131 replies to this topic

[Victor Morson]

Groovy4life, on 29 October 2013 - 07:55 AM, said:

If boating is bad then who the hell put that AWS-8Q in game? Or Jagermechs? CPLT-A1? Other boats? Not PGI themselves?

This is another huge problem I have with Ghost Heat. It's flat, every mech is the same system with no UI information in-game renders even canon 'mechs worthless, and it completely sends energy-heavy mechs to the trash heap (as well as AC/2 mechs, because they Ghost Heat like no tomorrow and no fix seems on the horizon.)

If it had different bonuses to different chassis, at least, it'd serve SOME purpose aside from being an unnecessary pain. i.e. if the Awesome's limits were +2 to LL & PPC, so it could run boaty builds, it would be a great way to make the Awesome useful again in some capacity.

As it stands it turns into "Haha you new pilot that never played before! You tried to use all the guns on your stock (or even trial) mech! PUNISHMENT TO THE BOATERS."

[GalaxyBluestar]

Almond Brown, on 29 October 2013 - 10:18 AM, said:

Anyone who knows the basic premise that GH was meant to prevent "cares". How in the hell does something that adds balance to the game deter "fun" wtf?

Your ranting man and without any logic. If you consider "unbalanced" game play as "fun" then no one, least of all PGI, can help you.

fun is being able to play anything and everything that comes to mind. that's why previous MW were so cool because their parameters for terible/black to viable/grey to optimal/white had a much bigger grey area than in this game {although MW4 suffered a simillar fate to what we've had recently}



i conversed with joe mallan about the top leauge play discussion, that got locked, he's absolutely right about millitaries being simillar trying to top each other and MWO reflecting this with the mechs being run. i just don't like going there, although it's natural the limitations for variety is a bit sad, too predictable, the tactics become routine like ferraris always on pole. it's why i prefer the scrub play, i like the anything goes anything can happen mentality of some matches, you never know what mech or loadout or movement gameplay you get and that's more exciting than just keeping up the trade of fire between simillar combatants.

so you see guy that's why the implementation of GH is bad, it's not about fixing the problem it's about LIMITING it whilst actually working on a solution {i hope} and thus many maners of build and play have been limited too and that's not fun. for sure ppc... ppc everywhere is bad but taking that out to put Ac's in their place alongside poptarting doesn't bring variety or balance, however you want to label it, to the game it's just one limitation on top of previous ones. LIMITING mech designs and play styles IS NOT FUN! like limiting the amount of friends you can play with as premades IS NOT FUN and these limitations, like 2 game modes no cw is what makes this game get a reputation for not BEING FUN!

Edited by GalaxyBluestar, 29 October 2013 - 05:49 PM.

[Viral Matrix]

If ghost heats gonna stay, then 4 LL limit is good. Thats 36 damage for 20 tons, 8 crit slots, 3.25 cooldown, and 28 heat. The ML limit is 6 for 30 damage and 6 tons, 6 crit slots, 3 second cooldown, and 24 heat. Only thing the LL setup wins on is range and slightly with 20% more damage. It should be a setup for heavy mechs, to make up for their slower speed. The 6MLs is fine on a lighter mech that can close distance easily, but that efficiency isnt allowed to heavies for some reason with their weapon system.

While were talking heat and energy weapons, ERPPCs and PPC limit needs to be upped to 3. The ERPPC needs its heat lowered to 12 or, at very most, 13. The PPC needs to have its min range removed, and have either the linear dropoff return or have no min range at all. At least until the AC/10 has a min range, its unfair. ERPPCs are way too inefficient, its not better than 2xLL, but it has higher heat. One ERPPC is just 1.5 heat less than 2xERLL. Thats silly.

Stop demonizing energy weapons PGI, while ACs are running around doing insane damage and screenshake and producing hardly any heat. Damage is damage. You should just add ghostheat to the ERPPC/PPC+Gauss combo instead of spraying ghostheat throughout the meta without thought.

Edited by Viral Matrix, 29 October 2013 - 06:32 PM.

