129 replies to this topic

[Gevurah]

Let me make this clear up front: This isn't a troll post and I personally would like to see increased heat effects on mechs (aim, movement, etc) as well as a return to pre-buff PPC heat levels. That's simply a personal preference so we see more lasers in the game (which I think are harder to use and thus require more skill/proficiency to do high damage with).

Now that aside - I can't understand the level of frustration and anger expressed at people who use PPCs. For context, I regularly play my flame, jager-dd, spider 5d and yen lo wang. None of them sports a PPC/ERPPC. I prefer higher mobility mechs with ballistic capability. I do not have much experience with assault mechs and presume this is possibly where the bulk of frustration is emerging from.

My mechs primarily require me to maneuver, use cover, and close range. The pop tarts are slightly frustrating, but hardly anything game breaking. Most of the complaints about pop tarts can be boiled down to PPCs making it easy. It makes it very difficult for people to rush in a straight line across open terrain, but so did LRMs.

My experience is if you're using cover and concealment in even a moderately effective manner you will not find it to be more than either the occasional 'bad surprise'.

Even back in MW4, when people would load up on ERLL + cGauss boats (they even got free coolant flush ) I never really understood it as an effective strategy. I mean literally you are so predictable in movement it makes it stupidly easy to hit you. You are tying yourself in one area typically which allows you to be easily flanked. For the record, back then I ran a Loki w/ two LBXAC20's. Go passive, run around the flank, start blasting cockpits/damaged components. Done. The same strategy effectively works here. They can only hit what they can see; they have limitations with heat, and are generally so slow once you flank them you can run circles around them.

So what's the problem? Sure, it's a nuisance, but so were LRMs. And SRM boats. And Gauss cats. And AC20 jagers/cats. Learn and adapt, and all that.

Can someone at least detail for me a reason I'm not seeing that could maybe clear up what all the hate is about?

[Braggart]

because you can throw a ton of PPCs on heavier mechs, and have pinpoint accuracy to cripple anything but a heavy or assault with a single volley, and then follow it up with another volley just a few seconds later, from across the map.

how would you feel if someone dealth 100 damage to you in 3.5 seconds... and all 100 damage hit the same armor section.

Edited by Braggart, 24 April 2013 - 01:11 PM.

[DegeneratePervert]

Because they dish out upwards of 45 damage (3x PPC + Gauss), in one second, to a specific armor location, and then dive behind cover again.

[Tremendous Upside]

Braggart, on 24 April 2013 - 01:10 PM, said:

because you can throw a ton of PPCs on heavier mechs, and have pinpoint accuracy to cripple anything but a heavy or assault with a single volley, and then follow it up with another volley just a few seconds later, from across the map.

how would you feel if someone dealth 100 damage to you in 3.5 seconds... and all 100 damage hit the same armor section.

I would feel as though I should've kept my head lower... but that's just me My feelings on PPCs and boats are that yeah... they're a pain in the butt. No, they're not unstoppable. It's just a matter of time before people realize the way to stop the PPC spamming is to bring something on your own mech that can fire back and force the spammers to put their own heads down. That doesn't mean carrying 6 PPCs on everything. 1 or 2 will do the job just fine. People generally don't like to get shot. The ones that do? They tend to die fast regardless what goes down. I have ~20pts of "LR" pinpoint damage that I can toss out at any given time myself. I do that because it gives me a balance on my builds, and allows me to carry a very nasty SR loadout for when I close on things. It's versatility... and it's been working just fine for me. I use my LR stuff to suppress target areas and move in. Then use my jets and 60+ pt alphas to rain pain on their heads at close quarters. Once more people figure this out, it'll probably change the meta yet again. This is nothing more than a phase.

[Caviel]

Gevurah, on 24 April 2013 - 12:39 PM, said:

Can someone at least detail for me a reason I'm not seeing that could maybe clear up what all the hate is about?

Boating 6 PPCs can, through a single alpha strike, kill any mech via cockpit, most light mechs via CT, and severely damage if not kill larger mechs from 500 meters away.

This, in combination that it becomes even more effective with Jump Jet capable mechs (Poptarting), plus the recent heat changes to PPCs and anti-ECM features means you see a LOT of PPCs in use right now.

