211 replies to this topic

[Angel of Annihilation]

TOGSolid, on 12 September 2013 - 08:15 PM, said:

Your inability to read never fails to be adorable.

What did I fail to read? You said and I quote, "The difference is that now PPCs require an actual level of skill to use." to which I responed, "What skill is required aside from managing heat?"

I mean seriously what skill? All them being hotter does is make your mech overheat faster which is countered pretty much by firing slower. If your a sniper, your tactics don't really change. You just peek up, aim, fire and then retreat to cover to cool. The only difference is now instead of 10 seconds to cool, you take 15 seconds to cool. If you are brawling, then the only tactics that change is firing less often to prevent an overheat and/or switching to other weapons you may have mounted on your mech like MLs or SRMs.

I mean I guess you could contend that having to opperate in a brawl with significantly less firepower being available to you requires more skill to be succesful and you would be right. But it still doesn't change my underlying statement about how pausing to prevent overheat is really the only skill required. Oh I guess they do move a bit slower now too but seriously, if you could learn to lead a target before and hit it, the slight change in projectile speed isn't going to make much of a difference after a few matches to get the hang of the new timing needed.

Nope, sorry, I just don't see much more skill required to fire a ER PPC at 15 heat than was required to fire a ER PPC at 12 heat.

Edited by Viktor Drake, 12 September 2013 - 08:29 PM.

[Kin3ticX]

I think PPCs are in a good place now. Now we just need new weapons.

[SilentWolff]

My Cat's main weapons that game were 2 ER PPC. Tell me again how unplayable PPC's are.

[Dimento Graven]

deanon, on 10 September 2013 - 05:25 AM, said:

The heat cost is to high, never put out enough damage for them to be worth it, Large Lasers are pretty much allways better since they allow you to fire more.

Tried them with my highlander and 15 double heatsinks..

I disagree. I believe the change to the gauss firing mechanism a much more troublesome issue than RETURNING PPC HEAT VALUES TO THEIR ORIGINAL TT VALUES...

You're not supposed to be able to fire them over and over as fast as the weapon can refresh. The change in heat values returns a bit of risk to alpha'ing your PPC's and ERPPC's recklessly over and over again.

Heat is SUPPOSED to be a significant portion of the balance of your 'mech builds, the lack of a robust heat affects table, by far, causes this game more balance issues than a paltry 2 or 3 heat points...

Get over yourself on that one my friend, and learn to shoot a bit more 'thoughtfully'...

Edited by Dimento Graven, 12 September 2013 - 08:48 PM.

[TOGSolid]

Viktor Drake, on 12 September 2013 - 08:28 PM, said:

What did I fail to read? You said and I quote, "The difference is that now PPCs require an actual level of skill to use." to which I responed, "What skill is required aside from managing heat?"

I mean seriously what skill? All them being hotter does is make your mech overheat faster which is countered pretty much by firing slower. If your a sniper, your tactics don't really change. You just peek up, aim, fire and then retreat to cover to cool. The only difference is now instead of 10 seconds to cool, you take 15 seconds to cool. If you are brawling, then the only tactics that change is firing less often to prevent an overheat and/or switching to other weapons you may have mounted on your mech like MLs or SRMs.

I mean I guess you could contend that having to opperate in a brawl with significantly less firepower being available to you requires more skill to be succesful and you would be right. But it still doesn't change my underlying statement about how pausing to prevent overheat is really the only skill required. Oh I guess they do move a bit slower now too but seriously, if you could learn to lead a target before and hit it, the slight change in projectile speed isn't going to make much of a difference after a few matches to get the hang of the new timing needed.

Nope, sorry, I just don't see much more skill required to fire a ER PPC at 15 heat than was required to fire a ER PPC at 12 heat.

TOGSolid, on 12 September 2013 - 04:31 PM, said:

Well, when I say level skill it's kind of ambiguous. On a scale of 1-10 going from not even being on the scale to a 1 is still an improvement.

I even quoted it in that ******** post.

Also you totally forgot about the slowed down shot speed requiring more competent target predictions but that's besides the point.

Edited by TOGSolid, 12 September 2013 - 09:14 PM.