[Viral Matrix]

Cathy, on 28 October 2013 - 09:33 AM, said:

Heat scale was put in to stop game breaking 6xPPC and 6ERLL boats being one shot kill mechs which is why 2 was the number picked.

while I'm not a fan of the way they have gone with balancing as it favors ac2 ac5 builds its a damn sight better than what it was and I just shake my head at the people still lobying for those builds to come back..


only way thay can change things is to compltely rebuild the game its a done deal. your wasting time

I got no problem with ghostheat for 6xLL or even 5x setups, but 4x shouldnt be penalized. And 3xPPC shouldnt be penalized either. I dont think you can call either of those numbers gamebreaking boats.

Edited by Viral Matrix, 29 October 2013 - 10:28 PM.

[Koniving]

Death Mallet, on 24 October 2013 - 06:03 AM, said:

Ghost heat wasn't about "fixing PPCs".

Ghost heat was about fixing rampant boating of all the weapons systems it affects.

You may not like the specifics of the mechanic. . . but the effect of it has definitely improved gameplay and build variety.

Ghost Heat needs to stay. Its fine as is.

30 Threshold could have solved the same problem and prevented the abuse that Ghost Heat allows.

Example: In all instances alpha striked. 3 PPCs = shutdown. 2 ER PPCs = shutdown. 4 LL while moving = shutdown. 7 ML while moving = shutdown. 6 AC/2s fired at the same time non-stop for 4 seconds at 0.5 second intervals with 16 DHS = shutdown. 5 LRM-15s fired at once while going 10 kph = shutdown. 4 LRM-20s fired at once while moving at 20 kph = shutdown. 6 SRM-6s at once while moving 40 kph = shutdown. 3 SRM-6s followed by waiting a full 2 seconds and 3 SRM-6s with 10 true DHS would put you at 66.66% heat not counting your engine heat (which would make up to an 18% difference on heat-neutral maps). A single firing of 4 AC/5s would bring you to 13.33% heat regardless of if you have 10 standard and 28 double heatsinks, with the only difference being how fast you cooled.

Now current threshold system allows this before ghost heat. That killed me at 200% heat. Even after ghost heat, take a battlemaster 1G. Load it with 7 ER PPCs. Chain fire them until you reach slightly beyond 100%. Reboot. Still beyond 100% be overriden and fire 7 ER PPCS at once. Notice you are still alive. At the moment the current system stops doing damage to your CT at 175% heat and forces a mandatory shutdown with 95% damage done to CT. Should you reboot, you die instantly. But remain shut down. Fire 7 ER PPCs again -- for the build I had the total heat generated is over 900% of my threshold. You're still alive, as it takes another 95% from the CT. Note I said %. Not an actual number, a percentage. In other words I could abuse this and never die so long as no one gets through my armor.

Remember the 5 LRM-15s and shutdown I mentioned with the threshold fix? Before ghost heat this build could fire 6 LRM 15s and then 6 LRM-15s and shut down. That's 12 LRM-15s with almost 5 seconds in between, shutdown. At the time LRM-15s fired slower. Now they fire faster. With ghost heat I can't fire them all at once (which sucked anyway because of the 90 LRMs the spread was over two Atlases wide on a stationary target with over 30 missiles missing every time). And so I chain fire them one at a time. Every single LRM goes 90% CT because I'm firing 1 launcher at a time. I'm also able to top out at between 16 and 17 rapidly fired LRM-15s.

17 LRM-15s with this system. With the proposed fix, 5 would shut me down if I so much as moved.

Enjoy LRM mayhem. God knows Ghost Heat has essentially made heat management into a ghost that you can't see or experience.


And this epic rush with 2 ER and 2 regular LLs? Would have been completely impossible with the 30 threshold fix.

My threshold in this one is 30 + 42 + 20% = 86.4 and my cooling rate is 42+15% = 48.3 4.83 (edit: decimal in wrong spot). Note, single heatsinks so no reductions or 1.4 b.s.. Had I done this with 30 threshold and true DHS, I'd have 21 DHS at true 2.0 cooling each, and my threshold would be 30 with a cooling rate of 4.2. With unlocks it'd be a threshold of 36 and 4.83/sec cooling. This would be identcal with 42 SHS, too. It still could never have happened even if the mech were capable of carrying that many DHS, as I would have shut down after a few shots. A single ER LL would have brought me to 28.33% heat. 2 would bring me to over 56.67% heat. Those 2 regular LLs? 46% heat. No matter how fast my cooling could be, I could never fire the 4 lasers together like that. Ever. Let alone keep doing it over and over.

