55 replies to this topic

[Corvus Antaka]

I wonder if just increasing pulse laser cycle times would help them as brawling guns.

[Raso]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 28 August 2013 - 03:20 PM, said:

I wonder if just increasing pulse laser cycle times would help them as brawling guns.

I'm not sure how it is since they changed medium and large pulse lasers last month but I if recall correctly if you fired a pulse lasers along side a beam laser of the same size they would be available to fire at exactly the same time. The beam duration and extra point of damage was, literally, the only benefit and that came at a cost that wasn't always easy to justify.

I think that, at the very least, you should be able to fire a pulse laser 1.5 times in the time it takes to fire a beam laser of the same size. Adjust damage and heat to balance if necessary but they should be much more rapid fire than they currently are.

[Snow Drift]

I have decided! Make pulse lasers laser machine guns. (Give them some additive heat curve the longer you keep the trigger down or whatever) and make normal lasers short burst damage.

Problem solved! So shall it be written, so shall it be done!

*nudge PGI*

Edited by Snow Drift, 29 August 2013 - 05:49 PM.

[East Indy]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 28 August 2013 - 03:20 PM, said:

I wonder if just increasing pulse laser cycle times would help them as brawling guns.

Reduce heat and reduce cycle time by about 11% and they start to become brawling no-brainers.

Edited by East Indy, 29 August 2013 - 07:39 AM.

[Zyllos]

XANi, on 28 August 2013 - 02:28 PM, said:

To be honest just removing weight penalty would be enougth to make them pretty effective. Then it would be basically tradeff, bit more alpha/focus fire for bit less range/heat efficiency.

As it is now, SPL is just ****** ML, MPL is not worth tonnage (better get heatsink for that ton) and LPL is worse PPC

Making pulses cycle faster would also be interesting, brawlers could get in. quickly "dump" their heat into target, and get out and repeat after cooling. PL should have best DPS per ton, while PPC have best Alpha and normal lasers best damage per heat

It is impossible to change the weight of anything in the game because the canon builds of mechs are based off those weights.

Personally, sense it's extremely hard to get the +1 To Hit introduced into the game (because we have no CoF mechanics), I think Pulse Lasers should produce the same heat as the base weapon. So, you trade off shorter range and tonnage for extra damage and shorter beam duration.

Edited by Zyllos, 29 August 2013 - 08:41 AM.

[Macbrea]

Lasers hit more frequently but it is very easy to accidentally track half your damage off your target into thin air. A pulse laser once fired hits it's target for the full damage. That is the advantage of one over the other. I play as a raven pilot, I cannot stand still else I will die. Alot of the time, my brawls are with other light mechs that do exactly the same thing. Here is my stats:

Weapon		 M   Fired   Hit  Acc	 Time	  Damage
MEDIUM LASER	85  1,483  1,089  73.43%  06:54:11  2,485
MED PULSE LASER	84  2,222  1,234  55.54%  07:01:06  3,813
SML PULSE LASER	63  1,737  1,049  60.39%  05:52:41  1,799

As you can see, I hit with the laser alot more, but my damage is quite a bit higher with the pulse.

Edited by Macbrea, 29 August 2013 - 08:53 AM.

[XANi]

Zyllos, on 29 August 2013 - 08:39 AM, said:

It is impossible to change the weight of anything in the game because the canon builds of mechs are based off those weights.

I think canon build got out of the window when "canon builds" started to be affected by ghost heat

But yeah, the biggest problem I have with them is the DPS increase they give is almost always negated by increased heat and range loss, magnified by weight (MPL is often put at cost of extra heatsink). If heat was same as normal version they would be worth extra weight

Macbrea, on 29 August 2013 - 08:51 AM, said:

Weapon		 M   Fired   Hit  Acc	 Time	  Damage
MEDIUM LASER	85  1,483  1,089  73.43%  06:54:11  2,485
MED PULSE LASER	84  2,222  1,234  55.54%  07:01:06  3,813

As you can see, I hit with the laser alot more, but my damage is quite a bit higher with the pulse.

