I Wanna Be A Bomb Ammo Placement?

[bakija]

So in looking at the various Fight Night threads and sussing out how mechs will do in various fights, the issue of stupid ammo placement came up with the Marauder vs Archer fight. Which is a significant issue, as the Marauder just blows up if it takes a LT crit at any point in the game. And then investigating the Orion vs Zeus fight, it turns out that the Zeus has the exact same problem. Unprotected ammo in the RT, just waiting to get shot and blow up. So I went looking through record sheets and was baffled by how many stock mech designs have random slots of unprotected ammo, just waiting to blow up. For no logical reason at all. Is there any insight into *why* all these mechs were designed (in the sense of "why the game designers did this") with suicide bombs attached?

For example, from the various 3025-3039 era cannon mechs:

-Hunchback: Its LT has nothing but 2 tons of ammo. Its RT has an AC20 and 2 empty crit slots. Yeah, ok.

-Trebuchet: LT ammo bomb. Woo!

-Kintaro: It's LT has 2 tons of ammo. And nothing else. Blam. I mean, yeah, the mech is full of ammo, but why not hide the ammo with the weapon, rather than just leaving it out there?

-Scorpion: I mean, not a good mech, but another LT ammo bomb. When it has 5 of 6 LT slots filled with guns. And an empty slot that could have ammo instead of not.

-Dragon: RT is full of ammo. And death!

-Crusader: Ok, so he gets *two* torso ammo bombs. When he has empty slots in his arms for ammo to go along with weapons. Great...

-Marauder: The poster boy for "Bad Ammo Placement", but as it turns out, in good company. Put the ammo in with the AC, and Marauder is saved from endless "Uh, yeah, I'm not gonna use that guy." assessments.

-Zeus: I'm 80 tons! I'm a significant investment! I'd better have an instant death slot in my RT!

And the slightly less than optimal guys:

-Sentinel: At least it has a single HS along with 2 tons of AC5 ammo in the LT. So it only has a 2/3 chance of instant death from a LT crit. Why not put the ammo in the arm with the AC5?

-Centurion: Just like the Sentinel. Only a 2/3 chance of instant death from an RT crit. When there are 2 crit slots in the RA where the ammo could be, where instant death is dropped to 1/6 instead of 4/6.

Like, there are plenty of cannon mechs of the same era that have their ammo tucked away behind guns or heat sinks. And then there are many that have the incredibly arbitrary suicide bomb factor. There isn't anything preventing the ammo from being somewhere smarter. They aren't saving anything BV wise by having the ammo in an otherwise empty torso location when it could be on the other side of the mech under the gun that is using it. It is just ridiculous, arbitrary, hamstringing. Why did they do this when there was zero need to do so?

[Sabelkatten]

At least partially - and only when it comes to the 3025 mechs - it may be because most of those mechs did have a lot of padding originally. When they were designed heat sinks didn't go inside the engine, so the Crud (f.ex) had 4-5 SHS in each side torso along with the ammo.

[Failure16]

Think of it in a meta-game sense:  BattleTech, according to the original designer's design notes as codified in the forward to Shrapnel, was supposed to be akin to a movie played out on the gameboard. 

The original source material (Macross, et al) featured grand fights wherein the heroes blasted the enemy in droves.  The game mechanics devised for BattleTech did not explicitly allow that because it chose an ablative paradigm in lieu of a titularly more realistic armor-penetration paradigm.  But, in order to keep the game from being a purely firepower-based game and to introduce some amount of luck to play, the concept of TACs was introduced...with the concomitant desire to have ammo placed in the original designs where those TACs could significantly alter the outcome of any game via instantaneous unit eliminations (through destructive ammunition explosions).  This also bolstered the image of a movie because it gave reasons for satisfying mega-explosions, thus increasing the drama of game-play.

