How many tons of armor is the maximum for a given 'Mech?

[HonorKnight]

I'm theorycrafting different 'Mechs, and I'm not sure how much to cap armor at.

I notice the maximum AMOUNT of armor seems to be generally double the amount of structure, so just as a wild guess does that mean I can take the structure tons from http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Technical_Readout_3028 and multiply that by 2?

 

[Havamal]

I'm theorycrafting different 'Mechs, and I'm not sure how much to cap armor at.

I notice the maximum AMOUNT of armor seems to be generally double the amount of structure, so just as a wild guess does that mean I can take the structure tons from http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Technical_Readout_3028 and multiply that by 2?

I'm with you there. No way to know how they handled that yet. I dont recall any concrete confirmations to quote.

 

[stjobe]

I'm theorycrafting different 'Mechs, and I'm not sure how much to cap armor at.

I notice the maximum AMOUNT of armor seems to be generally double the amount of structure, so just as a wild guess does that mean I can take the structure tons from http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Technical_Readout_3028 and multiply that by 2?

No, it's not quite as easy as that. You're right in that a 'Mech can have twice the points of armour it has points of internal structure*, but that has nothing to do with tonnage.

You'd have to look up the Internal Structure Table in Tech Manual, p.47 (edit: Or look at a character sheet in e.g. a TRO) to find out how many points of internal structure a certain tonnage chassis has, and then double that to find out the maximum number of armour points (and then divide by 16 to find out armour tonnage, since one ton of armour is 16 points)

*Except the head, which always has three points of internal structure and can have a maximum of nine points of armour, no matter what tonnage the 'Mech is.

Also, these are the TT rules; I believe HBS has followed PGI's example and doubled the internal structure points* and therefore also the armour points (so one ton of armour is 32 points).

*Again, except the head; IIRC PGI made the head have five times the internal structure (15 points), and with 18 armour max.

 

[Amechwarrior]

What stjobe says also comports with the chassisdef max armor values in the beta files. 2x IS max, with head getting a max of 45. 1 Ton of HBS armor is 80 points, 16x5 from TT numbers.

 

[HonorKnight]

1 Ton of HBS armor is 80 points, 16x5 from TT numbers.

So... let's talk a little more concrete shall we? Take a Stalker, for example, I see max armor amounts of 140, 180, 270, 180, 140, 180, 180, and max rear armor of 110, 120, and 110, for a total of 1610 body armor, plus 45 in the head for a total of 1655. How much would that weigh then? 20.6875? 20? 21? 20.5?

 

[CarpeMortis]

So... let's talk a little more concrete shall we? Take a Stalker, for example, I see max armor amounts of 140, 180, 270, 180, 140, 180, 180, and max rear armor of 110, 120, and 110, for a total of 1610 body armor, plus 45 in the head for a total of 1655. How much would that weigh then? 20.6875? 20? 21? 20.5?

I don't know how it works in HBS, but in TT there is no difference between max front and rear just a Max total between the two of 2x Internal structure. The question then would be is the total of the front and rear armor more than 2x the IS? So for the CT: (270+180)/2 = 225 Is 225 the Internal structure for the stalker's CT?

 

[stjobe]

So... let's talk a little more concrete shall we? Take a Stalker, for example, I see max armor amounts of 140, 180, 270, 180, 140, 180, 180, and max rear armor of 110, 120, and 110, for a total of 1610 body armor, plus 45 in the head for a total of 1655. How much would that weigh then? 20.6875? 20? 21? 20.5?

A TT Stalker has a max armour value of 263, which divided by 16 is 16.4375, or 16.5 tons.
The internal structure values for an 85-ton 'Mech is:

H: 3
CT : 27
RT/LT: 18
RA/LA: 14
RL/LL: 18​

for a total of 3+27+18+18+14+14+18+18 = 130 points of internal structure. Double that and add an extra 3 to the head and you have 263.

Max armour would be:

H: 9 (0.5625 tons)
CT: 54 (3.375 tons)
RT/LT: 36 (2.25 tons)
RA/LA: 28 (1.75 tons)
RL/LL: 36 (2.25 tons)​

for a total of 9+54+36+36+28+28+36+36 = 263 points and 16.4375 tons.

I don't know how it works in HBS, but in TT there is no difference between max front and rear just a Max total between the two of 2x Internal structure. The question then would be is the total of the front and rear armor more than 2x the IS? So for the CT: (270+180)/2 = 225 Is 225 the Internal structure for the stalker's CT?

You are correct. If one subtracts the rear values HonorKnight supplied, one ends up with 1315 points of armour, which divided by 80 (as per Amechwarrior's post) gives 16.4375, the same number as the max armour tonnage from TT as I showed above.

 

[Amechwarrior]

Ignore the rear armor part for a total of 16.43t max. Some mechs have poor rounding like the Atlas could have like 1 or so more points of armor, but it would need to allocate a whole 1/2ton just to equip that last point. Here I think the Stalker could max out at 16.5 tons with just a little wasted armor points. I'm on mobile, so I can't really confirm everything is correct.

