68 replies to this topic

[Blackadder]

zorak ramone, on 22 July 2013 - 10:21 AM, said:

It seems that increasing PPC heat is the most popular option, but it's also the wrong option.

Increasing PPC heat will do nothing but shift the balance back to GR-centric high alpha builds. Anyone who remembers the days of closed beta before DHS were added and when PPC heat was 10 knows this to be true. The moment an assault mech is added that can carry 2xGR and at least one PPC, you'll see that PPC heat was never the issue.

Increasing PPC heat treats a symptom (high damage PPC/GR alphas) without dealing with the core underlying problem (no limits on the amount of damage that can be applied to a single panel in a single trigger pull). The solution is a system that somehow limits the amount of damage that can be applied accurately in a single trigger pull. Everything else is just dancing around the issue.

Increasing heat will have zero impact, since players are already shifting away from 3-4 PPC builds, i run 2 PPC + Guass in my Highlander when i play it, because its pointless to do anything else as other weapons are not even worth it. As it is, i never really have heat issues, so extra heat, unless its severe wont really do much.

If you want to truly fix PPC there are only 2 options, one is to increase the reload on the weapon, and the other is to give both ERPPC and PPC a hard cap on minimum range like LRMs. The main problem with PPC is they can fire fast enough and still land 10 points of instant damage, even at short range. In Addition, they really suffer zero heat , range or DPS issues, because they can do it at 4 seconds.

So PPC @ 6-8 second reload gives it a significant disadvantage, to offset its advantage in range, instant damage, and ability to dominate the long range game.

Giving it a comparable minimum range in MWO is going to be around 200 meters , given that the ranges in this game are completely fubared and a major part of the problems PGI is having.

however, this entire thread is pointless, as the end result of any significant downgrade in the ppc, will do nothing for the long term health and quality of the game. Nerfing PPCs in any large way, will only result in everyone shifting to SRM boats, and then people will just post endless threads about SRM's instead of PPCs. Fixing individual weapons, without fixing the core problem of why the issues MWO has had for the last 12 months still exist, solves nothing, and will only promote the ongoing rotation of whats the latest OP weapon to use.

[SixBottles]

Magicbullet141, on 22 July 2013 - 10:39 PM, said:

All your ideas are COMPLETELY WRONG
We DON'T need more "special rules" that remove this game further from the table top and battletech in general!!!

PPC need to be reset to their original Heat, the TT heat

ppc= 10
erppc=15

"The best solution to problems is usually the easiest one"
-GLaDOS

nope u are wrong.

rolling back the heat penalty and upping the ppc heat to their TT values WOULD ACTUALLY BUFF THE PPC...
DO YOUR MATH
now 3 PPC's pruduve about 34 heat. with TT values for heat they would do 30.


as some others had already pointed out, there is a vote option missing:

increase the minimum range

when thats done, u could look again and see if the heat has to be upped abit.

and again, for the gauß... i really dont see the problem... a gauß already needs 20t, 12crit slots and is easily destroyed (thats why my atlas's dont get em)
that already is a big disadvantage for the 15 pinpoint damage and low heat.

Edited by SixBottles, 23 July 2013 - 03:34 AM.

[zorak ramone]

Joseph Mallan, on 22 July 2013 - 05:38 PM, said:

I would take a Thunder Hawk, Devastator, King Crab or Mauler over a Gunslinger... unless they render it to die for.

THe thing about the Gunslinger is that with MWO's customization rules you get the following:

-An 85 ton mech
-That JUMPS
-And has ECM
-And can carry 2xPPC/2xGR

Its a freaking jumping stalker that can carry GRs and ECM. They'd have to render it so bad that it made YOU, in real live, look like a literal piece of **** in order for it to not be the single most dominant mech in MWO.

Blackadder, on 22 July 2013 - 11:17 PM, said:

Increasing heat will have zero impact, since players are already shifting away from 3-4 PPC builds, i run 2 PPC + Guass in my Highlander when i play it, because its pointless to do anything else as other weapons are not even worth it. As it is, i never really have heat issues, so extra heat, unless its severe wont really do much.

