So, I am baffled PPCs are the exact same size and weight as a Large Pulse Laser (before June), but the perks involved with it are enormously better.
I would have thought that logically that if we're making a lightning cannon (which is the MW3 and later version of it) that it would
a ) Be as heavy as Gauss, AC/20s and AC/10 or at least sizeably heavier than the Large Lasers.
OR (Inclusive or not)
b ) Take up as many critical slots as these heavy hitting weapons.
If these restrictions existed, then it would literally be impossible to boat 2 of these on any given body part.
For example, 2 on a Right arm of A ******* CENTURION-AL (I did this, it was awesome for a little while until I got bored of low sustained damage output).
Also it limits the number that you can probably tack on due to the required number of DHS that you would need to slot in to dissipate it.
HOWEVER YOU CAN STILL PUT THEM ON VIABLY with the right setup. It'd be closer to juggling AC/10s on a Jager or Hunchback.
A consequence of the current PPC setup I've noticed came from me spending actual MC on a Stalker-3F and then PPC boating it.
I noticed that it is actually more of a farm build, and if newbies were given the right information, and chances are a friend has told them about MWO, then they'll save up, their Newbie Bonuses, get a Stalker, PPC it, and then make more C-bills.
THIS IS EATING PGI PROFITS! (Hint hint to any management up there)
It's basically a Newbie farm build where even if you die "fast" (which is not fast on any stalker), you are still going to output enough damage to give you 30k from a curb stomp.
The concept is about the only solution I can think of.
The PPC -should- be a relatively premier weapon system - the 'crème of the crop' so to speak. It -is- like having CERN (the LHC) packed into your battlemech's arm.
But it shouldn't come for free utility. A particle accelerator takes huge amounts of power to contain the particle stream. Thus, you would only want to be operating it when you're about to fire... but it takes time to accelerate that beam to nearly the speed of light before shunting it out of its circuit and into a linear trajectory.
Which means you could very easily justify a 'charge' mechanic before firing the PPC. Not through normal weapon recycle, but having a few moments where, to get damage out of the weapon, one must hold down the firing button before releasing. This charge should generate or otherwise affect heat.
Since we're dealing with a stream of particles, we can easily argue that there's a slight DoT factor here (better than pulse lasers, but not all-at-once like autocannons). Since the beam, itself, is traveling at nearly the speed of light - we can apply a hitscan effect to it, rather than a standard projectile.
So, I am baffled PPCs are the exact same size and weight as a Large Pulse Laser (before June), but the perks involved with it are enormously better.
I would have thought that logically that if we're making a lightning cannon (which is the MW3 and later version of it) that it would
a ) Be as heavy as Gauss, AC/20s and AC/10 or at least sizeably heavier than the Large Lasers.
OR (Inclusive or not)
b ) Take up as many critical slots as these heavy hitting weapons.
If these restrictions existed, then it would literally be impossible to boat 2 of these on any given body part.
For example, 2 on a Right arm of A ******* CENTURION-AL (I did this, it was awesome for a little while until I got bored of low sustained damage output).
Also it limits the number that you can probably tack on due to the required number of DHS that you would need to slot in to dissipate it.
HOWEVER YOU CAN STILL PUT THEM ON VIABLY with the right setup. It'd be closer to juggling AC/10s on a Jager or Hunchback.
A consequence of the current PPC setup I've noticed came from me spending actual MC on a Stalker-3F and then PPC boating it.
I noticed that it is actually more of a farm build, and if newbies were given the right information, and chances are a friend has told them about MWO, then they'll save up, their Newbie Bonuses, get a Stalker, PPC it, and then make more C-bills.
THIS IS EATING PGI PROFITS! (Hint hint to any management up there)
It's basically a Newbie farm build where even if you die "fast" (which is not fast on any stalker), you are still going to output enough damage to give you 30k from a curb stomp.
nbo another non fix. they are small but do less damage for the heat the produce. they balance....it not the PPCs it's the base heat system....lack ofone actually.
OR (and here's a brain buster) buff the Large Pulse instead of nerfing PPCs.
Do both.
But really, PPCs only need a minor heat nerf, possibly some messing with the min range so that they're not almost as good a brawling weapon as a Large Laser (honestly, I prefer them on my brawlers to Larges).
Messing up with weight or critical slots would make some stock mechs impossible to build in this game, I'm quite sure that's not wanted at all. Shouldn't be hard to make PPC a balanced weapon by changing it's values really. Make it 1 point damage per shot, and no-one uses it. Make it 7 and most of us won't use it. Easy.
