Stupid freakin explosions!!!

[Dam nExplosions]

This is goddamn retarded. 64 battles later, a team of 8, with 5 people at rank Elite (rank 7), all in 200 ton assault mechs, gets almost completely annihilated. One of my guys survives and wins the match. I look to see what the hell happened, and everyone died by mech explosions. For some reason their heat was going up by like, 500+ per second instead of the normal -3 or so. So my whole team is gone now, save one jock, who can't even hire any new jocks because his leadership won't allow him to lead more than 1 in the team, which includes himself.

[Marga]

Originally posted by Dam nExplosions
64 battles later, a team of 8, with 5 people at rank Elite (rank 7), all in 200 ton assault mechs...

Did you play the old Freeware Version 1.4 or the new game "Titans of Steel: Warring Suns", in which case you must have been playing day and night, I guess?

[Dam nExplosions]

Warring suns. I actually didn't play that long. I was letting the AI play. I was playing more of a manager type role. But that doesn't make it any easier losing almost my whole time of elite and crack pilots!

[PrinceCorrin]

These things happen. Sounds to me like someone got their engine blasted out, and everyone was clusterfucking around when it blew, which would have caused all the heat, maybe made another engine blow. Assault titan engines generally make a pretty big mess of things.

[rosary]

Originally posted by Dam nExplosions
Warring suns. I actually didn't play that long. I was letting the AI play. I was playing more of a manager type role. But that doesn't make it any easier losing almost my whole time of elite and crack pilots!

You do know that you can retrieve the team via $$ in the HQ unless you've dismissed them already. After 64 battles you must have a little money saved up.

[LarkinVB]

First I thought you were talking about a bug. Now it seems your team just blew up by a chain of engine explosions. Thats not stupid, thats war.

[Dam nExplosions]

Originally posted by rosary
You do know that you can retrieve the team via $$ in the HQ unless you've dismissed them already. After 64 battles you must have a little money saved up.

Actually, the battle had already ended, and since I won, the team was saved. And actually, I find it kinda hard to save up too much money. Since the payout is SO low, even for an 8 against 10 match with all 200ton mechs. I think it was something around 150000, compared to the beginning little newbie matches which were around 100000. Say what? I'm still getting paid chicken feed after climbing the ranks? That payout isn't even enough to cover repair costs anymore! And lets not even talk about upkeep costs which have sky rocketed to the 300-400K range. So you have to rely entirely on salvage to make any money.

Originally posted by LarkinVB
First I thought you were talking about a bug. Now it seems your team just blew up by a chain of engine explosions. Thats not stupid, thats war.

Yeah, it's all funny until somebody gets hurt! Everyone was around a 1-3 hex radius or so. It's not like everyone was in the same hex. Since the hexes are 333m in diameter, that means a mech in the next hex over is somewhere from 0m away, to 666m away, but let's just say it'd be 333m away, on average. So mech explosions are blowing up other mechs over 3 football fields away? Since mechs in neighboring hexes are severely damaged, that means the blast radius even extends beyond that. It'll probably be around a 500m or so radius, so the diameter of the blast will be 1kilometer. That's huge! These aren't mechs, these are kamikaze bombers.........

Even in mechwarrior, when you strapped high explosives onto your mech and ran up to people and detonated, you had to be almost in melee range to blow the other mech up. 5-6 steps back and you wouldn't even scratch their armor.

[LarkinVB]

Since you are the only one ever complaing about engine blast radius I guess it will stay as it is. Lots of people (including myself) like the lingering danger of engine explosions. A good D.C.S. and a decend skill will avoid blowup of your titans and shields will give protection against enemy blowups.

Damage is halved for the first hex and quarter for the second. No LOS will result in no damage.
Small engines do little damage.

Regarding you money problem you should take care that you have a good manager and a good mechanic. Good is 60+ skill.

[Voidhawk]

Hehe. In one my recent games, I had a guy (a cyborg of course) on a light titan equipped with nothing but chainsaws and MG's. He took out a recon with his saws, popped the engine, went down with both of his legs and an arm red, got up dizzy, and ran over to finish off another crippled light. He popped the engine on that one too, which blew off an arm and a leg, and he lost the other leg AND his LoT on the way down. I guess the rest of the squad had to use the jaws of life to cut him out of what was left of that smoking pile of debris that used to be a titan. I figured he was a goner for sure, but he somehow survived.

The battle stung my bank balance, but he got a promotion out of it. Crazy freakin' cyborgs.

[LarkinVB]

We do you guys think about reducing explosion damage if the exploding titan has his shield up ? Currently damage is engine power * 10. I could deduct shield protection %. Would add another twist. How do I setup a poll in this forum ?

[rosary]

Engine explosions are one of my favorite parts of the game. I was playing hetzer a network game of Huge teams and one of his titans had a very damaged CT so I kept sniping at it. I failed to make it explode but there were some joyful seconds as good ol' Hetz beat feet away from his ally.

[PrinceCorrin]

Yeah, it's all funny until somebody gets hurt! Everyone was around a 1-3 hex radius or so. It's not like everyone was in the same hex. Since the hexes are 333m in diameter, that means a mech in the next hex over is somewhere from 0m away, to 666m away, but let's just say it'd be 333m away, on average. So mech explosions are blowing up other mechs over 3 football fields away? Since mechs in neighboring hexes are severely damaged, that means the blast radius even extends beyond that. It'll probably be around a 500m or so radius, so the diameter of the blast will be 1kilometer. That's huge! These aren't mechs, these are kamikaze bombers.........

Even in mechwarrior, when you strapped high explosives onto your mech and ran up to people and detonated, you had to be almost in melee range to blow the other mech up. 5-6 steps back and you wouldn't even scratch their armor.