We already know this is wrong because back in the spring, before PPCs had their heat reduced to 8, GRs and UAC5s were dominating the field.

[Warge]

Typatty, on 21 July 2013 - 09:20 PM, said:

What would balance PPCs best?

Heat to 10 and min attack range to 120. ER PPC heat 12 or 14.

Edited by Warge, 23 July 2013 - 04:45 AM.

[SixBottles]

zorak ramone, on 23 July 2013 - 04:00 AM, said:

THe thing about the Gunslinger is that with MWO's customization rules you get the following:

-An 85 ton mech
-That JUMPS
-And has ECM
-And can carry 2xPPC/2xGR

Its a freaking jumping stalker that can carry GRs and ECM. They'd have to render it so bad that it made YOU, in real live, look like a literal piece of **** in order for it to not be the single most dominant mech in MWO.

...ehhhm:
jumpjets 2t
ecm 1,5t
2 ppc 14t
2 GR 30t +7t

___________

54 tons (31slots)

congrats, now u have 31 tons left, oh wait...
u'll need to add the min weight: 8,5t and weight for armour 14,5t (with reduced leg armour)...
so that sums up to a weight of 77 tons

allright did we forgot something? yeah right, the engine! ...hmm 85-77= 8t... good enough for a 120 std engine and 5 heatsinks...

OMG u are right! what an overpowered mech that is!

a whooping walking speed of 25 kph's and an heat efficiency aprox. ~30-35%


DAMN U PGI! WE NEED TO NERF THAT!

Edited by SixBottles, 23 July 2013 - 05:06 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

zorak ramone, on 23 July 2013 - 04:00 AM, said:

THe thing about the Gunslinger is that with MWO's customization rules you get the following:

-An 85 ton mech
-That JUMPS
-And has ECM
-And can carry 2xPPC/2xGR

Its a freaking jumping stalker that can carry GRs and ECM. They'd have to render it so bad that it made YOU, in real live, look like a literal piece of **** in order for it to not be the single most dominant mech in MWO.



We already know this is wrong because back in the spring, before PPCs had their heat reduced to 8, GRs and UAC5s were dominating the field.

Not everybody likes jumping. I have 2 Victors, Neither have JJ. You can get a Devastator on an 85 ton chassis? Wow, I never designed that in Heavy Metal ...12 years ago! My favorite build is a Stone Rhino with 3 Gauss and 2 ERPPC. With sinks enough to fire a 5,5,4 cyclic all game.

I have always tried to design Mechs that can destroy the enemy in 2-4 salvos. Some folks like drawn out battles, Some (like me) are fine leaving the enemy a smoking ruin in 2-3 turns if possible. I can accept 8-0 stomps so long as I can sometimes return the favor.

How to balance PPCs, Make a artificial hard cap of 3 PPCs (including ERs ) However the Supernova will be arriving with the Clans so be ready for more whine with all the cheese.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 23 July 2013 - 05:09 AM.

[Khobai]

Adding heat to PPCs wont fix the problem. It will just change alphastrike builds from ppcs to something else. The root cause of the problem is convergence and thats what needs to be fixed.

[Joseph Mallan]

But remember that the illusion of perfect pinpoint weapon fire is a true show of skillz Khobai!

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Just looking at the weapons, since changes like Convergence are not gonna be available for a while.

I'd like to explore changes close to these, to see if these three could be desync'd from each other, since their combination and few current drawbacks make them a powerful combo right now:

PPC

• Heat:10
  
• Duration: 0.25
  
• Cooldown: 3.75
  
• Speed: 1700

ERPPC

• Heat: 15
  
• Cooldown: 4.75
  
• Fire Delay: 0.25 (The increases with Cooldown and using a Fire Delay hopefully also help with managing heat)

Gauss

• Fire Delay: 0.1
  
• Cooldown: 3.9

[zorak ramone]

SixBottles, on 23 July 2013 - 04:59 AM, said:

...ehhhm:
jumpjets 2t
ecm 1,5t
2 ppc 14t
2 GR 30t +7t

___________

54 tons (31slots)

.......