[Morikuro]

Viktor Drake, on 12 September 2013 - 07:59 PM, said:

Guess this depends on how you use them and I think this is one of the reasons there is so much disagreement about them. If I want to stand back and just snipe with them, I don't find a problem using PPCs either mostly because when I am doing that I am never in a situation where I need to have any sort of sustained fire coming out of them. If you have never used the PPC or ER PPC for anything but that type of usage I sincerely doubt you would notice a huge difference. However if you were one of those people who used them as a multipurpose weapon useful as your primary energy weapon in all circumstances, then you would be screaming as loud as the rest of us about how they are too hot.

...I am one of those people who use them as a multipurpose weapon. I put 2 them on my Atlas arms for both the D and DDC, usually paired with some kind of big ballistic (gauss, ac/20, dual lbx10s, etc). Short range missiles, whether streaks or normal, according to whim. I have 14 DHS on both, and have no real heat issues unless I derp out and fire them constantly without letting the other weapons have their turns. My sole attempt at sniping with massed PPCs is my phract 3d which isn't even fitted out yet cause I bought it right before the PPC change when my Ilya needed to be Elited. The RS might have gone quad PPCs before the adjustment, but it was just as likely to get a duo + some other pair of energy weapons.

That's why I don't like the 0 damage min range nerf, and don't care about the heat nerf. If I'm not boating (yes that's right, 2 isn't 'boating'), yet they are my main weapon in a lot of range brackets as is their original design intention, it's lulzy as hell how they do nothing at close close ranges when there is nothing in any lore or rules (unlike lrms which have that 'not armed' thing, even if it gets rendered into penalties to hit in TT) that would indicate they should. It makes no sense to its depiction in any other BT source I can even remember, and isn't flattering for the massive amounts of mechs out there in canon that clearly have the PPC as a main all purpose gun that happens to not work quite as well closer in, not a sniper-only cannon. But as I said elsewhere, I expect PGI will either make a giant collective frowny face and say 'working as intended' out of sheer bloody-mindedness, or change it in awhile once they realize how bad that nerf is.

Edited by Morikuro, 12 September 2013 - 11:52 PM.

[Kahoumono]

I don't mind the heat so much, it is a pay off for the range. The speed nerf killed the PPC as a long range weapon. Sure, it has the range but you can't reliably hit all but the slowest/dumbest targets at extreme range. Fast targets can simply change directions to avoid the fire and slow mechs can start a slow slalom to make themselves very difficult targets. Along with the new firing mechanics of the gauss they have not only decoupled the weapons, they have effectively shorten the range of engagements overall. I guess the silent majority only want to hug each other with stompy robots, ie. working as intended. I also never understood the min range for the ppc rather than the erppc. I guess the erppc would be rendered obsolete if it had the min range handicap as well. They should work at this angle to make the two ppcs like two different weapons. The ER has longer range, higher heat, min range and faster travel time, while the regular PPC remains as is with slower travel time and no min range. This would promote more diversity in weapon usage and play style.

[Alex Warden]

+2 was too much...0.5-1.0 would have done the job, it was close to okay before the last increase

[Karl Streiger]

Kahoumono, on 13 September 2013 - 01:10 AM, said:

I don't mind the heat so much, it is a pay off for the range. The speed nerf killed the PPC as a long range weapon. Sure, it has the range but you can't reliably hit all but the slowest/dumbest targets at extreme range.

What? Sry - is that a hyperbole?
The ER-PPC travels in ~1sec to the maxium range - you can and you should hit targets at that range. At least because you have hardly any movement in the first moments of a game.
You could attack targets near the other base while standing near your own base (river city and forest colony)
I did that the full closed beta - with SHS and the same heat and travel times....

They didn't kill the PPCs - they just made them harder to learn - or in other words stop complaining that you are not able to hit a Spider that moves with full spead at 1500m.

[Strum Wealh]

Joseph Mallan, on 12 September 2013 - 06:13 AM, said:

We should only need 10 sinks for a PPC... Stupid Solaris and its dumb rules.

In all fairness, the PPCs' recycles are about twice as fast as they would be under the Solaris' 'Mech Duel Rules.