Like any game, however, power-creep and player-desire later changed this paradigm somewhat to the point that those choices seem either anachronistic or simply baseless.  The inclusion of items such as CASE would go on to circumvent the possible early desire for instantaneous unit eliminations--other than headshots which continue to form a major portion of such occurrences because of the increase of items that can do it at vastly increased ranges compared with the first and second iterations of the game (typified per the original 2nd Edition weaponry and the later Citytech additions which gave us the rest of the IntroTech lineup).

Well, at least that is one player's viewpoint...

[bakija]

At least partially - and only when it comes to the 3025 mechs - it may be because most of those mechs did have a lot of padding originally. When they were designed heat sinks didn't go inside the engine, so the Crud (f.ex) had 4-5 SHS in each side torso along with the ammo.

That seems to be the case in a lot of these instances. Well, at least the really old guys. Although even back to, like, 1990, these guys are in the same boat. Do we have any idea when the rules for heat sink crits were changed?

And assuming this is the case, what was gained by *not* moving ammo around after the rules changed? Other than, ya know, arbitrarily making a bunch of ammo laden mechs suck more?

[bakija]

Think of it in a meta-game sense:  BattleTech, according to the original designer's design notes as codified in the forward to Shrapnel, was supposed to be akin to a movie played out on the gameboard...  Well, at least that is one player's viewpoint...

There is certainly something there, except that it is so random and arbitrary as to which mechs (of even the same game design era) are hamstrung by the random suicide bomb penalty and which aren't.

Like, looking at a couple of the earliest mechs:

-The Griffin: A reasonably solid and well respected mech. Has 2 tons of LRM ammo. They are placed in the RT, along with 2 crits of an LRM10 and 2 crits of jump jets.

compared to

-The Scorpion: A generally unloved design, and not just because it has an LT that has nothing but a crit of SRM ammo, when its RT has 5 crits of weapons and then another 7 crits slots that could have held that single space of SRM ammo.

These two guys are from the exact same timeframe (i.e. I think they were both in whatever the first edition of BT was in the mid 80's). And one is mostly protected from arbitrary dangerous ammo placement and the other is not. There is a lot to be said for the reality that the Scorpion probably originally had Heat Sinks in the RT to protect the ammo. But when those rules changed (which I have no idea when that was), someone clearly should have seen fit to move some ammo around. Especially given that I don't think that in the earliest versions of the game, pre-filled out mech sheets even existed, such that you could put the ammo anywhere you wanted anyway.

If the game was consistent in it's use of "you get to blow up!" technologies, well, then I could see the argument of "we like when things blow up, and want to encourage it by making sure everyone has a suicide bomb!". But it *really* isn't.

Like, not wanting to continue the endless "ammo using weapons are vastly worse than energy weapons" discussion, but things like the Marauder (and Zeus and Crusader and Dragon and...) suicide bomb issue really makes that issue worse. If someone had said at some point in the last 15 some odd years (i.e. at one of the many points that the various record sheets were reprinted) "Hmm. Folks think ammo using weapons aren't that good a lot of the time. Having unprotected ammo to blow up only makes that perception worse. Let's fix that in the mechs that are saddled with this issue...", a lot of ammo using mechs would look a lot more solid about now.

[Sabelkatten]

That seems to be the case in a lot of these instances. Well, at least the really old guys. Although even back to, like, 1990, these guys are in the same boat. Do we have any idea when the rules for heat sink crits were changed?

And assuming this is the case, what was gained by *not* moving ammo around after the rules changed? Other than, ya know, arbitrarily making a bunch of ammo laden mechs suck more?

The HS rule was changed with the introduction of DHS, at the same time as the "crits are volume" idea was introduced. TRO3050 or 2750, I forget which one was first... :P

As for the second, I have absolutely no idea. IME all CBT designers from the start onwards has operated by the paradigm of "change small rules to have serious impact, but never consider the impact of the changes and never, ever, fix the problems they cause!". [soapbox]

[martian]

That seems to be the case in a lot of these instances. Well, at least the really old guys. Although even back to, like, 1990, these guys are in the same boat. Do we have any idea when the rules for heat sink crits were changed?