[Braggart]

Banky, on 24 April 2013 - 01:37 PM, said:

I would feel as though I should've kept my head lower... but that's just me My feelings on PPCs and boats are that yeah... they're a pain in the butt. No, they're not unstoppable. It's just a matter of time before people realize the way to stop the PPC spamming is to bring something on your own mech that can fire back and force the spammers to put their own heads down. That doesn't mean carrying 6 PPCs on everything. 1 or 2 will do the job just fine. People generally don't like to get shot. The ones that do? They tend to die fast regardless what goes down. I have ~20pts of "LR" pinpoint damage that I can toss out at any given time myself. I do that because it gives me a balance on my builds, and allows me to carry a very nasty SR loadout for when I close on things. It's versatility... and it's been working just fine for me. I use my LR stuff to suppress target areas and move in. Then use my jets and 60+ pt alphas to rain pain on their heads at close quarters. Once more people figure this out, it'll probably change the meta yet again. This is nothing more than a phase.

Thats what i love. People like you come in here and think that you have the right plan. You dont. If you can see and shoot them, they can see and shoot you. SO your 1 or 2 ppcs just got the crap kicked out of it because you had to expose yourself to shoot at them. So you did 20 damage, and they did anywhere between 35-60 damage, depending on the build. Your 60 point alpha doesnt mean jack at close range, because the equally skilled opponent has delivered his 60 point alpha at med/long range, and will dish another at short range where you get to deal your first.

I get so tired of people talking about the game like their enemies are are idiots. For once, I would like someone to admit that the enemy is atleast equally skilled, or perhaps better. The other thing to consider, is this game is a team game, you arent facing things 1 vs 1. So what happens when the other team has enough PPC firepower to instantly gib an assault mech because 4 of them have mass ppcs for extreme pinpoint damage. Nothing can survive that, and you cannot simply flank them all. Keeping in mind that the enemy is atleast as skilled as you.


The game is only going to get worse once they unleash 12vs12 also. The amount of fire power that is going to be on the field is going to make light and medium mechs more obsolete than before. Lights still have a place as cappers, but they will not be good for anything else once 12vs12 comes out.

Edited by Braggart, 24 April 2013 - 02:20 PM.

[Jonathan Paine]

Finally gave in and tried a 3xPPC+Gauss build. I'm not much of a sniper, but hitting a heavy/assault in the CT is not too hard. Repeat until opponent is dead.

Again: devs need to fix alpha strikes so they do not deliver all damage to the same location. Save that for chain fire (with a small delay between shots). Spread out alpha strikes to neighboring locations. Might even consider letting some of it miss if you are firing at something small.

[JudgeDeathCZ]

I have no problem with PPCs if I am in 6 PPC Stalker

[Royalewithcheese]

Because the meta is long-range right now, and PPCs are good at (and only at) long range. They don't need a nerf - they haven't changed for months, and nobody was complaining about them until SRMs went away and took half the brawler archetypes with them.

[Rakashan]

As other people have pointed out, it's a combination of two things. Boated PPCs can be fired from mixed hardpoints (arms and torso) with arms locked in order to put all the fire into a single location. That's something that even the nastiest LRMs could not do. PPC boats can be designed so that they have solid damage out to 1200m or so (longer than LRMs) and they have no down-side at short range.

A 6xPPC stalker has a 60-point alpha. There are not may *brawlers* who have that kind of alpha potential and yet the PPC builds have that potential from 90m to 600m, not just out to 300m. Even the AC/40 Jager falls short and the Jager has ammo that explodes to boot. The more conventional 3xPPC+Gauss jump sniper is doing a 45-point alpha to a single location. The only non-PPC mech that has had potential like this in the last 6 months is the Art-SRM Cat and that only functioned at specific ranges and within 270m.

Also, as someone mentioned, there's no way of knowing whether you are turning the corner into the face of one mech or three. If you are in an Atlas with all your armor forward, you can take three shots from these sniper builds in the center torso before you are down. If you happen to turn the corner into three of them at once, you fall down as you register the targets are there. Now, remember... A lance on TS is four of them, not three. Combined fire from a lance of snipers like this eliminates one mech every shot. Two snipers (much more common) with decent accuracy take down one mech in 5 seconds if he gets exposed before he realizes they are there.

