Systems Design Analysis - Core Weapons Sets Design and Balance in MW5
In this analysis I will examine the relationship between the core weapons sets in MechWarrior 5 and how they are tuned to achieve the balance that the game strikes.
Weapons System Balance Design Outcomes
MechWarrior 5 has a very well balanced weapons system, particularly given the number of weapons that they offer players. Specifically, the weapons are balanced to achieve the following:
Early game weapons are still viable and important in the end game
Weapons types (i.e. missiles, energy, and ballistics) are differentiated and posses specific advantages, but don’t have a contrived RPS relationships to differentiate themselves
Weapons within a set (e.g. pulse laser set - small, medium, large pulse laser) are each the “optimal” choice based on needs
Outside of the core sets, set variants are not strictly better, and require a meaningful resource investment and risk analysis to justify
The weapons designs and values are tuned in balance to the mech system to achieve implicit design intent without contrived mechanical behaviors or effects
Core Weapons Sets
The “core” weapons are considered to be:
Ballistics - Machine Gun and Auto-Cannons (AC2, AC5, AC10, AC20)
Energy - Lasers (Small, Medium, Large), and PPC
Missiles - Short Range Missiles (SRM2, SRM4, SRM6), and Long Range Missiles (LRM5, LRM10, LRM15, LRM20)
*The Flamer (the flame thrower weapon of the energy type) is not part of the analysis because it’s clear from the design that the “heat-damage” system of MW5 is under developed and that the incompletion of that design’s balance is the reason why the weapon is made to behave the way that it does.
These are considered to be the core weapons because they are the starting weapons, they are the weapons which set variants, and fully express the fundamental weapons designed dynamics in the game.
Weapons System Design - Dynamics
The weapons of MW5, outside of specific and narrow weapons behavior, are differentiated across functional axes that are meaningful in the context of MW5’s combat scenarios and mech systems design. Weapons of the core set tend to be more polarized in their expression across these axes, where as their variants tend to occupy spaces not yet occupied by the core designs.
Anti-Armor vs Anti-Structure
Anti-Armor: A mech’s armor must be reduced to 0 before the structure underneath can begin to take damage. To efficiently begin to do structural damage, a weapon capable of depositing all of it’s damage payload to a single component would be the most efficient. Anti-armor weapons would naturally benefit from precise delivery of a single impulse of damage. In this case, as long as DPS doesn’t overly suffer, a lower rate of fire would be acceptable if it were traded off against high damage and low projectile counts.
Anti-Structure: Once a mech’s armor has been reduced to 0, the underlying structure receives damage as normal, but the game has a “critical damage” mechanic where each instance of damage, no matter how much, has a chance of destroying equipment within that part of the mech. If explosive equipment are destroyed, they can do additional damage to the structure and equipment in the struck part of the mech, as well as in adjacent parts. In this case, a high rate of fire, independent of total damage output would be the most effective. Alternatives to high rates of fire would also include weapons with high projectile counts per volley.
Standoff Capability vs Equipment Efficiency
Standoff Capability: Long range standoff weapons allow mechs to apply damage to targets at extended ranges. Against opponents without the same range capability, it establishes a state of inevitability that will force mechs to attempt to close the distance to attempt to change the rate of exchange in their favor. In MW5, can be a forcing function allowing standoff weapons to force their opponent’s hand into combat in scenarios of sub-optimal terrain, situations, or matchups.
Efficiency: The tradeoff for standoff capability comes with various downsides, typically in the form of excess tonnage, the requisite storage of heavy explosive ammunition within mech components, high heat generation, and the tradeoff of pure DPS capabilities at medium to short ranges.
Damage Rate vs Endurance
High Damage Rate: The DPS of a weapon is an essential metric of a weapon in a game that operates around exchange rates of damage. The weapons designs accentuated by the highest rates of damage are characterized by their higher weight penalties, greater ammunition requirements, and additional heat generation that is typically dealt with in the form of extra tonnage and space by way of heat sinks. This generally goes for both types of damage rate of consequence in the design, alpha* damage, and DPS.
High Endurance: Weapon endurance in the game is a combination of percentage up time and total up time. For example, energy weapons with no ammunition can have a potentially unlimited total up time, but the designs that produce more heat than a mech can dissipate between engagements will have to cease firing so as to not cause the mech to over heat and shut down. Conversely, some weapons with low heat generation could potentially have 100% up time, but if their rate of ammunition consumption exceeds how much the mech is able to take into battle, it’s total up time might fall short of what is required.
