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ObsidianSpectre, on 26 June 2013 - 12:20 PM, said:
I'm pretty sure I do understand how your idea works, my point was that it's likely to be pretty frustrating a lot of the time. The first person hit is at an immediate disadvantage, and while he can even things up again, he has to do so by hitting back while under an aiming penalty. And what if there are two mechs with AC/2s?
Another issue with this is that most of these high alpha snipers are shooting once, and then going back into cover. This convergence penalty isn't going to do anything about that, and in fact may support this meta as anyone who isn't poptarting or ridge humping and fighting someone who does is going to find it much harder to return fire before the shooter gets back into cover.
True, though my thought was that the people running guns like the AC/5 and 10 would actually be brawlers more than the ones at range. The AC/2 would exist to give snipers a way to screw with each other and protect their team, but this really isn't meant to keep people from popping you at long range, that's why long range combat exists. What it is really meant to do is stop those superpowered long range alphas from working once you close the gap. While snipers will definitely have the advantage at range (as they should), what I would expect is that once the CTF-3D armed with an AC/5 or 10 and 4 medium pulse lasers gets close enough, it should be lights out for that 6 PPC stalker because he won't be able to converge them on a single spot, while the two torso mounted medium lasers on the CTF-3D and the AC/10 go to town and the two arm mounted guns provide additional burst in the initial alpha. It would reward using cover and not just barreling straight towards the opponent, as that Cataphract could round the corner, pop the right torso of the Stalker, walk to the left and have a clean alpha on the Stalker's back armor.
The problem with the game right now isn't that the long range alpha exists. The problem is that it still works when you get close, and it actually is much more effective than taking brawling weapons because you can deal damage as the opponent closes. The 6 PPC stalker can two shot a heavy mech from 90ish meters away, and that's a one shot if it got anything in during the mech's approach. However, that one shot goes to a 4 shot or so if he can't converge his guns. That's the real idea here.
Another way to make this work better would be to limit the effective range of these effects. If the target is in green range, the gun knocks the opponent around etc, but if it's not, the effect gets limited severely and scales linearly.
