55 replies to this topic

[Lightfoot]

I have never seen a light mech with a PPC, they all have medium lasers. Maybe the PPC lights all died?

Of course the 35 ton Clan Puma Prime will have 2 Clan ERPPC's and do 30 damage from 900 meters. 97 kph too, if I remember right. What say you now? Just say no to the Clan Invasion. It's the only way to nerf everything.

It's going to be funny to watch everyone freak-out on the forums when the Clan Mechs appear. You really need to re-center yourselves and stop all the nerf-herding or the Inner Sphere is doomed.

Your motto should be "Cry Havoc! And let slip the PPCs of War!!" Because PPCs are all the Inner Sphere has that even comes close to Clan Tech weapons. AC20 meet UAC20. SRM6 meet SSRM6 with 350 meter range. Medium Laser meet ER Medium Laser. Clan LRMs, just think 2X more, no minimum range.

Yeah, right, go fix the PPC.

Edited by Lightfoot, 16 August 2013 - 11:24 AM.

[Shadey99]

Lightfoot, on 16 August 2013 - 11:12 AM, said:

I have never seen a light mech with a PPC, they all have medium lasers. Maybe the PPC lights all died?

Most common lights to run PPC builds are the 1xPPC Spider 5D (arm mounted & sometimes with tag in CT), Jenner (Any variant) with 2xPPC, or single PPC Raven (Usually a 3L, but not always). Sometimes people also include the Cicada 3M ninja sniper with it's 2xPPC as well.

[Clit Beastwood]

I've seen a lot of dual ppc jenners lately. They don't seem great. I do better with lasers on my 5d than I do with a PPC, though I have a kinda strange playstyle in the spiders. Might work for people willing to engage from a distance, but I like to run up and kick people in the shins

[Trauglodyte]

Dual PPC Lights are horrible. The only way to do it is to be extremely slow, extremely hot, or very lacking of armor. How is that any good at all? I see a lot of dual PPC Cicada-3Ms and they're terrible. I can and do more damage than them with 1 PPC and 3 Md Lasers and do it more often and more efficiently. Sometimes, bads just don't want to listen.

[Fais]

I know it wont be popular among some people. But, personally I think they need to add a fire delay time to Gauss Rifles and/or PPC's. I would like to see ~.20 seconds for Gauss and/or ~.40 seconds for ppc's. This would hurt their pinpoint accuracy and covergance across the two systems. It even makes sense from a technological standpoint for the PPC cannon as they might have to build a charge. They could also do this by slowing down the projectile speeds some and making the gauss and the ppc's speeds further apart.

[Clit Beastwood]

Fais, on 16 August 2013 - 12:47 PM, said:

I know it wont be popular among some people. But, personally I think they need to add a fire delay time to Gauss Rifles and/or PPC's. I would like to see ~.20 seconds for Gauss and/or ~.40 seconds for ppc's. This would hurt their pinpoint accuracy and covergance across the two systems. It even makes sense from a technological standpoint for the PPC cannon as they might have to build a charge. They could also do this by slowing down the projectile speeds some and making the gauss and the ppc's speeds further apart.

What about you click to start charging the gauss coils, and release to fire? Min warmup 1.5 seconds, max time you can keep it charged 3 seconds, something along those lines

[KAT Ayanami]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 16 August 2013 - 07:53 AM, said:

I can shoot 4 with my 4 erppc stalker and i can shoot 2 5-6 times with a stalker and even 4-5 times with a blackjack before needing fluid flush, which lets me shoot even more.

Well then I would love to know the amount of DHS you have on those mechs.

[Deathlike]

KAT Ayanami, on 16 August 2013 - 01:08 PM, said:

Well then I would love to know the amount of DHS you have on those mechs.

You can easily run 20 DHS on the Stalker for 4 ERPPC.

For the BJ... I'm thinking like 16 DHS..
BJ-3

Oddly enough, I found a way to fit 17 DHS. It's more than enough to cool 2 ERPPC.

Edited by Deathlike, 16 August 2013 - 01:30 PM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Agent 0 Fortune, on 16 August 2013 - 09:38 AM, said:

Absolutely they should. Especially after the PPC and ER PPC have been balanced. In fact the whole goal is to make builds equally viable.
The problem we have now is that PPCs are too easy and too effective. The goal isn't to get rid of PPCs or even PPCs + Gauss, it is to make them balanced so some players take them, while other may opt for AC5s and Large Lasers (etc). For instance I still see 4x PPC mechs in the field they just aren't as popular as they used to be because there are other equally effective options available.

1 (ER)PPC on a Jenner with a SRM4 is a Panther. It should be much more prolific in Kurita forces as it is their primary light Mech.

I see quite a few 4 Ultra 5 Jagers and Phracts also I see Phrats with 2 AC5 and 2 AC2. I also die more often to LRM, AC20 damage than I do PPC Gauss.

[Coralld]

I have an interesting idea.
As we all know lasers have a beam duration, during the beam duration is when the heat rises, or to be more accurate, creeps up, and only cools when the lasers finishes firing. What if we took this idea and through it in another direction for PPC weapons. What if we made it so that after the PPC fires and the heat spikes that the heat stays where it is until all the PPCs that were fired finish their recharge cycle? This way those who have a hard on for their PPC don't have to worry about more ghost heat as the heat is the same but simply prevents the mech from cooling down until the PPCs finish recharging. It would make sense do to the fact that recharging what is for a lack of a better term a weaponized hadron collider would require a lot of power to recharge and thus prevent any kind of cooling to occur. This will make PPCs and ERPPC great for what they were meant for, which is mid to long range fighting, but would leave them gimped in close range combat because they would never have an opportunity to cool down if they constantly fired their PPCs every time they were ready. This would also allow for the other long range energy option, the LLs, to actually be appealing and useful. Because who would want to be shut down for an extra 4 seconds because the last weapons you fired were PPCs?

