Author Topic: Re-engineered Lasers try 2  (Read 18943 times)

Diablo48

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #30 on: 13 October 2014, 17:16:55 »
I keep seeing 2 standard lasers do the job of 1 RE laser against those armors and people should use standard. But don't those 2 standard lasers have to both hit the target in the same location to do the same damage 1 RE laser does? I suppose hitting 2 different locations is good but aren't you still depending on IF? And isn't it better to get past the hard outer shell and into the sweet juicy center as quickly as possible? Don't RE Lasers do that against those armor types? Also aren't there more and more aerospace fighters that are using reflective armor?

To me, RE Lasers would seem to be a good fit on fighters since they'd nullify reflective armor. I would think they'd also be a good fit on AA and fire support units. They'd shoot down fighters faster than those with other lasers and if ground troops run into a unit with that kind of armor they just call in support and let the support unit handle them and then move in to exploit the damage they did.

The problem with this is that they just do not have enough concentrated punch to matter on anything bigger than a light.  You will wind up sandblasting the armor either way so concentration does not matter as much as raw damage.  Furthermore, more hits means that once the armor goes through you have more chances to score crits, and standard lasers also deal full damage to internal structure so you will rip that apart far faster with massed standard lasers.

Things are a little bit different on the aerospace side because of threshold crits which give the large a real use air-to-air, although its range is too short to be really good in the anti-aircraft roll, especially when you could replace it with the lighter 2-X which is the weapon ASF pilots have nightmares about.  That said, most ASFs will have enough armor that the small and medium do not help you on this front either so they are still failed weapons.

yep. so the arguement for massed standard lasers has the same flaw as the arguement for using massed LRM5's instead of LRM10's, 15's, or 20's, or the arguement for using twin light PPC's instead of a single standard.

in terms of potential damage, the massed smaller weapons do seem to make sense. but in terms of things like average damage and damage concentration, they fail. the more times i have to roll a to hit, the greater the odds i will miss, reducing the damage. which reduces the average damage by quite a bit. plus each hit has to roll for location separately.. which means the damage is spread out more.

the bigger guns might be less efficnet mass wise, but they have better one hit punch.. while the massed smaller guns is sandblasting.

That only really works with big hits which the RE-Lasers cannot deliver.  Honestly, even the 10-point PPC blast is not great these days when you have the HPPC for serious penetration, and the RE-Lasers are all worse.  The Large is the most usable with its 9-point hit, but that cannot even crit the head on its own and will not do much more than scratch the paint on a heavy or assault.  The medium and especially small are most definitely down in the sandblasting category so the only thing that matters is total damage output because they cannot concentrate damage enough to matter.

Also, while total damage is important, the total number of hits is also important because more cluster rolls means more chances for TACs and head hits to try to knock out the pilot, and it gets even better once you crack the armor and can start trying to crit out the internals (with double-damage hits because IS does not get the armor bonus).  This gets even more important against vehicles because they suffer so much from TACs and is also helpful against conventional infantry if you do not have a dedicated AP mount because you will be killing one guy per hit no matter what you use.

As for the probability of hitting, more weapons does not change your expected damage, it just makes reality conform more closely to the statistically expected values.  This can be either a good or bad thing based purely on luck because while you might get lucky with fewer bigger weapons and land more damage than the cluster of smaller weapons, you could just as easily get unlucky and totally miss the target.  It is of course also possible to get lucky or unlucky with the larger cluster, but the law of averages says it is less likely to be as extreme either way due to the larger sample size.


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ScannerError

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #31 on: 13 October 2014, 18:30:47 »
in terms of potential damage, the massed smaller weapons do seem to make sense. but in terms of things like average damage and damage concentration, they fail. the more times i have to roll a to hit, the greater the odds i will miss, reducing the damage. which reduces the average damage by quite a bit. plus each hit has to roll for location separately.. which means the damage is spread out more.
While damage concentration is indeed an issue with multiple smaller guns (and damage concentration is quite important), the average damage is in fact the same if you have two smaller guns that deal half the damage of a larger gun.  Using the PPC vs 2x LPPC example, you've got one gun that deals 10 damage vs two that deal 5.  If your odds of hitting are 50%, then you can expect the PPC to on average deal 5 points of damage, and you can expect the LPPCs to deal 2.5 damage on average each, for a combined average of 5 damage: the same as the PPC. 

The reason this is so is because while you get that 10-point hit half the time, the other half of the time you get nothing from that PPC.  The LPPCs have a 50% chance in a given round of dealing 5 damage (one of the two hits), a 25% chance of dealing 10 damage (both hit), and a 25% chance of dealing no damage (both miss).  The average damage per round for both options is the same.  Obviously, the PPC has the advantage of dealing much more concentrated damage, and it is more likely for a pair of PPCs to meet the 20 damage PSR threshold for a given round of shooting than a quartet of LPPCs (25% vs 6.25%, assuming 50% odds).  In contrast, the LPPCs serve better when you're looking for crits, or if you're just looking to save a ton and only care about the raw damage.  But in either case, the average damage per round is the same.  Personally, I prefer the higher damage concentration for the PPC, but I can see why people could be more concerned with raw damage per ton.