And assuming this is the case, what was gained by *not* moving ammo around after the rules changed? Other than, ya know, arbitrarily making a bunch of ammo laden mechs suck more?

Some time ago one forum member asked TPTB what they think about changing record sheets according new rules from TW, TacOps etc.
(in a sense, that something was useful or reasonable under old rules when those 'Mechs were originally created, but makes no sense today under current rules).

The answer was akin: Yes we thought about it, but we decided not to do that.

[bakija]

Some time ago one forum member asked TPTB what they think about changing record sheets according new rules from TW, TacOps etc.
(in a sense, that something was useful or reasonable under old rules when those 'Mechs were originally created, but makes no sense today under current rules).

The answer was akin: Yes we thought about it, but we decided not to do that.

Well, there you go then. That is kind of mind boggling, but ok.

[Failure16]

bakija, to take your singular example of the Griffin...the developers considered having the 'Mech's jump jets in [and evenly distributed across] the torso, so with two tonnes of LRM ammo to work with, that made the most sense.  One could also say that there might have been further meta-gaming in play; to whit they wanted certain 'Mechs to face problems along those lines.  Does that mean it is true?  Of course not, and we would have to talk to a lot of people (who, even if found, might not recollect the truth of the matter) to find out if it was.

My suspicion is the answer would be "That's just the way they ended up" or some variation thereof.  We would also have to correlate whether the first run of pre-filled out record sheets (circa 1986-7 with the original Reinforcements module) had any relation to what the devs were using for their beta-testing and that is how they came to look the way they did.  And then we would have to delineate the exact progression of BattleMech designs and how their record sheets became finalized.

If you want, you could always make a chart of the original 55 to see how many designs fall outside of the proposed track.  For example, the Wasp, Wolverine, and Griffin certainly do (the Battlemaster, being an Assault, might be considered to fall into neither paradigm, though its ammo bins are certainly padded and it does pointedly avoid the Center Torso Bomb paradigm).

I sadly do not have the time to do it, buta cursory examination shows a higher percentage of "ammo bombs" in the initial 14 (as typified in the 2nd edition onwards) than the their fellows that composed the later 55 of TRO 3025 fame.

EDIT:  martian's remark regarding changing record sheets is missing a critical piece of context in that the question posed was not solely about record sheet critical location placement, but rather certain pieces of equipment.  Of course, if I recall correctly, there was something to do about jump jets in the legs, which now hamstring many designs from jumping out of Depth 1 water...

[Acolyte]

Yep, this is one of the reasons that 'Mech design programs get used by my group. It's amazing how many tech decide that the AC5 ammo in the Marader would be better placed closer to the weapon, in the right torso....

Thank You
   - Shane

[JadeHellbringer]

Clan Mechs automatically get CASE in any location with explosives, but... that left torso on the Thunder Stallion 1 or 2 is just ridiculous. A pair of LRM-15s, and then... uh oh.  ;D

[Firedrake]

The HS rule was changed with the introduction of DHS, at the same time as the "crits are volume" idea was introduced. TRO3050 or 2750, I forget which one was first... :P

I believe you will find that this is not the case. The BattleTech Manual (aka The Rules of Warfare), published in 1987 well before any of the non-3025 tech came out, has text on p.79 that has the same effect as the current rules.

[massey]

1984: Battledroids comes out.  Battledroids does not provide record sheets for any of the 11 mechs included in the rules (Stinger, Shadow Hawk, Archer, Griffin, Warhammer, Marauder, Phoenix Hawk, Crusader, Wasp, Rifleman, with the Merlin being the example mech in the construction rules).  The rules require all heat sinks to be distributed, none are contained in the engine.  A hand-written example record sheet for the Crusader is pictured, with 5 heat sinks written in for each side torso location, providing ample torso bomb padding.

