Well your...umm...wrong?


http://www.sarna.net/wiki/LB_20-X_AC

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Dictionary

Hmm...  Well in Mech 4 the Lbx had a diminishing dmg return at range just like a shotgun and in Battle tech it does not.  I guess that was my real intention.  In any event the LBX is a great weapon for Anti-Air.  Mostly the lower Caliber guns with more range.  LBX-2, LBX-5.  If you note, they have two different rounds for the LBx in Battle tech. One is like a standard round, the other fragments.   'Beyond the "standard" models, variants include the "shotgun-like" LBX and quick-firing Ultra.'  It is still open to debate as what the LBX is.  And it may always be.

Of course when I wrote this origonnaly I forgot about the old "cannister shot" used out of cannons from pretty much the invention of the weapon.  Cannister shot is just that.  Several pounds of lead or steel balls loaded into a Cannister and shot out of the cannon.  They usually were around .50 cal in size.  And it appears we still have this available.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cgn1nhUEgo8

Battletech didn't have it because in reality shotgun fire in rather tight spread patterns. Shot guns do NOT spread out in a giant cone of fire, but rather have a relatively compact sphere of pellets. And the description of the shells sounds exactly like a shotgun shell (a specialty shell that splits apart after being fired). Though it's exact sematics may be different, this is the very essence of "shotgun" like. Also, battletech probably didn't have it, as it was ment as a critical causing weapon, and they didn't want to complicate the tabletop game with damage reduction over distance rules (relatively speaking, BT rules are rather clean, and hence are not burdened with "interpretation" and complication problems of other arguably more "realistic" systems).


Oh, and one last thing, while we don't have it now, we may at some time (or perhaps in future releases) create the different ammo-types for
the autocannons (we already use some of them depending on what they are mounted on, but they are defaulted in, and not capable of being changed).

they say it's cluster rounds behave like a shotgun blast, but the only thing they ever specify about the actual rounds are that they split into smaller submunitions giving the weapon spread.

There is no specific mention of shooting lots of pellets like an actual shotgun.  But out of personal preference i'd vote against it in favor of my multiple APFSDS idea since pellets would not be good against armor.

Also, i think the lbxes sort of have that same sort of artistic flexibility that reguilar acs have, i.e. lbxes shown having different numbers of barrels, and vastly different widths and lengths among different illustrations able to represent possibly the same or any class of lbx.  So there's a lot of flexibility there.

Who can say whether the pellets would or wouldn't be effective against mech armor?  After all, a single burst from a .50 caliber machine gun inflicts more damage than one of these pellets does against mech armor.  2 Damage from MGs, 1 per pellet for LBX Cluster.

Since the CBT LBX Cluster munition could, theoretically, hit both the head and the foot of an enemy mech with a single blast then I would simply have the cone be ~20 meters in diameter at maximum range and move backwards from there.  What you'll end up getting is a relatively crappy, but accurate, long range gun that spreads damage all over and a fairly brutal crit-cannon at closer ranges.

If you use CBT range for the LB10X you are looking at a maximum range of 570 meters with a spread diameter of 20 meters.  At 285 meters the blast would be 10 meters in diameter and at 143 meters it would be only 5 meters in diameter.  At point blank range, or 30 meters, the spread would be all of 1 meter across, inflicting tremendous damage to one or maybe 2 locations.

To balance the weapon damage out I'd have it throw out 50% more pellets (So 15 instead of 10, or 30 instead of 20), to encourage people to use it over the standard ACs.  On average it will inflict less damage until the enemy is in short range, then the accuracy of the shotgun vs. a standard AC is null and the damage starts to climb for the LBX.

Basically, the trade off between the LBX and the standard AC is that the LBX is more accurate, spreads damage, and increases in damage dealing as range decreases.  The standard and Ultra ACs are less accurate as range increases but inflict concentrated damage to single locations.

I wasn't going to mention the standard and cluster rounds for the LBX because I figured it would require too many controls and interface stuff to have ammunition both be swappable and for the mech lab to allow you to load up both types.  If that isn't an issue then the only downside to the LBX is that it needs to be larger than the equivalent AC.

If you look at the CBT 3050 TRO the LBX autocannons have equal or superior range to even the Ultra versions of ACs.  Add to that fact that an IS LB-10X actually weighs 1 ton less than an AC/10 and produces less heat and it quickly becomes obvious that the only balance factor in the CBT design for these weapons was the number of criticals they took up.

I'm not sure how badly this could impact the engine, but having a bunch of individual submunitions being seperately tracked might not be the fastest/best way to model the LBX cluster munitions, but it sure would be the most appropriate.

How are the devs handling the LBX cluster rounds?
Can LBX ACs switch between solid and cluster munitions?
What's the current range on the LB10X and LB20X respectively?
How are ACs and Ultra ACs going to be different from LBXs, especially if the LBX does end up with solid ammo?

And, the questions most in my mind. 
How are Pulse Lasers going to be presented? 
Specifically are they going to be rapid-fire lasers that overheat the mech because they can be fired continuously, or is there some other method that the -2 to target number modifier is going to be represented in the game?