Your average ML damage per shot (including misses): 1.675
Your average MPL damage per shot (including misses): 1.716

That's 3% increase per shot, on average.

With only hits:
ML : 2.28
MPL: 3.08
~35% more damage

So with your current accuracy you pay twice tonnage for 3% increase. But with better accuracy using pulses would come to 20~35% more damage (as it would be easier to keep them on target on top of extra damage).

And that doesn't even touch heat, which depending on situation would reduce it. Depending on mech, taking extra heatsink, bigger engine or switching say SRM2 to SRM4 would be probably better. Also, range. Fine in brawl but that extra metres might let you poke someone you would miss with pulse

[Edson Drake]

I like Pulse Lasers, but I still prefer to take the standard lasers, lower heat and weight are much more desirable than slightly higher damage, but more heat, weight and lower range.

To me, Pulse should receive a slight damage buff(more like 0,5, 0,8 and 1,0 respectively) and beam duration reduced. The timing of the small pulse is really cool. Almost makes me feel like a laser machine gun, so a beam duration of 0.4 would make the small pulse really good and the medium/large 0.5.

Right now, they almost feel perfect.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Raso, on 28 August 2013 - 04:06 PM, said:

I'm not sure how it is since they changed medium and large pulse lasers last month but I if recall correctly if you fired a pulse lasers along side a beam laser of the same size they would be available to fire at exactly the same time. The beam duration and extra point of damage was, literally, the only benefit and that came at a cost that wasn't always easy to justify.

I think that, at the very least, you should be able to fire a pulse laser 1.5 times in the time it takes to fire a beam laser of the same size. Adjust damage and heat to balance if necessary but they should be much more rapid fire than they currently are.

Actually the pulse laser fires a bit faster. Refresh starts immediately after the beam has exectuted its full duration. Since the duration for pulse lasers is 0.6 seconds and the duration for regular lasers is 1.0 seconds, pulse lasers fire 0.4 seconds faster. Of course the converse here is that firing faster means it also generates heat faster above and beyond the heat difference of the weapons themselves.

To give a better comparison.

LPL do 10.6 damage
LL do 9.0 damage.

Difference of 1.6 damage per shot without taking into account the faster refire rate of the LPL. Overall I would guess the rough equalivancy would be 2.0 damage difference over time so LPL does roughly 20% more damage than a LL. Of course they are quite a bit heavier, hotter and much shorter ranged so I guess you have to ask yourself if the better damage outweighs the heavier, hotter and shorter range. Heat is actually slightly less than a PPC so they are a really good alternative to a PPC right now.

As for me, I want to love pulse lasers, do love them actually but their weight and heat makes them damn near impossible to use, at least as effectively as a LL. What I find is that just about every build I try to use them on, I end up being a few heat sinks short of what is needed to make them as effective as my LL builds. Either I have to remove DHS to compensate for the 2 extra tons thus making them too hot or I can't fit enough DHS due to critical limitation thus making them too hot to use.

I think for me to actually find a use for them, they would have to have their heat reduced to be honest. That seems the barrier for me. Ironically, heat is why I don't use PPCs and ER PPCs very much anymore. I just can't justify any of them against a LL in most cases. Then again as I have found out, apparently I am one of the few people that can actually hold a LL beam on target long enough to get full effect out of them so I guess I can see how alot of people don't find the LL the uber weapon I do hehe.

Edson Drake, on 29 August 2013 - 10:38 AM, said:

I like Pulse Lasers, but I still prefer to take the standard lasers, lower heat and weight are much more desirable than slightly higher damage, but more heat, weight and lower range.

To me, Pulse should receive a slight damage buff(more like 0,5, 0,8 and 1,0 respectively) and beam duration reduced. The timing of the small pulse is really cool. Almost makes me feel like a laser machine gun, so a beam duration of 0.4 would make the small pulse really good and the medium/large 0.5.