1985: Battletech: Second Edition comes out.  Sadly I don't have the rules to know what was changed here.  Battletech: Reinforcements is also published, giving 55 record sheets for different mechs.  These are the first official record sheets published for any mech (as opposed to the shorthand listing in Battledroids that listed locations for every piece of equipment except heat sinks).  These sheets allow each mech to hold 10 heat sinks in the engine, but everything over 10 is allocated to a location, no matter the size of the engine.  First appearance of "ammo bomb syndrome" in mechs like the Crusader.

1986: Battletech Manual: The Rules of Warfare released.  By this point, the current rules of heat sink critical space allocation have been introduced.  Tech Readout 3025 is also released this year.

[bakija]

bakija, to take your singular example of the Griffin...the developers considered having the 'Mech's jump jets in [and evenly distributed across] the torso, so with two tonnes of LRM ammo to work with, that made the most sense.  One could also say that there might have been further meta-gaming in play; to whit they wanted certain 'Mechs to face problems along those lines.  Does that mean it is true?  Of course not, and we would have to talk to a lot of people (who, even if found, might not recollect the truth of the matter) to find out if it was.

Heh. Well, it is certainly possible. And also likely something we will never know. But it seems to me (based on the above discussion and the changing of the Heat Sink allocation rules at some point early in the evolution of the game) that, in all likelihood, the most likely answer is "Well, it just kinda ended up that way after we changed the rules, and we didn't want to bother fixing it."

My suspicion is the answer would be "That's just the way they ended up" or some variation thereof.

Yep. Me too. Giving a cursory look over the 3085 record sheets which I have handy, I can't find any instances of suicide bomb ammo placement. Even on the retro-3025 era mechs in the product (Merlin, Lineholder, etc.). It looks like the vast majority of the cannon mechs with suicide bomb ammo placement are the old guys. Who were probably originally designed before they changed the Heat Sink rules. And when the Heat Sink slots that used to protect their ammo vanished, no one thought it prudent to fix that particular problem. Which resulted in a very arbitrary punishing of a significant portion of the early era mechs. Maybe it was a conspiracy to convince people to use later era mechs (i.e. buy more stuff :-)

We would also have to correlate whether the first run of pre-filled out record sheets (circa 1986-7 with the original Reinforcements module) had any relation to what the devs were using for their beta-testing and that is how they came to look the way they did.  And then we would have to delineate the exact progression of BattleMech designs and how their record sheets became finalized.

That would certainly be interesting to see. The stuff I have only goes as far back as the 1992 3rd Edition box set. Anyone have any 1st or 2nd edition record sheets lying around they could examine?

I sadly do not have the time to do it, buta cursory examination shows a higher percentage of "ammo bombs" in the initial 14 (as typified in the 2nd edition onwards) than the their fellows that composed the later 55 of TRO 3025 fame.

There is still a significant number of later edition guys like the Hunchback and Trebuchet who suffer from suicide bomb-itis as well.

[bakija]

1985: Battletech: Second Edition comes out.  Sadly I don't have the rules to know what was changed here.  Battletech: Reinforcements is also published, giving 55 record sheets for different mechs.  These are the first official record sheets published for any mech (as opposed to the shorthand listing in Battledroids that listed locations for every piece of equipment except heat sinks).  These sheets allow each mech to hold 10 heat sinks in the engine, but everything over 10 is allocated to a location, no matter the size of the engine.  First appearance of "ammo bomb syndrome" in mechs like the Crusader.

Ok, so it is certainly possible that in the original Battletech: Reinforcements record sheets, any of the current ammo-bomb suffering mechs could have easily had some extra heat sinks protecting their (now naked) ammo slots. At least the ones with more than 10 heat sinks (like Marauder and Zeus and Hunchback). Anyone have that book in their possession?

[Sabelkatten]

I believe you will find that this is not the case. The BattleTech Manual (aka The Rules of Warfare), published in 1987 well before any of the non-3025 tech came out, has text on p.79 that has the same effect as the current rules.