Another example. Ghost heat will attack 3 AC/2s being fired at 0.25 second intervals. 3 AC/2s fired at the same time for 10 seconds generates 19 shots each and 114 damage. 3 AC/2s fired at 0.25 intervals generate 13 shots each (1 doing 14) for 80 damage. The 114 damage isn't touched, but the 80 damage is attacked so voraciously that each AC/2 can't even get out 4 shots for 24 damage before being violent shut down and damaged.

Ghost heat attacks 3 PPCs which does 30 damage. But it will not attack 2 PPCs + 2 LPL + 2 MPL which can be with the right build fired twice in a row without any risk of shutdown. That's 53.2 that's perfectly fine. 8 MPL? 48 Perfectly fine. 2 UAC/5s and 2 AC/5s? In the same 4 seconds it'd take for the first two rigs to fire again, 60 damage (and that's in 3 seconds with 1 second to spare. The UAC/5s could churn out another 5 damage each in that time to make 70 damage). But that's perfectly fine!

Ghost heat doesn't need to stay. It's a band-aid to an underlying core issue with the heat system. What fixing the threshold cannot solve is boating AC/20s.

We have two solutions to that.

• Multi-shot variants and remove the non-lore-friendly single shot AC/20s -- they don't exist on mechs in Battletech. The recoil is too strong and Atlases topple over using them.
  
  • The biggest AC/20 on a mech is the Chemjet Gun, a 4 shot AC/20 where each shot does 5 damage, delivered in a slow but effective burst.
    
  • The Hunchback carries a 5 shot AC/20 known as the Tomodzuru Autocannon Mount Type 20.
    
  • The Hunchback II-C carries twin "Devastator Ultra AC/20s." Each fires 6 shots to do 20 damage in an MG-style (non-stop, no cooldown. In MWO that firing rate would be 4 seconds / 6 = 0.667 seconds per shot. Ultra mode would double that firing rate at the risk of jamming on any shot (20% / 12 = 1.667% chance to jam on every shot). Each shot does 3.33 damage, totaling 20 or 40 depending on the firing rate. Yes, it's massive damage but yes it's massive spread.
    
  • Every AC is like this, actually, and over 95% of the ACs in battletech are not single shot.
    
  • There's an AC/2 that requires 10 shots to make 2 damage.
    
  • There's an AC/20 that requires 100 shots, known as the Pontiac 100 which is described as a 14 ton gatling gun firing thin 100mm by ?(something tiny)mm rounds loaded by a cassette (mechanically fed magazine). In a single trigger pull the Pontiac 100 "discharges the entire cassette in less than a few seconds creating a cloud of black fire that blinded them both as the transparent alloy of his rival's cockpit shredded until all that remained was a gruesome mess of gore and unsalvageable circuitry. The echo of an exterior port opening to eject the expended cassete is followed by the rattling of chambers, servos and pistons setting and jamming the next cassette into place. A green light the ballistic weapon indicator informs the pilot that his Pontiac 100 is ready for another firing." <--Corrected my paraphrase with the actual quote.
    
  • The Atlas's 100mm Deathgiver AC/20 fires 15 rounds in an MG fashion (4/15 = 0.2667 seconds between shots), but these are much bigger and harder hitting shells. The 120mm Deathgiver AC/20 on the King Crab fires 12 rounds in a burst form (all shots fired within 1.2 seconds as a rough estimate, leaving 2.8 seconds to eject the cassette and load in another) to get 20 damage.
• Option 2: Limit ammunition. AC/20 has 5 rounds, AC/10 has 10 rounds, AC/5 has 20 rounds, AC/2 has 45 rounds. Boating issue solved.
  
• Far as missile spam being hindered by the reduced threshold? Increase LRM damage to 2.0 (2.0 against double armor = 1.0 against regular armor = intended values) and reduce their firing rates to fire slower. This lightens LRM spam (which would be impossible with the 30 threshold anyway), lightens projectile and registration issues, lightens server load, makes LRMs scarier without the harassment of constantly being peppered, and because they don't shoot as fast you'll probably want some backup weapons when that angry Atlas starts rushing you. Better call a few friends too.

There. Problem solved. No convoluted systems necessary. Can I haz prize now?