FedComGirl

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #32 on: 13 October 2014, 21:56:56 »
Thanks. I can understand crit seeking but I would think you'd want a big punch to get through the armor as fast as possible. Especially when you don't have a lot of armor. But I think I'm missing something.

When did the damage reduction round up?  ??? I just looked up Reflective Armor in the 2nd Ed of the TacOps PDF and it says to divide in half rounding down. So a small laser would do 1 point of damage, a medium 2 points of damage, and a large 4 points of damage.

Looking at Field Manual 3145 I would need 4 small lasers, 3 medium lasers, or 2+ large lasers to equal the damage of 1 small , medium, or large RE Laser. Doubling or tripling the amount of crits taken and gaining .5 to 2 additional tons depending on the size of weapons. Not to mention all the heat those weapons generate. If it weren't for range PPCS would be completely worse compared to RE Lasers. Was there an errata I missed or am I reading things wrong because I don't see anywhere that 2 standard lasers equal 1 RE laser.

What I am seeing is a big advantage for RE Lasers when used against those types of armors. A lot of the advantages RE Lasers have are flipped in standard lasers favor but against those armors RE Lasers have an overwhelming advantage.

I am fuzzy about thresholding on airospace units. Do you threshold before or after dividing damage?  Either way standard lasers were used for ages so switching to RE lasers shouldn't be a big deal. Longer ranged lasers might get a shot off sooner but at half damage. Then the range is closed and the RE lasers are doing full damage. I would think the same would go for AA units. Of course you want to keep them far away from the ground targets but you also want to make sure they don't come around for another pass. I would think that a laser that does full damage would be more useful than one that only does half.

I don't know. I still think they'd be good for AA and fire support if nothing else. That way if you need them you've got them. After that I guess it comes down to intelligence. If they have more of one you bring more of the other so they're always under gunned.


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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #33 on: 14 October 2014, 06:48:53 »
Was there an errata I missed or am I reading things wrong because I don't see anywhere that 2 standard lasers equal 1 RE laser.

Nope, no errata you missed.
You are absolutely correct and it has been pointed out in the past, but was ignored.
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GreekFire

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #34 on: 14 October 2014, 08:38:57 »
I think most people can agree that Large Re-Lasers do have a role on the battlefield, punching through the hardened armor of beasts such as the Shiro, Stalker II, etc. If you disagree, that's fine, but I'll warn you that I'm not getting into a quoting war over it.

I find the Medium Re-Laser also has a use ATM - it can blast through the rear armor of many canon 'mechs. This might be construed as not being a true advantage of the weapon, but one of the metagame instead, but it's still an advantage that I can use on the battlefield. Prey Seekers and their ilk are usable units to me, and their low(er) BV certainly helps.

Small Re-Lasers though...I dunno. The only machine I've found that uses them in an interesting fashion is the Night Stalker variant which makes a good Reflective/Hardened armor 'mech hunter, but even then I'm not completely sold.
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FedComGirl

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #35 on: 14 October 2014, 14:24:59 »
Thanks DarkISI. I thought I'd gotten something wrong there.

solmanian

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #36 on: 14 October 2014, 15:11:32 »
I had no idea reengineered lasers were such a hot topic, to justify flame wars...
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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #37 on: 14 October 2014, 18:46:50 »
That's what happens when you get people who feel like they've been backed into a corner defending a weapon that is just flat out not able to compete on a normal battlefield without a lot of beneficial conditions.
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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #38 on: 14 October 2014, 19:28:54 »
We will have NO flame wars or flames or flamey opinions.

Such posts will be dealt with.

I hope I am clear enough.



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Diablo48

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #39 on: 14 October 2014, 20:09:10 »
Thanks. I can understand crit seeking but I would think you'd want a big punch to get through the armor as fast as possible. Especially when you don't have a lot of armor. But I think I'm missing something.

When did the damage reduction round up?  ??? I just looked up Reflective Armor in the 2nd Ed of the TacOps PDF and it says to divide in half rounding down. So a small laser would do 1 point of damage, a medium 2 points of damage, and a large 4 points of damage.

Looking at Field Manual 3145 I would need 4 small lasers, 3 medium lasers, or 2+ large lasers to equal the damage of 1 small , medium, or large RE Laser. Doubling or tripling the amount of crits taken and gaining .5 to 2 additional tons depending on the size of weapons. Not to mention all the heat those weapons generate. If it weren't for range PPCS would be completely worse compared to RE Lasers. Was there an errata I missed or am I reading things wrong because I don't see anywhere that 2 standard lasers equal 1 RE laser.