Hmm... Interesting. I wonder what caused that change, then? The only reason I can see is that the advanced tech rules were already in playtesting and that rule was already decided upon... :-\

Btw, due to the effects of shipping to a small country up in Scandinavia I actually got my copy of the Manual after I bought TRO3050 and never really looked at the publishing dates! ::)

[Failure16]

Point of order:  Reinforcements came out in 1987; the RS book included with the box-set features identical sheets to the stand-alone RS book (annotated FASA 1625A, dated 1991).

Both conform to the rules of the day regarding engine size and visible heat sinks--namely those seen in The Rules of Warfare and succeeding rules-editions.  I am basing my ideas solely on those record sheets since they are the first of their kind and have remained stable for the variants portrayed.  Thus, unfortunately, we have no evidence or grounds for supposition that the original 11-14 (well, 15) had their "bombs" padded out.  However, I quite like the possibility that it engenders...

[bakija]

Point of order:  Reinforcements came out in 1987; the RS book included with the box-set features identical sheets to the stand-alone RS book (annotated FASA 1625A, dated 1991).

I can't find any information on the BT Wiki about the Reinforcements book, and certainly don't own one. As that is really, the only starting point for figuring this stuff out, I'm hoping someone has one in their possession and wants to find information in it for sharing.

[Failure16]

I have both, bought in stores at the time they were released.  The sheets in both sources are identical.  They vary from the record sheets you have the the 1992 3rd Edition only in aesthetics/visual layout (well, the WVR has way too much armor, but that appears to be a result of mixing the -6R and -6K sheets somehow).

So, for our purposes, the 'Mechs have always been...just the way we have known them.  The only [ultimately unanswerable] question is the one you have raised:  did the change of heatsink-related rules between 1984 and 1987 give us the situation we have today, or where the critical layouts made that way in 1987--after the change in rules to current norms--for some reason?

[martian]

It would be interesting to see 3025 'Mechs with heat sinks moved to empty locations. I mean - a Marauder which is actually durable as per TRO 3025 fluff, Crusader which lasts longer than five seconds and so on ...

[Firedrake]

Ok, so it is certainly possible that in the original Battletech: Reinforcements record sheets, any of the current ammo-bomb suffering mechs could have easily had some extra heat sinks protecting their (now naked) ammo slots. At least the ones with more than 10 heat sinks (like Marauder and Zeus and Hunchback). Anyone have that book in their possession?

I have the Reinforcements book dated 1987 (the Scorpion has a normal biped armour diagram with "left/right arm" and "left/right leg" labels), and none of its ten heat sinks is on that sheet. The MAD-3R has six heat sinks on the diagram! (Per the Rules of Warfare, there should be twelve removed by the 300-rated engine, so 4 on the diagram.) The Zeus should have 5 on the diagram, has 7. The Hunchie has the 5 it should have.

I no longer have my copy of BattleTech Second Edition available. My copy of the CityTech rules, 1986, doesn't have design rules and doesn't tell you how to fill in record sheets in detail.

[Failure16]

Thanks, Firedrake, for bringing up the Marauder.  My book has the MAD-3R with a heatsink in Slot 2 of the Left Torso..thus giving us a verifiable example that the Marauder at least had a little bit of a chance with that record sheet, and that someone had tried to mitigate the "bomb" effect.

Neat thread.

[bakija]

I have both, bought in stores at the time they were released.  The sheets in both sources are identical.  They vary from the record sheets you have the the 1992 3rd Edition only in aesthetics/visual layout (well, the WVR has way too much armor, but that appears to be a result of mixing the -6R and -6K sheets somehow).

Huh. So there were no official record sheets before the Reinforcements book from 1987 (is this correct?). And in that book, most of the mechs are the same as they are now.

So, for our purposes, the 'Mechs have always been...just the way we have known them.

Hrm.

  The only [ultimately unanswerable] question is the one you have raised:  did the change of heatsink-related rules between 1984 and 1987 give us the situation we have today, or where the critical layouts made that way in 1987--after the change in rules to current norms--for some reason?

