24 replies to this topic

[Slashmckill]

Should PPCs function in the exact same way as all ballistic weapons do, or should they find their own identity somewhere else?

I believe that ppcs should function much the way they are depicted in their descriptions. PPCs are described as firing a stream of negatively charged particles, which could more or less be translated as a combination of a ballistic and a laser weapon. (why is the ppc acting as an energy ac/10?)

I honestly believePPCs should function like both Lasers and Ballistics, having the fire and forget aspect of a ballistic but having a beam duration of a laser.

Why should PPCs work like that? because it combines one of the strengths of a ballistic weapon with the feel/nature of an energy weaponry.

Nobody complains about boating lasers because firing lasers leave you vulnerable to counter fire, plus the amount of skill required to pinpoint all the damage onto one location is rather difficult to do. Nobody complains about boating Ballistics either because they are far too heavy, ammo limited and and slot intensive to boat more than 2. (May change with future mechs, but thats not the point)

The ppc would be the best of both weapon systems while at the same time being different enough to make them unique in their own right. Making the weapon into a ballistic beam would leave the weapon just as accurate and boatable as it always has been, but now the victim could reduce the impact of the damage by either being very fast or torso twisting to spread the damage. (reducing overall frustration of the victim)

Now that being said, i personally like PPCs, but i hate how much they resemble ballistics when they can be more than that. This isn't a solution to boating or high-alpha, it's merely my view on how to make the ppc a more unique weapon than just an energy based ac/10.

[Unbound Inferno]

There was an idea I tossed around about making the PPC a kind of ballistic energy shot with a short-lived duration.

The duration was the beam in effect hitting the target. It spreads out damage slightly, but due to its short duration its not really noticeable on larger slower mechs, but smaller and faster ones will get hit less with it.

How to code it? I have no clue, but its what I visually see and would love seeing that actually be the case.

[Slashmckill]

Unbound Inferno, on 14 July 2013 - 04:43 PM, said:

How to code it? I have no clue, but its what I visually see and would love seeing that actually be the case.

Yeah i've always seen the ppc as both a projectile and a beam, i don't much like the feel of the current ppc, feels too much like a ballistic weapon. (it's T2 tech so i imagine a mixture of the postives of T1 tech would be a big part of it... but that is largely just my opinion)

Edited by Slashmckill, 14 July 2013 - 04:52 PM.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

The general idea seems to be to split up the 10 damage, while keeping it like a projectile. Some suggestions that I can remember off the top of my head are a 5+1+1+1+1+1 damage stream, or 7+1+1+1 style.

I'm fine with making them a beam, even hit scan, since they are supposed to be practically instant with their high speed.

And since you comment on boating in your OP, I would like to share some thoughts on the matter, but I'll stick them in a spoiler, since it's a bit of a tangent from your question about PPC function.

Spoiler

The problem with PPCs is more with being able to carry so many on a single mech (and with a Gauss Rifle, if you have the tonnage and hardpoints) and then teaming up with other PPC and Gauss totting mechs to wreak havoc on the battlefield. One or two mechs using them, matches can last a while and go down to the wire. Get at least three mechs using these weapons and matches can finish very quickly and generally be more frustrating than challenging, and this is more a function of the high combined DPS of the weapons with the pin-point burst damage to one area on a mech.

Which is not too different from players taking other highly effective weapon combos IMHO.
It's not fun or challenging either when you go against a few mechs effectively boating something, if you are dying very quickly under their combined firepower. So the already high DPS of the available weapon combos is simply amplified if players are working together (doesn't even require comms) since the combined firepower can be overwhelming in many situations anyway.


So in other words, PPCs are simply a symptom of the problem since they currently have great range and allows the user to use defensive tactics like cover or twisting effectively. Nonetheless, the problem still is being able to stack weapons to get very high DPS performance, so we need to directly deal with how most weapon combos are capable of dealing too much damage in a short burst right now.

And changing Armor and Internals up again ain't gonna work here, it's just gonna make balancing harder, nor is heat gonna be enough if damage is still very high. DPS simply needs to be lowered or even capped on the weapon combos, and there have been various suggestions around the forums as to how to do it, so I'll stop here.

