LRMs vs Heads

[Varkin]

IIRC, the clustering effect breaks the volley down in to groups of 5. The first missile in a group has a chance to hit the head. If it misses, so will the next 4. This means an LRM 20 has 4 chances to land at least one head hit, while an LRM 5 has one.

No. With LRMs in this game each missile rolls for location based off the area that the first missile hits and has weighted values to hit areas near that location. However if the first missile doesn't hit the head no other missile in that volley can hit the head. Only in tabletop does it group into 5 with LRMs.

 

[Gizardpuke]

I am not sure about that.
Have you ever seen more than one headshot per round?
My theory at the moment is that more projectiles are desirable, since each projectile has a chance of causing a headshot, but that once a headshot has been achieved no additional headshot can be achieved.
You might get additional pilot damage (side torso damage, toppling the mech) but I don't think there is a chance of more than one hit on the head per round.

i have, ive had a head shot from 3 consecutive AI in the same combat round. so yes, its possible.

 

[Varkin]

Does it work as designed or is it a bug (meaning there should be 4 injuries, instead of 2)?

You can only receive one "pilot injury" per each time a mech fires at you. So if a mech fires at you with 3 small lasers and defies probability and all 3 of them hit the head you will only receive 1 pilot injury. You will take the armor and structure damage from the 3 hits though. If you fall over from stability damage though you can take another pilot injury from that.

 

[Holy.Death]

You can only receive "pilot injury" per each time a mech fires at you. So if a mech fires at you with 3 small lasers and defies probability and all 3 of them hit the head you will only receive 1 pilot injury. You will take the armor and structure damage from the 3 hits though. If you fall over from stability damage though you can take another pilot injury from that.

I rarely get injuries from anything else than a head hit (and an occasional knockdown), so my pilots are in no real danger of being killed by losing mech's parts, which is why I thought injuries from these should count. But that's just me. I thank you for the explanation.

 

[Naeron66]

I rarely get injuries from anything else than a head hit (and an occasional knockdown), so my pilots are in no real danger of being killed by losing mech's parts, which is why I thought injuries from these should count. But that's just me. I thank you for the explanation.

They do count but to prevent us exploiting the called shot system and to lower the chances of our own pilots being out of service due to long stays in the med-baay HBS obviously decided that they should limit it to 1 injury per volley plus an extra one for the knockdown.

 

[Ri0Rdian]

I would actually like an option for unlimited injuries per volley. If you get unlucky you die in one salvo even without direct head destruction. Applies to enemy and to me. Would make for more interesting and realistic gameplay (at least I believe so, maybe if I tried it I would change my mind).

Too bad I don't think this will happen. Maybe a mod, if it is even possible to mod such thing (quite likely it is hardcoded or buried somewhere with no access to it).

 

[Naeron66]

I would actually like an option for unlimited injuries per volley. If you get unlucky you die in one salvo even without direct head destruction. Applies to enemy and to me. Would make for more interesting and realistic gameplay (at least I believe so, maybe if I tried it I would change my mind).

Too bad I don't think this will happen. Maybe a mod, if it is even possible to mod such thing (quite likely it is hardcoded or buried somewhere with no access to it).

HBS are talking about introducing difficulty sliders, what you suggest might be good for an Ironman mode.

 

[Manwue]

I think that the confirmation bias that most players are exibiting here is caused by 2 things: Volume of out-of-sight LRM rain, and the Striker vehicles.
Almost all vanilla loadouts (the ones the OpFor is using) have LRM launchers in them. With most random missions putting you against 2 lances, it is cammon to be engaged with one lance while the other just rains LRMs on you. Therefore, you are subjected to far more LRM hits than, for example, AC hits. Obviously if you get attacked by LRMs 4 times more often, you will get Headshots from them 4 times more often. Think back. How often in your game so far have you had an AC headshot? ACs are scary, and you take measures to avoid getting repeatedly hit by one. LRMs on the other hand, just happen way too often, and therefore they cause more Headshots.
The second culprit in this confirmation bias issue is the Striker vehicle. It has a mix of LRMs and SRMs. Now, SRMs are really scary when it comes to Headshots. A Striker can very reliably cause a headshot every 2 voleys or so, if you wander inside the SRM range. But SRM range is not actually short. It is pretty decent. Add to that the fact that strikers travel in groups. And add to that the fact that strikers are common in the early game, where pilots are rare, untrained, and players not too aware of the dangers, and you get a mixture that makes players create a perception that stays with them. As soon as the SRM-totting Strikers are out of the picture in favour of the Demolishers, the rate of Headshots received drops dramatically (you DO remember each and every time you got headshoted by a demolisher). And yes, I did run my Shadowhawk in the midst of a striker convoy to stomp on them early in the campaign, and yes, they did kill my pilot (eventually). And I was as frustrated as some of the players in the posts above seem to be. If something needs to change it is the SRMs (they should follow the LRM rule) and most players will not develop that frustration any more.

 

[Naeron66]

I think that the confirmation bias that most players are exibiting here is caused by 2 things: Volume of out-of-sight LRM rain, and the Striker vehicles.

