Interesting concept.
One of the big advantages for the BattleMech is it's endurance or resistance to critical damage that Conventional Armor just can't compare.
Wasn't reactive armor made to blunt this type of damage.
In the 'real world' Reactive armors (ERA) are great....if you're facing shaped charge warheads. it's less great against solid penetrators. (one of the main reasons so many tanks moved away from using HEAP/HEAT rounds toward high velocity solids in the 1970s and 1980s after that type...kinda lagged in the 1950s and 60s.)
okay...
so...
out of five responses, the majority favor restricting to autocannons only. (I guess machine guns WOULD be kinda overkill here.)
Most people favored rounding
down? or is it
up?
not really sure there. There is one suggestion for changing to a 20% (aka if armor is 10, that's the most you're going to crit with an AC/2, an AC/5 only crits on 20 or lower) is that right?
Admit I didn't bother taking AP ammo as it exists into account, there's a reason; I'ts bloody useless and consumes an enormous portion of your ammo bin for being bloody useless (*fewer shots, you miss each one more often, and the crit chance sucks ass on anything smaller than a class 20, which has two shots in a ton and requires standing in the other guy's boots to hit.)
now for some of my logic in choosing what I did for the post that started this;
1. most of the time absorbed in battletech play, is players hemming and hawing, I don't see a time penalty from the addition of thresholds, because most of the dithering is in the movement phase anyway, and that's not likely to change.
2. I've noticed a trend with people when you give them math; they find it easier to mentally calculate 1/10th, than 1/5th, especially with numbers that aren't a multiple of five. This may have something to do with how american money is decimal based, but most people who struggle to come up with 1/5th of 23, can do 1/10th of 23 in their heads after about fourth grade.
rounding...
alright, rounding up or down to the nearest ten means an Ac/5 will top out the threshold at 50, rounding it down, yeah, you've got to be over 50 to get the crit check...which is great, when you've got as many designs that don't reach 50, but do pass 40, in the Heavy and Assault categories.
which kinda makes the idea pointless, really, unless you're willing to ALSO go with sliding numbers that WILL take more time. (dividing by the REMAI"NNG armor takes more time....and requires consulting your opponent to make sure he's not bunking his totals.)
not really sold there, but I can be.
like the title says, I'm pretty certain the risk-averse average player would NOT appreciate something like this.
in any form.
Mainly I'm looking at this, and remembering that the BAR system got dumpster-filed (though not deleted) pretty quickly with the next pile of extra weapons (Rifles anyone?) came up after a change in leadership.
now..for the awful.
AC/2 being genuinely dangerous recalibrates a lot of mockery directed at lots of existing designs. The Jagermech suddenly becomes
dangerous because it crits at range-or can crit at range, anyway, if your dice don't hate you, same for the base model Blackjack, the Pike, that Clan thing with ten ultra 2s and so on.
i'ts a 'machine gun hit' that can PENETRATE armor at a distance, making certain fluff scenarios actually
work.
likewise for the AC/5, a weapon that is
predominant in the early designs of the game and keeps showing up despite being...welll an overweight ER medium laser that ammo explodes and runs out of shots. Nearly everyone dumps it first, usually for a PPC or some flavor of large laser.
but what if it actually had a REASON to exist beyond "well, we forgots how to mek thim farncy lenzes"?
all of a sudden, the SHD-2H becomes something you might actually WANT in your army, makes the token autocannon on a Marauder actually
useful as more than ballast.
but toying with the base idea a little more (I sincerely doubt anyone's going to bother testing this...)
Thresholds:
Autocannons/ballistics: 1/10 threshold, Threshold caps. (51 points in the design, no threshold check off an AC/5 or smaller, 21 poitns same for AC/2, and so on.)
LBX Cluster loses the threshold ability-it's armor damage only and normal chances for crit as we all know, slug loads do the same as basic autocannon (1/10th threshold crit)
AP ammo: Doubles your critical chance at the same threshold. (1 becomes 2, 2 becomes 4, 3 becomes 6...yeah, it gets absurd)
Flak: Only thresholds against Aerospace units or VTOLs (Non penetrating against Standard ground units).
Energy: 1/20th thresholds on ground vehicles, 'mechs, etc. (round down, so a ML will go through 25, but only does armor damge on 26.)
Missile: armor damage only. (this should be obvious with something like an LRM, where each missile is hitting separately with a shaped charge, same for SRM)
I honestly don't think we need to give Ferro any more advantages, esp. Clan ferro...but hardened? Yah, treat hardened armor as having double the threshold requirement (aka an AC/5 is not going to threshold 40 points of hardened armor, period. You have to chew that shit off point by point until it's gone.)
balancing: The empty 'Roll again' spaces? you don't roll again on a threshold crit, it may have penetrated, but it didn't hit anything vital, the shell is just kinda 'there' in that empty space and inert now, or maybe it overpenetrated and fell out.
yes, missile boats kinda suffer, but then, we have Clan LRMs running around and they'll still kill things just as fast as they have always done, you just don't get to check for a critical chance as often, but then, that's why you have hole punchers, right?