[Strum Wealh]

"The energy-based equivalent of the Gauss rifle, the particle projector cannon (PPC for short) is one of the most powerful non-ballistic weapons ever devised for the modern battlefield. Consisting of a magnetic accelerator, firing high-energy proton or ion bolts, PPCs can flay armor through kinetic and thermal damage. While popular belief may hold that PPCs are an electromagnetic weapon, it’s worth mentioning that even though most PPC bolts look like a flash of manmade lightning, the actual electrical component of a PPC attack is little more than an intense burst of static." (TechManual, pg. 233)

"Unfortunately, they are less effective at ranges of less than 90 meters, as the particle fields at this range are deliberately inhibited by the weapon design. This feature - hardwired to every standard PPC model from the Donals produced in the Taurian Concordat to the Parti-Kills made on New Earth - is an electronics safety feature, intended to prevent the unfocused static of a discharging PPC from overloading the firing unit’s electronics." (TechManual, pg. 234)

One implementation of a PPC (or PPC-like device) is as a device known as an "electrolaser".

"An electrolaser is a type of electroshock weapon which is also a directed-energy weapon. It uses lasers to form an electrically conductive laser-induced plasma channel (LIPC). A fraction of a second later, a powerful electric current is sent down this plasma channel and delivered to the target, thus functioning overall as a large-scale, high energy, long-distance version of the Taser electroshock gun.
Alternating current is sent through a series of step-up transformers, increasing the voltage and decreasing the current. The final voltage may be between 10^8 and 10^9 volts. This current is fed into the plasma channel created by the laser beam."

In essence, the device would emit a relatively low-power laser beam (by comparison to a laser weapon) that ionizes the air it comes into contact with, creating an electrically-conductive "plasma channel" along which a pulse or bolt of charged particles (such as electrons, protons or ionized atoms/molecules) is projected.
The advantage to this is that it would (at least partially) counteract the effect known as "blooming", wherein "particles bump into one another under the effects of thermal vibration, or bump into air molecules" and "ions of like charge repel one another", thus causing the beam/bolt to lose cohesion and severely limiting its range.

The electrolaser being developed and tested by the US Army even resembles the BT novels' description of the PPC firing as "an arc of man-made lightning".


Like its natural counterpart, such a weapon could deliver its damage instantaneously to a very small, specific area.

Also like its natural counterpart, the propagation speed through air of such a PPC bolt would/should realistically be on the order of 1.6*10^6 m/s (1000 miles per second; the speed of a natural lightning bolt's downward leader track) to 1.4*10^8 m/s (equivalent to 87,000 miles per second, or ~0.47c; the speed of a natural lightning bolt's return stroke).
The comparatively-paltry 2*10^3 m/s that the current MWO implementation uses is good enough, as is.

As stated in the official description, the primary modes of damage for the PPC family are kinetic energy (similar to the Gauss Rifle) and thermal energy (similar to the lasers), with some minor electrical interference against the target (which, according to BT lore, only becomes significant when three or more PPCs strike the target simultaneously).

-----

The take-away from that is that the PPCs should be fast-moving, hard-hitting, point-damage weapons plagued by high-heat generation (which, IMO, should be increased back to their BT values - 10 heat/shot for standard PPCs and 15 heat/shot for ER-PPCs - for MWO), a minimum range (for the Standard PPCs) within which they lose effectiveness (which, IMO, should have the damage drop-off be exponential (and of the form 10^((range)/90) for 0< (range) ≤ 90), rather than linear), and a fairly long recycle time (on the order of ~5 seconds would be best, IMO).

[Slashmckill]

Praetor Shepard, on 14 July 2013 - 05:47 PM, said:

The general idea seems to be to split up the 10 damage, while keeping it like a projectile. Some suggestions that I can remember off the top of my head are a 5+1+1+1+1+1 damage stream, or 7+1+1+1 style.

I'm fine with making them a beam, even hit scan, since they are supposed to be practically instant with their high speed.

Well yes, technically the point would be to split up the damage alittle seeing as beams don't deal burst damage but ballistics do. It's more of an hybrid of the two weapon systems more than anything, i just don't like seeing a ppc act like an upgraded ac/10 when the Uac/10 already exists for just that purpose. (well doesn't exist in the current timeline, but will exist in the future)

Praetor Shepard, on 14 July 2013 - 05:47 PM, said:

And since you comment on boating in your OP, I would like to share some thoughts on the matter, but I'll stick them in a spoiler, since it's a bit of a tangent from your question about PPC function.

