Weapon damage at various ranges

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Weapon damage at various ranges

Post by Skyfaller »

There's been a thread about how strange it is that lasers do full damage at 600 and no damage at 601m. It made me think about the subject, but now I can't find the thread again ...
So I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. Please let me know if you find errors.

Lasers:
In contrast to MW2's "travelling" lasers which you can see moving to their target, at a speed of 300,000km per second it makes no sense to simulate movement in a computer game. That's why MW3's continuous beams are more realistical in this regard. Along its path, the beam loses cohesion, meaning that it widens linearly. As it widens linearly, the energy in its cross-sectional area remains constant, but the energy per area drops linearly, so damage could be understood to drop proportionally to inverse distance.

Ballistics:
There are two factors affecting ballistics:
  • Aerodynamic resistance. Along its path, the speed of the projectile drops proportionally to the speed, so it drops proportional to the squared distance travelled until it reaches zero. However, at its travelling speed, most projectiles travel quite far before this becomes an issue.
  • Drop. Even at its high velocities, the projectile drops normally due to gravity, so the projectile does not travel along a ray. It may also be thrown off by wind, making a weapon more difficult to aim accurately.
So for ballistic weapons, it is more difficult to aim them at higher ranges, but apart from that, an individual slug should keep most of its damage potential. Obviously, the slugs travel far longer than indicated by BT weapon ranges. I think this is most painfully obvious with MG, which at ranges less
than 100m can damage even a BattleMech, although in reality their slugs may travel for kilometers.

PPC:
This is a plasma weapon, so the rules of conductivity would apply. Electric resistance reduces the amount of
electricity linearly, so the amount of damage is proportional to inverse range? However, at closer ranges, the weapon's effect is reduced to prevent feedback.

Missiles:
The missile runs out of fuel after a certain distance. It flies on inertia until it hits the ground and explodes. Missiles have to counter gravity and wind effects, if present.

Weapon focal point:
Without a targetting computer, all weapons simply fire parallel, whereas a targetting computer might allow to move
weapons so that their rays meet in one point.
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Re: Weapon damage at various ranges

Post by Pepsi-Wolf »

i dont know much about Physics, Electricity, and such

The focal point makes sense to me, but I'm not sure thats how it works in battletech.

In battletech, the actual component that enables a mechwarrior to fire is the sensors -- and this has been proven while playing megamek (online version of btech). In one game I got my sensors hit twice (or three times) destroying the sensors, which my mech could not fire or physically attack at that point.

The Targeting Computer in Battletech allows the (clan)mechwarrior to aim at a specific part of the enemy mech (i.e. leg, head, etc..)

At least this is how i take it.
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Re: Weapon damage at various ranges

Post by Freeza-CII »

Very interesting. But I may say to much realism can kill a game. but its your project build it as you see fit.

Weapons would have a Optimal Range The range in which they do the most damage. and there Accuracy fall off. Where the further they are the less damage you do or possibly miss. this would let you deal with cohesion and the Projectile drop and Plasma diffusion. Ballistic weapons how ever should have 100% accuracy do to there tracking IF there a tracking weapon.

Ballistic weapons would be 100% Accurate but would have a flight time and a tracking so they would still be DODGEable not just a Lobbers delight to just get a ownage tank of missile boats. The faster the missile the less there tracking. And dumb fire missiles would just be 100% accurate but they have a gravity drop that is proportional to the game settings. But there lack of tracking systems means they can have a bigger explosive yeild.

Projectile weapons Would have a greater Fall off because of there scatter effect and effect from gravity. Now its not always true that with the smaller the gun the greater the accuracy. for instance the .50 cal desert eagle is more accurate then a .22 cal revolver because of aero dynamics and there weight. So with a Projectile. You would have a High Fall off with a Low Optimal.

Lasers weapons Hmm this one is tricky. There extreemly accurate. but there power drop off over range is what kills them. So they would have a High optimal and a low fall off. Making them have great all pretty much all ranges Like they are now.

Plasma weapons aka PPC Flammers. Plasma can only be mantained in a high magnetic feild or by its own gravity much like a sun. After leaving that field it would slowly loose destructive power. So A ppc could go 1.24k but at its max range it wouldnt do as much as it would if you were close. These weapons wouldnt be that accurate either. Kinda a spead effect splash as we all know the ppc and the flammer are known for. So i think they would have a low optimal and a low fall off it doesnt make them useless.

You have to remember accuracy is only determined by the players skill not the game overall. Scatter/defussion effects should only be the effect on accuracy. So there shouldnt be I shoot a laser while pointed at you and it flys off on some random vector around them.

