LB20xs, how do they work?

[knowthyself2]

I put two of them on a King Crab and those things hardly do any damage. What am I missing?

[wesnef]

They're shotguns. They each fire 6 'pellets' of 20 damage each (if I remember the LBX20 stats correctly). They get scattered across locations with to-hit rolls, and are reduced for cover/guard/etc. So, yeah - it can end up looking underwhelming depending on how the hits scatter and what the defenses are.

(I'd tried a 'shotgun' Crab, with two LBX10++ and two Snub PPC++, and yeah - it just didn't feel very strong, even though it theoretically did a bunch of damage.)

[Dux Aquila]

Think of them as huge shotguns.
They don't function like normal AC/20s and don't fill the same role. As far as I understand, they're not so much intended to actually rack up a lot of kills on their own, but instead fish for crits after armor has been stripped.

[knowthyself2]

Seems like a design error, then. Once armor is stripped away, the conventional weapons that destroyed the armor do just fine at destroying the mech's structure.

[Valen]

LBX's have never been a favorite of mine in any battletech/mechwarrior game - damage just always seems to spread out... Same with snub PPC.

At least missiles (which scatter as well) have long range and indirect fire use.

[Dux Aquila]

Originally posted by knowthyself2:

Seems like a design error, then. Once armor is stripped away, the conventional weapons that destroyed the armor do just fine at destroying the mech's structure.

Sometimes, accuracy through volume of fire is a viable option.
For me though, I don't understand why I would pick an LB 20-X AC over a bunch of SRM launchers.

What does an LB 20-X AC weigh? 14 tons? Two tons of ammo and you're up to 16 tons to do 6x20 damage.
For the same tonnage, I could mount 4 SRM-6 launchers and 4 tons of ammo. That's 4x6x8 damage.

[Lack of Stuff]

I'm not a fan of most of the LBX but the LB 2X is pretty sweet. It's like 2 and a half MGs stuck together and fired at long range all for almost no heat and reasonable tonnage.

[Harukage]

LB-X AC is suposed to use 2 types of ammunitions and switch them in combat. Solid slugs to penetrate armor and cluster rounds to maximize internal systems damage.
Somehow the weapon had lost half of it's use in transition to this game. Though stacked LB-X cannons can strip armor, deal multiple crits and knock mech over with ease.

[Sword_of_Light]

Originally posted by Harukage:

LB-X AC is suposed to use 2 types of ammunitions and switch them in combat. Solid slugs to penetrate armor and cluster rounds to maximize internal systems damage.
Somehow the weapon had lost half of it's use in transition to this game. Though stacked LB-X cannons can strip armor, deal multiple crits and knock mech over with ease.

To expand on that:

In tabletop, if you equip both AC ammo and LBX ammo, the LBX - like real-world shotguns - can fire either. However, if you try that here, you just get an error saying you've equipped your mech with ammo that no weapon uses.

So the LB20X is essentially equipping your mech with 5 short-range ballistic weapons that each do base 20 damage.

[wesnef]

Looked at my tabletop rulebook to see all the details.

Comparing the AC10 to the LBX10 (Inner Sphere 3050 weapon chart):
- the LBX is one ton lighter & less critical spaces
- the LBX makes 2/3 the heat (2 heat vs 3 - in tabletop a single heatsink clears 1 heat)
- the LBX has slightly longer range (6/12/18 instead of 5/10/15)
- when firing cluster ammo, there's a 1 bonus to hit
- to switch ammos, you need to install full tons of regular & cluster

The Clan LBX10 is yet another ton lighter & smaller.


Of course, in tabletop you also roll on the "# of missile hits" table to see how many submunitions actually hit. It's a 2-12 bell curve table, so the highest odds are that you'll only hit with 60% of the damage (tabletop LBX's do 1 point per pellet, with the # of pellets = the weapon's damage. So an LBX20 fires 20 pellets and rolls on the LRM20 column. Remember that in tabletop, the damage is different than this game - an AC10 does 10, an AC20 does 20, a PPC does 10. If AC2's had been translated straight like most other weapons, they'd only do 10 damage, and no one would ever touch one.)

[erictred11]

Originally posted by wesnef:

They're shotguns. They each fire 6 'pellets' of 20 damage each (if I remember the LBX20 stats correctly). They get scattered across locations with to-hit rolls, and are reduced for cover/guard/etc. So, yeah - it can end up looking underwhelming depending on how the hits scatter and what the defenses are.

(I'd tried a 'shotgun' Crab, with two LBX10++ and two Snub PPC++, and yeah - it just didn't feel very strong, even though it theoretically did a bunch of damage.)

Put 2 Uac 120's on crab and kill stuff instead of playing with your food.

[wesnef]

Originally posted by erictred11:

Put 2 Uac 120's on crab

That level of recoil should do stability damage to your own mech. :D


(also, that's 96 heat. And almost a ton of ammo every time you fire. Heh.)

[MilfordTheBunny (DarkZenith)]

Has anyone tried putting LBX's on the Archer to see if they stop spreading out? (Not supposed to work with the missilry suite, but hey it may be a glitch). Or snub ppcs. Not sure if any of the variants with the suite have Ballistic mounts.

[erictred11]

Originally posted by wesnef:

Originally posted by erictred11:

Put 2 Uac 120's on crab

That level of recoil should do stability damage to your own mech. :D


(also, that's 96 heat. And almost a ton of ammo every time you fire. Heh.)

Ya but your targets dead and besides that with a ++ exchanger and a ++ heat bank I can alpha 2 to 3 times before I have to vent heat depending on world climate I'm on.

And recoil does nothing to me with a 10. 10. 10. 10 pilot, heat can be a problem but I rotate my mechs in and out of front line to vent heat.

All my mechs have AC weapons and haven't looked back since.