40 replies to this topic

[Allen Ward]

A plasma beam would actually travel at a much higher speed... you would not have any big difference between firing a laser beam (SoL) and a plasma beam. The intense heat makes friction neglactible... (no slowing down) the plasma beam would probably be much thinner though (like a pencil) and the whole EMP stuff about it (and the animation with crackling lightnings) is mostly fantasy. Ah...but if we start this...such a plasma beam would burn right through a complete Atlas on the very first hit... no steel or known alloy would be able to resist it.

The range limits for energy weapons are ridiculous... I was shot at with large lasers from more than 1.000m away...the beams stopped in midair, causing a small bloom at the end - weird and funny.

Autocannons should shoot ballistically, though. Gravity forces any projectile with a mass to fall while traveling, making it less accurate or harder to aim with. Unfortunately this would punish the AC2 and not affect the dreaded AC20. The gravity on maps could affect this very nicely.

Missiles are way too slow...nobody would use LRMs that travel 120m/s (the term Long Range is a joke in MWO, too - almost any other weapon system in the game can fire the same range or even further). Modern day missiles are capable of traveling up to 5.000m/s... and the whole lock on crap is totally broken too. If a Spidy circles you, anyone can easily home in missiles on you, if you shoot at a locked on target further away than 400m there is almost no chance to hit, as the target gets a nice wwarning and has plenty of time to dodge into cover. Missiles have become suppressive fire weapons (unless you use them in a Stalker/Spider combo, which will utterly destroy an target in seconds).

This game knows extremes only.

[Corvus Antaka]

imho 1600 m/s + 1-3 more heat for ppc and 2-5 more heat for erppc and we are golden.

[Allen Ward]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 29 June 2013 - 03:36 PM, said:

imho 1600 m/s + 1-3 more heat for ppc and 2-5 more heat for erppc and we are golden.

Agreed. PPC boating should be countered by immense heat production, a 4 PPC mech doing Alpha should risk immediate meltdown on caustic. the speed doesn't matter much, 1600 is so close to 2000, it could actually be even faster (accelerated particles almost move at the speed of light). shooting a PPC should cost a lot, a PPC Spider could go pop like that...a 6 PPC Stalker should never even consider firing more than 3 or 4. Firing 6 should blast it to hell.

[Conraire]

The only solutions that would actually work to stop the alpha warrior ppc problem are either

A: Lower the heat cap to what it should be, make double hs into true doubles, and have serious heat penalties for alphaing and over heating your mech constantly.

B: Limit the amount of slots available for weapons in a given limb. Say the arm pods on the stalker for example. Yes it has two energy hardpoints. Which means it has power couplings for two energy weapons. But, They could limit the space available for those weapons to 4 slots. Which means, you'd have to chose between 1 PPC and 1 MLas, 2 Large Lasers, or 2 Large Pulse lasers. Or even a mix of others, and just go heavy on SRMs/LRMs. Instead of the two ppc in each arm game we have today.

You could almost apply the same to ballistic weapons, at least to curb the troublesome mechs like the dual ac20/Gauss cats, that weren't intended builds. At least with the Jager, and Cataphract the cannons are in the arms so they're easier to disable.

[Malavai Fletcher]

I dont understand why people think the closed beta PPC's were so bad,they took time to learn,but once learn't were great weapons.

All through RHoD my Euro unit had 3 mechs running PPC's,before the play offs we had an 8-1 w/l record,the unit that beat us had more PPC's than us,beat us badly and went on to win the whole thing.

This was before the heat was reduced,the speed increased and HSR.

The increase in speed has caused alot of the problems with convergence,before you were aiming in front of mechs moving laterally to you,so your point of convergence was whatever bit of scenery your crosshairs aimed at behind your target,the further away the worse the convergence.With their speed now you dont have to lead off of some of the mechs,so you have pin point accuracy.

I would love to see PPC's put back the way they were.