It was merely an off-hand remark since the ppc is such a huge issue right now, but sure i'll bite.

Praetor Shepard, on 14 July 2013 - 05:47 PM, said:

Spoiler

The problem with PPCs is more with being able to carry so many on a single mech (and with a Gauss Rifle, if you have the tonnage and hardpoints) and then teaming up with other PPC and Gauss totting mechs to wreak havoc on the battlefield. One or two mechs using them, matches can last a while and go down to the wire. Get at least three mechs using these weapons and matches can finish very quickly and generally be more frustrating than challenging, and this is more a function of the high combined DPS of the weapons with the pin-point burst damage to one area on a mech.

Which is not too different from players taking other highly effective weapon combos IMHO.
It's not fun or challenging either when you go against a few mechs effectively boating something, if you are dying very quickly under their combined firepower. So the already high DPS of the available weapon combos is simply amplified if players are working together (doesn't even require comms) since the combined firepower can be overwhelming in many situations anyway.

Praetor Shepard, on 14 July 2013 - 05:47 PM, said:

Spoiler

So in other words, PPCs are simply a symptom of the problem since they currently have great range and allows the user to use defensive tactics like cover or twisting effectively. Nonetheless, the problem still is being able to stack weapons to get very high DPS performance, so we need to directly deal with how most weapon combos are capable of dealing too much damage in a short burst right now.

And changing Armor and Internals up again ain't gonna work here, it's just gonna make balancing harder, nor is heat gonna be enough if damage is still very high. DPS simply needs to be lowered or even capped on the weapon combos, and there have been various suggestions around the forums as to how to do it, so I'll stop here.

i'll also respond with a spoiler, just so i don't clog up the disscusion.

Spoiler

The reason boating ppcs can be a symptom is because the front-loaded damage delivered from all the pin-point ppcs on that mech. It is enough where one shot is either lethal or severally crippling to almost every class of mech. Which it's not so much about the boating as it is the 3-4 weapons dealing an instant 30-40+ damage to an armored location that was balanced around random hit locations.

If you make different weapons fire differently then others (like lasers and ballistics) then the different weapons systems start to de-synergize with each other. This basically creates a purpose to boat the same weapons and a purpose to not boat the same weapons. (it's about finding the balance between boating and not boating)

By boating you will be able to sync your multiple weapons together to be more efficient in that range, however the more you boat the more limited your range and situational effectiveness will become. By not boating (i.e. frankenmechs by most accounts) you will have a much more versitile range of situations you will be able to fight in, but since your weapons don't sync up you will be limited to use just the weapons that work well in those situations. (lower damage output)

By de-syncing ppc's from ballistics it creates a divide in two weapons systems, making the ppc itself more in-line with an energy weapon but making it still able to be used with ballistics. ( i think i am getting really off point here)

There is no dry and cut solution that will fix everything, it is a multitude of problems and design flaws that accumulate into what we have now. What really matters is if pgi is going to treat the cause of the problems or are they just gonna slap a band-aid on the whole thing and let it fester. (which is what they have done for months so far)

[Unbound Inferno]

Praetor Shepard, on 14 July 2013 - 05:47 PM, said:

The general idea seems to be to split up the 10 damage, while keeping it like a projectile. Some suggestions that I can remember off the top of my head are a 5+1+1+1+1+1 damage stream, or 7+1+1+1 style.

I'm fine with making them a beam, even hit scan, since they are supposed to be practically instant with their high speed.

And since you comment on boating in your OP, I would like to share some thoughts on the matter, but I'll stick them in a spoiler, since it's a bit of a tangent from your question about PPC function.

Spoiler

The problem with PPCs is more with being able to carry so many on a single mech (and with a Gauss Rifle, if you have the tonnage and hardpoints) and then teaming up with other PPC and Gauss totting mechs to wreak havoc on the battlefield. One or two mechs using them, matches can last a while and go down to the wire. Get at least three mechs using these weapons and matches can finish very quickly and generally be more frustrating than challenging, and this is more a function of the high combined DPS of the weapons with the pin-point burst damage to one area on a mech.

Which is not too different from players taking other highly effective weapon combos IMHO.
It's not fun or challenging either when you go against a few mechs effectively boating something, if you are dying very quickly under their combined firepower. So the already high DPS of the available weapon combos is simply amplified if players are working together (doesn't even require comms) since the combined firepower can be overwhelming in many situations anyway.