Edit: Made slightly easier to read. Gave exact quote. Fixed a misplaced decimal.
Edit 2: Heat simulator found. It does not have updated PPC/ER PPC heat or pulse laser heat. But it does have ghost heat. It also can quickly tell you the threshold of any build.
http://keikun17.gith...heat_simulator/
Want to see how unfair the current system is? Start with a 250 engine, make any number of heatsinks. Then go 225, 200, 190, 175, etc. MWO's system screws lights and some mediums like the Blackjack.

Edited by Koniving, 31 October 2013 - 09:22 AM.

[Lyoto Machida]

Koniving, on 30 October 2013 - 12:14 AM, said:

30 Threshold could have solved the same problem and prevented the abuse that Ghost Heat allows.

Example: In all instances alpha striked. 3 PPCs = shutdown. 2 ER PPCs = shutdown. 4 LL while moving = shutdown. 7 ML while moving = shutdown. 6 AC/2s fired at the same time non-stop for 4 seconds at 0.5 second intervals with 16 DHS = shutdown. 5 LRM-15s fired at once while going 10 kph = shutdown. 4 LRM-20s fired at once while moving at 20 kph = shutdown. 6 SRM-6s at once while moving 40 kph = shutdown. 3 SRM-6s followed by waiting a full 2 seconds and 3 SRM-6s with 10 true DHS would put you at 66.66% heat not counting your engine heat (which would make up to an 18% difference on heat-neutral maps). A single firing of 4 AC/5s would bring you to 13.33% heat regardless of if you have 10 standard and 28 double heatsinks, with the only difference being how fast you cooled.

Now current threshold system allows this before ghost heat. That killed me at 200% heat. Even after ghost heat, take a battlemaster 1G. Load it with 7 ER PPCs. Chain fire them until you reach slightly beyond 100%. Reboot. Still beyond 100% be overriden and fire 7 ER PPCS at once. Notice you are still alive. At the moment the current system stops doing damage to your CT at 175% heat and forces a mandatory shutdown with 95% damage done to CT. Should you reboot, you die instantly. But remain shut down. Fire 7 ER PPCs again -- for the build I had the total heat generated is over 900% of my threshold. You're still alive, as it takes another 95% from the CT. Note I said %. Not an actual number, a percentage. In other words I could abuse this and never die so long as no one gets through my armor.

Remember the 5 LRM-15s and shutdown I mentioned with the threshold fix? Before ghost heat this build could fire 6 LRM 15s and then 6 LRM-15s and shut down. That's 12 LRM-15s with almost 5 seconds in between, shutdown. At the time LRM-15s fired slower. Now they fire faster. With ghost heat I can't fire them all at once (which sucked anyway because of the 90 LRMs the spread was over two Atlases wide on a stationary target with over 30 missiles missing every time). And so I chain fire them one at a time. Every single LRM goes 90% CT because I'm firing 1 launcher at a time. I'm also able to top out at between 16 and 17 rapidly fired LRM-15s.

17 LRM-15s with this system. With the proposed fix, 5 would shut me down if I so much as moved.

Enjoy LRM mayhem. God knows Ghost Heat has essentially made heat management into a ghost that you can't see or experience.


And this epic rush with 2 ER and 2 regular LLs? Would have been completely impossible with the 30 threshold fix.

My threshold in this one is 30 + 42 + 20% = 86.4 and my cooling rate is 42+15% = 48.3. Had I done this with 30 threshold and true DHS, I'd have 21 DHS at true 2.0 cooling each, and my threshold would be 30 with a cooling rate of 4.2. With unlocks it'd be a threshold of 36 and 4.83/sec cooling. It still could never have happened even if the mech were capable of carrying that many DHS, as I would have shut down after a few shots. A single ER LL would have brought me to 28.33% heat. 2 would bring me to over 56.67% heat. Those 2 LLs? 46% heat. No matter how fast my cooling could be, I could never fire the 4 lasers together like that. Ever. Let alone keep doing it over and over.

Another example. Ghost heat will attack 3 AC/2s being fired at 0.25 second intervals. 3 AC/2s fired at the same time for 10 seconds generates 19 shots each and 114 damage. 3 AC/2s fired at 0.25 intervals generate 13 shots each (1 doing 14) for 80 damage. The 114 damage isn't touched, but the 80 damage is attacked so voraciously that each AC/2 can't even get out 4 shots for 24 damage before being violent shut down and damaged.

