ACTUAL Weapon Stats - MechWarrior 2 - ADG Pro 12

Who knew the LB-X AC/2 was SUPPOSED to have longer range than the Gauss Rifle?? :O

Today for ADG Pro, we're going back to MechWarrior 2 and investigating the weapons because... something's off. When you look through the stats the weapons are given in the MechLab in this game, they're all stats from the BattleTech tabletop game system, but then when you actually go to use these weapons they just... don't... feel right. Like the stats in the MechLab might actually be lies.

Let's figure this out once and for all!

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Additional Information and Corrections:

* I can put up an image to download containing the final results if so desired, but I decided not to this time around because even though the results are definitely revealing, it's not the sort of thing that's going to be of a massive benefit to know exactly, as many of the weapons do still have similar relativity to each other: SRMs are stronger than LRMs per missile, the Autocannons still do tremendous damage... it's really mostly the energy weapons that have the most egregious differences. :P

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[subtlewhatssubtle]

Very nice! Though you may be interested to learn that, according to the strategy guide they released with the game, the pulse lasers work on very unusual logic. When the devs were interviewed for the guide, this is how they explained it:

The game runs two checks every time a pulse laser hits a target, one for each pulse in a salvo. If the game detects that the first pulse hits a target, that pulse deals full damage, and the damage of the second pulse is ignored, even if it hits the target.

If the game detects that the second pulse hits a target, it then checks to see if the first pulse in the same salvo has already hit. If not, then the second pulse gets to deal the full damage of the pulse laser.

[AmyraCarter]

As Modern Vintage Gamer would say... "Mistakes were made." lolz
I'm not much of a Battletech connoisseur, and I've played only a few games with less than five total hours of gameplay time overall, but even I can understand and appreciate just how precise given values should be. After all, such is quite important in RPG mechanics, whether it be a videogame or table-top game or whatever medium.

[Novous]

I just remembered. IIRC, The Medium Pulse damage is incorrectly higher than what it's supposed to be in Mech2 and fixed in mw2:Mercs. Which is why at 24:48 you're doing more damage than even a LARGE pulse laser. If you look at the stat list for weapons, they're supposed to scale up normally. (3, 7, 10, damage per statcard. Likewise for mercs, it's 3, 6, 9 damage per statcard. In both cases, the medium should do LESS than a large.) If it's not a bug, you'd have to be a fool / noobtrap to use the large pulse (heavier, more heat, more slots, and less damage than medium lasers).

[SirxMMPD]

Good video. Well thought out!

Several years ago for Netmech we were doing similar testing because of the Gauss rifles not functioning properly at any range, but we got the damage values via hex editing. A guy named Highlander made a nice spreadsheet of it all. I'll have to go see if I have that saved somewhere or look into recreating it, but yes they definitely were not accurate 100% in mechlab.

Regarding the Medium Pulse Lasers though, I definitely can attest to them being beasts through similar testing that I did. The damage gets even more convoluted when you do a side by side comparison between Titanium and DOS/95!!! If you compare the DPS of MPulse in Titanium vs DOS/95 you get even more DPS on the Titanium version.

Side note: In testing online using 1.0 gravity er mediums cap out at about 310 meters, LRM 20's do around 800-850. These values are based upon where they work before they disappear. You definitely are correct about there is a maximum amount of missiles in the air as for a very long time it has been a tactic to chain your missiles so your opponent loses their missiles if they are using group fire; however, I am pretty sure that there is a maximum amount of lasers in the air count as well, but the number is significantly higher so that you would not notice unless you had four or more players with lasers playing at the same time.

[jong]

This confirmed my childhood suspicions that it was always more fun to get as many high caliber Autocannons loaded, and watch mech limbs fly.

[dt]

This was amazing.

I always knew the weapons stats weren't entirely accurate but it's actually pretty awesome to see that the environment changed the ranges too.

[catherinebranigan]

Final testing for today: MG crits against engine.
I destroyed 20 armorless, weaponless dires, going for the CT.
30% (6 kills) happened while the mech was on yellow damage (backstabbed, this can't be a accidental cockpit hit), 70% (14 kills) happened due to MG destroying the CT component (DWF was with a red torso on enhanced imaging display).

Soo, critting engines seems to be a thing in this game. Not that I ever did that. Due to the game's rather simple damage indicators, you generally know it's time to crit only when the CT is red. At that time, you might as well finish it with raw firepower.

I guess now it's time to test MGs during campaign missions to see if it is useful, or just a nice lore friendly thing that's not practical in actual combat (in MW2, of course).

[TheGreatCodeholio]

Just for reference: Think of fixed point as like an integer value N, but you treat it in your code as N / (some power of 2) so that conversion to a whole number is just one shift instruction away.


For example if I chose bit 16 as the "decimal point", then 0x10000 = 65536 = 1.0 and 0x8000 = 32768 = 0.5. Of course this means with 32 bits you can only count from -32767 - (65535/65536) to 32768 + (65535/65536), but it means you can do finer calculations without an FPU.


x86 processors did not integrate the FPU until the 486, and later the Pentium, though early 486s with faulty FPUs were sold as not having one, and non-Intel CPUs eventually integrated the FPU as well.