So in other words, PPCs are simply a symptom of the problem since they currently have great range and allows the user to use defensive tactics like cover or twisting effectively. Nonetheless, the problem still is being able to stack weapons to get very high DPS performance, so we need to directly deal with how most weapon combos are capable of dealing too much damage in a short burst right now.

And changing Armor and Internals up again ain't gonna work here, it's just gonna make balancing harder, nor is heat gonna be enough if damage is still very high. DPS simply needs to be lowered or even capped on the weapon combos, and there have been various suggestions around the forums as to how to do it, so I'll stop here.

I'm fine with a split, but the PPC shouldn't be front-loaded so much.

I'd prefer a 3-2-1-1-1-1-1 style if its at all possible.

Pulse Lasers I'd much rather rework and have those front-loaded more. Take the LPL as a 5-3-1-1 Make the Pulse Lasers preferred for snapshot hits where Lasers have sustained damage. PPC is a price between the two for extreme range hits.

[Slashmckill]

Strum Wealh, on 14 July 2013 - 06:06 PM, said:

As stated in the official description, the primary modes of damage for the PPC family are kinetic energy (similar to the Gauss Rifle) and thermal energy (similar to the lasers), with some minor electrical interference against the target (which, according to BT lore, only becomes significant when three or more PPCs strike the target simultaneously).

-----

The take-away from that is that the PPCs should be fast-moving, hard-hitting, point-damage weapons plagued by high-heat generation (which, IMO, should be increased back to their BT values - 10 heat/shot for standard PPCs and 15 heat/shot for ER-PPCs - for MWO), a minimum range (for the Standard PPCs) within which they lose effectiveness (which, IMO, should have the damage drop-off be exponential (and of the form 10^((range)/90) for 0< (range) ≤ 90), rather than linear), and a fairly long recycle time (on the order of ~5 seconds would be best, IMO).

Thats another great description of the weapon, by making it a hitscan bolt of lighting it would also de-sync it from ballistics. However i find it still kinda mimics ballistics in a way, the whole instant upfront damage thing is kinda whats throwing me off.

However, if it were a laser with a .25 second beam, that might mimic the lightning bolt aspect of it. (Though I am not sure if a long cooldown would do anything more than slow down the rate at which people would get one shot.) But yeah raising the heat back to 10 is a good start, maybe add a small charge up delay. (actually yeah i could really dig that)

It would be the reverse of what i was thinking, keeps the hit-scan and beam duration of a laser but has the frontloaded damage of ballistics. I could honestly go for either idea, they both sound amazing compared to the upgraded ac/10 ppc we have now.

Edit: sorry missread part of your post, gonna add on to that.

Edited by Slashmckill, 14 July 2013 - 07:34 PM.

[Vassago Rain]

It's a particle cannon. They are very real, and we know how they work.

[Gaan Cathal]

I may be wrong, can't find the quote right now - think it may've been in a podcast. However, I'm fairly sure PGI have said that once they've fixed their splash damage code (so that it's non-multiplicative, basically) they're looking at applying that to the PPC to spread it's damage. So you'd see, say, 7.5 damage to the point of impact and 2.5 to an adjacent compartment.

[Slashmckill]

Gaan Cathal, on 14 July 2013 - 08:40 PM, said:

I may be wrong, can't find the quote right now - think it may've been in a podcast. However, I'm fairly sure PGI have said that once they've fixed their splash damage code (so that it's non-multiplicative, basically) they're looking at applying that to the PPC to spread it's damage. So you'd see, say, 7.5 damage to the point of impact and 2.5 to an adjacent compartment.

Not really sure i'd like them to do that, i mean i guess it could work to balance some stuff out on the weapon, but it would still function the exact same way, it would just apply the damage differently.

An energy ac/10 with splash Is just not what i think of when thinking of the ppc. (functions too much like a ballistic weapon for my taste)

Edited by Slashmckill, 14 July 2013 - 09:07 PM.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

I like the idea of making PPCs hit scan with a very short beam duration matching the PPC projectile animation.

Maybe ERPPCs could keep the projectile style it has, if heat goes back to 15, with at least a 5 second cooldown. If ERPPC would then be able to spread damage that would be a bonus, but the high heat and at least a 1 second longer cooldown over PPC and Gauss might be enough.

