123 replies to this topic

[Yeach]

Kindof in this vein about weapons damage
But like the Dragon's speed poll,
I like to know what the people's peference in regards damage and recycle for the following weapons:

From TT stats
AC20 = 20 damage (for 10 secs)
PPC = 10 damage (for 10 secs)
Medium Laser = 5 damage (for 10 secs)

Choose your favourite or closest number

*Note - May have to edit because I am not 100% sure of the Solaris dueling rules for recycle times. Also may add new choices later.

Edited by Yeach, 10 April 2012 - 06:20 AM.

[80sGlamRockSensation David Bowie]

I know a lot of you really value your TT stats and everything, but I would LOVE to see how well you do in real time with a weapon that you can only shoot once every 10 seconds. Maybe that sounded a bit harsh, but this is just a prime example of things that don't translate well from turn base to real time.

Edited by mwhighlander, 09 April 2012 - 08:56 PM.

[Pvt Dancer]

I am against nerfing weapon damage. Devs have not spoken on the recycle time yet, but I for one am fine with 10 seconds (specially with missile and heavy hitter weapons).

The only weapon it feels silly with are MGs.

[William Petersen]

mwhighlander, on 09 April 2012 - 08:55 PM, said:

I know a lot of you really value your TT stats and everything, but I would LOVE to see how well you do in real time with a weapon that you can only shoot once every 10 seconds. Maybe that sounded a bit harsh, but this is just a prime example of things that don't translate well from turn base to real time.

I'd love to find out, too. I'd LOVE to test the game with 10-second cycle times on all weapons, given that they retain their other TT stats (range = hex length * 30m, damage, and heat such that 1 unit of heat is dissipated by 1 heat sink in 10 seconds). I would really, really like to test that kind of a set up. Maybe you're right, maybe it would suck, maybe I'd hate it, but I'd sure a sugar like to try it! =D


EDIT: Also, assume that table-top speeds are preserved, I.E. a mech that moves 8 hexes running, can move 240m (and generates 2 heat over the 10 seconds, which wouldn't really show up, but would rather appear as a reduction in the efficiency of the heat sinks), in 10 seconds.

And see, this is the big problem with long-rang weaponry. In the TT, you get, like, 2 turns of fire before heavies close to medium or short range. You only have to weather unanswered ER PPC, Gauss, or LRM fire fire for two turns (and odds are they're going to miss, given shooting at long range and you're moving somewhat quickly). In the games so far, you have to take round after round after round after round before you even get in range of your closer weapons, even in quick Mechs. To say nothing of the inherent ease of hitting a Mech, even one moving at high speed when you're personally targeting the system, rather than rolling dice and hoping for luck.

Edited by William Petersen, 09 April 2012 - 09:17 PM.

[wwiiogre]

In the fiction it is always talking about having to wait as weapons cycle, perhaps and this is just my wild arse guess, the weapon could recycle faster but due to the time to reduce heat, each weapon has a safety installed allowing it to be fired after only a certain amount of time has passed. Just thinking that was how the fiction writers dealt with the TT rules for a turn being ten seconds, either waiting for a lock or waiting for a weapon to cycle.

chris

[Coralld]

I'm not touching this until we know from PGI about what the basic weapon damage, cycle time, heat, and ammo amount and their relations to heat sinks are going to be. Other wise there is just to much wild speculation.

[Monky]

I think you're aproaching this the wrong way.

Recycle time is fairly irrelevant, what matters is DPS (or in TT terms, damage per turn/DPT). Several different kinds of AC20 had different fire rates in lore, but where classed as doing 20 damage within 1 turn for 1 unit of ammunition. This should be the standard, recycle times can be tweaked around to make the game feel more organic and provide a layering fire effect so you aren't dry after you dump an alpha strike, unless heat prohibits you from firing any more. The important part is keeping maximum damage output capped at 20 per 10 seconds on the AC, and likewise for the situations of any other weapons.

[Insidious Johnson]

I'm all for AC's firing as fast as you pull the trigger. They all have autoloaders so semi-auto rates of fire should be expected, assuming the barrel does not melt. But Mechwarrior has not ever dealt with ballistically generated heat confined to just the breech and barrel. It tends to average the heat over the whole mech. Since in BT the 10 second recycle accounts for cooling the barrel, no big deal. But here it would translate into performance decreasing dramatically with heat to the point of total failure unless the firing action was used to dissapate local heat only. RAC's deal with this by jamming. As for the energy based stuff, I have no real comparisons so its all "trahi ex culus".

[Taelon Zero]

We have heat sinks, lets abuse them.

[LordDeathStrike]

correct dmg values and cycle times (from mech warrior games) ac 20 20 dmg 6 second recycle ppc 18 dmg 8 second refire med laser 5 dmg 3 second refire. that is all.

so 4 med lasers = 20 dmg every 3 seconds, and they make alot of heat, but they are light and low crit space

ac 20 does scarey dmg every 6, low heat, eats ammo, heavy and huge.

ppc lots of dmg, long reuse, lots of heat, big, heavy, causes heat on target as well though, awesomes cook people if they fire back.

[Kanil]

I'd also love to see TT recycle times and heat scales. You take your AWS-8Q, fire all 3 PPCs and you're instantly at 30 heat and the 'mech shuts down. Stagger your shots one every 3 seconds and you can sustain that rate of fire for nearly a minute -- then you just omit one single PPC blast and resume your firing.

Would certainly balance out the Clan tech a bit too -- gotta be really careful with all those oodles of ER lasers. Sure you sink a lot of heat over a cycle, but you can't handle suddenly spiking 60 heat in a fraction of a second.

Would also make mobility more useful, as each missed shot gives you more time to reposition before the next one comes. This would help lighter 'mechs, but would also make ranged 'mechs less useful.