[FireSlade]

I always thought that PPCs should be a short duration laser like weapon but if PGI did that LPLs would be even more scarce on the battlefield. The problem with the PPC is not the speed it is the pin point damage to a single section. If people were only using 1, 2, or 3 of them we would not be complaining about an alpha of 30 damage. Instead we have people using 4 or more with little downsides. With twin AC20s you have lots of heat, low speed (reduced accuracy), limited range, very heavy, and very limited ammo that poses an explosion risk. The PPC can weigh more with the heatsinks and very high heat (not enough), all to counteract infinite ammo, ballistic like damage, and high speed (higher accuracy). 4 PPCs will net you 38tons (with 10 DHS) while the twin AC20 with 6 tons of ammo will weigh 34tons but the big thing is you only have 21 shots, meaning do not miss... The high heat would be a balancing factor in itself but with how PGI designed their heat system, high heat alpha builds only suffer shutting down for a few moments then they restart and other than the few shots they took, they are fine. Coolshot module compounds the issue. Rather than nerfing the speed of the PPC, PGI need to do a few things slowly, very slowly, to address the issues with the heat systems, convergence, and any other issues that we have not seen arise in the past and current metas. Once done 90% of people will forget about the PPC and find a way to abuse some other aspect of the game so that they can gain an edge over someone with more skill but is not willing to abuse the system.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Why can't people just learn to play?

Seriously.

Ran into a Quad PPC Stalker while playing my QD last night. Boy do I wish this game had a replay feature like WoT because them I could post the fight and shut everyone up on PPCs.

I used the canyon COVER to FLANK him, then did a spiral circle to close the distance and get around BEHIND him. As I was circling, he tried to nail me with his quad PPCs however, every time he looked like he was lining up on me, I would use my JJs briefly to screw with his aim and tighten my spiral. Also after hist first shot I started counting...1-1 thousand, 2-1 thousand, 3-1 thousand, JUMP....he would miss and kept missing. Then while closing the spiral, I managed to take out his right torso...1/2 his weapons gone. Eventually I used my superior speed to get around behind him and keep behind him. Ended the match by coreing the mech out from the rear CT.

That's how you beat a Quad PPC Stalker, it is called being smart, using cover, using knowledge and applying tactics. Imagine that.

[PanzerMagier]

PPC'S are NOT used for brawling, OP. Please, let that sink in before you post something as harebrained as this.

Edited by PanzerMagier, 29 June 2013 - 06:01 PM.

[Deathlike]

The PPC projectile reaches its destination a split second faster than Gauss... so it's very close to pinpoint even before we talk about convergence.

That in itself is a problem.

[SubRyan]

PanzerMagier, on 29 June 2013 - 06:01 PM, said:

PPC'S are NOT used for brawling, OP. Please, let that sink in before you post something as harebrained as this.

I would change your statement to say that PPC's are not intended for brawling but that happens to be the case currently

[Blue Hymn]

Sooo.....about Awesomes then, that are designed to be PPC Boats.....
Er...

[Morderian]

yes with 3 PPCs not 6 cause 6 ppcs would normally roast any inner sphere mech, but i agree on lowering the projectile speed of the ppcs ofc not so much make it back to the values it had around closed beta and that is okay th rest of theissue will get hammered with the heatpenalitys

[Karr285]

Majorfatboy, on 29 June 2013 - 07:56 AM, said:

We had slow ppcs in closed beta...... NOBODY USED THEM.

yep thats why nobody used them... couldnt have been due to the .5 second delay when firing OR the lack of any HSR and poor net code, nope it was because they were slow... that was the only reason.

Sorry but the reason ppl didnt use them before was, there was very poor hit registration, and the fac tthey were slow and hot just made it pointless because maybe 1 in 3-5 shots hit. Now we have Hit registration, or some semblance of it, now people are running 60-80% accuracy with them its time to return them to their original values.

[MasterErrant]

SubRyan, on 29 June 2013 - 05:39 AM, said:

750m/s


Let that sink in a for a moment......


Done? Okay then, let me discuss my harebrained idea for this one. Plasma is going to create a lot of friction traveling through air due to the immense heat necessary to maintain the high-energy plasma. Bringing the projectile speed down from 2000m/s to 750m/s would truly make the PPC a heavy energy weapon for brawling, which the energy weapons definitely need.