I think that would be better for the two weapons over simply changing how the projectile fires, it just seems from quotes I've read that the devs are preferring to keep it projectile-like right now, but as mentioned if PPCs can be desync'd from ERPPCs and Gauss then it should make it harder to pinpoint so much damage with those particular weapons.

Then with tweaks to regular and Pulse Lasers as necessary, along with the boating heat penalties and Energy Weapons should seem okay boated or not.

But a major problem I see is stacking weapons for both high Damage like PPCs and Gauss, but also high DPS combos that can overwhelm current armor ratings too quickly as well.

So, I think if we deal less damage over time with different weapon combos, then matches can last longer and be more challenging. One idea I've been wondering about is if a longer cooldown can be implemented for stacking different weapon combos so that we cannot deal more than say (for sake of discussion) 60 damage over 8 seconds, or just simply enforce chain fire for weapons.

However overall weapon balance goes, I think making PPCs, ERPPCs and Gauss different from each other is a small step in the right direction at this point.

[zraven7]

Oh, for all the chickens...

PPCs are not hit-scan weapons. It's not how they work. Their "beam" is traveling faster than a gauss shot. It hits immediately because it's going that fast.

PPCs are what they are. If you wanna raise the heat, fine, they run hot. I can't argue that idea. Making them duration-based, however, breaks whatever imaginary physics this game has.

Seriously, how many times is this thread going to come up?

[Slashmckill]

zraven7, on 15 July 2013 - 08:24 AM, said:

Oh, for all the chickens...

PPCs are not hit-scan weapons. It's not how they work. Their "beam" is traveling faster than a gauss shot. It hits immediately because it's going that fast.

PPCs are what they are. If you wanna raise the heat, fine, they run hot. I can't argue that idea. Making them duration-based, however, breaks whatever imaginary physics this game has.

Seriously, how many times is this thread going to come up?

The original Idea was to make the ppc function like both a laser and a ballistic, meaning it will fire a projectile much like how it does now but instead of the the damage being front-loaded the entire beam itself is the damage.

The thread is about if ppcs should function exactly like ballistics, if you like them how they are then explain why.

[zraven7]

Slashmckill, on 15 July 2013 - 09:38 AM, said:

The original Idea was to make the ppc function like both a laser and a ballistic, meaning it will fire a projectile much like how it does now but instead of the the damage being front-loaded the entire beam itself is the damage.

The thread is about if ppcs should function exactly like ballistics, if you like them how they are then explain why.

Because the "Beam" is a cluster of accelerated particles traveling near the speed of light. It is not a constant beam, but an extremely short lived pulse. And by pulse, we mean milliseconds. A PPC could be hitscan in the same way a bullet could be hitscan if the target it was hitting moved a little while it hit it.

[Slashmckill]

Praetor Shepard, on 15 July 2013 - 07:28 AM, said:

I like the idea of making PPCs hit scan with a very short beam duration matching the PPC projectile animation.

I like it to an extent, it's a good idea but it still feels off to me.

Praetor Shepard, on 15 July 2013 - 07:28 AM, said:

Maybe ERPPCs could keep the projectile style it has, if heat goes back to 15, with at least a 5 second cooldown. If ERPPC would then be able to spread damage that would be a bonus, but the high heat and at least a 1 second longer cooldown over PPC and Gauss might be enough.

I think that would be better for the two weapons over simply changing how the projectile fires, it just seems from quotes I've read that the devs are preferring to keep it projectile-like right now, but as mentioned if PPCs can be desync'd from ERPPCs and Gauss then it should make it harder to pinpoint so much damage with those particular weapons.

Eh, i can't say i can fully agree with the idea that erppcs should stay the same but normal ppcs should change, i mean you can de-sync them rather easily by just ajusting the speeds of both projectiles. Make the ppc a little slower by about 200-300ms and leave the erppc at what it is now.

Praetor Shepard, on 15 July 2013 - 07:28 AM, said:

But a major problem I see is stacking weapons for both high Damage like PPCs and Gauss, but also high DPS combos that can overwhelm current armor ratings too quickly as well.

Which is where the beam effect comes in on the original idea, you can fire the gauss and the ppcs at the same time but without good aim on the ppcs you just spread most of the damage.