When you get into brawling, there are ballistics that dish out higher DPS individually but they are heavy and so cannot be boated as effectively. In order to match the DPS of a 6xPPC Stalker, you'd have to boat 4 AC/20s or 5 UAC/5s, AC/10s or AC/2. The only thing that comes close is a 4-ballistic Jager and it requires that you skimp on armor compared to one of the PPC builds which is going to have much better survivabilty. The only advantage the ballistics have over the PPCs is heat which begins to matter about the 3rd or fourth salvo of PPCs (so 180 points of damage later).

[BlackBeltJones]

Braggart, on 24 April 2013 - 02:15 PM, said:

Thats what i love. People like you come in here and think that you have the right plan. You dont. If you can see and shoot them, they can see and shoot you. SO your 1 or 2 ppcs just got the crap kicked out of it because you had to expose yourself to shoot at them. So you did 20 damage, and they did anywhere between 35-60 damage, depending on the build. Your 60 point alpha doesnt mean jack at close range, because the equally skilled opponent has delivered his 60 point alpha at med/long range, and will dish another at short range where you get to deal your first.

I get so tired of people talking about the game like their enemies are are idiots. For once, I would like someone to admit that the enemy is atleast equally skilled, or perhaps better. The other thing to consider, is this game is a team game, you arent facing things 1 vs 1. So what happens when the other team has enough PPC firepower to instantly gib an assault mech because 4 of them have mass ppcs for extreme pinpoint damage. Nothing can survive that, and you cannot simply flank them all. Keeping in mind that the enemy is atleast as skilled as you.


The game is only going to get worse once they unleash 12vs12 also. The amount of fire power that is going to be on the field is going to make light and medium mechs more obsolete than before. Lights still have a place as cappers, but they will not be good for anything else once 12vs12 comes out.

I logged in today (something I thought I would never do again) just to 'Like' this post. Touche.

[Nastyogre]

The real problem with PPC's and ALL alphastrike builds is the unrealistic convergence. Only weapons in arms should be able to pinpoint target. Sure you have point that is your aim point, but only CT weapons should be pointing directly at it.
RT and LT weapons should shoot NEAR that area, but off a little bit. At a long range, that would be significantly off, perhaps even missing your target.
The concept of convergence out to any range on fixed weapons is preposterous. Fighter pilots learned the convergence point of their wing mounted guns in WW II. We should have to deal with that too. A problem with Torso mounted weapons should be their inability to strike accurately at ranges significantly greater or lesser than their convergence point. We should have to compensate.
Were Battlemechs real, the pilots would have to compensate for this. It's not an issue in Table Top Btech because the rounds are 1 min long, so you have lots of time to target and fire with various weapons during the phase.

Eliminate perfect convergence, and you do several things. Arm weapons become more valuable for their ability to track. Alpha-Strike Warrior becomes Mechwarrior again. DPS and real ability to aim and lead targets becomes important.

The problem isn't that PPC's got a buff or missiles got a nerf or anything like that. It is the unrealistic and automatic weapon convergence that allows for pinpoint accuracy with all of a unit's weapons.

[Hobietime]

It seems everyone is up in arms about convergence, or heat. Yet last patch affected neither. Heck, I don't think they have touched convergence since closed beta. Back then everyone was complaining about shots not converging. What did change this last patch is HSR. This makes PPCs and any ballistic much easier to fire. At 2000 m/s, PPCs require at most about half a second of lead at max range.

Remember when this happened?

Paul Inouye said:

1) AutoCannon projectile speeds increasing. AC/20 ~ 900m/s. AC/LBX10 ~ 1100m/s. AC/UAC/5 ~1300m/s.

2) PPC and ERPPC projectile speeds increasing to 2000m/s (AC/2 speed).

If we gave ballistics more realistic drop (excluding the PPC) and brought back bullet speeds to their previous levels, it would raise the skill cap for ballistics.

People didn't hate LRMs because they were devastating, people hated them because they were easy to use effectively. With HSR, ballistics are now easy to use effectively. That's why people hate them.