Although 10 seconds might be too long. I wouldn't want to see it much lower, but 7s might work as well. Another concern is that most 'mechs would shut down if they alpha striked. This might bother some people, but it doesn't really bother me.

[Thorn Hallis]

10 seconds for AC20 isn't enough, I'd put it between 15 and 20 seconds..

[Hef]

I wanted to vote for 9500 damage for the AC20 and fires thrice every second, but the option wasn't there. So I went for the next best thing.
Seriously, if you can't yell "IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAND!!" every time you click the mouse then what's the point of playing at all?

May as well go back to playing with my little ponies.

[Xanquil]

I'm realy hopeing thay keep to the TT vary closely with this. Heat, amo use, rate of fire, damage, and movement speed need to be based off the 10s round. That being said I'm all for weapons that have shorter cycle time but it will have to be mached with a change to the other stats as well.
Example: PPC
normal = 10 damage 10 heat every 10 sec
rapid fire = 5 damage 5 heat every 5 sec
slow fire = 15 damage 15 heat every 15 sec

example 2: MG
normal = 2 damage every 10sec and 200 shots a ton
rapid fire =.2 damage every 1sec and 2000 shots a ton

There are other examples but I think this gives the general idea.

If the rate of fire is increased without changeing these other stats the whole balance of the weapons will be lost and the paceing of the game will be wrong.

Edited by Xanquil, 10 April 2012 - 12:37 AM.

[EDMW CSN]

Mechwarrior 2 autocannon ROF. ;f

[Siilk]

There should be an option with "5 damage, 2.5 recycle time" for AC20, that is the best option. Anything slower doesn't feel right. MWLL AC20 had a very slow recycle rate in early beta versions, somewhere between 5 and 10 seconds AFAIR, and it wasn't very good for the weapon. Now it's closer to 1 shot per second(with appropriately lowered per-shot damage) and it is much better that way, even those who doesn't wanted the change admit that. For starters, anything with low RoF/high per-shot damage would promote camping of sort, as you don't have to expose your mech for too long to deal substantial damage. Above that, when you fire ACs, you usually want something like that to happen. Feels way cooler that way.

@Xanquil: you are completely right, RoF change must be followed by the per-shot damage adjustment to keep overall weapon DpS the same.

Edited by Siilk, 10 April 2012 - 01:11 AM.

[Solis Obscuri]

Doesn't Solaris Rules have the AC/20 at a 7.5s cycle time,the PPC at a 10s cycle time, and the MLas at a 5s cycle time?

This thread seems kind of like bullshit...

[Nik Van Rhijn]

The trouble with increasing the RoF for the AC20 is that it takes away the instant damage to one point and makes the ML, even with DoT much more favourable again. Changing it say to 5 damage every 2.5 seconds effectively turns it into a very heavy UAC 5. This may not be so much of a problem where it is one of the weapons in a mech like the Atlas. It totally changes it's usefulness in a Hunchback which is an ambush mech - it has to be with that weight and range profile. Solaris rules are great for Arena combat, where they want to keep it quick but IMHO it's wrong for what MW should be. Increasing RoF very far from canon changes the whole gamplay.

[Felbombling]

mwhighlander, on 09 April 2012 - 08:55 PM, said:

I know a lot of you really value your TT stats and everything, but I would LOVE to see how well you do in real time with a weapon that you can only shoot once every 10 seconds. Maybe that sounded a bit harsh, but this is just a prime example of things that don't translate well from turn base to real time.

Sure, let's give the AC/20 a rate of fire 4x normal for the game. It would take you 25 seconds to burn through the average ammo supply. Whooo... fun times right there for the rest of the game. Ok, perhaps that is a bit extreme... for sake of argument, let's give it a 5 second refresh rate, so you'd have under a minute of sustained fire. The design team have already established 16 points of armour per ton. If you hit once with the AC/20, do you still expect it to do 20 damage? What about the heat it would generate? Firing it twice should produce 14 heat, unless they mess with those stats, as well. That would overtax the Hunchback's heatsink capacity, and we haven't even talked about the Medium Lasers it has, yet. How about we strap you into a Hunchback on open terrain and pit you against a Catapult. You're out of range for your weapons, but the Cat isn't. How many salvos of LRM 15's do you take with this sped up rate of fire before you close within range to use your AC/20 and Medium Lasers? At 16 points of armour per ton, do you even have a Mech left to fight with? You've thought all this through before you made that post, right, Highlander? The only reason some people 'really value the table top stats and everything' is based on the fact that the dev team said they value them. To jump to the conclusion that these players will have a hard time with the game is rather bold on your part.

Sorry if that sounded harsh.

[CCC Dober]

The original rules leave a lot of wiggle room. If a single turn takes 10 seconds and you can fire any weapon just once in all that time, does that automatically mean the damage is applied over 10 seconds? Does it reload instantly after that? Hell no! It just states 1 shot/burst/salvo in 10 seconds, the rest is anyone's guess, which is good news for the devs. Game balance becomes that much easier as a result.

On a more general level, certain weapons will define standards and I'm sure that starting with the lower end of the spectrum is not gonna help in the long run. The need to constantly rebalance existing weapons because the latest weapons were not considered at the beginning is a real threat. Make no mistake, there are and will be far more devastating weapons available than AC20s and MLs. Maybe not all of them initially, but they will come and heavily influence weapons choice without a doubt. I'm mainly talking about the heavy hitters, such as CERPPC, CERLL, HeavyLL, HeavyML, CGauss, HGauss, ArrowIV, CLRM20, CSMRM40, CSSRM6, CUAC20, CLBX20, RAC5, LongTom. HAG40 anyone?

Just saying ...

Edited by CCC_Dober, 10 April 2012 - 06:11 AM.