What I am seeing is a big advantage for RE Lasers when used against those types of armors. A lot of the advantages RE Lasers have are flipped in standard lasers favor but against those armors RE Lasers have an overwhelming advantage.

The only actual numbers in this thread so far are the quick comparison I did for the small against Ferro-Lamellor armor, but it probably makes sense to repost the full numbers from the other thread so here they are.  The other thread is locked so I cannot properly use the quote feature, but this was posted by Yeti and the post is in this embedded link.

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I just run the number, the only RE laser that seems worth taking is the large,  medium and small get a very small advantage against reflective armor but lose against all other types.

Code: [Select]

Small Lasers
comparison 1 RE vs 3 std
       weigth          crits      heat
RE      1.5t             1          5
std     1.5t             3          3

damage against different armor types
              normal armor           laser-reflective       ferro-lamellor    hardened
RE                  4                        4                     4             4
std                 9                        3                     6             4.5

Code: [Select]

Medium Lasers
comparison 2 RE vs 5 std
       weigth          crits      heat
RE       5t              4         14
std      5t              5         15

damage against different armor types
              normal armor           laser-reflective       ferro-lamellor    hardened
RE                 12                       12                    12             12
std                25                       10                    20            12.5

Code: [Select]

Large Lasers
comparison 5 RE vs 8 std
       weigth          crits      heat
RE       40t             10        50
std      40t             16        64

damage against different armor types
              normal armor           laser-reflective       ferro-lamellor    hardened
RE                 45                       45                    45             45
std                64                       32                    48             32

As you can see, only the large actually gets an advantage over standards when used against the armor types it is supposed to beat, especially when you factor in the increased chances of scoring TACs or head hits and the fact that internal structure is treated as standard armor so you will always have to do some damage to that if you want to actually destroy a target.

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I am fuzzy about thresholding on airospace units. Do you threshold before or after dividing damage?  Either way standard lasers were used for ages so switching to RE lasers shouldn't be a big deal. Longer ranged lasers might get a shot off sooner but at half damage. Then the range is closed and the RE lasers are doing full damage. I would think the same would go for AA units. Of course you want to keep them far away from the ground targets but you also want to make sure they don't come around for another pass. I would think that a laser that does full damage would be more useful than one that only does half.

I am not 100% certain, but I am fairly sure it is based on the actual damage dealt which means that reduction could be a lifesaver for a fighter equipped with it so bypassing it gives you a huge advantage there.

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I don't know. I still think they'd be good for AA and fire support if nothing else. That way if you need them you've got them. After that I guess it comes down to intelligence. If they have more of one you bring more of the other so they're always under gunned.

No, the 2-X is way better.  You only need one point of damage to force a control roll, and if they fail that they go plowing into the ground at supersonic speeds with predictable results.  That means the only important things are range and accuracy, and the 2-X is king in both categories with either 27 or 30 hexes of range and a huge flack bonus when used against airborne targets.


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solmanian

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #40 on: 14 October 2014, 22:13:52 »
I think it opens the way to superior armors, that would've been dubbed as OP, if such a weapon didn't exist to counter them. It's a way for battletech technology to keep evolving to the point that a 150 years of technological development do make a difference. 3025 tech shouldn't be comparable to DA tech. If you brought a WWI armor battalion to a modern battlefield, it probably wouldn't even stand up to a light infantry platoon.
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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #41 on: 14 October 2014, 22:23:08 »
Diablo, I'm going to ask a question and I'd like an answer.

Do you feel that two LPPC are superior to a single PPC?  If not, why not?

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #42 on: 15 October 2014, 01:23:45 »
I suspect he'll say what already been pointed out: 10 points actually matters, 5 points doesn't. The reason being that the common armor levels (around 20 points on average) means that with 10-point hits you have a good chance of actually punching a hole before you've spread damage all over the target (i.e. sandblasting) while 5-pointers have very little chance of beating the odds.

Against fighters it's much the same (10 points TAC most things, 5 points don't). Against vehicles of course you want as many hits as possible, but then you want missiles or LB-X anyway!

Which of course means the ReLL might actually be worthwhile if you expect to meet a lot of reflec/hardened, but the small/medium are really wasted page space. If they had caused 6 and 9 points respectively (with the large pushed up to 10) they would have been a fair investment.

FedComGirl

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #43 on: 15 October 2014, 03:23:28 »
Diablo

First, apologies for not replying normally. I'm not allowed. I'll probably be in trouble just for replying.  :( but hopefully my reply will make sense anyway.

The numbers you provided are nice but I'm not sure how practical they are. How many units can carry 40 tons of large lasers with enough heat sinks to use them?  ??? It looks like Yeti went by matching weights but still 40 tons of laser requiring 25 to 32 tons of heat sinks to cool? I'm not sure that's possible on a Mech. Not only that but it just compares things based on weight alone. If you base the numbers on other things it changes a lot.