Or keep canon stats and only mess with (i.e.)
-rate of fire
-not point loaded but short burst damage
-shot speed (should maybe still reflect physics)
-charge and fire mechanic (I hope not, would be stupidest thing for a weapon system ever)
-Slightly erratic flight pattern (it's kind of a lightning after all, maybe it jumps to a different part of mech than you actually aimed?)
Lot of alternatives, without making canon mechs invalid, or even changing tabletop statistics.
Shouldn't be hard to make PPC a balanced weapon by changing it's values really. Make it 1 point damage per shot, and no-one uses it. Make it 7 and most of us won't use it. Easy.
They've tried this in the past with the PPC. Didn't work.
Part of the problem is that the Clans come along - and they throw a huge amount of "WTF" into just about everything. The Clan ERPPC, in TT, does 15 damage (as compared to the 10 damage of the IS PPC).
No other MechWarrior game has really been able to balance that weapon by simply playing with recycle, damage, heat, and even a new hardpoint/slot system (Mech4).
MW4 was probably the closest to actually balancing the PPC of all of them... but it was still a "if you can mount this weapon, you really should" type of scenario.
And lasers applied their damage instantly (with most energy weapons having their damage considerably reduced with armor values doubled).
Quote
Or keep canon stats and only mess with (i.e.)
-rate of fire
Back to the 6PPC stalker, then. It is the only thing that can field the PPCs in the numbers necessary to make the best damaging energy weapon in the game relevant.
Quote
-not point loaded but short burst damage
That's nice. You'll still never bring a pulse laser along because the weapon has a superior reactive potential (it fires as soon as you press the button) and superior damage profile (unless you just want it to be usurped by the pulse laser).
Quote
-shot speed (should maybe still reflect physics)
If anything, the way the PPC behaves is a serious physics nerf. The weapon is a particle cannon. It shoots a stream of particles - similar to the ones we shoot in particle colliders, today. It's Fermi-Lab-in-a-pod. The things are traveling at significant fractions (90+%) the speed of light.
Quote
-charge and fire mechanic (I hope not, would be stupidest thing for a weapon system ever)
It was also one of the few things MechAssault got right regarding the PPC (spare for the whole homing factor... - but everything in that game homed...)
In videos like the MechWarrior 3 intro, there is displayed a very short charging period for the weapon system:
I know MechAssault is a sort of taboo among MechWarrior circles - and I somewhat agree, but was still an enjoyable game even if it went completely off the wall with some of its lore interpretations.
Obviously, the charge mechanic is quite viable for particularly powerful and potent weapon systems that would be impossible to balance if they were simply "point and click" weapons.
Of course, in the case of the BFG 9000, it's not really supposed to be 'balanced' - but you get the idea.
Quote
-Slightly erratic flight pattern (it's kind of a lightning after all, maybe it jumps to a different part of mech than you actually aimed?)
If it were simply an electron beam, that would be the case. But it's a stream of charged particles (ions) - which are going to behave a little differently. http://www.airpower....ug/roberds.html
That's a fairly in-depth discussion of particle accelerators as weapons.
This is put to use in things like proton therapy - where doctors can precisely 'drop' protons into a very specific region of space. This is highly precise radiotherapy - far better than standard radiation (which still exposes surrounding tissues to considerable amounts of ionizing radiation).
In weapons applications, however, it means that high-energy particles can literally travel -through- material obstructions before depositing the energy they hold... and this can be calculated with very high degrees of accuracy. Which means, for the sake of argument, that a PPC could plausibly shoot through walls, buildings, mountains, etc.
Which means the MechWarrior 3050 PPC is, probably, the most true-to-life PPC mechanic out there (since it can pass 'over' obstructions)... but it would be one of the most unwieldy weapons in MechWarrior if the charging mechanic related to a specific range that the PPC would deal damage (though anyone who could use it effectively would be able to toot their skill horn all they wanted to).
But that's getting a bit out there.
PPCs aren't really a bolt of lighting. They 'generate' the 'lightning' because of the electrons getting stripped and exchanged near the edges of the beam, which also creates a strong magnetic field that helps to further contain the beam. The 'lightning' of the PPC is a side-effect rather than a primary effect.
Quote
Lot of alternatives, without making canon mechs invalid, or even changing tabletop statistics.
I'm in agreement, there. Messing with the statistics we are using for every other weapon system could get a little messy... we'd have to re-visit everything to be proper about it.