Just another of my 2 C-Bills thrown out there.

Edited by Coralld, 16 August 2013 - 02:05 PM.

[Shadey99]

Trauglodyte, on 16 August 2013 - 12:28 PM, said:

Dual PPC Lights are horrible. The only way to do it is to be extremely slow, extremely hot, or very lacking of armor. How is that any good at all? I see a lot of dual PPC Cicada-3Ms and they're terrible. I can and do more damage than them with 1 PPC and 3 Md Lasers and do it more often and more efficiently. Sometimes, bads just don't want to listen.

I have used a Dual PPC + 1 ML and Dual ER PPC 3M designs. They key to running them is to hit from behind/flank quickly and then reposition escaping any retaliation and leading several of them off on wild goose chases without ever getting into detection range of seismic or BAP. In a stand up fight they are horrible, that's not how to use them. Used as intended I've done 6 kill 6 assist matches and basically won the day with only minor damage before. However they require a good team and a map where one can circle in behind.

I've switched it out for a AC2 +3 ML build recently and act as a harasser right now as the heat nerfs on PPCs really hits the 11 HS, 133 kph, Dual ER PPC build.

Oh btw the Spider isn't a bad PPC platform. I run a XL245 engine for 145+ kph, full armor, ECM, and a LL+2ML build which could be switched over to a PPC without an issue. 2xPPC on a Jenner is questionable (The 3M Cicada does it better and isn't that much better) and the Raven carries a couple ML for backup making it functional though best as a light damage sniper.

Edited by Shadey99, 16 August 2013 - 02:06 PM.

[Profiteer]

PPCs don't need any more nerfs.

Other weapons need to be buffed.

Large lasers/Large pulse lasers ghost heat limit should be changed from 2 to 4.
Medium lasers should have it removed completely.
Medium pulse should be 1.5 tons not 2.
SRMs ammo should be 125 per ton.
AC2 ammo should be 100 per ton and .75 heat.
AC5 ammo should be 50 per ton.
Ultra AC5 ammo should be 40 per ton and have the rng replaced with a system that increases the % chance of a jam as your mech heat increases. (low heat = low jam chance, high heat = high jam chance).
AC10 ammo should be 25 per ton.
LBX pellets should do splash damage.
SSRMs should be 2.0 damage.
Small laser/pulse should be 2 second cool-down.

Nerfing PPCs back to uselessness isn't the answer, making other weapons/combos more attractive is.

[Shadey99]

Profiteer, on 16 August 2013 - 02:48 PM, said:

Nerfing PPCs back to uselessness isn't the answer, making other weapons/combos more attractive is.

I said this one the last page including real world stats to show why some things need buffed that could be used in place of PPCs, if they were as functional.

[VanillaG]

Lightfoot, on 16 August 2013 - 11:12 AM, said:

Of course the 35 ton Clan Puma Prime will have 2 Clan ERPPC's and do 30 damage from 900 meters. 97 kph too, if I remember right. What say you now? Just say no to the Clan Invasion. It's the only way to nerf everything.

Slightly off topic, but if PGI keeps to the lore around omnimech, that Puma is going to be stuck going 97kph no matter what weapons it mounts. You get rid of hardpoint limits by giving up the ability to change the engine and chassis options.

Back on topic, if you want to balance the PPC you need to decide what type (not talking about hardpoint, but damage type) of weapon it is; an energy weapon or a ballistic . If you want it be an energy weapon, give it a beam duration like all other energy weapons. If you want to be a ballistic, give it a chance to explode like a gauss and increase it recharge time because it has no ammo limit. Then you can figure out how to balance it with its other types.

[OneEyed Jack]

I feel that the whiners won't **** until PPCs of all sorts are so bad that no one would ever field them. Of course, that could be applied to every gun. "Halp! Something shot me, NERF IT!"

Tw1stedMonkey, on 16 August 2013 - 07:23 AM, said:

I would argue that guass rifles are becoming just as common lately.

You've perhaps heard of the Highlander and Victor and their ballistic arms?

[LegoPirate]

1. lights with ppcs are choosing to be more effective at range for next to zero light fighting ability. a jenner with 6 MLs will beat a 1-2 PPC light every time.

2 (and this is the big one) the entirety of the sniping meta is brought on by the map design. large maps with open areas means snipers reign supreme, especially when brawlers cant shoot past their face. imagine you were playing halo/cod/unreal/CS with these maps. i know id abuse snipers in those cases too. in fact i think these maps would be borderline unplayable in any other game.
if you look at most other shooters, their maps include some open areas, but they mostly consist of systems of corridors encourage mobility and flanking. they also include "secret" passages that are often less obvious to access but quite useable.

possible solutions:
1.more maps with more cover/ true urban maps (river doesnt count).
2. change the range dynamic so weapons still do some damage past their max range, meaning you simply cant powersnipe brawlers from outside their range. at the moment a single pair of snipers can force a team of 12 brawlers under cover with no possible recourse other then to try to maneuver into some spot where they can begin to do damage.
3. complete rescaling of ranges so brawlers can still be effective out to ~1kish range, but conversely extend the range of snipers to pretty much infinite range so they maintain some advantage. (this solution really needs a working iteration of adv zoom to be viable)

Edited by LegoPirate, 16 August 2013 - 04:01 PM.