Ghost heat attacks 3 PPCs which does 30 damage. But it will not attack 2 PPCs + 2 LPL + 2 MPL which can be with the right build fired twice in a row without any risk of shutdown. That's 53.2 that's perfectly fine. 8 MPL? 48 Perfectly fine. 2 UAC/5s and 2 AC/5s? In the same 4 seconds it'd take for the first two rigs to fire again, 60 damage (and that's in 3 seconds with 1 second to spare. The UAC/5s could churn out another 5 damage each in that time to make 70 damage). But that's perfectly fine!

Ghost heat doesn't need to stay. It's a band-aid to an underlying core issue with the heat system. What fixing the threshold cannot solve is boating AC/20s.

We have two solutions to that.

• Multi-shot variants and remove the non-lore-friendly single shot AC/20s -- they don't exist on mechs in Battletech. The recoil is too strong and Atlases topple over using them. The biggest AC/20 on a mech is the Chemjet Gun, a 4 shot AC/20 where each shot does 5 damage, delivered in a slow but effective burst. The Hunchback carries a 5 shot AC/20. The Hunchback II-C carries twin UAC/20s. Each fires 6 shots to do 20 damage in an MG-style (non-stop, no cooldown. In MWO that firing rate would be 4 seconds / 6 = 0.667 seconds per shot. Ultra mode would double that firing rate at the risk of jamming on any shot (20% / 12 = 1.667% chance to jam on every shot). Each shot does 3.33 damage, totaling 20 or 40 depending on the firing rate. Yes, it's massive damage but yes it's massive spread. Every AC is like this, actually, and over 95% of the ACs in battletech are not single shot. There's an AC/2 that requires 10 shots to make 2 damage. There's an AC/20 that requires 100 shots, known as the Pontiac 100 which is described as a 14 ton gatling gun firing thin 100mmx?mm rounds loaded by a cassette (mechanically fed magazine). In a single trigger pull the Pontiac 100 "discharges the entire cassette in less than a second creating a cloud of black fire that blinded his opponent as his cockpit shredded." The Atlas's 100mm Deathgiver AC/20 fires 15 rounds in an MG fashion (4/15 = 0.2667 seconds between shots), but these are much bigger and harder hitting shells. The 120mm Deathgiver AC/20 on the King Crab fires 12 rounds in a burst form (all shots fired within 1.2 seconds as a rough estimate, leaving 2.8 seconds to eject the cassette and load in another) to get 20 damage.
  
• Limit ammunition. AC/20 has 5 rounds, AC/10 has 10 rounds, AC/5 has 20 rounds, AC/2 has 45 rounds. Boating issue solved. Increase LRM damage to 2.0 (2.0 against double armor = 1.0 against regular armor = intended values) and reduce their firing rates to fire slower. This lightens LRM spam, lightens projectile and registration issues, lightens server load, makes LRMs scarier without the harassment of constantly being peppered, and because they don't shoot as fast you'll probably want some backup weapons when that angry Atlas starts rushing you. Better call a few friends too.

There. Problem solved. No convoluted systems necessary. Can I haz prize now?

Logged in just to like this.

[Koniving]

Thank you. . Far as the AC variants, I'm soon to be working on another video. The AC/2 heat penalty has been really hurting any attempts. But this old one, though the info on it isn't entirely accurate (Devastator is the name of the Hunchback IIC's UAC/20. The book I read refers to trying to mount the Ebon Jaguar's UAC/20; the only single shot one mounted on a mech, on an Atlas. Though it is still as of today, unproven that any Inner Sphere mech can use a single shot AC/20 (the 203mm size is how you know it's a single shot).

Again, this vid isn't entirely accurate (Chemjet is, in a book, a 4 shot AC/20. Here I made it into a 3 shot based on an image of what inspired me to research and make this). I need to make a new one correcting information as well as delivering more variant concepts based on lore, as well as UAC and LB variant concepts. Many of these will require 3DS Max animations using the game's models.



On the other hand, the Crusher is 100% accurate. But there are 3 subvariants of Crusher (made by different competing manufacturers). Info given: One is belt-fed slower firing MG-style (constant rate of fire) and another is a burst-fire magazine fed version. No info on the third sub-variant.

