computer game where shots don't scatter and pretty much never miss.

With clantech... the weapon of choice is the ERML... with IS tech it's the ML.

Falconer has essentially presented my entire argument for me. He must've gone up against the 40ML Atlas before too

They dont always go to the same location, OR hit all the time, but it will still generally slag a mech in 1 fantastic alpha-strike, leaving the Atlas fine to sit there for a turn or two offline as it cools off, especially if said atlas' player decides to only fire enough lasers to stay heat neutral until they get a viable TN to roll against on 2d6.

Stick one in megamek. The sheer amount of cheese of the mini-sun atlas is kinda fun to play with once or twice, just to see people look at all the rolls on the turn readout

Note, my way did not address the financial aspect of the modification. Only a limiting factor on what could even be attempted. The C-bills and time you'd need, would be an entirely different matter.

Which is to say: your idea and mine would work together just fine, hand-in-hand.

These mechs are there in canon too, more or less . .
There are Mechs with 12 Clan ER Medium Lasers or something silly like that.
Or 6 Clan ER Large Lasers. Namely the Nova and the Super Nova, if i remember correctly.
Aptly named, because something will usually go supernova, when this is fired.
And this is WHY?
Because the Clans entire MAXIM of Combat is to get in the strongest possible hit first.
Everything else will have to be thought of after that fact . .
You'd think a HUNCHBACK IIC with 2x Clan Ultra AC 20 would be nonsense . .
But in their way of fighting it is a supreme alpha strike that can and will cripple even Assault Mechs.
If it doesn't simply blow them out of existence in one go . . Because Clan-Pilots usually have Shooting 2 and Piloting 1 or something to that effect.
Meaning, yes, they can and will hit double dips on the ultra AC's pretty reliably . . and this way, there is a damage potential of 80 points.
IN A MEDIUM MECH! That is absurdly powerfull. But in the Table-Top rules and the clan way of thinking, it makes perfect sense to do it!
Especially if you use it for stuff like dueling . . which can be done in all kinds of trials, even in an open combat, if you shout, over open frequency, a challenge to an enemy mech/pilot, he HAS to accept it . .

Except that your idea rapes the suspension of disbelief right up the ass with one of those giant horse-cock dildos. Is there some kind of cosmic point-assigner who audits 'Mech garages to make sure they aren't sticking too many points' worth of weaponry on a chassis? At least the idea of hardpoints is merely breathtakingly stupid rather than tearing open a hole in reality big enough to fly the Death Star through.

Maybe I should watch less Zero Punctuation.

Well, under CBT Rules, yes, actually, there IS a universal Instance of Control of Balance . .
It's called BattleValue Version 2 . . which includes at least a Dozend of Variables and assigns them points.
So a Clan Daishi can easily be in the 3500 to 4500 points worth range . .
Now take an Inner Sphere Assault Mech that weights in at 1100 pts and you have 4 mechs for one.
Which gives a tactical because numerical advantage . . but the Daishi will be expected to take out 2, maybe 3 and with a good player all 4 of the enemy mechs.
Because, technically, strictly points speaking, they are on equal footing . .

...which neatly brings us around to the real problem: BattleTech isn't balanced at the level of individual 'Mechs because IT ISN'T SUPPOSED TO BE. CBT is a force-on-force game, and is balanced on that basis.