Heavy armor working as HEAVY armor

[(TLL) Zeh]

I think he means you'd be damaging the internal structure when the armor is still fully intact - something that shouldn't happen.

[Askis]

I think he means that, if you had two hitpoint values for every location, armor and internal structure, a hit with a splash weapon would damage armor and internals, even before armor is breached.

[Flyingdebris]

yeah, pretty much.

i mean, if it could be done, great.  but my understanding from how weapons deal splash right now, you'd see a lot of situations of hollowed out mechs since i don't think hitboxes stop splash from spreading, so stuff like ppcs would be damaging armor and internals at the same time  unless you eliminated splash damage all together....

[Askis]

Yup, splash spreads through 'Mechs without a problem...
Dunno if it still happens, but after the SRM-splash increase of 0.1.0, I severly damaged the rear armor of a few Hollanders by firing a full Vulture B salvo at their CT >_>

[(TLL)Siilk]

thing is, i think that with the way splash damage works, any weapon that would have splash damage would probably damage the internals too.

So you mean things like LBX and SRMs and the like would have an advantage on finding crits like in CBT?

 Actually, this would be a good boost to somehow lacking LBXs and SRMs, ifwhen criticals would be implemented. Less armor damage, more chances to get a criticas hit.

[(TLL)Sky_walker]

Critical don't work in FPS games.
I mean... how would you calculate it in any way? And how's that realistic?

I'm far more for adding destroyable components, like coolant pods, Jump Jets, single, but bigger weapons (so having a chance to destroy the HGauss without touching the right torso). This would add more realism without some odd random calculations which never made sens to me.

[=KoS=Zeus]

If you ever played the Virtual World battletech game in the Tesla Pods then you know how incredibly frustrating it was to have critical hits be tied to specific areas of mechs. The Techs who ran the place logged thousands of games and knew exactly which missile port on a Vulture to hit with a single small laser and cause an ammo fire, or which arbitrary vent to hit and cause a coolant leak. It was not fun, it was exploitative.

Now imagine that those components are now easily recognizable to players. It will be much easier to disable the main weapon on a Hollander, for example, and it already is. How much damage should it take? Too much at you get wasted shots against weapons when you were trying to take the arm off, too little and you end up with weaponless mechs dotting the battlefield and a BA fight between them.

Critical hits should only take effect once armor is breached.

[~SJ~ Blhurr]

More destroyable stuff I like.  I tend to believe though, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the more hit boxes you add the greater the computational load on the servers and client. 

[(TLL)Sky_walker]

Yea, it is, but I don't believe that the difference would be higher than the one between playing Extremity and beta 0.1.0 clearcut with destroyable trees.

Also perhaps the better would be to make as few components possible to be destroyed as possible - like... the big 3: coolant pods (hit at the pod), Jump Jets (hit in the ass), electronic-warfare equipment (hit in the radar/sensor, wherever the mech would have it).
This should be of course possible only after taking down say... 80% of mech part at which this component is located.

[(TLL)Siilk]

Critical don't work in FPS games.
I mean... how would you calculate it in any way? And how's that realistic?

I'm far more for adding destroyable components, like coolant pods, Jump Jets, single, but bigger weapons (so having a chance to destroy the HGauss without touching the right torso). This would add more realism without some odd random calculations which never made sens to me.

 I thought more of a MW2-style critical hits. MW2 tracked where your subsystems, weapons and ammo are located and loosing a subsystem was tied to where you were hit and how much armor you have left there. It wasn't completely random and, at the same time, you cannot aim at particular "weak spot" to have a guarantied subsystem destruction.

[(TLL)Sky_walker]

But as far as there's still an armor on the part - you would have to random the chance of getting critical.
Now, how someone shooting random MGun at heavy tank would have a chance to damage it's cooling system, while the armor is still there protecting the part.

IHMO the whole concept of critical hits works well in the projects where at you cannot inflict damage to subsystems of units - but in MWLL we have subsystems damage already, I'd be kinda unreasonable to require complete destruction of arm armor to take it down, yet not require complete armor destruction on a coolant pod, if there's a possibility to make it happen.

Moreover the Beta 0.2.0 introduced the thing I'm talking about. Just take a look at AMS system. It could be made with critical hits, yet (hooooray!) it's normal, destroyable subsytem.

[(TLL)Siilk]

 I agree with a part of random criticals being bad, and direct damage(as with AMS) being good, but how you will implement the damage of inner subsystems, heat sinks or gyro for example? The only thing I have in mind is Flyingdebris' idea from "damage systems" thread.

[~SJ~ Blhurr]

I'm liking these ideas more and more.  Right now it feels to me like if a mech loses an arm or leg or something that it's basically time to go looking for a quick death because a brand new mech is so much more effective.  If damage were more gradual and varied using a damaged mech to its fullest potential would seem more epic.  If they scrapped the Millenium Falcon everytime the hyper drive went down...you get my drift.
 
This actually segways into another idea.  Mechs become these highly prized and personalized items in the BT universe that are passed down from generation to generation.  It would be nice to be able to spend Cbills to personalize mechs with decals or destroyable trophy pods or something that would amplify the emotional attachement to a specfic mech.  If you've taken one particular mech back to repair 3,4, or 5 times being able to name the mech or add a banner or some custom paint to it would be epic as hell.  Something additional that makes the pilot think twice about recklessly throwing a mech into the fray.  I don't know how canon it would be but having an atlas with like 2 giant banners of your particular clan or family mounted on the shoulders would be cool and feed any gamer's megalomania.  Do you give away Cbills to fight the war effort or do you spend a couple 100k tricking your mech out because you are the undisputed master of the battlefield? 

[CHHs Cyan]

Battlemech armor is ablative specifically to counter 1-shot kills from weapons like AC/20s, Gauss Rifles, and PPCs.

The philosophy is that if you are putting your royalty in a giant walking tank, you don't want it to die from the first PPC shot that hits square on the armor plate over the reactor.

Instead, you sacrifice invulnerability versus smaller weapons, for survivability against massive weapons. The result is a machine that can actually be hit by upwards of 10 150mm cannon shells and not instantly explode. The trade off is that an infantry platoon opening fire with their rifles can degrade your armor protection.

This is what makes Battletech different than Heavy Gear. In battletech you score lots of gratifying hits, all of which are working toward eliminating your opponent. In Heavy Gear you are trading shots, missing, or scoring glancing hits which bounce off the armor, and all it takes is a good shot to instantly explode the largest of targets.

Heavy Gear is more realistic, Battletech is more fun.

signed/

c

[Flyingdebris]

you know, the whole thing of kinda personalizing your vehicle made me think of something else...

What if there was a way of giving players gameplay incentive on being attached their vehicles.

For example, each time you score damage or spend money in that particular vehicle (donations do not count), it kinda goes to some invisible tally independent of rank. And as the tally goes up you get subtle bonuses for that vehicle alone.  Nothing major, just tiny percentage increases to damage, speed, or damage resistance to represent luck or pilot skill.

So you present players with the choice, do i want to keep rockin in this shadowcat that i've repaired a dozen times and have become a beast in, or do i get a bigger mech that i have to start over with.  I don't want to see ullers shrugging off heavy gausses, or coring assault mechs with a single medium laser burst, so there's gotta be some maximum cap, but it'd be interesting to have slight subtle differences between a fresh mech and one that has survived a dozen fights.  Perhaps the banners and custom paints are visual markers of this?