I'm also not sure about the damage. The damage for standards is most likely spread out so it isn't 3 points of damage compared to 4 but three 1 point hits compared to one 4 point hit. That's great for crit seeking and whatnot but wouldn't 2 LRM-5s or 4 SRM-2s be even better? Also while you're crit seeking aren't you giving up big hits that would wear down armor faster?

I'm not sure but did you agree that RE Lasers against those armored fighters is a good thing? I do agree that LB-X2a are great against aircraft but a good and/or lucky pilot with a well armored fighter will keep coming back. A pilot that just lost a good chunk of their armor might not. And if they did it'd be a fewer number of times they could. Right? So pairing the two on a couple units would be a good thing right? One plinks away with the LB-X2 and if the fighter keeps coming it gets swatted by the one with the RE laser.

I don't know. I guess I don't see RE lasers as the replacement for others but as an addition to them.

Diablo48

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #44 on: 15 October 2014, 18:18:59 »
I suspect he'll say what already been pointed out: 10 points actually matters, 5 points doesn't. The reason being that the common armor levels (around 20 points on average) means that with 10-point hits you have a good chance of actually punching a hole before you've spread damage all over the target (i.e. sandblasting) while 5-pointers have very little chance of beating the odds.

Against fighters it's much the same (10 points TAC most things, 5 points don't). Against vehicles of course you want as many hits as possible, but then you want missiles or LB-X anyway!

Which of course means the ReLL might actually be worthwhile if you expect to meet a lot of reflec/hardened, but the small/medium are really wasted page space. If they had caused 6 and 9 points respectively (with the large pushed up to 10) they would have been a fair investment.

That is about right across the board, although I do feel like the combination of the LPPC and HPPC can make the old standard feel a little bit superfluous in a lot of cases.  The LPPCs are better if you want to sandblast things without worrying about penetration and the 15-point chop from the HPPC is far more threatening than the 10 from the PPC.  It does still have its uses, but they are getting smaller and smaller with each new weapon introduced.

Diablo

First, apologies for not replying normally. I'm not allowed. I'll probably be in trouble just for replying.  :( but hopefully my reply will make sense anyway.

The numbers you provided are nice but I'm not sure how practical they are. How many units can carry 40 tons of large lasers with enough heat sinks to use them?  ??? It looks like Yeti went by matching weights but still 40 tons of laser requiring 25 to 32 tons of heat sinks to cool? I'm not sure that's possible on a Mech. Not only that but it just compares things based on weight alone. If you base the numbers on other things it changes a lot.

While you cannot reasonably mount that many of each gun on anything smaller than a DropShip, it is still a useful point of comparison because it gives you an idea of how they stack up on a per-ton basis.  You will probably not exactly match the weights, but you can use that weight difference for other stuff which is usually fairly well balanced around the 3025-era gear so it is essentially the same.  You might wind up with a slightly different performance envelope if you use that mass for LRMs, but it is not objectively better or worse, just different.  Also, those numbers show that the large does actually give you an advantage against the armors it is supposed to beat so the minutia of the numbers there really just boils down to nitpicking because we have already established that the weapon works.

You are right that the comparison would have been better if the weight of the required DHS had been factored in to leave only crits as a floating variable, but the point still stands that the small and medium are not worth the weight because they are very close to each other on heat and crits so the numbers there are at least very close to accurate.

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I'm also not sure about the damage. The damage for standards is most likely spread out so it isn't 3 points of damage compared to 4 but three 1 point hits compared to one 4 point hit. That's great for crit seeking and whatnot but wouldn't 2 LRM-5s or 4 SRM-2s be even better? Also while you're crit seeking aren't you giving up big hits that would wear down armor faster?

4 points of damage does not make a hole, that is smaller than a LRM Cluster.  At that point you are firmly in the critseeking and sandblasting category so more hits is more useful than the marginal damage concentration.  You are going to have to grind through all their armor no matter what so the critseeking is better than nothing.  For reference, I generally consider 5-point hits to be the absolute least useful form of damage in the game because it is not concentrated enough to make a serious dent in armor so there is no hole punching power and it is too concentrated to really critseek effectively so all it does is sandblast armor.

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I'm not sure but did you agree that RE Lasers against those armored fighters is a good thing? I do agree that LB-X2a are great against aircraft but a good and/or lucky pilot with a well armored fighter will keep coming back. A pilot that just lost a good chunk of their armor might not. And if they did it'd be a fewer number of times they could. Right? So pairing the two on a couple units would be a good thing right? One plinks away with the LB-X2 and if the fighter keeps coming it gets swatted by the one with the RE laser.