They've tried this in the past with the PPC. Didn't work.
When? The only "nerf" the PPC ever got, was increasing its CD to 4 seconds, which could hardly be called a nerf when it actually made them more heat efficient.
I didn't read the rest of your post cause the premise was completely false.
I do agree with possibly having a charge time to fire as that does make sense with the weapon's characteristics.
Nothing super long like a Death Star cannon, but I was thinking on Par (Which is basically an animation of 1-second to open, and then 1/4 of a second for the beams to fill the cannon) with like Raiden's Dual Beam cannons from Virtual-On
I conceptualized for a second that the charge time would make it a challenging sniping weapon because you would need to work similarly to how a long range rifleman would take his shot.
However, knowing the community, it will actually probably just cause people to rage that they
a ) can't Poptart PPCs
b ) can't actually use the max range because of the excessive lead on target required with the charge time.
So most likely people would end up using it like a medium-short range slug cannon and complain more about the charge time....
I never played the TT, but by the looks of the community, TT matching is "highly" demanded, and still highly debatable about its effectiveness in a Real-time shooter.
xRatas suggestions does shut down a large portion of the community's complaints about non-matching TT values.
Additionally, One Medic Army's fix is easily doable, that will reduce their effectiveness, and thus make other weapons more viable.
Let's discuss a few of these tweaks perhaps theoretically and how they would affect matches.
I'll start with One Medic Army's since the developers can pretty much change 2 numbers and the fix would take effect immediately.
I'm not quite sure how high of a heat increase people would suggest.
As for minimum range, I was thinking of doubling their minimum range to 180 like LRMs?
The problem with that is it does not actually solve or address the current issue of PPC boating and the meta game issue of PPCs on EVERYTHING.
This suggestion of more critical slots and heavier weight limits but doesn't eliminate the possibilities of the weapon.
PPC boating is not as good as you believe it to be, try to get used better to your mech, and bring a more balance loadout into battle. You will often find yourself kill those pure PPC ones . I have a 4 ERPPC Stalker 5M before the patch. It is only good at fighting people who love to do peak shot with me despite I have much more power in one shot compare to them, but they love to do it where I at my strongest so their dead is forseeable.
I was thinking on some combinations of those suggestions really, for example non instant shot speed with burst damage, so it fires a 100m long beam at 2000m/s which works like laser otherwise. If it connects on both ends, it fries your own mech too. Firing speed issue could be circumvented with something that opens the channel for particles, for example more conventional shot, that primes the shot. Could again work believably, even if not explicitly realistic.
As for charging weapon, game history is full of those, first I can recall seeing right now is in Star Control, but I'm sure it was not first I've seen. Point was, last thing you'd want for your manually aimed direct fire weapon would be firing delay. No one would seriously design a gun like that... (Or would they?)
Leaping electricity, while proven not completely realistic, would still be believable enough IMO. Nice reading though, thanks for it.
IMO MW4 large lasers were better than PPCs, at least I used them much more.
But I think we could agree that best solution for balance could come from mechanics instead of statistics?
And yes, there is the issue with clan mechs. I'd prefer a game without them. They were not meant to be balanced at 3050 level2 rules ton for ton. Hard to see them doing any good for competitive side of a PvP game, no matter how good stuff they could be for a single player campaign.
When? The only "nerf" the PPC ever got, was increasing its CD to 4 seconds, which could hardly be called a nerf when it actually made them more heat efficient.
Which is precisely why it didn't work in this game or the others in MechWarrior history that have been subject to decades of combined balancing efforts.
Increase the cool-down too far, and the heat of the weapon becomes negligible. If anything - the PPC is more balanced with a higher recycle time when it is applying proper heat, as the longer recycle times serve as a form of mandatory heat management and drive home the importance of accuracy.
If you increase the cool-down time even farther, then the weapon only appears as a sniping alpha. Which means it's going to be removed from non-boats and only applied to those that can boat it in numbers high enough to dismember mechs nearly instantly.
Quote
I didn't read the rest of your post cause the premise was completely false.
Because none of that post would have been reinforcing the point I made.
*sigh*
And you're more than likely a legal voting resident.
A good weapons designer would design the PPC to pre-charge so that the pilot will not experience a firing delay. Why? A firing delay would increase the risk of missing the shot, which then increases the risk of death.
Huh. I'd not actually considered a charge-up mechanic for PPCs. Might actually work. Especially since if you don't touch any of the rest of the code it'd dump the heat at the start of the charge, so it'd be easy to set it such that if you overheat it fails to fire.