OMG u are right! what an overpowered mech that is!

a whooping walking speed of 25 kph's and an heat efficiency aprox. ~30-35%


DAMN U PGI! WE NEED TO NERF THAT!

Look at this guy who didn't even try to build it. Five minutes later in the mechlab ...
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...c9dc06d19334c03

52 tons and 31 slots free. I dropped 2 tons of GR ammo (5 is plenty). Also, there are actually only 29 slots free since the Gunslinger would have lower arm actuators ... but since I dropped the 2 tons of GR ammo, it fits. If you drop the engine to a 255 XL, you get two tons free, which you can spend on internal DHS or more armor on the legs/arms.

Joseph Mallan, on 23 July 2013 - 05:08 AM, said:

Not everybody likes jumping. I have 2 Victors, Neither have JJ. You can get a Devastator on an 85 ton chassis? Wow, I never designed that in Heavy Metal ...12 years ago! My favorite build is a Stone Rhino with 3 Gauss and 2 ERPPC. With sinks enough to fire a 5,5,4 cyclic all game.

I'm having trouble seeing what your point is here. Also, are you denying the utility/power of a JJ powered sniper in MWO?

Quote

I have always tried to design Mechs that can destroy the enemy in 2-4 salvos. Some folks like drawn out battles, Some (like me) are fine leaving the enemy a smoking ruin in 2-3 turns if possible. I can accept 8-0 stomps so long as I can sometimes return the favor.

And so do I? The point of this post is not "omg PGI needs to nerf big mechs" its "adding heat to PPCs will do jack and ****"

Quote

How to balance PPCs, Make a artificial hard cap of 3 PPCs (including ERs ) However the Supernova will be arriving with the Clans so be ready for more whine with all the cheese.

This is a terrible idea. Hard caps on the amount of weapons that can be carried on any mech are basically an admissionthat your weapons balance system is broken. Its dancing around the issue again. Also, this particular restriction will make some iconic mechs (Warhawk!) impossible to add. This is bad!

note: I'm in favor of hardpoint size restrictions as a way to distinguish mechs from each other, but not as a stand-in for weapons balance.

[Blackadder]

zorak ramone, on 23 July 2013 - 04:00 AM, said:

We already know this is wrong because back in the spring, before PPCs had their heat reduced to 8, GRs and UAC5s were dominating the field.

Your not taking into account the limited number of PPC's allowed to be fired now, which reduces overall heat. changing values back to there origional will have minimal impact on players who use the peek a boom style of game play to land large damage strikes against single portions of armor. 16 heat per strike or 20 heat per strike is entirely manageable, and a non impact on PPC's. the only impact you will have is forcing stalkers to shift from PPC's to SRMS or add additional heatsinks, while not impacting the mechs able to carry mixed ballistic & energy loadouts at all.

GR & UAC5 have always been very good weapons, but they were not dominating the field in march, SRMs were the dominant weapon in march by a large margin, with LL , GR, UAC5, PPC all being used as well.

[SixBottles]

zorak ramone, on 23 July 2013 - 06:52 AM, said:

Look at this guy who didn't even try to build it. Five minutes later in the mechlab ...
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...c9dc06d19334c03

52 tons and 31 slots free. I dropped 2 tons of GR ammo (5 is plenty). Also, there are actually only 29 slots free since the Gunslinger would have lower arm actuators ... but since I dropped the 2 tons of GR ammo, it fits. If you drop the engine to a 255 XL, you get two tons free, which you can spend on internal DHS or more armor on the legs/arms.

bravo! u got yourself an XL engine on an assault mech... good luck with that

[VanillaG]

Khobai, on 23 July 2013 - 05:24 AM, said:

Adding heat to PPCs wont fix the problem. It will just change alphastrike builds from ppcs to something else. The root cause of the problem is convergence and thats what needs to be fixed.

While I agree that convergence is the proper long term fix, giving PPCs a beam duration is probably the quickest solution to mitigate the high pinpoint damage meta. The beam duration seems to have worked for all other energy weapons so I can't see why it wouldn't work here.