I ran a 2 PPC centurion and a 4 PPC stalker before the heat changes, there was no difference in skill, just patience.

Edited by Hobietime, 24 April 2013 - 04:26 PM.

[Tremendous Upside]

Braggart, on 24 April 2013 - 02:15 PM, said:

Thats what i love. People like you come in here and think that you have the right plan. You dont. If you can see and shoot them, they can see and shoot you. SO your 1 or 2 ppcs just got the crap kicked out of it because you had to expose yourself to shoot at them. So you did 20 damage, and they did anywhere between 35-60 damage, depending on the build. Your 60 point alpha doesnt mean jack at close range, because the equally skilled opponent has delivered his 60 point alpha at med/long range, and will dish another at short range where you get to deal your first.

I get so tired of people talking about the game like their enemies are are idiots. For once, I would like someone to admit that the enemy is atleast equally skilled, or perhaps better. The other thing to consider, is this game is a team game, you arent facing things 1 vs 1. So what happens when the other team has enough PPC firepower to instantly gib an assault mech because 4 of them have mass ppcs for extreme pinpoint damage. Nothing can survive that, and you cannot simply flank them all. Keeping in mind that the enemy is atleast as skilled as you.


The game is only going to get worse once they unleash 12vs12 also. The amount of fire power that is going to be on the field is going to make light and medium mechs more obsolete than before. Lights still have a place as cappers, but they will not be good for anything else once 12vs12 comes out.

I dunno man. If my enemies were at least as skilled or better than I am, I'd be the one in here bitching about PPCs. I'm not. I didn't get sniped to death all weekend. And yes I did run 8 mans and I think at one point we must've dropped against the same Kaos team 5 times in a row (2x3Ls and 6xpoptart snipers). I still managed to get my punches in.

[Captain Stiffy]

DegeneratePervert, on 24 April 2013 - 01:17 PM, said:

Because they dish out upwards of 45 damage (3x PPC + Gauss), in one second, to a specific armor location, and then dive behind cover again.

No matter what they change the 'best weapon' to be, I am going to boat it. They crapped on my LRMs, they crapped on my 6 ppc stalker [wait for it they're about to] and they will crap on my (not telling) when PPC's get nerfed but probably by then they will rebuff LRM's so I'll just go back to that...

...as long as it's possible to have a ferocious alpha strike a lot of people, like me, will run mechs like that.

Edited by Captain Stiffy, 24 April 2013 - 05:18 PM.

[NRP]

I don't get the hate either. If you are getting PPC'd to death, carry PPCs or ACs of your own. You have to supress snipers, or you're screwed. So why don't more people take some long range weapons of their own? Is just an ideological thing?

[Keifomofutu]

NRP, on 24 April 2013 - 05:48 PM, said:

I don't get the hate either. If you are getting PPC'd to death, carry PPCs or ACs of your own. You have to supress snipers, or you're screwed. So why don't more people take some long range weapons of their own? Is just an ideological thing?

Sniper vs sniper matches are the most one-dimensional fight known to man.

[Yiazmat]

I was in the boat of "f this pop tart meta game" for a while. then i just accepted it. I have many lance mate's that i com up with and well jump in meds and brawl the poptarts balls off. people are forgetting how to counter close range mechs. given we stay vigilant and stick together to swarm targets that break away from their main battle group. there's always the possibility of being 1 shot of course. but there's nothing i can do about that if the ppc boat is as s skilled as me (or more so).

[Ancalagon]

If you had said that "lasers took skill to use" in closed beta, everyone would have laughed at you. People will always find things to hate on; first it was the swayback, then the gauss-cat/splat-cat/streak-cat etc etc. We should stop trying to have everything nerfed into oblivion (PPCs were absolutely crap before the heat buff), and just focus on making a gameplay system where every weapon has its pros and cons. Buffing LRM speed, tightning SRM spread and etc would be a nice way to make missiles viable again.

Edited by Ancalagon, 24 April 2013 - 06:41 PM.

[Davers]

I think many Stalkers, Highlanders, Cataphract 3Ds, and Atlas RS would say they have no trouble with PPCs currently.