Good examples of fixed point include DOOM and Wolfenstein 3D. Use of fixed point in DOOM for your position is the reason you can NOCLIP, walk backwards out of a map, and eventually hit a point where your 3D view goes wonky and then disappears, and when you turn around, you're on the opposite side of the map.

[Zontar]

incredible how, with so many mechwarrior games made after this, we always go back playing this one . for me it's clearly the best

[Dave_L]

Great research, very well-done video. Some reflections: 1) ranges in the Battletech tabletop game were not meant to be literal... they were intentionally made shorter than what was realistic in order to facilitate good tactical gameplay given movement speeds, 2) it sounds like the small laser was nerfed a little bit in order to make the small pulse laser more attractive... in the tabletop game, pulse lasers give a very important bonus to hit which is not really possible in the computer game, so the alternative would be to make pulse lasers shoot a little farther and hit a little harder than their regular laser counterparts. Again, this is in line with the design philosophy of the tabletop game (even when the stats end up differing from the tabletop), as these things have always been designed with gameplay in mind and simulation taking second seat. In any case, it's great to see the differences and put hard numbers to them!

[BeyondTheScanlines]

What an interesting breakdown - it's been a while since I gave Mech2 a proper play, but I'd forgotten about the reticle lighting up outside of range. The convergence factor is new to me - though I'm sure I experienced it for sure.

[timix_au]

I'm going through the same data-mining exercise for Mechwarrior 1 at the moment, with the intention of optimising speedruns. I can recognise a lot of the little problems and foibles you went through, because I've seen them all myself - which means both of us were on the right track in our own ways.

The strategy I adopted was to assume the smallest weapon, the machine gun, did one unit of damage, and every other weapon would be an integer multiple of that, which seems to be borne out in my testing. DPS and range are a lot harder to figure out, as there's no way to get the game to run at a consistent speed, range to target is never explicitly displayed, and weapon ranges are listed as "short", "medium" and "long" (and there are variances between weapons within those categories). The best generalisation I've come up with is that the shorter the range for a given weapon, the more DPS it has, so if you can get a teammate to distract an enemy Battlemaster, you can sprint in with a Locust and blow it to pieces in seconds with machine guns with impunity.

I've also seen the same smallest-weapon-does-one concept in another game, Fire Fight, which the developers got *very* adventurous with afterwards. The starting machine gun does one damage per hit, the swarmer missiles also do one per hit but launch four at a time, the plasma gun follows a pattern of 2, 2 and 1 damage (three shots doing 5 DMG and four doing 7 DMG absolutely did my head in until I figured it out), homing missiles do a flat 7 damage, the cannon does *up to* 12 depending on how close you are (again, no range display, so hard to quantify), and I think grenades do a flat 12 with a certain radius as well.

I'd love to see more videos like this, about mining data from old games - it's a super interesting topic to the right people, and this one's given me a few ideas for new avenues to explore with Mechwarrior 1, so thanks for the effort!

[LynxSnowCat]

I had the modding/"gamepiece" manual for MW2 a while ago. I don't recall doing much with it after some severe arguments resulted from my trying to get a copy of the various editions of the base game and NetMech to see if there were greater differences. -- trying to remember if it included weapon definitions or only those needed to add vehicles and missions.

[falconat]

really useful video for Clan Mechwarriors. marvelous.

[catherinebranigan]

Final note: Lasers were dissapointing in this game, but that's just because Activision decided to nerf 'em. Since I'm a sniper this is kinda a big thing.
You end up with a weapon that has a 1.5 heat/dmg ratio (CERLL, way too hot IMO), and no nice recycle. Learning to use the CERPPC and just outright spamming it at a range the enemy can't fire back from is verry rewarding. Just put plenty of CDHS to offset the heat and you're good to go.

Now I will basically carry loads of CERPPC and Gauss Rifles.

[StooDogg]

Wait, the plane of Gothos that belongs to fighter ace Baron Von :0 Excited!!!!

[catherinebranigan]

Alright, update: you're absolutely right, CERLL do 8 dmg only. The algebra just wasn't adding up, contradicting equations ^^ That 40 armor DWF leg goes in 8 shots, not 7. My mistake. Poor counting on my part.
Weird I made like 3 tests giving me 7 shots, but I guess I just was tired today and forgot how to count :D heh
Very conclusive as a result. Good thing I made that mistake: I would never have found your video and would have been redoing your work. Only slower, on dires, on Goat Path, and without the fancy DPS testing you did.
All in all, people like you, and MMPD Radick are exactly what make the MW2 community awesome.
So, thanks again. MW2, you just got decrypted :P
God, I'm such a kid ^^

[woldemunster]

Back in the day i used to play this using a "nice" flightstick that had throttle-lever. After remembering that, i need to find dedicated usb-throttle that fits at the end of keyboard.... :DDDD

[Stilgarsan]

Well, I knew that the LB-X 2 has the highest range. But I am a nerd for the battletech Tabletop.

[DoCKathos]

That DPS chart actually checks out perfectly to me. I never liked the ER lasers, I always preferred the pulse lasers and I usually boated mediums or large depending on the mission. Pulse lasers and LRMs were usually my go to, didn't really like SRMs or any of the ballistic weapons. I ran the AC a few times and wasn't putting enough ammo in them because I was a dumb child so I just went back to pulse lasers and LRMs lol. Of course all of that changed with MW4 Mercs, I loooove me some AC cannons.