Full damage on covered targets

[Mackie42]

Hello,to the programmers of Battletech
Basically I like your implementation quite well and it gives me a lot of fun.
I already know it from the 80s.

But isn't it a bit nonsensical with the reduced damage?
A target behind a cover is of course harder to hit but that would mean a modification of the hit throw.
If a person is standing behind a wall and you can only see their head, you will hardly be able to hit them with a pistol, but if the hit is made, will it do the full damage or do you think you would get away with a bump?
Maybe you dare to try it yourself (laugh).
You can also reduce the number of missiles hitting you because they hit your cover, but the amount of explosives in your warhead remains the same.
Also, the intensity of a laser remains constant.Does the person behind the wall light up with a flashlight.Does the light spot get darker just because he's standing behind the wall?

I hope these comparisons are convincing.
The full damage should be guaranteed, but it should become more difficult to hit a covered target.

Thank you for your attention and good luck.

 

[Aleksandria]

You're treating cover as if its a 100% solid thing. Realistically, no tree or sandstorm- regardless of how furious it is- will stop a mech grade weapon of any type in a way that has some impact on accuracy.

However, it absolutely will degrade the impact in some manner. Sand particles in the air can diffuse a laser as an example, which would never make it miss but would absolutely reduce its impact. A tree won't stop an autocannon shell, but it might take a little speed off of it or adjust the angle slightly, resulting in a less effective hit. A missile could tumble and its shaped charged could detonate in a less effective manner instead of a dead-on hit.

 

[Mackie42]

All these effects assume that the target is not really hit. Clearly a projectile can become a ricochet, but if so, the actual target was not hit either.

 

[Havamal]

Hello,to the programmers of Battletech
Basically I like your implementation quite well and it gives me a lot of fun.
I already know it from the 80s.

But isn't it a bit nonsensical with the reduced damage?
A target behind a cover is of course harder to hit but that would mean a modification of the hit throw.
If a person is standing behind a wall and you can only see their head, you will hardly be able to hit them with a pistol, but if the hit is made, will it do the full damage or do you think you would get away with a bump?
Maybe you dare to try it yourself (laugh).
You can also reduce the number of missiles hitting you because they hit your cover, but the amount of explosives in your warhead remains the same.
Also, the intensity of a laser remains constant.Does the person behind the wall light up with a flashlight.Does the light spot get darker just because he's standing behind the wall?

I hope these comparisons are convincing.
The full damage should be guaranteed, but it should become more difficult to hit a covered target.

Thank you for your attention and good luck.

I wont lie, I originally didnt like the idea either. But after hundreds upon hundreds of hours in beta and the release game, it works and still feels like Battletech imho, with out extending matches past the 4 hour mark like TT used to do from ease of achieving 11s and 12s and even unhittable levels of evasiveness..
@Aleksandria has the way of it from a theorycrafting perspective.

 

[Aleksandria]

What counts as a target being "really hit" to you? If an autocannon shell plows through half a forest, starts tumbling and collides with a mechs leg sideways or at an angle, personally I would say that without any doubt, the shell hit the mech in the leg, just in a manner that was less effective. Likewise, a diffused laser doesn't miss, it just carries less focused energy.

Personally if a bullet goes through some drywall and hits someone in the leg I'm comfortable saying that person was hit in the leg with a bullet, regardless of the fact it technically hit some drywall first. And honestly when you're talking mech-level weaponry, anything short of a fortified bunker is much closer to your average homes drywall than something truly bulletproof. I would honestly consider it more ridiculous if mech targetting systems were thrown off because they're standing in a forest, because the idea that something could damage a futuristic armored robot in a meaningful way but would be stopped entirely by a humble pine tree is just a little bit nutty. Like, we blow up buildings with this stuff, I just wouldn't buy the idea that medium lasers can't go through a tree/some sand/the rubble of a building it literally just blew up, but I would believe it would experience some degraded performance as a result.

EDIT: If it helps think of cover in this game like balsa wood. If someones on the other side, you absolutely can put your fist right through it and hit them with no problem if you know where they are. But you're gonna lose a little momentum in the process, and not punch as hard- so while it didn't stop you, it did take some force away.

 

[Mackie42]

It's unrealistic, as I said before, hitting the target under an existing cover should be more difficult, but a bullet that misses the cover will hit the target with full force, it's logical that the number of misses would increase, but it's illogical with partial damage, either the target is hit with all consequences or it misses and does no damage.

 

[Wissenschaft]

This idea that cover reduces accuracy doesn't even hold true in real life. If you have a gun and someone hides behind a car, you can shoot through the car to hit them. Your accuracy isn't reduced because their hiding behind the car but you might not deal any damage to them if your bullet doesn't carry enough force to punch through the car to hit them.

The way battletech is implemented is more realistic than most games that have cover reduce accuracy.

 

[Mackie42]

I don't want to shoot through the car to hit the target behind it, I would want to find a position to have a clear view of the target, and if I only see a part of the target, for example the head, it's harder to hit, I wouldn't try to shoot through the car.

PS: Maybe I misunderstood the argument because of the translator.

 

[yrrot]

It's an abstraction, either way. To be honest, it doesn't really matter which way it is implemented, you are going to either 1) hit the target in cover less often, doing less damage, or 2) hit the target for less damage more often.

The hit reduction probably would favor light mechs a little bit, since they already have decent evasion to further stack on it. However, the damage reduction makes cover slightly better in the late game when you can't rely on low hit chances to save you.

