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The current meta of high damage alpha strikes with pinpoint precision has generated a lot of discussion lately, so i thought I'd throw my 2 quatloos into the ring.
It would seem logical to me that if you're going to fire off a massive projectile or projectile like weapon there should be physical (Newtonian like) consequences, and it would be a way to combat excessive weapon boating. The BT wiki even mentions recoil in the description of the PPC...
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The Particle Projector Cannon (or PPC) is a unique energy weapon. PPCs fire a concentrated stream of protons or ions at a target, causing damage through both thermal and kinetic energy As such, despite being an energy weapon, it produces recoil.
Now, a mech's gyro should be able to cope with a reasonable amount of recoil, so firing 1 PPC should have little effect, 2 would be moderate but not a problem at anything but extreme range, 3 at a time would produce some noticeable shake and reduction of accuracy, and get exponentially worse the more that gets fired simultaneously. Light off a 4-6 PPC stalker and expect the shots to have an LB 10-X like spread at anything over point blank.
The same principle could be applied to autocannon, with varying severity dependant on calibre and rate of fire ... One AC 20 should in my opinion shake a mech about a bit, but not so much as to cause concern, but 2 together or in very rapid succession should rock the boat to the point that shots don't land in exactly the same place. An AC2 would produce less recoil initially, but like a hand held machine gun fired on full auto should generate more recoil and thus become less accurate the longer it is continuously fired (above a certain frequency for instance, a Jagermech in full macro dakka dakka mode would have to moderate their burst if they didn't want to be spraying all over the broad side of a
I would also put it out there that larger mechs should be able to cope with larger weapons and thus more recoil, so an Atlas firing off an AC20 or two UAC-5s would shake less than a blackjack for example.
This leaves lasers and SRMs in a difficuilt place though, if PPCs suddenly become hard to boat the 6 LL stalker will become the mech du jour for large aplha strikes, so perhaps a small rework of the duration of the beam to allow for more chance to spread the damage across the target (either by torso twising defensively or a less than steady aim on the part of the laser user). Maybe combine recoil with lower heat cap/faster dissipation would be the way to go.
Thoughts/suggestions/flames?