Praetor Shepard, on 15 July 2013 - 07:28 AM, said:

So, I think if we deal less damage over time with different weapon combos, then matches can last longer and be more challenging. One idea I've been wondering about is if a longer cooldown can be implemented for stacking different weapon combos so that we cannot deal more than say (for sake of discussion) 60 damage over 8 seconds, or just simply enforce chain fire for weapons.

I'am gonna have to pass on this part, it's getting alittle too far off topic.

Praetor Shepard, on 15 July 2013 - 07:28 AM, said:

However overall weapon balance goes, I think making PPCs, ERPPCs and Gauss different from each other is a small step in the right direction at this point.

Yeah, making them different in several small ways helps alot in the grand scheme of things, i just wish ppcs weren't carbon copies of ballistic weaponry.

[MaddMaxx]

There is no real reason to take any 10 point weapon and have it be a beam, unless it is a beam weapon. The PPC is not a Beam, as has been noted. The man-made Lighting bolt travels in game @2000m/s. so once it arrives it is there, OR, it would have to be at minimum, a 1-2 second Beam in order to spread the damage to 7-1-1-1 or the other 5-3-1-1 properly. Do we really need more 7 or 8 point weapons when the player fire their 10 pointers?

If that was to happen, then the AC2 and AC5 (next fastest) would have to be segmented as well. As it travels at the same speed, so 1-1 spread would be acceptable right? Only fair. Nerf the Energy side, need to reciprocate on the ballistics side. No why not? Because the AC2 is not a problem? Depends on who you ask...

[Slashmckill]

MaddMaxx, on 15 July 2013 - 10:10 AM, said:

There is no real reason to take any 10 point weapon and have it be a beam, unless it is a beam weapon. The PPC is not a Beam, as has been noted. The man-made Lighting bolt travels in game @2000m/s. so once it arrives it is there, OR, it would have to be at minimum, a 1-2 second Beam in order to spread the damage to 7-1-1-1 or the other 5-3-1-1 properly. Do we really need more 7 or 8 point weapons when the player fire their 10 pointers?

The only 10 point weapons that exist in the game other than ppcs have limitations attached to them, large lasers deal their damage in a 1 second beam so that accuracy is a big thing. Ballistics, mainly the ac/10, ac/20 and gauss, are all massive tonnage and slot wise, plus they have limited ammo. You can generally only take around two of any of those ballistic weapon systems where as you can regularly take up to 4 ppcs on almost any chasis without even batting an eye.

Why should the ppc change and not ballistics? because it itself is the only anomaly, it functions exactly like any ballistic except that it's far better than them. There is litterally no reason right now to take any ballistic other than gauss or ac/20 since the ppc puts everything else to shame.

That being said, how one views the description of a ppc is a matter of interpretation, i see it as an intermediary between laser technology and ballistic technology.

MaddMaxx, on 15 July 2013 - 10:10 AM, said:

If that was to happen, then the AC2 and AC5 (next fastest) would have to be segmented as well. As it travels at the same speed, so 1-1 spread would be acceptable right? Only fair. Nerf the Energy side, need to reciprocate on the ballistics side. No why not? Because the AC2 is not a problem? Depends on who you ask...

Once again, the front-loaded damage aspect is unique to the ballistic weapons, its practically their only strength seeing as firing faster means nothing next to high-alpha. (caused primarily by ppcs and pin-point accuracy) It's absolutly fine if at one point they introduce different weapons manufacturers that give segmented damage to ballistics. But again ballistics give up alot to deal their front loaded damage, ppcs do not, which is the reason why i ask if ppcs should act like ballistics.

I can understand if you see the weapon functioning the way it does based on a literal description of a particle cannon, but clearly the implementation of it in the game is imbalanced compared to pretty much all ballistics.

Edited by Slashmckill, 15 July 2013 - 11:22 AM.

[Mister Blastman]

Well, now that you mention it OP, YES! In a way, they should function like ballistics. Take gravity, for instance. Ballistic weapons drop due to gravity. So should the PPC.

"But noooooo Blastman, they can't be affected by gravity because they are lightning bolts and go really fast!"

Need I remind everyone here that light is affected by gravity and it is both a particle and a wave. I rest my case. No matter the velocity PPCs travel at, gravity should change their trajectory even if it is ever so slightly.

[Slashmckill]

Actually i wouldn't mind bullet drop, even on ppcs, though i really doubt pgi considered even putting that in. (they have waaay too much on their plate already)