So it seems that mp4 will apply damage to armor in a new way... does it mean that original Microshaft mechs will not suffer from cheesearmor central torso, like Warhawks or Blacknights? Thinking about it, we can max. FF armor in all body and spent some extra weight in hardened armor in TC...w00t.
Once again, thanks for the good work...

Here are the types of armor currently implemented

1) FF. You know what this is. A damage sponge. 30 pts per ton
2) Reactive/Reflective. These take off 50% of the ballistic/energy damage. 20 pts per ton
3) (new) Standard armor. This takes off 25% of damage from all weapons. 20 pts per ton
4) (new) Hardened armor. This takes off 25% (or is it 33% not in front of machine to recall) of damage from all weapons
(just like standard). 10 pts per ton.
5) (new) Stealth armor. This behaves like FF, but the more coverage you have, the less of a radar signal you
have on the mech. This uses up heat when active. I think this is 30 pts per ton (I forget at the moment what it is)


In addition, each armor type has a DAMAGE REDUCTION amount. This is a fundamental change in the way armor works.
So, a weapon (any type) has it attack strength reduced by the DR BEFORE other modifiers are applied. So, for example,
a mech with a DR of 7 would be impervious to ERLLs (7 - 7 = 0).

Each section has its own DR. DR is proportional the amount of armor present minus an armor type dependent offset. So, DR can be reduced to zero through enough damage taken to the section.


OK, in simple terms, DR = (armor value)/(armor per ton) - offset.

Off the top of my head I think the offsets are like this:

DR Offset:
FF = 1.0
Std/Refl/Reac = 0.5
Hardened = 0.0
Stealth is a special case, it NEVER has a DR value.

Now, DR can be negated by using AP ammo type which is available for autocannons, heavy MGs, a wide variety of SRMS, MRMS, ATMS. When these weapon************ with this ammo loaded the DR is ignored and damage goes directly to the section as everyone is used to. AP ammo is heavy though (like depleted uranium tipped). So, these kinds of weapons can be used to reduce DR values so other weapons can be more effective.











In addition,

What's the difference between Standard and Hardened armor? I think you missed some key items Jeho.

DR?

50 pts of std armor gives you are DR of 50/20-0.5=2.0, 50 pts of hardened armor gives a DR of 50/10=5.0

Aww, ok. Thanks for the explanaton!

Not to mention that based on what I am reading, you can quite simply mount more tons of armor on a location that has Hardened as an option. Of course, that precious tonnage could be used for weapons, but that really depends on what role you have in a team... For instance, a speedy turtle 'Mech with hardened armor and a C3 Slave can relay all kinds of information while withstanding all kinds of firepower. The only problem is that it obviously won't be able to dish it back out, but that TAG spotting laser has to be useful for something, right?

Goddam, this will definitely re-define team play!

Wait, one more question. Will the DR affect damage per alpha or per weapon damage?

It is per weapon hit.

Nice, very nice ... can't think of other questions. I just like to see these changes in action!

Ok, so I will save some tons for my Warhawk CT armor. He is now jumping around in happiness... without jumpjets heh

The example I listed was actually a very extreme idea. I can think of other ways to (ab)use the armor system, such as making a 'Mech stealthy while making it deceptively hard to take down...

Hehehe, but that wouldn't be an abuse, 'coz it cannot dish-off much damage. Worst case abuse I could think of is to use a very fast, high DR mech with full electronics. That's a very nice scout mech!

Another question pops into my mind. If example an Annihilator boating a RAC2 shoots another fresh assault with full hardened armor, will this mean that the DR mech would receive zero damage and zero knock?

If it does, then combined arms/weapons and teamwork is definitely a must!

Yes. Unless the RAC2 were loaded with AP, then it would bypass the DR.

Armor piercing rounds will be available for ballistics only? Sorry, for the tons of posts/questions, I just like to get more detail so I'd be ready when MP4 comes out.

The problem is that Stealth armor (according to an older post) has zero DR at all. However, at the cost of getting back some of that radar signature, you can equip very key locations with Standard or Hardened armor, such as in the Center Torso or a Side Torso for protecting a key weapon slot. Maxing out the other locations with Stealth Armor can preserve the precious stealth system.