Well, if there were no official record sheets before the 1987 Reinforcements book, and the 1987 Reinforcements book has mechs that look pretty much like the do now, then, really, they all started out that way. Gah.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Remember, the mechs are supposed to be designed in universe by people who don't have any knowledge of game mechanics, and torso allocations are somewhat abstracted anyway.  Many mechs have obvious (to the players) flaws that don't make sense because we're thinking about the metagame when we look at the record sheets, but in universe there's a whole host of other considerations going on that don't affect gameplay, and many mechs are designed to simulate that.

[bakija]

I have the Reinforcements book dated 1987 (the Scorpion has a normal biped armour diagram with "left/right arm" and "left/right leg" labels), and none of its ten heat sinks is on that sheet. The MAD-3R has six heat sinks on the diagram! (Per the Rules of Warfare, there should be twelve removed by the 300-rated engine, so 4 on the diagram.) The Zeus should have 5 on the diagram, has 7. The Hunchie has the 5 it should have.

Ok. So at least at *some* point (and apparently in the 1987 Reinforcement book), the diagrams were built using the rules of any heat sinks over the integral 10 were allocated slots. So the Zeus has 2 more heat sinks on the diagram than currently (are any in the RT with the ammo?) and the Marauder has 2 more (are any in the LT with the ammo?)

[bakija]

Remember, the mechs are supposed to be designed in universe by people who don't have any knowledge of game mechanics, and torso allocations are somewhat abstracted anyway.  Many mechs have obvious (to the players) flaws that don't make sense because we're thinking about the metagame when we look at the record sheets, but in universe there's a whole host of other considerations going on that don't affect gameplay, and many mechs are designed to simulate that.

The point here is that I don't think it is an intentional "simulation". It likely is the result of the evolution of the game rules. And mostly unintentional. Or accidental. Especially given the evidence that pretty much every mech designed in the last 10-15 years avoids these problems. Even the ones that are retroactively attributed to the same time frame as the mechs that suck like this.

[massey]

Ok, so it is certainly possible that in the original Battletech: Reinforcements record sheets, any of the current ammo-bomb suffering mechs could have easily had some extra heat sinks protecting their (now naked) ammo slots. At least the ones with more than 10 heat sinks (like Marauder and Zeus and Hunchback). Anyone have that book in their possession?

I have it.  The mechs with more than 10 heat sinks have padding, those without (like the Crusader) don't.

[massey]

Thanks, Firedrake, for bringing up the Marauder.  My book has the MAD-3R with a heatsink in Slot 2 of the Left Torso..thus giving us a verifiable example that the Marauder at least had a little bit of a chance with that record sheet, and that someone had tried to mitigate the "bomb" effect.

Neat thread.

Yeah if you'll look closely, they have 10 heat sinks internally.  Anything over 10 is used as padding.  The only record sheets we see before that are the hand-written examples from Battledroids, which do show padding for the Crusader.

[bakija]

I have it.  The mechs with more than 10 heat sinks have padding, those without (like the Crusader) don't.

Ok, so we have confirmed that at least for some of the old mechs in question (Marauder, Zeus, etc), they used to have extra heat sinks in with their ammo. Which got removed when the heat sink allocation rules changed.

So some of the suicide bomb mechs have an excuse--the rules changed around them. Some of the other ones (Crusader and Scorpion, say) just have no excuse at all.

[Breetai]

Ok, so we have confirmed that at least for some of the old mechs in question (Marauder, Zeus, etc), they used to have extra heat sinks in with their ammo. Which got removed when the heat sink allocation rules changed.

So some of the suicide bomb mechs have an excuse--the rules changed around them. Some of the other ones (Crusader and Scorpion, say) just have no excuse at all.

More to the point, even those with the HS as padding which were then later changes were often changed non-optimally. Even with the 'heat sinks can be in the engine' rule, the -3R Marauder should have 4 crit-filling HS; so why not leave all of the ones in the torso with the ammo?   :D