[Joseph Mallan]

Why do we need to do anthing more than return the heat to 10 and 15 and just agree to not bring more than 3 PPCs? Why can't we as players do that? Why can't we agree upon our own Ares Conventions?

[Joseph Mallan]

zorak ramone, on 23 July 2013 - 06:52 AM, said:

I'm having trouble seeing what your point is here. Also, are you denying the utility/power of a JJ powered sniper in MWO?

I personally didn't see a problem with one or two Poptarts on a team.

Quote

And so do I? The point of this post is not "omg PGI needs to nerf big mechs" its "adding heat to PPCs will do jack and ****"

The point of every thread like this one is to Nerf whatever is popular at the moment.

Quote

This is a terrible idea. Hard caps on the amount of weapons that can be carried on any mech are basically an admissionthat your weapons balance system is broken. Its dancing around the issue again. Also, this particular restriction will make some iconic mechs (Warhawk!) impossible to add. This is bad!

You will notice I did reference the Supernova 6 ER Large Lasers as a fail myself...

Quote

note: I'm in favor of hardpoint size restrictions as a way to distinguish mechs from each other, but not as a stand-in for weapons balance.

Funny thing, I have played this game (TT & video games) for 30 years. I never have made 6 PPC boats or 20 Medium laser boats, or any of the Munchkin builds I heard of and see now. It just doen't feel sporting. 2 AC 20s... well I do like seeing the effect that a single 20 has on TT so I cannot lump that in with some of the other builds I see.

Seriously TT like Heat effects and Less convergence would solve a good bit of the whine.

[Joseph Mallan]

zorak ramone, on 23 July 2013 - 06:52 AM, said:

Look at this guy who didn't even try to build it. Five minutes later in the mechlab ...
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...c9dc06d19334c03

You built a Devastator on an 85 ton frame! Wow I have never seen that before!

Convergence is what makes that terrifying not the 50 damage by itself. If it were the amount of damage everyone would be screaming about my 64 points of damage.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 23 July 2013 - 07:46 AM.

[Kyrs]

PPC damage curve base on a opening of an IRIS

duration .33 second
damage exponential increase
exemple:

seconds: 0.000 / 0.0755 / 0.160 / 0.235 / 0.33
Damage: 0.250 / 0.500 / 1.000 / 2.000 / 4.25 ( total damage add-up to 10 )

I would also put a minimum range to the ER-PPC to 30 metres. I feel way to much safe with my ER-PPC

Edited by Kyrs, 23 July 2013 - 08:18 AM.

[Warge]

Khobai, on 23 July 2013 - 05:24 AM, said:

Adding heat to PPCs wont fix the problem. It will just change alphastrike builds from ppcs to something else.

Something what?

[Unbound Inferno]

SixBottles, on 23 July 2013 - 03:32 AM, said:

nope u are wrong.

rolling back the heat penalty and upping the ppc heat to their TT values WOULD ACTUALLY BUFF THE PPC...
DO YOUR MATH
now 3 PPC's pruduve about 34 heat. with TT values for heat they would do 30.


as some others had already pointed out, there is a vote option missing:

increase the minimum range

when thats done, u could look again and see if the heat has to be upped abit.

and again, for the gauß... i really dont see the problem... a gauß already needs 20t, 12crit slots and is easily destroyed (thats why my atlas's dont get em)
that already is a big disadvantage for the 15 pinpoint damage and low heat.

Oh, would you look at that? TT rules wouldn't need Paul's additional screwy who-knows-what heat system...

[Bors Mistral]

So, if I get it correctly:
- do not touch PPC base heat
- reduce PPC projectile speed to 1600, and reduce ERPPC projectile speed to 1800
- set a min damage falloff range of 180m for PPCs, 90m for ERPPCs
- give a quarter second firing delay to PPCs, half a second to ERPPCs. With a proper audio sound clue, of course.

This will give the PPC family a cool unique feel, raise the skill bar a bit, and curb some of the obvious problems too.
Wouldn't say my numbers a perfect, but that's the gist of how I see it.