The vid has the burst fire Crusher all figured out. Burst fire weapons will have an equal number of trigger pulls as a single shot weapon. Simply call the trigger pulls "cassettes" or magazines. In MWO 1 ton of ammo gives you 7 shots for a single shot AC/20. For a burst fire AC/20, it gives you 7 cassettes/magazines of x amount of shots each per ton.
The MG-style I figure would work like this:

• To hit 5 DPS (an AC/20's damage rate), the Crusher fire its full amount of shots to deal full damage within the same amount of time it takes the MWO AC/20 to fire and reload, so within 4 seconds. To accomplish this we take the time slice (4) and divide by 10. 4/10 = 0.4 seconds per shot.
  
  • The mathematically proposed MG-style Crusher variant would fire like this: 0 seconds, bang. 0.4, bang, 0.8, bang, 1.2, bang, 1.6, bang, 2.0, bang, 2.4, bang, 2.8, bang, 3.2, bang, 3.6, bang, 4.0, start over.
    
  • The MWO AC/20 fires like this: 0 seconds. Bang. 1, 2, 3, 4 bang. 1, 2, 3, 4 bang.
    
  • So we've got an identical rate going. Now given Battletech rules, all AC/20s have an identical ideal range. This is reasoned by lore as: "Autocannons range in caliber from 30mm up to 203mm and are loosely grouped according to their damage versus armor. The exact same caliber of shell fired in a 100 shot burst to do 20 damage will have a shorter effective range than when fired in a 10 shot burst to do 2 damage due to recoil and other factors."
    
  • Thus, despite being much smaller shots what prevents it from being super effective at longer ranges isn't that the smaller bullets stop doing full damage beyond 270 but because recoil makes it really difficult to focus the shots.
• But what about heat? According to the lore's rules, all AC/20s produce exactly 7 heat (6 in MWO -- combined with a threshold of 60 or higher is it any wonder it'll never overheat?). Let's figure it for 7 and then 6.
  
  • Figuring for 7 heat, it'll be 0.7 heat generated every 0.4 seconds (every shot) starting at 0. By the time we reach the 10th shot at 3.6 seconds we've made 7 heat.
    
  • Figuring for 6 heat, it'll be 0.6 heat generated every 0.4 seconds (every shot) starting at 0. By the time we reach the 10th shot at 3.6, we've made 6 heat.
    
  • MWO's current AC/20 generates 6 heat at 0 seconds, and doesn't generate another heat spike until 4 seconds later when it fires again.
    
  • Our version's cycle resets at 4 seconds just like MWO's, and thus a new heat rise will begin at 4 seconds.
    
  • Though the MG Crusher's heat spikes much less, it ultimately generates the same amount of heat.
• Now, what about ammo count? Unlike burst fire, MG styles can stop firing at any time!
  
  • For this we take the number of shots the AC/20 requires to do full damage, 10. We multiply that with the number of times a single shot AC/20 can be fired for 1 ton of ammo, 7. 10 shots * 7 = 70 shots per ton.
    
  • For comparison, if 10 shots = 20 damage, then 70 shots = 140 damage. Single shot AC/20, if a single shot does 20 damage and there are 7 shots in a ton, we deal 140 damage. We're equal!
• So what are the pros of the slower firing MG variant over the faster firing burst variant?
  
  • No pauses in firing rate.
    
  • Control over your ammunition, you don't lose 10 shots just because you got spooked and pulled the trigger.
    
  • Could, in theory, use 'tamed' fire control to effectively treat the Crusher like an unsteady 14 ton AC/2. But likely PGI would crush this concept.
    
  • Smoothly spread out heat spikes allow better control over heat generation.
    
  • Ability to space out shots to make them count and last.
    
  • An MG style AC/20 is ready to put a round down range at any time.
• What are the cons of using the MG variant over the Burst variant (what makes the burst better)?
  
  • The MG variant would/should have a tougher time handling recoil as its constant even if mild, where the burst fire is hit strong and stop.
    
  • Burst fire ACs would have a much easier time concentrating a lot of fire power in close to one spot very quickly for pop-and-shoot fire. MG styles take considerable time to accomplish this and need a constant line of sight.
    
  • Because burst fire (and single shot) AC/20s have to wait to reload, they are given time to 'rest' and cool off rapidly. An MG style doesn't have any real time to rest and so it's constantly fighting against its cooling.
    
  • Burst fire AC/20s would sound cooler due to ejecting magazine sounds.