That was air-to-air only, and even then that only applied to the large.  ASFs behave very differently in air to air combat than they do when engaging ground targets.  In the air you cannot usually force them to lawn dart because they have too much altitude so that PSR looses its teeth and the 2-X becomes useless, but when they are attacking ground targets failing that PSR is essentially instant death so nothing else matters.

This means the 2-X is the king of ground to air work with other long range flack weapons filtering in behind it, and air-to-air work is dominated by what 'Mech jocks think of as hole punching weapons (AC/20, HGR, Gauss Rifle, HPPC, ect).

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I don't know. I guess I don't see RE lasers as the replacement for others but as an addition to them.

The problem is that outside the large, they do not even do that.  The standard Medium and Small Lasers do just as good a job as the RE-Lasers in the cases where the new technology is supposed to shine while performing far better in all other cases so there is no reason to ever use them.


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FedComGirl

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #45 on: 16 October 2014, 00:03:28 »
I don't know. Numbers can be made to say a lot of things. I'm not saying they're right or wrong. It's just that if I were in close with a unit mounting reflective armor I'd want 1 small RE laser because I'd need 4 standard small lasers, and probably a targeting computer and so on to do the same job. Otherwise I'm maybe sandblasting. Getting crits is good but I don't want to rely on maybes. I want to put that unit down as fast as possible. That's getting through the armor and to the crits. That extra .5 tons could come in handy for something else too. And then there's the crits I'd need to mount all the extra lasers. They may not be available.

Of course Id I'm going up against a different unit I might want something else. I'd take a standard medium over a small RE if going up against standard armor. Of course if we're just talking tonnage I'd take 2 mediums over the 4 small when up against reflective armor. Then I'd have to weight the range advantage and sandblasting over a solid shot ranged hit. Which of course screws with the numbers that were posted.

Ah okay. Thanks. Still, with more aerospace units using reflective armor I would think re small and mediums would be more welcome since you'd spend more tonnage on standard to do the same damage. And then they'd be sandblasting. I suppose when it comes to aero units I miss Aerotech 1's more damage location. PSRs weren't so much a concern then when the AA unit could shoot off a wing.  Now you have to hope for failed PSRs because there's more armor in fewer locations to get through.

When it comes to PPCs I think I'd prefer the standard to 2 light PPCs. The Standard gives you more damage than both the lights against reflective armor.



Diablo48

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #46 on: 16 October 2014, 18:25:06 »
I don't know. Numbers can be made to say a lot of things. I'm not saying they're right or wrong.

Ok, go ahead and play with the numbers then.  See if you can come up with any kind of argument based on actual data for the existence of the small or medium.  I can clearly see that there is no value at all because any slight advantage you could come up with will be more than offset by the fact that 1/3 of the total damage you will have to do goes into what is essentially standard plate, but feel free to prove me wrong.

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It's just that if I were in close with a unit mounting reflective armor I'd want 1 small RE laser because I'd need 4 standard small lasers, and probably a targeting computer and so on to do the same job. Otherwise I'm maybe sandblasting. Getting crits is good but I don't want to rely on maybes. I want to put that unit down as fast as possible. That's getting through the armor and to the crits. That extra .5 tons could come in handy for something else too. And then there's the crits I'd need to mount all the extra lasers. They may not be available.

4 points is not a hole puncher and it is not getting through the armor any faster than the 1-point plinks will.  Combat units just have too much armor for the difference in concentration to matter so the chance at TACs or pilot damage are a much better deal.

Also, there is no accuracy difference, the RE-laser is just more descretized so it will look bigger.  They will both do the exact same average damage.  That is how probabilities work.

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Of course Id I'm going up against a different unit I might want something else. I'd take a standard medium over a small RE if going up against standard armor. Of course if we're just talking tonnage I'd take 2 mediums over the 4 small when up against reflective armor. Then I'd have to weight the range advantage and sandblasting over a solid shot ranged hit. Which of course screws with the numbers that were posted.

Yeah, Small Lasers of all forms have always been more notable in that they fit in a half-ton slot than any kind of performance advantage outside a handful of very specialized niches.

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Ah okay. Thanks. Still, with more aerospace units using reflective armor I would think re small and mediums would be more welcome since you'd spend more tonnage on standard to do the same damage. And then they'd be sandblasting. I suppose when it comes to aero units I miss Aerotech 1's more damage location. PSRs weren't so much a concern then when the AA unit could shoot off a wing.  Now you have to hope for failed PSRs because there's more armor in fewer locations to get through.

It does not matter.  What matters air to air is cluster size, and 6 points is not enough to worry anything bigger than a light so there is really no point.

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When it comes to PPCs I think I'd prefer the standard to 2 light PPCs. The Standard gives you more damage than both the lights against reflective armor.