OK Now for the whole thing about how the weapons would hit. The mechs have computers And it wouldnt be that unreasonable that the weapons would have a semi moveable mount so they could be moved to a focus fire but only to the reticle and range of the mech. How ever they should not beable to move to target the head aka AUTO AIM. Like Mech 3 you still have to manually put the reticle in the target circle for targeting parts. Having the weapons just Fire off on a straight line seems kinda ridiculous to me see as there are in the 31st century with walking Magnetohydrodynamic nuke reactor.
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Re: Weapon damage at various ranges

Post by Cyril »

the erppc is not a plasma weapon.

the erppc shoots out a bolt of lighting,,,this clears the path of pollutants like air, and allow the particles to be shot at mech at close to the speed of light. I don't think they have ever mentioned what particles are using, but any heavy element would do.

it is a compact particle collider.
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Re: Weapon damage at various ranges

Post by Freeza-CII »

Lightning bolts eh. Well the problem with lightning bolts is they follow the path of least resistance to ground So it would not make a straight line. But yes that is the only way a Particle accelerator would work in a vacuum. A laser could do the same thing. I dont know if it would be heavy element. Most particle accelerators use Gold or tungsten i believe.

But Still capable of doing what you say. It would still have a power drop off because the atmosphere coming back together and just that the particles would begin to scatter.
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Re: Weapon damage at various ranges

Post by Skyfaller »

Thanks for the feedback and discussion so far. There have been similar discussions here and here.

It appears my thoughts about lasers and ballistic weapons have been flawed. The laser widens in two dimensions, so its energy per sqare area hit would drop by inverse sqared distance. For the high velocities of bullets of all sort, aerodynamic resistance is likely proportional to squared speed, so speed would fall proportionally to sqared speed. However, assuming linear falloff for these curves makes the implementation easier and still improves upon the constant damage we currently have.

The rules list the following weapons types as ballistic: all autocannon variants, Flamer, Gauss, machine guns. Missiles are another category.

The master rules describe PPC's as a "magnetic accelerator firing high-energy proton or ion bolts". They only look like a lightning. So my thoughts on the PPC were flawed as well. The PPC causes damage through heat and kinetic impact. Heat would decrease proportional to the difference to the environment temperature, and the kinetic component loses speed in the same way as a bullet.

While in BattleTech, zero amounts of damage sometimes means "The weapon would still cause damage, but you can't hit with it", a simulation can calculate with higher accuracy, still leaving the MechWarrior a chance of hitting. If we introduced the laser power decrease, lasers would do very little damage at their maximum range. In order to give lasers some of the power back that they loose in this manner, we could double the range of lasers, giving them half damage at their earlier maximum range. For projectile weapons, weapon range could be increased by a factor of five, but simulating recoil and spread would make aiming them more difficult at longer ranges. Probably the best way of doing this would be to give the player an option to decide whether to be as close to official rules as possible or to strive for more realism.
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Re: Weapon damage at various ranges

Post by Freeza-CII »

The Recoil issue. Now in mech 3 and 4 recoil and impact rocking were some of the most annoying things. Rememder physics Equal but oppisite reaction. Plus That recoil has to effect the mech and mechs arent exactly light. I would think only certain weapons would actually cause some recoil but not on the scale of before mentioned games. This Also means that you cant Knock down a mech with weapons fire either. Because If i can fire some thing that has enough force to knock you down It would have a equal amount of force on firing that it would knock down the mech firing on its butt. Its one of the things i never liked about the game. Plus you would have to believe that if these weapons are that powerful the mechs would have some kinda compensation in there torso twist and arm systems to keep them on target.

Now if you want lasers to be more like the game they would only go so far and do 100% damage. Realistic lasers would do like we have been talking about. But there Light there range is like light it goes on forever till it diffusses or hits some thing. So you could have SMALL lasers that reach out well beyond that of a guass/ppc but they would be so weak. But i belive the lasers most likely have a focusing lens in them. And this would let them hit at 100% all the time. unless the target goes beyond the focus ablity of the lens. And this is how you can have small medium and large lasers.
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Re: Weapon damage at various ranges

Post by Cyril »

Freeza-CII wrote:Lightning bolts eh. Well the problem with lightning bolts is they follow the path of least resistance to ground So it would not make a straight line. But yes that is the only way a Particle accelerator would work in a vacuum. A laser could do the same thing. I dont know if it would be heavy element. Most particle accelerators use Gold or tungsten i believe.

But Still capable of doing what you say. It would still have a power drop off because the atmosphere coming back together and just that the particles would begin to scatter.
well it didn't say how they get the lightning blot to contact,,,but that is exactly what the "bolt of energy does" it creates a vacuum. just like lightning, that is how it send the protons or ions out. if you didn't no that, the particles would loose their force very quickly.

as for recoil. lasers should not cause any recoil whatsoever. and if you wanna get too real we shouldn't be able to see them unless in a dense fogy atmosphere. i believe the rock from being hit from a laser, in the btech universe, is from the sudden vaporization of armor, and the miss-balance the new weight and the correction that the computer and you have to do.
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Re: Weapon damage at various ranges

Post by Freeza-CII »

Not that is has anything to do with ranges i believe the lasers should be visble. But with a slight twist hehe. IS small med and large should have a different color and sound then Clan lasers being the standard sounds hehe.

That would be a good way to knock down a mech but at the point of removing that much armor i would see the mech just exploding. So it all seems rather pointless to have it fall down from weapons fire. I would bring up the Idea of Melee damage and weapon but maybe for another time or project.
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