But, what about comparing the Crusher with MWO's AC/2?

MG-style Crusher Super Heavy Autocannon/20 versus MWO's single shot AC/2.
Firing rates.
Crusher: 1 shot per 0.4 seconds.
AC/2: 1 shot per 0.52 seconds.
Damage.
Crusher: 2 per shot
AC/2: 2 per shot.
Range.
Crusher: 270 optimum.
AC/2: 720 optimum.
Recoil.
Crusher: Mild jerks.
AC/2: Next to none.
Weapon heat (per shot).
Crusher: 0.7
AC/2: 1.0
Weapon weight.
Crusher: 14 tons, 10 slots.
AC/2: 6 tons, 1 slot.
Ammunition.
Crusher: 70 shots per ton. (With my threshold fix and lower ammo counts, 50.)
AC/2: 75 shots per ton. (With my threshold fix and lower ammo counts, 45.)
Weapon health (based on MWO values).
Crusher: 18 health (but easier to damage due to slots)
AC/2: 10 health (very difficult to damage)

So as you can see there are pros and cons either way.

The implementation of recoil would also give the upcoming feature, crouching, a genuine function as you could crouch to reduce recoil.

Hope you enjoyed!

[Khobai]

They cant even balance the 4 base autocannons and you want to add 3 variants for each one? no thanks.

[GalaxyBluestar]

Koniving, on 30 October 2013 - 09:32 PM, said:

bounds of experimental knowlege

you need a pet, like a dog, to eat all that homework you've done. maybe 3?

GJ

[Koniving]

Khobai, on 30 October 2013 - 09:55 PM, said:

They cant even balance the 4 base autocannons and you want to add 3 variants for each one? no thanks.

Honestly the main issue with the ACs and is that they generally fire too frequently for too much pinpoint damage, the variants would be considerably more balanced than the originals even when based on the originals in MWO.

One suggestion that really stuck out was to reduce the DPS of the single shot variants, but base the multi-shot variants on the original values. Example, single shot AC/20 make it 4 DPS (5 second refire rate) while keeping the multi-shot ones 5 DPS (4 second time slices).

The beauty of the design is that any tweaks are easy to spread across the board as any variant and sub-variant has 5 simple rules, and the irony is I didn't even have to make them up. It was part of the MW3 designer notes though the concept was scrapped due to game limitations. These rules are based on the TT 'classification' rules, which makes it even more beautiful even though TT can't account for things like recoil and spread:

• Its optimum ranges must match.
  
• Its DPS must match.
  
• The overall heat generated per time slice / cycle must match.
  
• It must weigh the same.
  
• If it has ammunition then the total amount of ammunition per ton must match the intended damage potential of all other variants per ton of ammo.

Though specifically I'm looking to add MWO's 12 unique variants to the AC/20.

The Crusher exclusively has 3 sub variants (the unknown one clearly must be a burst style with a different burst and magazine reload rate. Either slower burst and faster magazine rate or faster burst and slower magazine rate).
(Actually went back and looked. Crusher has 2 variants. The Chemjet Gun is the one that has 3.)

The Chemjet Gun has three variants, likely two different burst variants and a MG style (figure 1 shot per second; basically a 14 ton faster firing AC/5 with 4*7 = 28 shots per ton versus the AC/5's 30 shots per ton, 1.5 heat per shot for MG-style chemjet).
This totals 15 variants, but only 12 truly unique ones.

13 AC/10s variants. No subvariants.

9 AC/5s variants. 6 unique, 3 sub-variants. The ones with subvariants are Armstrong J11 (has the original and two sub variants. 1 MG, 2 burst), and the General Motors Whirlwind (specified as a 3 shot AC/5, so one MG and one burst).

4 AC/2s variants. No sub variants. (We know one fires 10 shots to make 2 damage, and thus is a 6 ton MG with incredible range. The other 3 have no information, though clearly one is a single shot AC/2, aka MWO's version so we have some play with 2 more variants. I can't imagine a burst version is possible with AC/2s).

44 regular Medium laser variants not counting the sub-variants. Though I wouldn't expect more than 10 to make it to the game. (Quicky ideas. Constant beam ala Star Trek Phaser. Charge and fire instant damage ala Spartan Laser [Halo].) About half of these are clan medium lasers.