That is a tiny advantage against that only applies when used against a relatively uncommon armor type so I do not worry about it.  Reflective is really only worth considering with RE-Lasers because that is what they are supposed to be good at, and even there I have serious doubts that the niche is worth worrying about at all because you can just point a Gauss Rifle at the problem and laugh.


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Alexander Knight

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #47 on: 16 October 2014, 23:16:54 »
Well, except for when your Gauss Rifle has blown through it's 8 shots/ton of ammo, or it gets critted and does 2 pilot hits to you.

FedComGirl

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #48 on: 17 October 2014, 00:51:12 »
I'm not allowed to prove anyone wrong, nor am I saying that you are. But if I look at damage I need 4 standard small lasers to equal 1 re small laser against reflective armor. That's 1 extra half ton and 3 extra critical slots. I'm also sand blasting instead of solid hitting. Against standard armor though for for 1.5 tons I'd go with a medium and a small laser than the small re laser. 

Also not every unit has 40 points of armor per location. Many have less than 10 points and losing 40% or more of their protection in that location compared to 10%  is going to be a big deal.And again TACs can be great but I don't want to have to rely on maybes.

When it comes to air to air isn't a 6 point hit better than a 2 point hit? :-\

It is a tiny advantage but it still is one. There's also 10 points of damage being more threatening than a couple of 5s. But if someone wants to use 2 light PPCs instrad of a single PPC that's okay with me. There's also the fact that not every unit can weild a guass rifle but if you got one.  >:D

Diablo48

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #49 on: 17 October 2014, 18:37:48 »
I'm not allowed to prove anyone wrong, nor am I saying that you are.

Why not?  It is just some basic math and this is the perfect place to dump the numbers.

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But if I look at damage I need 4 standard small lasers to equal 1 re small laser against reflective armor. That's 1 extra half ton and 3 extra critical slots.

It is also 1 less heat which requires half a DHS (because we can totally do that ;D) to dissipate for the RE-Lasers which costs you .5 tons and 1.5 crits so the net difference is 1.5 extra crits for weapons that will deal 3 times the damage once they get through the armor.

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I'm also sand blasting instead of solid hitting. Against standard armor though for for 1.5 tons I'd go with a medium and a small laser than the small re laser.

Also not every unit has 40 points of armor per location. Many have less than 10 points and losing 40% or more of their protection in that location compared to 10%  is going to be a big deal.

That is really not a valid argument.  Very few units (as a percentage of total units) have that little armor on any front location (with the obvious exception of the head), and the ones that do are almost always fast enough to guarantee the smalls will never get in range.  Furthermore, if they do have 10 points of armor there is no functional difference between 1 point and 4 points because a 4-point hit leaves them with 6 points which will still stop a small clusters so it is not a big deal, and 9 points is not enough to stop the 10 point hits that they are really worried about from penetrating.  Also, this only applies to units with Reflective Armor and I would be very surprised if there are more than one or two with thin enough armor that 4 points would actually worry them.

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And again TACs can be great but I don't want to have to rely on maybes.

Agreed, but it is better than nothing which is what the 4-point cluster gets you.

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When it comes to air to air isn't a 6 point hit better than a 2 point hit? :-\

Not really.  You have to beat a threshold based on their armor to get a crit, and most ASFs can take a 6 point cluster because they have so few facings to armor.

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It is a tiny advantage but it still is one. There's also 10 points of damage being more threatening than a couple of 5s. But if someone wants to use 2 light PPCs instrad of a single PPC that's okay with me. There's also the fact that not every unit can weild a guass rifle but if you got one.  >:D

Honestly, I do agree with that logic outside the edge case that is Reflective Armor, but I also extend it to include the HPPC which is an order of magnitude more threatening than the standard because it is a headcapper.

As for the Gauss Rifle, it is far from the only option, it is just an all around exceptional weapon for anything big enough to mount one.  You can get LRMs or SRMs on anything, and the recent proliferation of conventional units has made SRMs more valuable than ever for their ability to carry Infernos.  There is also the option of breaking out AE weapons like the artillery cannons because they do double damage to Reflective Armor or rushing into melee to exploit that vulnerability.

Hm, that just reminded me of yet another nail in the RE Small's coffin.  Its range is so short that you are practically in melee anyways which is something every design with Reflective Armor wants to avoid like the plague because melee attacks do double damage to Reflective Armor.  Even a 20 ton 'Mech will gain 4 points of damage from this, and heavies and assaults get huge can openers for free (and a TSM Berzerker will annihilate anything it hits with an insane 80 point axe blow).


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FedComGirl

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #50 on: 20 October 2014, 03:56:27 »
Can't go into it.

You have to get through the armor first.

It happens enough to put small lasers on things


It's 4 points less armor.

Oh okay. I don't play Aero too much.


Sure the HPPC is great. But it's also heavy and generates lots of heat. Not every unit can carry it.

Most of those are also a lot heavier too.