Right now, they almost feel perfect.

Hey it's my long lost cousin Edison!!!

[Corvus Antaka]

i believe the 0.6 vs 1.0 timers are in fact a similar "to hit" bonus. the problem is the short range on pulse lasers. increasing recycle times somewhat to make them premier brawling guns might be good, but already a mech with 4-5 MPulses can tear enemies up.

[Foxfire]

I would like to see pulse lasers act more continuous. Continuous fire weapons ala the MG and Flamer that builds up heat per second instead of a set amount of heat and set beam duration per trigger pull.

[AC]

I would like to see the pulse lasers being continuous. Heat can be their balancing factor. That way you have a chance to walk fire into that light mech more consistently.

[Frank Frankie Frankenstein]

After seeing all the talk about how pulses should be short bursts and the like, I would like to gladly present...(Drum roll)

The seemingly forgotten X-pulse laser! Which actually was done in MW: LL.

X-pulses were a semi-auto pulse laser that could fire as fast as the pilot could press the button with the cost of high heat buildup.

Canonically, they had the same range as regular lasers and also had the to hit bonus of pulses.(Which was done well through the semi-auto function in MW:LL)

But meh, it is up to PGI to add them or not.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 29 August 2013 - 02:25 PM, said:

i believe the 0.6 vs 1.0 timers are in fact a similar "to hit" bonus. the problem is the short range on pulse lasers. increasing recycle times somewhat to make them premier brawling guns might be good, but already a mech with 4-5 MPulses can tear enemies up.

One thing is the faster they fire, the more heat they generate so from a balance perspective you would have to be very careful that in making them fire faster you wouldn't make them so hot that they are useless. Honestly I feel they are already a tad too hot and would have them mounted on alot of my mechs if they were more heat friendly. Conversely, if they weighed only as much as a standard laser, I wouldn't mind care about the heat because I could offset it with a extra heat sink or two in most cases.

Foxfire, on 29 August 2013 - 03:11 PM, said:

I would like to see pulse lasers act more continuous. Continuous fire weapons ala the MG and Flamer that builds up heat per second instead of a set amount of heat and set beam duration per trigger pull.

Honestly this isn't too bad an idea and would definately make them unique. Basically you pull the tigger and the beam is continious. Obviously your heat would continue to rise the longer you held the trigger. Additionally as a balancing mechanic you could even make it so that if you hold the button longer than say 1 second, the heat generated starts going up substancially. For example on a LPL, up to 1 second, heat generated is 7 per second. From 1.1 to 2.0 seconds, heat goes up to 10 per second. 2.1 to 3.0 seconds, heat goes up to 18 per second. 3.1-4.0 seconds heat goes up to 30 heat per second. Could even be higher for balancing purposes. Basically you would want to fire in 1-2 second bursts to prevent too much heat build up but they would always be available to fire as long as you had heat to spare.

This would simulate the weapon overheating due to the continious fire and prevent someone from just being able to lay on the trigger continiously with little thought to the heat even if they had alot of heat sinks.

Edited by Viktor Drake, 29 August 2013 - 10:57 PM.

[BeezleBug]

I think LPLaser need just a little tweak. The range is a problem. 300 is a to short for the full dmg. max range is 600
I think 350 to 750 would be nice. The weapon weighs 7 tons and makes a lot of heat, make it worthwhile.

[Edson Drake]

Quote

Hey it's my long lost cousin Edison!!!

Hi there! How's Sheila? Heard she's raking some serious C-Bills in Kagran doing Garrison Duty in that Jenner of hers.

Ah... X-Pulses... I wish PGI dropped the timeline officially and just included a bunch of weapons. Would be much better to have more options. I dislike nerfs, even when they're deserved, variety is so much better.

Edited by Edson Drake, 30 August 2013 - 10:51 PM.