Ooooh, man, I am so loving the possibilities this system is going to create. Gone are the days of slapping on a few weapons in a few minutes and calling it good...

Yah, so much possibilities now. My mech variants inventory would be like ... triple in size?

Is the "many variants" problem already fixed (ie. had to get back to lobby 'coz variant selection is messed-up)?

Is there anything being done to keep laser weapons competitive? It seems like this new armor system could be very rough on them given their already lowish damage.

Just curious since it seems that missiles and ballistics are getting a good reworking but I haven't seen a lot about energy weapons.

So stealth basically gives you IFF on body parts, as well as a weaker radar signature. What would be cool is if you guys could find a way to make it so that stealth disallows someone to select you on their radar and read your damage read out. No q locks, no radar select, no nothing....well, you wouldn't get a damage report on the parts that are stealthed.

Stealth armor doesn't quite work that way. :/ It's just mostly the whole smaller signature thing and being therefore harder to target, but nothing else.

I don't care if that's how it works in BattleTech or whatever, but I think it would be really useful if something could prevent the other guy from reading your damage.

that would be useful

I must agree that that might be a good idea, though it would be a better idea if MW4 had damage modelling so you could see where you've messed up on the enemy.

Don't the sections turn black when they are damaged?

yes they turn black. but thats hardly visible at ranges and some dark camos hide that damage pretty well.
i think hes talking about 3d damage or damagetextures. think IL-2 kind of damage model.
while i agree that it would be awesome to have such a damagemodel in mechwarrior it would be a big load of work to do for all the models and so on. i dont know how damgetextures could be implemented but even that is unlikely i think.

but think of it this way. battlechs are walking tanks. go to youtube and look for videos wich show you destroyed tanks. the overall structure is mostly intakt. some holes, some bits blown away but overall the tank is recognisable. but you see black arees on their hull because they are burned out from within. battelmech should have the same way to take damage. considering that on mw4 mechs legs and arms can be blown of leaving some burned out struts stikink from the hull - we have an appropriate damagemodel for the game.


ed

Wow, I definitely like the new armor types. This is really going to bring Battletech and Mechwarrior back together from the looks of it

Will we be able to "patchwork" armor? For an example, be able to mount hardened armor on the center torso, reactive armor on the arms, reflective on the legs, and ferro-fibrous on the rear-torsos and head?

Yes. If you look closely at the mechlab shot I posted it shows just that.

Oh, I didn't notice that picture. Awesome!

Random question: How will volley weapons such as UACs, Missile racks that fire multiple "sets" of missiles interact with damage reduction?

For instance; The ©LRM20 does 16 pts of damage spread between 4 individual projectiles. Targeted against a mech section with DR=2, will total damage be 14=(4+4+4+4-2) or 8 [(4-2)+(4-2)+(4-2)+(4-2)]?

I assume the latter as there's no guarantee all projectiles will hit the same section, and DR will be different from section to section and therefore need to be calculated per projectile. Heck, even if they were all hitting the same section, each hit from the same volley would reduce the armor present on that section, thereby reducing the DR applied to the hits after it, necessitating individual calculation per impact.

Am I on the right track here, or completely off my rocker?

It's per projectile, so the damage would be 8.

Wow. This is really gonna start making hose assault mechs worth their tonnage.

I'm curious how you're implementing selection between AP and normal ballistics ammunition. I'm hoping you wont' have to use duplicate weapons with AP rounds, that could clutter up the weapons list a bit - but I'm not really sure how else you'd do it. Of course, half the other stuff you're doing in MP4 is stuff I would have assumed impossible anyways.

From the 'mech lab pictures I have seen, ammunition selection will be provided with a separate box positioned next to the ammunition amount box.

I haven't seen those screens, but I was hoping that's how they'd do it.

For Standard/hardened armor where it takes off a percentage of damage, is that taken off before DR or after DR? And do any of these have any effect on missiles since reflective/reactive do not?

Also, how are specials treated? Do they carry the same armor type of the mech part they are attached to or are they all the equivalent of FF?