Based on the above examples, the M Laser may be among the highest endurance weapons in the game, but every other weapon has to negotiate some degree of penalty for it’s contextual performance advantage over that floor.
Tuning - Establishing Base Values
MechWarrior 5 inherits its values from a game system that has been adapted to table-top minis-based war games to real time strategy games to sim-based mech piloting sims. Interestingly, many of the damage, tonnage, and range values are true to the first incarnation, Battledroids, released in 1984. The medium laser is cornerstone of the weapons system. At 5 damage, a weight of 1 ton, and a range of 540 m (in MW5), this weapon is used to define the delimitations of the game.
Because the Medium Laser is one of the most efficient weapons in the game across the board in the design, it continues to be useful throughout the game. Therefore weapons with meaningful ranges in excess of the medium laser can be considered “long range” weapons with standoff capability being defined by its effectiveness when used in excess of these ranges. With a DPS of 1 damage per second, it defines the floor for the core weapon’s rate based damage output. And with a Damage per Ton of 5 dmg/T, it is the second highest weight efficient burst damage weapons.
MW5 can be considered a “strategic” shooter in that combat scenarios tend to resolve themselves over periods of time significantly greater than small multiples of the average human’s reaction time. Players are required to assess range, terrain, cover, and force v force positions changing in real time. This means that effective damage output is informed by ranges as well as exchange rate interruption frequency. And because mechs are designed with individually destructible components with survivability considerations differentiate by whether damage is being applied to armor or structure, weapons designs also have to balance with respect to damage diffusion and hit rates.
Weapon Damage and DPS
MechWarrior’s weapons are conceptually differentiated across their dynamics, but how did they assign each weapon it’s damage and firing rate values?
Looking at Damage / Ton, we can see how the Medium Laser stays relevant throughout the game - by being one of the highest burst damage sources per ton in the game. From there, most weapons have some damage advantage over the Medium Laser with the exception of the “weight compromised” versions of weapons that typically have a variety of compromises for their weights savings.
For non-weight compromised designs, we can see that each weapon’s tonnage is penalized for it’s burst damage output in excess of the Medium Laser’s. However, we can also see that there isn’t a strict 1:1 between tonnage and damage.
Range and Tonnage Tuning
To understand how weapons values were balanced accounting for damage, range, and tonnage it can be helpful to look at a weapon’s Damage Envelope. Damage Envelope (DE) and Damage Envelope Tonnage Efficiency (DETE) are derivative of the concept of how much damage a weapon can do against a target as they close the distance between its max range to zero.
If a target was closing at 64.8 kmph (18 m/s) against a medium laser, you could calculate the total volume of fire in this way:
Damage = (damage / sec) * range / velocity
Damage = 1 DPS * 540 m / 18 m/s = 30 dmg
It’d be challenging to tune when having to do this for every combination, but for any constant DPS and maximum range, a dependent relationship can be defined between the volume of fire and the incoming velocity. By removing velocity, the damage value could be abstracted to a useful constant that defines a velocity independent comparative value to gauge the weapon’s potential output in a closing dynamic.
Damage Envelope = (damage / sec) * range
The MechWarrior system, by design imposes penalties and benefits for a design’s deviation from the baseline in the form of weight, so DETE takes that dynamic into account.
Damage Envelope Tonnage Efficiency = DE / weapons tonnage
From these values, we can observe that:
Weapons have a high variation in their DE values, but most weapons have a DETE clustered within 25% of the medium laser.
Weapons with exceptional range, DPS, or other outputs are the most heavily penalized:
AC20 - High DPS + Point Dmg + Med Range -> DETE of 30% of MLaser
AC10 - High DPS + Point Dmg + Long Range -> DETE of ~45% of MLaser
PPC - High Point Dmg + High Endurance -> DETE of ~50% of MLaser
LLaser - High Dmg + Long Range + High Endurance -> DETE of ~50% of MLaser
When considering a weapon’s Damage Envelope to it’s weight, we see a much more highly correlative relationship.
What breaks out are two linear relationships - the lower line representing energy weapons which don’t require ammunition, and the upper line representing missile and ballistic weapons which do consume ammunition.
It’s worth point out that AC10 takes a severe penalty relative to other ammo based weapons and falls in line with a DE in line with energy weapons.
The AC20, with it’s huge destructive potential is more representative of weapons in variant sets. These variants (not examined here) typically have some exceptional capability (for the AC20 that being it’s massive damage and damage rate), and have non-linear penalties applied such as excess weight penalties, severe heat generation, or some other downside/risk.