Well, they ARE nuclear engines you know. What do you expect from nuclear meltdown?
ESPECIALLY Assault sized engines. When u start throwing engine 6 and above ur talkin major fission upon decontainment.
It's not so hard to imagine, really.
Besides, ur just ****** cuz u lost ur team. Muahahahahaha.

[customer717]

On my last campaign mission last night I experienced the woe of engine explosions.

I had 3 recon rookies closing on a badly wounded enemy light rookie. They HAD to close to very short range as the terrain and frankly rookie skill demanded it (sorry, scans, battle comps, crouching, etc can only do so much... rookies can not shoot didly at range).

The enemy titan had a pair of GMH2 I think and a laser. One of my titans scored a descent shot on the enemy's side torso and it was destroyed in a massive ammo explosion. At which point the mech fell down and took a cascade of damage, ammo explosions, and finally an engine explosion. The thing went from a credible threat to a super nova flash in an instant!

BOOM!

Even though my mechs were 2 or so hexes away, all of my pilots took massive damage. Almost killing one outright. Two were dizzy. Heat sky rocketed on the mechs by like 300 degrees and was climbing. Armor on the mechs just melted off in an instant. Shut down warnings and dying pilots all around.

Since that was the last mech, the match was over. However, given a few more turns.... my Team would have been slag with maybe 50k in the bank. Game over.

That all said. I like the engine explosions. You get real scared when a mech is taking engine damage. I still do not understand what exactly makes them blow, but it is a sight to see when they do.

HOWEVER. I think the poster above has a point. Money does seem to be very scarce. Maybe not for more experienced players who take mechs down quicker (better salvage) and don't take the same beating (repairs). I have not played too much, but there have been more than a few missions where I either lost money or made only 10-20k. Savana missions 2 and 3 felt real stingy on the cash.

Perhaps some kind of option can be set (difficuly) which effects amount of money to be made? Or maybe a more forgiving save system so that if you lose a mech or take too much damage, it is not game over. I am not sold it is a problem. However, cash is VERY tight for my recon squad now. Losing a mech could end the team's career. If money does not improve at the higher levels... (shudder).

Edit: Yes I have a business manager maxed (50 something) and a mechanic maxed (50 something)

[LarkinVB]

Mobbing up : Note that the AI is likely to eject in case of one leg or the gyro being disabled and an arm or left/right torso missing. So you don't have to bash a crippled titan with the risk of an engine explosion. If a titan is crippled like this and you don't want him to explode you should switch to another target.

[Iskandar]

yes, but you then lose the 10k bounty you'd otherwise get if you kill the titan.

hard decision to make. take the salvage, and let the jock eject. or go for the bounty, and pray you rip the head off and not the engine....

(side note: I've won games I shouldn't have because of engine explosions. I had the three remaining enemy titans in the same hex as one of my two remaining titans. I'm trying to eject both, as it is more or less game over, when they breach the torso and engine. when the smoke clears there is my last titan, and titan bits everywhere. )

[Paul Vebber]

TO set up a poll, start a new thread and check the box under "attach file" that says "Yes, Post a poll!" make sure the number of choices is correct (you can change it later if you need to).

Fill in the message tha describes the poll as you would any other post, then when you hit "Submit new thread" the poll frame will come up and you can enter the topic and choices and select the "rules".

[Dam nExplosions]

Originally posted by LarkinVB
Since you are the only one ever complaing about engine blast radius I guess it will stay as it is. Lots of people (including myself) like the lingering danger of engine explosions. A good D.C.S. and a decend skill will avoid blowup of your titans and shields will give protection against enemy blowups.

Damage is halved for the first hex and quarter for the second. No LOS will result in no damage.
Small engines do little damage.

Regarding you money problem you should take care that you have a good manager and a good mechanic. Good is 60+ skill.

The blast radius extends past 2 hexes?? The explosion must be 2Km wide! That's enough to level a city!

And I did have a good mechanic and manager. Both had reached skill 80, but were 65-70 for a long time.

[Voidhawk]

Originally posted by LarkinVB
We do you guys think about reducing explosion damage if the exploding titan has his shield up ? Currently damage is engine power * 10. I could deduct shield protection %. Would add another twist. How do I setup a poll in this forum ?

I was under the impression that shields did protect against explosions. The manual says:

"An active shield will reduce the amount of damage, heat and radiation taken from the blast – the higher the shield setting, the lower the effects."

Is this partly or completely inaccurate? I tested a CC design with a shield and without, but couldn't really detect a noticeable reduction in damage from engine explosions. At least, if there was any reduction in damage, it wasn't enough of a reduction to justify the weight/space of the shield. My final design seems more effective using that weight/space for additional armor instead.

I like it that engine explosions hurt, and hurt bad. For pure CC titans, it balances out the brute power of the chainsaw and makes power axes/vibra claws even more attractive. So you can either go for more effective called shots with the axe or internal damage with the claw; or just sling that saw around and risk hitting a CT one too many times.

[rosary]

The shield protects from Damage, Heat and Radiation.

What Larkin is asking is whether or not if the shield of the 'Exploding' titan if active would reduce the explosion damage.

This would seem to work in 2 ways. Your pilot is in a titan-at that is on the verge of exploding. You turn your shield on to protect your own squad from the resultant explosion.

Your titan-at is in the midst of a group of enemies. You shut off your shield so the explosion is larger.

[LarkinVB]

Originally posted by Dam nExplosions
The blast radius extends past 2 hexes?? The explosion must be 2Km wide! That's enough to level a city!

Ok, I noticed that you don't like the explosion rules. The majority nevertheless does.