Edit: Beaten already, what stjobe said.

 

[Ragnar Blackthorne]

I don't know how it works in HBS, but in TT there is no difference between max front and rear just a Max total between the two of 2x Internal structure. The question then would be is the total of the front and rear armor more than 2x the IS? So for the CT: (270+180)/2 = 225 Is 225 the Internal structure for the stalker's CT?

Assuming HBS works exactly like PGI's system, armor for each torso segment works like they do in tabletop, with a shared max armor amount between front and rear. In Mechwarrior Online, my Stalker has 54 CT structure and 108 max CT armor.

Edit: Also, in MWO 32 armor = 1 ton as stated earlier.

 

[HonorKnight]

Hmm... so looking through the beta files, all the 'Mechs that were enabled in the beta have armor totals that exactly equal their expected tonnages of armor based on http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Technical_Readout_3028; however, the 'Mechs that were not enabled have irregular assigned armor amounts, for example the stock blackjack numbers add up to 8.4375 tons of armor instead of 8.5 exactly...

 

[Ragnar Blackthorne]

Hmm... so looking through the beta files, all the 'Mechs that were enabled in the beta have armor totals that exactly equal their expected tonnages of armor based on http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Technical_Readout_3028; however, the 'Mechs that were not enabled have irregular assigned armor amounts, for example the stock blackjack numbers add up to 8.4375 tons of armor instead of 8.5 exactly...

I'm new around these parts so I don't know the beta numbers, but at a guess, with the mechs considered "final" enough to be enabled HBS distributed a few extra points of max armor to round out the tonnage, while the disabled mechs are using "tabletop values x2" which gets rounded up to the next tenth of a ton (because if your overall tonnage is sitting at 84.5375 you can't fit half a ton of ammo). The tabletop armor values don't always have the actual tonnage of a max-armor mech at a round value, as stjobe demonstrated above.

 

[Amechwarrior]

Also the CN9-AL has about 20+ more points on the torsos that is legally allowed on both TT and it's own chassisdef. I fixed that on my latest Post Beta Mod Pack release.

 

[HonorKnight]

Also the CN9-AL has about 20+ more points on the torsos that is legally allowed on both TT and it's own chassisdef. I fixed that on my latest Post Beta Mod Pack release.

Hmm... spider max head armor is wrong but it's clear it should be 45... trebuchet's max CT armor is wrong, but it's clear it should be 160... Either the King Crab or the Atlas has the wrong max CT armor, it's hard to say for sure which of those is right with nothing else to compare them to.

 

[Prussian Havoc]

Also the CN9-AL has about 20+ more points on the torsos that is legally allowed on both TT and it's own chassisdef. I fixed that on my latest Post Beta Mod Pack release.

While we won't have Mech Quirks, it is the distinctiveness of things like the CN9-AL's 20+ point torsos that I hope will differentiate Mechs from one another and serve to accentuate BattleMech Variant Core Identity. : )

 

[ronhatch]

Here's a screenshot of the spreadsheet I use to track this:

Tonnage is the mech tonnage. Structure and Armor are the TT values, so multiply by 5 for this game... then add 1 to the structure for the head. Total Damage is simply Structure + Armor. Armor Tonnage is if you load up to the maximum possible armor values. Wasted Armor is how many unused points of armor were in that last half ton (half a ton of armor is 8 TT points, so 7 is the maximum value here). Practical Tonnage is how much the armor weighs if you refuse to waste more than half the potential points in that last half ton of armor.

Oh, and in case it was unclear, that Wasted Armor thing happens because the construction rules require that armor be bought in half ton lots (so 8 points at a time), but the maximum amount of armor is never an exact multiple of that.

 

[HonorKnight]

Some mechs have poor rounding like the Atlas could have like 1 or so more points of armor, but it would need to allocate a whole 1/2ton just to equip that last point.

What did you mean by this? I show the Atlas at 1545 points or 19.31 max tons of armor (possibly 1535 points or 19.19 tons, if the King Crab has the correct CT number instead of the Atlas)

 

[HonorKnight]

It looks like the beta figures for max armor for Atlas and Commando differ from tabletop. Probably just typos, though, rather than intentional deviations.

 

[HonorKnight]

That table is exactly what I was looking for ronhatch, thanks! Now I can theory-craft with a clear armor cap (or I suppose a soft cap and a hard cap)

 

[ronhatch]

That table is exactly what I was looking for ronhatch, thanks! Now I can theory-craft with a clear armor cap (or I suppose a soft cap and a hard cap)

Welcome. The issue comes up often enough when designing mechs that I had the table available... just had to figure out how to get a readable version of it onto the forum.

 

[ronhatch]

What did you mean by this? I show the Atlas at 1545 points or 19.31 max tons of armor (possibly 1535 points or 19.19 tons, if the King Crab has the correct CT number instead of the Atlas)

Yeah, I remember including the Atlas internal structure in my list of bugs in the mech data. And 307*5 is indeed 1535. The 19.19 tons relates to the 5 wasted points in my table... just a matter of how you want to track the information.