Maybe... but remember than a fast medium with AP rounds still can outrun an assault and shred it to tears as always... in the proper hands ( not mine, btw. I suck handling speedys)

DR is taken off first, then the resistance.

DR affects all weapons including missiles.




Specials are treated as FF.

It seems this is implied in the system, but I just wanted to confirm - is DR is based on the *current* armor value? That is, if your mech starts losing chunks of armour due to damage, will DR decrease proportionally? If that holds, i suppose then it would be an incentive for a mech to hold a mix of weapons much like CBT; heavy guns to break a mech's armour down, and secondary "chewy" weapons to exploit gaps in armour. Or a mix of configs that emphasize going after weakened mechs, etc.

YES!




Give the man a gold star!

Don't forget armor piercing ammunition on ACs and SRMs/MRMs which BYPASS DR (DR to them is zero).

Awesome! This would certainly minimize boating. I'm tired of seeing the same old configurations.

Question, if you have a DR value of 2, wouldnt that make any weapon that does less than 2 dmg do absolutely nothing, even if boated since it is a per weapon and hit basis, or would the fact that they are boated the damage added together. For instance a light machine gun Talos, can have 14 of them on their, and they do .3 dmg per shot. If they all add up then all of them do 4.2dmg every .3 seconds, so the DR value of 2 would mean it would do 2.2 dmg every .3 sec instead?

Im kinda concerned about the energy weapons since they are supposed to melt armor, and of course the ppc has the added effect of disrupting electronic systems. The only armor type that should be able to to dmg reduction to i would think would be reflective. If all armor is some sort of metal alloy then lasers would still melt it. Lasers dont do a whole ton of damage unless boated, and since they melt the armor, they usually do a small amount of internal dmg per hit once the armor is weak enough. With dmg reduction affecting all weapons and with only armor piercing rounds going to missiles and ballistics, so what is going to be given to energy weapons to make things balanced?

DR is per weapon impact. The machine guns would do nothing unless equipped with AP rounds.

AP weapons remain balanced due to halved ammo/ton.

Lasers still have unlimited ammo, amazing damage / weapon tonnage, and no weapon travel time. Plus we'll be seeing way more reactive than reflective on heavy mechs to help protect them from DR-bypassing AP rounds. The benefit there to energy boats is obvious.

unless you see alot of hardened armor with DR 5 or 6 on mechs, in which case yon erlg laser is now a popgun

Keep in mind that with the introduction of targeting computers/fire control the attractiveness of lasers when compared to travel time weapons will drop, since those weapons will be much easier to use than before when the TC/FC is in effect.

There's only a .5 ton discrepancy between the DR of hardened and reactive armor. With reactive carrying twice as many points/ton and a .5 damage multiplier against ballistics, I'm currently in favor of reactive on most assault mechs. Hardened certainly looks tough - but 10ps/ton is pretty dang heavy. Too heavy to mount five or six tons on more than a couple sections even on hundred-tonners without severely crippling their mobility or firepower.

The ERLL has been the bread-and-butter weapon of the game for years. I've got no real issue with finally needing to break out something else to crack especially well-armored assault mechs.

But then, I don't play online, just competitive lan play with a local group. So I probably don't have as much experience as a lot of you.

Not to mention most ballistics can now mount AP, so you can rely more on your strong DR to absorb energy attacks, while your reactive 50% bonus helps against AP ammo... assuming the hardened bonus is 25% reduction and not 33%.
Well, and that's also assuming AP ammo doesn't cut through the percentage modifiers.

Why don't you take the people in your group and go online instead?

Yeah, join us on Sunder.

Eh, the same old lag issues combined with my generall-not-excellent ping in the first place.

Bu you're right - we need as many regulars online as possible. I'll see what I can do.

MechQuest forum is full of robot lovers ... too bad any non-MQ related post is quickly shot.

I would actually like to hear my question answered by someone of the beta testers group that can attest to this or an admin working on the project. No offence to those that have offered answers, just i dont see how you could actually have weapons that do no dmg since anything hitting armor eventually will wear it down.

Check Jeho's posts in his profile. I think he already answered your questions multiple times (ie. re DR).