Optimized Quick Strike/Battleforce

Ok, ncKestrel made me go ahead and do some interesting stuff when it comes to the damage calculations for Battleforce and QuickStrike.


For example, lets take the Black Hawk (Nova) Prime.  This sucker has 12 clan ER-Medium Lasers.  Each generate 5 heat.  However, the design has only 18(36) heat sinks.  Basically, if it alpha strikes and jumps, its at 29 heat and has an 83% chance of being shutdown, can no longer move (except jump), but luckily it has no ammo to explode.


In Strategic Operations, this unit would be able to do 84 damage.  However, with 65 heat generated, and only 36 able to be dissipated, its heat efficiency is 55.38%.  Thus, the damage in Strategic Operations is 46.5, or 5 points at both short and medium range.


Strategic Operations Method.  5-5 Attack, 3 Overburn.


Ok, sounds reasonable, and is a decent extrapolation.


However, 5 attack is at least 45 damage, meaning 7 lasers fired.  7 lasers a turn for 3 BattleTech turns while jumping results in 12 heat at the end of those turns, roughly on the BF heat scale at 2.  Well again, that isn't very fair.


See these computer things rock, and I can easily do thousands of things in milliseconds it'd take you days to do, with lots of errors, with a pen and paper (or even in excel!).


So I wrote a function that takes every single item on a unit, and figures out every single possible combination of firing in a turn.  I think figure out just how much a unit can fire without any heat, and I then have some really accurate data!


Using this method, each turn the mech can fire 6 lasers, resulting in 42 damage, rounded to an attack of 4-4.  Each battletech turn it has 1 heat unallocated.  Well this is far more accurate than the SO method.  



Now, when it comes to overburns, you can go from 0 to 4.  Mechs can go from 0 to 30.  So basically each point of overburn represents about 7.5 heat in battletech.  However that is over 3 turns, and is cumulative, so each point of overburn is really only about 2.5 heat per Battletech turn.  Not much for a BattleTech player eh?  


If I add 10 heat per battletech turn, an overburn of 4, it allows me to fire 2 more lasers each turn.  This results in a 6-6 attack.  This is annoying.  While I generate +4 Battleforce heat, it actually results in only +2 damage.  Ack!


But for now I am showing these calculations on the right side of the Quick Strike card, to show what the mech *should* be.  In this case, the Black Hawk is 4-4-0-0 attack, but if using Overburn 4, it can actually be 6-6-0-0.  FAR more accurate than SO.


My Current Method:  4-4 Attack, 4 Overburn gives 6-6 attack.


Not to dog SO at all, nobody wants to do that much math, but I'm using a computer to do it all for me, so it ends up making the unit data FAR more accurate, and I didn't use a single piece of paper!


I calculate ballistic (all ballistic/energy weapons considered) and energy (only weapons without ammo considered) in these calculations.  


This isn't the end however.  I really want to do totals over 3 BattleTech turns to show proper abstraction into BattleForce.




In 3 BattleTech turns the Nova would have 108 heat dissipation ability, use 15 for movement, leaving 93 to fire weapons.  That is 18.6 shots, so 18*7/3 = 42/10, or 4.2 attack.  So the unit should have an attack of 4-4.






Adding overburn there would be 108, 115.5, 123, 130.5, or 138 heat dissipation for each overburn factor over the 3 BattleTech turns encompassing a single QS/BF turn.


0 Overburn, 108 Heat = 18 Lasers Fired = 4.2 Attack
1 Overburn, 115.5 Heat = 20 Lasers Fired = 4.7 Attack
2 Overburn, 123 Heat = 21 Lasers Fired = 4.9 Attack
3 Overburn, 130.5 Heat = 23 Lasers Fired = 5.4 Attack
4 Overburn, 138 Heat = 24 Lasers Fired = 5.6 Attack


Using this method, you'd get 3-3 Attack, with an overburn of 4 giving a 6-6 attack.  This actually matches my current method, but it won't always.  The Marauder II Bounty Hunter has +10 heat using my method after each BT turn, as its simply not enough to fire another ERPPC.  However, if I average across 3 turns, thats +30 heat, and allows 2 more shots, giving the unit +1 attack at long range.  


Notice how I'm ignoring special attacks like SRM, LRM, HT, TOR, etc.  That is because if you break these attacks out, well, the sheet becomes horribly convoluted, and the system completely breaks down.  IMO, if you want those values, well, play BattleTech, otherwise completely skip those values completely as they really don't work right anyway (FLK/IF/NARC are all fine)


I'll try to get the multiple turn code written in the next couple days, but for now you can at least see something far more accurate than any other method has produced.  Simply go to the Encyclopedia and find a unit (Preferably mech, maybe CV/Infantry/BA/Fighters too) and click on it to see the record sheet and Quick Strike sheet with the new factors.