13 Gauss Rifles with one sub-variant of Poland Main A making a total of 14 for just the inner sphere (there's another 6 or 7 for the clans). The Poland Main A and its subvariant belong to the Hollander and the Banshee and despite their huge mech size difference the superior version of it is clearly mounted on the Hollander.

12 unique regular PPCS with 10 sub-variants totaling 22 PPCs. I'm certain most of the sub-variants here will just be thrown out and their names just applied in community warfare to affect prices.

15 unique ER PPCs. 3 sub-variants. Like for PPCs, some of the ER PPCs are clan tech ones.

Quite a few SRM, LRM variants, a few Mech Mortar variants, a number of LB variants for each category and a number of UAC variants for each category.

(Note: LB variant rules state that the total damage inflicted per shot or volley match its name. These can be varied in 2 ways. One, they can be varied by the number of pellets put down range. There's an LB/2 that has a spread of 20 pellets, and there's an LB-20 that only fires '2' pellets. So this can vary quite a bit. Two, they can vary like ACs by having multiple shots in either burst or MG styles. PGI would most likely opt for method one though it'd be easy to combine both methods).

(SRM variants can be done in a number of ways but would mainly encompass their slight tracking ability, spread patterns, flight patterns. Tube counts could also play a role here.)
(LRM variants do not have much play room I haven't really touched how to go about this yet and it was not included in the dev notes for MW3. Mainly concepts could involve when/where they adjust their flight patterns. For example currently if the target's beyond 500 meters the LRMs will go high. What if another kind started going high at 200 meters? What if another kind never tries to go up high? Just a thought.)

For fun... The Tomodzuru Autocannon Mount Type 20 that comes stock with every Hunchback 4G in action on video. It's a 5 shot burst, though in lore it supposedly has a very nasty recoil where here the recoil barely exists. Notice the Centurion (oh god it's ugly) also has a 3 shot burst from its AC/10.

And the AC/10 sounds (and UAC/10 and a PPC sound for fun) from MW3. It sort of reminds me of Ed 209's gun arms.

Edited by Koniving, 31 October 2013 - 08:31 AM.

[Koniving]

But back on topic. Being able to fire 3 LLs at once without a penalty would be nice and would benefit the C1 and Jester catapults, too, as well Cataphract 1x. It'd add variety on certain other mechs as well including Stalkers, Muromets, Awesome, etc.

[aniviron]

Victor Morson, on 29 October 2013 - 05:27 PM, said:

But here's the thing Cathy, Ghost Heat did not kill those builds. Sure people overreacted and started running horrible frakenbuilds, but the PPC remained the absolute dominate weapon right up until they... fixed the PPC! Go figure!

Even if you took Ghost Heat out right now, you simply could not run a 6 PPC Stalker. It wouldn't work. Even the 4 PPC Stalker (which was far, far better than the 6) would run terribly right now and would in no way be a good 'mech.. because again, the guns are fixed.

Ghost heat results in things like:

3x LRM10 1x LRM20 = 4x LRM20 Ghost Heat for 50 missiles
2x LRM20 2x LRM5 = 0 Ghost Heat for 50 missiles

Etc, etc. Also notably Large Lasers are outright trash when used in groups of two, it NEEDS to be at the very least 3, and ideally 4 if they do keep this stupid system.

But I absolutely promise you Ghost Heat didn't fix anything, because the Maths were terribly, terribly thought out and are the worst example of game design I've ever seen in my life. It's goal was to reduce overall alpha which it didn't do, and in fact, it didn't even dent the meta in any major way (except ruining previously fun non-OP builds)... correcting the guns did that.

It's a really important distinction and when people see more gun diversity and thank Ghost Heat (instead of the brief period of actually editing the weapons XML file and correcting stuff within it), it's just unfortunate.

I will confirm this as Trufax™. Been running an AWS-8Q as a ghetto 9Q (4PPCs) for a long time, and while ghost heat made me sad, really, it wasn't that bad just to fire in 2+2 mode; the damage was a bit more spread, but the only real change I noticed was that there were less people firing PPCs back at me, 800-1000 damage games were still a daily occurrence. But lo and behold, once they actually, you know, fixed the PPC, this build has pretty much become a non-starter. Imagine that- fixing the PPC worked a lot better than a convoluted and arbitrary mechanic that affected almost all the weapons in the game, despite being aimed specifically at about 4 weapon configurations.