Wowey! 80 points is a lot! But it still has to get into range though. RE small lasers may not have a lot of range but it is greater than physical ranger.

Diablo48

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #51 on: 20 October 2014, 21:27:37 »
Can't go into it.

You have to get through the armor first.

Yes, but getting through the armor does not destroy a 'Mech and you will have to chew through at least half as much IS as you did armor.  I am going to mathematically demonstrate this by assuming the best case scenario for the RE-Laser which is 100% of possible armor protecting that IS and I will pick easy numbers for the math which will be 24 armor and 12 IS.  That means it will take 6, 4-point hits from the RE Laser to get through the armor (6*4=24) and 3 hits to get through the IS (3*4=12) to destroy the location for a total of 9 hits which naturally takes 9 turns.  The standard smalls will need 24 hits to get through the armor, but only 4 hits (4*3=12) to destroy the IS for a total of 28 hits which takes 9.33 turns with 3 lasers or 7 hits with 4 lasers.  Given that 4 standard lasers have almost exactly the same profile as the single RE-Laser once you account for DHS as demonstrated earlier, we can clearly see that the standards beat the RE-Laser in what is supposed to be a best-case scenario for it.  Indeed, it is so bad that we can knock off one of the standard smalls and still come out almost exactly even when ignoring the extra heat of the RE-Laser, and that is still using the best possible situation for the RE-Laser.

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It happens enough to put small lasers on things

I have no idea what you are talking about here.

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It's 4 points less armor.

It is 4 points less armor either way.  The smaller hits just give you much better odds of scoring a TAC or head hit in the process.

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Oh okay. I don't play Aero too much.


Sure the HPPC is great. But it's also heavy and generates lots of heat. Not every unit can carry it.

Most of those are also a lot heavier too.

It is not all that much heavier than the standard PPC, and the difference in impact is far out of proportion to the extra weight you pay to get it.  Also, anything that does not have room for the HPPC probably has the kind of speed that makes the ERPPC a much better buy to help keep the enemy's TNs up too high for them to effectively retaliate.

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Wowey! 80 points is a lot! But it still has to get into range though. RE small lasers may not have a lot of range but it is greater than physical ranger.

The range difference is negligible, although I do agree that getting into range is going to be a major issue for that Berserker because nothing with reflective armor wants to risk letting it get on the same mapsheet as them for obvious reasons.


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FedComGirl

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #52 on: 21 October 2014, 01:56:05 »
Let's see, 24 hits over 10 turns or 9 hits over 9 turns. I think I'll stick with the RE Laser. There's a lot less presumptions with it.


I did say TACs were nice. I just don't want to rely on them.

Acturally, if I had to name a weapon that was bad I'd probably go with the HPPC. The Clan ERPPC does everything the HPPC does and is 4 tons and 2 crits less than it. I still like it and it's still useful for lower tech places but if the Clan ERPPC is available there's no reason to use the HPPC.

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #53 on: 21 October 2014, 02:09:15 »
Clan tech is better than Inner Sphere tech.

I feel the need to point out how utterly useless this kind of statement is.  It's totally unhelpful for the discussion (on top of being a good example of why Clan tech is awesome, not why IS tech is garbage) on top of being tangential at best.  You might as well say the IS ER PPC is utter garbage because the Clan version does 50% more damage for a ton less and similar heat.  You might as well say that IS LRMs are garbage because the Clan version is half the weight.  None of the above statements are true, and it's the most egregious example of comparing apples and oranges and then declaring apples must be worse than oranges because oranges have citric acid in them.  Totally arbitrary and unhelpful.
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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #54 on: 21 October 2014, 15:08:24 »
I feel the need to point out how utterly useless this kind of statement is.  It's totally unhelpful for the discussion (on top of being a good example of why Clan tech is awesome, not why IS tech is garbage) on top of being tangential at best.  You might as well say the IS ER PPC is utter garbage because the Clan version does 50% more damage for a ton less and similar heat.  You might as well say that IS LRMs are garbage because the Clan version is half the weight.  None of the above statements are true, and it's the most egregious example of comparing apples and oranges and then declaring apples must be worse than oranges because oranges have citric acid in them.  Totally arbitrary and unhelpful.

Actually, you could say that about the IS ERPPC and IS LRMs. That doesn't mean I wouldn't use them. And the HPPC was brought into the discussion because it was a headcapper. Which is great but not every unit can use it because of it's weight and bulk. Just like not every unit has weight and space crits to mount 4 small lasers compared to 1 RE small laser. But if it is garbage because it heavier than small lasers wouldn't the same be true of the HPPC compared to the Clan ERPPC?

Personally, I don't see the hate for it. Against certain armors its a single weapon that does the same damage as multiple standard weapons. I think that's a good thing. Against the other armor types it isn't as great but that extra point of damage could be useful. But then those other armors aren't it's intended opponent. RE Lasers are more tactical weapons than general purpose weapons.