A contributing factor may also be Opfor with more than 1 launcher, it can be hard to see that a mech has fired 2 smaller LRMs rather than 1 if you are not looking for it.

 

[Carl_Bar]

A contributing factor may also be Opfor with more than 1 launcher, it can be hard to see that a mech has fired 2 smaller LRMs rather than 1 if you are not looking for it.

ALso they'll generally fire LRM;s at any range outside minimum, at the upper ends of SRM rnage this can result in a mixture of LRM's and SRM's coming flying in. Which isn't ideal as far as headshot odds go.

 

[Amechwarrior]

So I talked to the combat engineer and we looked at the code.

I was wrong about the LRM clustering. I thought that had been removed, but apparently LRMs still have clustering rolls so the first hit location determines valid hits. If the first hit is not a head hit, then subsequent rolls for that rack can not be a head hit. I'll correct my steam guide to reflect this. Good find all.

I was right about the only one MechWarrior injury per volley of fire. So if you have a volley of fire that cooks the ammo, hits the head twice, and blows up two torsos, that's lumped up into one injury. And then if that knocks your mech down, it will inflict a second injury.

- Eck

I believe there might be an incredibly rare 3 pilot hit combo. It happened on one of the pre-release streamers but I can't recall when.

1. Initial Melee attack destroys side torso and triggers knockdown, one injury from torso loss.

2. Knockdown, one injury.

3. Support weapons trigger another final injury. The stream was the other side torso loss, but head plink or ammo explosion would likely work too.

I think the game treated the melee attack and the support weapons as different attack salvos. I haven't been able to recreate this situation on the launch game. However, it's such a rare event I doubt it could be exploited.

 

[HBS_Eck]

I believe there might be an incredibly rare 3 pilot hit combo. It happened on one of the pre-release streamers but I can't recall when.

1. Initial Melee attack destroys side torso and triggers knockdown, one injury from torso loss.

2. Knockdown, one injury.

3. Support weapons trigger another final injury. The stream was the other side torso loss, but head plink or ammo explosion would likely work too.

I think the game treated the melee attack and the support weapons as different attack salvos. I haven't been able to recreate this situation on the launch game. However, it's such a rare event I doubt it could be exploited.

Since the melee sequence and fire sequence are separate, I bet you're right. It's rare enough that I think it's cool, but I'll bring it up with the combat engineer and designer to see what they think.

- Eck

 

[Ri0Rdian]

Since the melee sequence and fire sequence are separate, I bet you're right. It's rare enough that I think it's cool, but I'll bring it up with the combat engineer and designer to see what they think.

- Eck

While at it, please ask if we could get an option that would "unlock" the maximum injuries per attack volley. Some of us would love that.

 

[Daswulf]

One of the moderators posted a description of how Missiles view headshots. It was:

If an LRM strikes the head with the first missile, then no other missile from that volley will strike the head.
If an LRM misses the head with the first missile, then no missile from that volley will strike the head.

Since seeing that, I've zoomed in on my mechs and enemy mechs as they took LRM fire (as I suspected that this wasn't true). This is what i've found.

It is true that if the first missile of a volley strikes the head, no other missile from that volley will hit the head.
However, if the first missile does not hit the head, each additional missile DOES have a chance of hitting the head, but once a single missile does hit the head, then all others will not.

I've seen heads get hit in the middle of the volley, I've seen them hit by the last missile in a volley. So basically, an LRM20 (from my observations) does in fact get 20 chances for a headshot (but once a headshot is obtained all other missiles will avoid the head).

This explains why there have been so many head hits from LRMs. It isn't 1% of every volley fired hitting the head, it's 1% of every missile fired that's likely to hit the head (with a max of 1 hit per volley).

I now have a new record - received 6 head hits in a single fight, luckily they were divided between 3 of my mechs so the pilots survived. A main force of 1 SRM Carrier Tank, 1 LRM Carrier Tank, and Trebuchet and a Dragon (with LRMs) firing from outside line of sight (not sure how the SRMs were firing from farther than I could see, but that is what happened). while I was dealing with the Reinforcement lance (because of course the reinforcements were encountered before the main force was even seen lol ).

Anyway, if my observations listed above aren't the way it is supposed to work, then please pass this along to the Dev's to check out, but for the past 6 hrs I've watched just about every LRM volley fired so see where each missile hits and when, and this has been what I saw.

I am kind of confused as to what is the concern, it is working as it does in the TT . Battletech is game where one of the main objectives is to consider everything and make choices as to your play style, Missles are used to score a lucky critical hit (occasionally), but for the most part to score multiple critical hits on locations that have already been weakend by intensive fire.
To help increase your understanding of the Battletech computer game, it might help to play the TT as it would show just how close the two games are to one another. With 30+ years playing Battletech you never master it, because of 2 critical points, 1, unless you are using loaded dice, you can only hope you made the correct call and 2, you are playing against another human things will not go the way you always expect. I am quite pleased as to how well the computer game replicates the TT game.

 

[Varsi]

People think LRMs are bad. Wait till you meet 4x Kintaro with 5x SRM/6 each. Tried some other silly setups as well with a lot of SRM/6 and MG combos. Anything bigger than a medium will get its pilot killed long before 'mech goes down.