Matrix Games Forums

Originally posted by mutt2050
No keep the masons but maybe a small weapon made to do internal damage instead of armor damage. I have used masons but they rarely do any internal damage and run out of ammo before ever doing any damage to the internals.

Just to clear up some details, internal damage is used to describe damage to the internal structure, and system damage refers to damage to components. This being said, heavy mesons for example have 40% chance for doing system damage, and do 3 external damage and 3 internal damage. This gives them some flexibility, as you can go for called shots to a bodypart to destroy it (when internals are gone bodypart is destroyed regardless of any external armor still existing), or try to damage any system (namely the engine). As Eric said, a good scanner is very useful for both these options. When I said mesons are not effective except en masse, well, mesons *are* a weapon of chance. You can get really lucky, and turn the tide of battle with one single shot. How many battles have been won with *one* ammo crit? The fact is, they're more effective against titans that are packed with systems, cause those 40%, if successful, can still hit an empty or armor slot, and that's as good as a no effect. For dropping bodyparts, multiple mesons are mandatory of course.
Now, mesons in WS will have a slight boost, in crit chance and ammo, so I heard from Larkin some time back. So you see, the VB guys are not exactly sleeping on the job

I was refering to BG's acid arrows, and not to poisoned weapons in AD&D: if you think I was refering to AD&D it's your deduction... but it's wrong.... acid arrows exist in BG and they make the effect I described; that's all. If you want to check by yourself you can install the game on your PC and then you can go to Sundries' shop in Baldur's Gate city.
Anyway I'm not saying that I want a weapon in ToS like BG's acid arrows; I only think that an acid weapon could be interesting if applied to this game.
If I rember well, I saw acid weapons also in other two games (and one of them was about robots), but I didn't mention them before 'cause I don't remember exactly the titles.

It's obvious that an hypothetical acid weapon should be discussed and balanced, but I'm trying to say that I won't reject this concept if I was in you.

Megrez

I'd have to agree with Iceman's assessment of the impracticality of an acid weapon when facing titans. Think about one thing for a second. Pools of acid (which are about 300 KM across, and pretty **** deep) do *1* point of damage every *5* seconds. The amount of acid you are speaking of would be negligeable in comparison. How can a weapon be effective if it does almost no damage?

Although 300km seems a little off the charts (that's ~900 hexes), PC is right. And when standing in a pool of acid, your legs are completely immersed, front and back, in an "infinite" source of acid,while when hit by acid you're merely splashed in part of a location, and the effect wears off with time. Like I said in one of the first replies to this subject, if you think about it for a minute...

Well...
The way Im thinking of it is a meson that has mebbe 60% chance to do internal dmg, but only to one degree... mesons can make stuff medium or worse damage from one hit, acid should have increased percentage to do damage, penalty to accuracy, and not able to do modifiy the damage of a component more than one degree. Should do 1pt of either outer or internal dmg...

The logistics of this... Has anyone seen Independence Day? Near the end of the movie, they shoot a missle into the aliens... The missle doesnt explode on contact, but pierces the armor, then explodes... Why cant this same principle be used in the acid? Another example (dunno if this is still true, it was old when i saw it) in fighters, they have a missle known as a Sidewinder 9J. The 9J has trouble locking onto engines, and it has another bug/feature that causes the triggering mechanism not to fire until its inside the plane. Another example of how to get a breakable canister inside 100mm of armor.

That was just to work out the logistics of it...

Couple of other things to think about...

Prince may be right about the acid, except hes talking about damage to armor, and im talking damage to internal components with maybe a little damage from the acid traveling through the outer armor, no lasting damage to armor.

Another thing is that if you think of it, the acid the titans stand in to get 1 dmg every 5 secs is probably not PURE acid, it would be maybe a little less potent than car battery acid, because its in contact with the ground, and alkaloids from the soil would seep in and partially neutralize the acid.

The missiles you are talking about are, I think and I am not 100% sure about, a delyed trigger missile. A missile with a delyed trigger on it will hit the target tripping the switch that will count down to a predetermined time then detonate the bomb. This will happen even if it does not penetrate the armor. It will just bounce off fall away then detonate. The problem with this is airplains do not have armor at all and a missile will penatrate them very easily Titans have very thick armor and a lot of your shots may just bounce off. You could do it with an AC but I believe that is already the premis behind the mason guns. They don't explode on impact but have a delyed fuse where the explode once they have penetrated the armor.

You could do it with an AC but I believe that is already the premis behind the mason guns. They don't explode on impact but have a delyed fuse where the explode once they have penetrated the armor.

EXACTLY!!!

Instead of delivering some sort of explosive device with the meson gun, have it deliver a can of acid that then explodes!!

Car battery acid solving 1 mm of titanium every 2.5 secs... ok.

Not going to argue the logistics or I'll be accused of destroying your post, but back to my first question: what would it add to the game?

The US no longer uses the AIM 9J. We've been using the AIM9M for quite some time. Most of it's guidance system are heavily classified, so I'd rather not discuss it. However, I will say that we are developing an AIM9 which will be fully capable of being fired forward, and destroying a target off your left wingtip. Hella kewl.

Instead of acid how about REAL artillary? Like an artillary cannon the generates alot of heat takes awhile to reload is somewhat inaccurate but does a hell of alot of damage on impact? Might just be me thinking this here but if you can hit your enemy once or twice and blow a leg off from a great distance doesn't it make that kind of cannon worth it?

on another thought about artillary im not talking energy or missle weapons i mean real cannon cannons with he rounds or something like that

IN tos there are several cannons

ac4, ac7, ac12, ac20 and the guass cannon. Machine gun is considered a cannon as well.

Did I miss any?

The mesons

The artillery role is played by missiles in ToS, not cannons. Cannons are direct fire weapons. There just aren't "off-the-board" weapons. I like it that way. I don't miss artillery.

i generally use the biggest gun wins theory and well artillery are pretty **** big ^^

So are AC20s.
But if you think about it, missiles are exactly what you are asking for. They do splash damage (GM6 = 3 pts per hit IFIRC, which spreads. 2pts per hit for LRMs like the LRM 15)
Now how much damage do they do? Well, it varies, as an artillery blast would. Max LRM 15 dmage to a titan is 30 pts, usually spread over two or three locations, if not more. Wouldn't artillery act somewhat the same?

So as Iceman says, I don't miss artillery, and why should I? Missiles satisfy all my needs in that area.

seems i didn't put this clear enough alright here goes another try: artillary as i see it has equal to/great range as the missles but a far more devastating hit. splash damage or not if you can hit something far away with a gun that does as much as like an ac20 even if the gun has high reload time and high heat i personnaly think its worth it compared to missles that do more of a light damage to multiple parts at once.

Artillery of that kind would take the fun out of the game. Same goes for thermo nuclear strikes, satelite based death rays and killer snails.

What no killer snails?!?!? Wheres the fun in that!

Oh man, someone is gonna do an internet search and post here everything we need to know about killer snails...