Diablo48

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #55 on: 22 October 2014, 21:32:58 »
Let's see, 24 hits over 10 turns or 9 hits over 9 turns. I think I'll stick with the RE Laser. There's a lot less presumptions with it.

First, that was 7 turns with equivalent payloads, not 10.  Second, that is the best possible case scenario for the RE-Lasers and is thrown off in favor of the standard smalls if the target is hit with absolutely anything else.  Third, there are no more presumptions with one over the other, I only assumed that they would both hit 100% of the time because misses will affect both equally.

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I did say TACs were nice. I just don't want to rely on them.

I never said I was relying on them.  In fact, I have been explicitly ignoring them in every calculation which just goes to show how bad the RE-Lasers are because they cannot even compete with the standards when I hobble them by ignoring a major advantage they have.

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Acturally, if I had to name a weapon that was bad I'd probably go with the HPPC. The Clan ERPPC does everything the HPPC does and is 4 tons and 2 crits less than it. I still like it and it's still useful for lower tech places but if the Clan ERPPC is available there's no reason to use the HPPC.

That is a supremely useless comment.  The Clan ERPPC renders every single medium or long range weapon the IS has obsolete as anything but special effect dispensers, and even that is highly questionable outside vehicles.  Honestly, it even makes the standard Medium Laser a very questionable choice because the Clan ERPPC will generally serve you better outside 3 hexes unless you have an exceptionally good gunner, and the ER models are totally outperformed at all ranges.

Actually, you could say that about the IS ERPPC and IS LRMs. That doesn't mean I wouldn't use them. And the HPPC was brought into the discussion because it was a headcapper. Which is great but not every unit can use it because of it's weight and bulk. Just like not every unit has weight and space crits to mount 4 small lasers compared to 1 RE small laser. But if it is garbage because it heavier than small lasers wouldn't the same be true of the HPPC compared to the Clan ERPPC?

Personally, I don't see the hate for it. Against certain armors its a single weapon that does the same damage as multiple standard weapons. I think that's a good thing. Against the other armor types it isn't as great but that extra point of damage could be useful. But then those other armors aren't it's intended opponent. RE Lasers are more tactical weapons than general purpose weapons.

Let me summarize this in one sentence.

RE-Lasers do not have a viable niche.

The numbers are such that they do not do the job that is presented as being their niche any better than the standard lasers they are supposed to beat there, and they fall off very hard everywhere else so they do not do their job.


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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #56 on: 22 October 2014, 21:57:19 »
Ok, go ahead and play with the numbers then.  See if you can come up with any kind of argument based on actual data for the existence of the small or medium. 

Battle Armour mounting special armours.  A Re-Engineered laser will kill off a trouper (and thus reduce the firepower of the squad/point by 25~20% respectively) in far fewer turns than a pair of standard lasers will.

But this is where the endless arguing begins: 

1)  Someone asks what use a Re-Engineered Laser has
2)  Someone replies that Re-Engineered Lasers have a niche use at X
3)  Original person replies that weapon Y is better at use X than the Re-Engineered laser (E.g, someone will say to just bring a SRM with Infernos)

Which is moving the goal posts. 

 
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Alexander Knight

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #57 on: 22 October 2014, 22:01:48 »
RE-lasers lose to standard lasers when employed in large numbers shooting at a single target location.

This is not something that will occur in actual play.  Ever.

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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #58 on: 22 October 2014, 22:21:16 »
RE-lasers lose to standard lasers when employed in large numbers shooting at a single target location.

This is not something that will occur in actual play.  Ever.

Indeed.  A lot of the Battletech weapons can be classified as either 'hole punchers' (for lack of a better term) like Gauss Rifles and AC20s that deal a lot of damage to a single location and the 'Damage over time' or 'sandblasters' like SRMs and LBx.

A battery of SRMs or Medium lasers may do more damage over time than an AC20 but the AC20 can cripple a light or medium 'mech in one shot.  Most people here can agree that both types have their uses.

The Re-Engineered lasers fall between the two against special armours.  Medium lasers essentially become SRMs against special armour, the Re-Engineered lasers perform similar to their standard equivalents against regular armour, and the big guns (Gauss Rifles, AC20s, whatever) remain the big guns.

Anytime you'd use a medium laser instead of, say, SRMs or an AC20 is when you'd use a Re-Engineered medium laser against a unit with special armour.  That's their niche.
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Re: Re-engineered Lasers try 2
« Reply #59 on: 22 October 2014, 22:35:54 »
RE-lasers lose to standard lasers when employed in large numbers shooting at a single target location.

This is not something that will occur in actual play.  Ever.
Lots of the sorts of analyses used for comparison will rarely-to-never occur in actual play.  That doesn't make them useless as a means of comparing the two systems.
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