Mystere, on 21 July 2013 - 09:52 PM, said:
A good weapons designer would design the PPC to pre-charge so that the pilot will not experience a firing delay. Why? A firing delay would increase the risk of missing the shot, which then increases the risk of death.
In which case that weapon would only not pre-charge if it wasn't possible to safely contain the charge for an extended length of time. Boom, explanation in place (and gives a potential role for the PPC capacitor later).
Also, there are canonically no good weapon designers in the Battletech universe as evidenced by, well. All the weapons.
See a trend? AC's have twice the DPS of a PPC. That's where their balance vs. PPCs comes in.
Pro Tip: Make lasers worth running instead of making PPCs worthless. More people will run Lasers without breaking out the nerfbat.
the other problem is that the limited number of slots make boating the biggest guns almost obligatory. The fact that you have to choose between a small laser and a PPC makes the whole weapon balance issue trivial as it's broken at its core.
the other problem is that the limited number of slots make boating the biggest guns almost obligatory. The fact that you have to choose between a small laser and a PPC makes the whole weapon balance issue trivial as it's broken at its core.
If they give me a 85ton mech that can boat 4-6 AC/5s with an awesome long-range fire profile, I will gladly do so.
The only mechs I can boat AC/5s on are a couple of the Jagers and the Cataphract 4x, and there you end up spending 32tons on the guns, plus another 6-7 on the ammo for half the upfront damage compared to a PPC stalker.
I will take my Quad-5 Phract against a Quad-PPC stalker any day of the week if they stand in the open, but they've got a better profile, less tonnage spent on guns (39 vs 28), no ammo restrictions, higher weapon mounts, and a 15ton advantage on top of having their damage concentrated better if they alpha (though the boating nerf has penalized that).
I would love to have an assault that could mount more than 2 AC/5s, or more than 1 AC/10, even though many can mount 3+ PPCs.
Yes, if ever PGI puts in the annihilator, there will be tears.
Edited by One Medic Army, 21 July 2013 - 10:48 PM.
A good weapons designer would design the PPC to pre-charge so that the pilot will not experience a firing delay. Why? A firing delay would increase the risk of missing the shot, which then increases the risk of death.
That's exactly what I meant, no sane army would field a direct fire weapon that started it's reload cycle when you pull the trigger.
A good weapons designer would design the PPC to pre-charge so that the pilot will not experience a firing delay. Why? A firing delay would increase the risk of missing the shot, which then increases the risk of death.
I could have sworn that I already covered this.
A Particle Projector Cannon does not simply "charge" like one would the capacitors for a Gauss Rifle. A Particle Projector Cannon must continually accelerate a stream of particles through a very intense magnetic deflection field (on the level of your fusion reactor).
"Charging" the PPC is not possible without considerable base-line heat generation, as a few tons of superconducting magnets have to be cryogenically cooled and supplied with enough power to keep several grams of particulate matter cycling around a loop no more than a meter or two in diameter at speeds approaching that of light.
Which means that pre-charging the weapon is technologically impossible. There is going to be a firing delay unless you want to be feeding several gigawatts of power into a weapon continuously.
xRatas, on 21 July 2013 - 10:44 PM, said:
That's exactly what I meant, no sane army would field a direct fire weapon that started it's reload cycle when you pull the trigger.
Plenty already do. Most laser systems have a warm-up period. Dumb-release bombs (a direct attack munition) are somewhat similar - computers in the aircraft detect when the aircraft is "zero G" and release the bomb onto a designated target (very accurate, though it restricts maneuvering against anti-aircraft fire).
Weapons like the 5-inch gun aren't necessarily supposed to hit with their first shot - the radar tracks the projectile and compensates before firing the next shot. In the world of ship-to-ship combat, the 5" gun is "direct fire."
Even then - these weapon systems aren't built to address all threats.
Which is exactly why a charge mechanic would balance out PPCs. Autocannons remain the reactionary damage dealer and 'brawling weapon' alongside SRMs. Lasers are reactionary - but light and fieldable. PPCs are more of a support weapon in the direct fire role - they can deal heavy damage against the heavier targets, but the lighter and more nimble targets are going to be able to mitigate the weapon system.
0
. I have a 4 ERPPC Stalker 5M before the patch. It is only good at fighting people who love to do peak shot with me despite I have much more power in one shot compare to them, but they love to do it where I at my strongest so their dead is forseeable.