The nice thing about the damage reduction version, also, is that you even out the highs and lows a bit. Instead of popping into cover and still getting slammed by a lucky AC/20 round that managed to hit you through evasion, you just get a flat reduction to damage. It aggregates out about the same in the long run over many missions, but the reduced damage ends up evening the abstraction out so you don't get those spikes or streaks of miss/miss/BIG hit/miss/miss that a to-hit penalty would cause.

 

[wolfhoundtoo]

It's a game not a combat sim. The point of the rules as they stand are meant for playability. Given that you routinely face 3 times the force that you can bring when playing against the computer a change to the battle system regarding cover would be a significant amount of work for the development team. Given that they are working on a 2nd expansion (with a 3rd planned), I don't see them deciding to totally rewrite the battle system (along with the necessary tweaking that would be required for the campaign and career mode options).

 

[Takoita]

I believe that's the difference between cover and concealment. Cover hopefully makes things hit you less hard, concealment, well, conceals your exact position.

The second one is kind of represented by forest tiles reducing visual spotting distance from both standing inside, looking outside and standing outside, looking inside the tile. You still see the power plant and other thermals and electronics going on your radar somewhere in there, but not quite enough to make an accurate shot attempt without some additional fiddling (sensor lock).

 

[jj284b]

i find more problematic that hit to the rear ignore cover.. after all, cover is cover, its solid, therefore it should not matter if you are outflanked or not.. But of course pilot abilities like bulwark should not apply from rear..

 

[Mackie42]

Yes, it is a game, but it simulates a battle, so it is also a combat simulation. In the regular rule books of FASA there was no such nonsense. There the corresponding advantages and disadvantages were placed accordingly on the hit throw and with too high a value was not to hit the target. So completely uncompromising This was more credible than a barely perceptible target to be able to hit easier, but with a M107 only the damage of a pea gun to do.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

 

[Mackie42]

I notice that this discussion is leading nowhere.
I personally can't make friends with Mechs who are equipped with foam bullets.
Maybe it would still be worth a try to deal with ballistics, kinetics and general physics.

 

[Wolf von Versweber]

You are treating cover as if it was an impenetrable object, which is a somewhat decent approximation compared to squishy humans, but in itself unrealistic when we talk about something like tanks or mechs, which are more durable than most cover.

In the first and second world war some tanks could mount trees on their sides to reduce damage ... it certainly didn't make them harder to hit. A tree or brick wall will not stop a tank projectile, but it takes energy to pass through, thus reducing damage to the target behind it. A warhead exploding on a tree besides you will still damage you, because of the explosion, but less than a direct hit. A laser burning through some trees transfers less energy into the armour.

In reality cover fullfilles both roles, hiding a target from being hit and reducing the potential damage; it just happens that unarmoured humans mostly don't benefit from the reduced damage, because it's still leathal enough.

Any game has to make compromises, health/armour bars for example. They chose the compromise that's better for gameplay.

 

[Ben G]

There is also “partial cover” of sorts in the game already. If there is intervening terrain, but not enough to block LoS, the target line gets dimmer and the target is harder to hit.

 

[Mackie42]

I'll try to explain it one more time.
I guess you want to hit the target and not the cover.
Even in the FASA Battletech rulebook of 1988, page 21 explains: "It is possible to fire in or through forest fields, but the hit throw is modified".
This modified hit throw is what I have been talking about all along, which will make the target more difficult to hit. This would also result in rockets being hit in smaller numbers (if the modified hit succeeds at all), but any rocket that did not fly against a tree would have the full damage of the individual rocket.
If a target would be 75% covered I would not waste any valuable ammunition with an autocannon but look for a more advantageous position.
Every weapon that only hits the cover does NO damage to the target, of course. If a hit should be achieved anyway, the cover was passed and this hit will be fully rated.
Likewise the opponent could also refrain from an attack on a well covered target because of a too low hit probability in order to look for a better position.
In the normal rules also a target behind 2 honeycombs with dense forest would not be recognizable any more.
I find it just unbelievable that the program allows in such a situation depending on the weapon hit probabilities of over 85% which then hardly do anything.
Let's be honest, would you aim at a target you can hardly recognize? (Maybe it's an ally with a fancy IFF transponder) (grins)

I only mean that more tactical skill would be necessary due to the more difficult meeting instead of just bolting on with high probability at low prices (hit points).

Maybe I'm just too stubborn with the rules of the board game. (After almost 30 years as a game leader, I won't be able to get rid of that anymore)

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

 

[Timaeus]

No one is confused by what is trying to be explained. You've done quite well given the language barrier.

That said, what was chosen for this game (where cover provides damage reduction instead of making it harder to hit) was done because because during initial development feedback to the Devs was given that told them more or less that hitting, but with reduced damage, is better than not hitting at all. That is why cover is damage reduction instead of increasing difficulty to hit.

 

[Mackie42]

All right, thanks for that information.
I don't see much sense in it, but before I become the stubborn villain of the forum, I'll take it better.

I also thank my critics for their patience with me.

 

[Doc_Holliday]

I would say to clarify, that changes from the original, tabletop game were made in order to improve gameplay. Since this is not a direct port and is a video game for entertainment, changes had to be made for mass appeal, especially when taking non-grognards [no disrespect to the grognards /non-grognards intended] into effect.