Compared to the ballistic king of the king of the hill (AC/20), PPC/ERPPPC would travel 150m/s slower but have a comparable/longer range while maintaining a higher heat generation without needing ammunition. This would leave LRMs and Gauss rifles as the premier range options but would also encourage more people to get up close and personal with that mech they are trying to destroy

TLDR: Convert PPC into a brawling weapon by reducing projectile speed by 1250m/s

so make an energy weapon that propagates at about 70% of lightspeed even slowerthan it is?...stupid.


try asking the to fix what is acutally broken...the heat system that is/was the limiter to lls and ppcs./

[Hellcat420]

PanzerMagier, on 29 June 2013 - 06:01 PM, said:

PPC'S are NOT used for brawling, OP. Please, let that sink in before you post something as harebrained as this.

erppc work pretty well for brawling when the hit detection decides to allow it.

Edited by Hellcat420, 30 June 2013 - 12:13 PM.

[Havok1978]

Allen Ward, on 29 June 2013 - 03:47 PM, said:

Agreed. PPC boating should be countered by immense heat production, a 4 PPC mech doing Alpha should risk immediate meltdown on caustic. the speed doesn't matter much, 1600 is so close to 2000, it could actually be even faster (accelerated particles almost move at the speed of light). shooting a PPC should cost a lot, a PPC Spider could go pop like that...a 6 PPC Stalker should never even consider firing more than 3 or 4. Firing 6 should blast it to hell.

nothing wrong with a spider using a PPC or ER PPC, look to the Wolfhound for evidence of this.

[Corvus Antaka]

Havok1978, on 01 July 2013 - 12:38 PM, said:

nothing wrong with a spider using a PPC or ER PPC, look to the Wolfhound for evidence of this.

with the 3 second recycle and more heat the erppc spider was quite hot. since the 4s change the erppc spider has almost 0 heat issues. re-adding a little heat to the erppc is needed - right now 1 ppc is better than 1 erlarge, and the erlarges extra range means squat when it's spraying all over the mech vs the ppcs instant hit.

when ppc was at 1200m/s it was a much higher skilled gun, cutting travel time to 1600 or 1200 is vital, and adding back some heat is equally important now that HSR is in pinpoint weapons are simply better than lasers in every way.

Edited by Colonel Pada Vinson, 01 July 2013 - 12:49 PM.

[Glucose]

I like the idea of slowing down the PPC + add a little bit of heat back. Those two combined should soften the edge that this weapon has. It'd be nice if 'moving laterally' actually made the PPC harder to land. Right now its just *too* fast. They also made the speed increase before HSR was implemented. I think it needs to be revisited now that the gun actually fires when you click.

[ObsidianSpectre]

Majorfatboy, on 29 June 2013 - 07:56 AM, said:

We had slow ppcs in closed beta...... NOBODY USED THEM. They were awful, you could only hit a target standing perfectly still at range, and had even more trouble nailing a moving target up close.

We didn't have HSR in closed beta. They were sped up to compensate for the lack of HSR. With HSR, slower PPCs will become an anti-giant sniper weapon. I don't know that I'd slow it down as far as the OP wants, but I think that'd be a great role for them. PPCs are for taking down assaults, and lights & faster mediums need not worry so much. Much better than the current state of PPCs being a great weapon against all opponents, and thus carried by everyone. Also helps with the extinction of the lights, and allows for a more dynamic metagame.

[Glythe]

jakucha, on 29 June 2013 - 07:43 AM, said:

I don't think projectile speed is the problem. More likely to do with alpha spam on that weapon and lack of alpha penalties, in regard to heat or whatever.

You're wrong too. No one used the old PPC because it was easy to dodge in an Atlas at 400m when you were moving at 54kph with zero cover. The high heat was the second reason that it sucked so much. The PPC with low heat, easy aim 2000m/s with all the damage in one place is the noob tube of MWO.


The PPC should not have every desirable characteristic in a weapon..... I for one wish it would be slower than the AC/20 and I'm thinking about 500m/s is a good speed.

Edited by Glythe, 01 July 2013 - 05:48 PM.