Category 1 ("Delay 0" - 0.0 to 2.5 seconds)

• MG
  
• AMS
  
• AC/2

Category 2 ("Delay 1" - 2.5 to 5.0 seconds)

• Flamer
  
• Small Laser
  
• Medium Laser
  
• Small Pulse Laser
  
• AC/5
  
• AC/10
  
• LB 10-X
  
• UAC/5
  
• SRM-2
  
• SRM-4
  
• SRM-6
  
• SSRM-2
  
• Narc

Category 3 ("Delay 2" - 5.0 to 7.5 seconds)

• Large Laser
  
• Medium Pulse Laser
  
• AC/20
  
• Gauss Rifle
  
• LRM-5
  
• LRM-10
  
• LRM-15
  
• LRM-20

Category 4 ("Delay 3" - 7.5 to 10.0 seconds)

• PPC
  
• ER PPC
  
• ER Large Laser
  
• Large Pulse Laser

Under the Solaris rules, PPCs and ER-PPCs (along with ERLLs and LPLs) would have had a cooldown between 7.5 and 10.0 seconds (versus 4.0 seconds for MWO).

Personally, I would have preferred if they had actually used the 'Mech Duel Rules as a general guide for cooldowns.
For example, just looking at the Category 4, we could have had something like this:

• LPL - ~7.5 second cooldown
  
• ERLL - ~8.0 second cooldown
  
• PPC - ~9.0 second cooldown
  
• ER-PPC - ~9.5 second cooldown

Likewise, we could have used variation within the above categories to do something like (for example):

• giving the AC/20 a ~5.5-second cooldown (for an average of 3.63 DPS and 1.27 HPS), and giving the Gauss Rifle a ~7.25-second cooldown (for an average of 2.07 DPS and 0.14 HPS), or
  
• giving the AC/5 (and UAC/5) a ~2.75-second cooldown (for an average of 1.82 DPS (or 3.63 DPS for a double-fire UAC/5) and 0.36 HPS (or 0.73 HPS for a double-fire UAC/5)) and giving the AC/10 (and LB 10-X) a ~3.75-second cooldown (for an average of 2.67 DPS (for both the AC/10 and the LB 10-X), and 0.80 HPS for the AC/10 & 0.53 HPS for the LB 10-X), or
  
• giving the AC/2 a ~1.25-second cooldown (for an average of 1.60 DPS and 0.80 HPS) and leave the MG where it is (firing ten 0.10-damage bullets per second, for an average of 1.0 DPS).

Thoughts?

[Joseph Mallan]

In my defense, I took one look at those rules back in the 90s and said F-This! I didn't even buy the boxset!

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 13 September 2013 - 06:14 AM.

[Livewyr]

PPCs are fine.

They fit the wonderful role of "Long range, light weight, funsized autocannon/10 that never runs out of ammo." And pay for that with heat.

Now if we could just do away with the Ghost heat for them. (I guarantee you won't be seeing much out of the 6 PPC stalkers, especially since now overheating damages internals..)

[JohnnyWayne]

PPCs are not long range. Your argument is wrong.

If everyone wants PPCs that relate to TT then take the TT and lore stats.

• DHS: make em double.
  
• Field inhibitor: Switchable
  
• PPC shots: almost instant (lighting)

Then we shall talk again. Or your could also reduce heat to 9 and increase speed to 2000. Moreover I don't see where it says that PPC do 0 damage below 90m. On Sarna it says "reduced", not no damage.


PPC's were never the problem in the former 2xPPC + Gauss fotm. It was the synergy between these two weapontypes. The regular PPC was fine, not sure about the ER version. Proabably depended on its usage.

Now they made PPC centered loadouts obsolete. Awesomes have to rethink their loadouts just to prohibit Gauss + PPC builds. My Marauder loadout were considerably weakened even though it had a lot of limitations before and was more than balanced (Im almost exclusively playing that).

If they really want to force TT stats on PPCs then I insist on these for every aspect of the game. Buff ml, nerf LL and all that fun stuff. Also the points above.


The discussion of LL vs PPC is also an instresting one. I think it might be possible to say that LL have their head in front due to its buffed state (in which the PPC should also be(again)) even though the "insta hitz!1one" argument. People just didn't realise that yet. Like they didn't with the UAC5. They were already that strong before with makros, but almost noone knew...

We'll have to wait and see where the loadouts are going to shift at. My money is on AC20 and LL. Maybe a little LRM.

Edited by JohnnyWayne, 13 September 2013 - 07:25 AM.

[Livewyr]

JohnnyWayne, on 13 September 2013 - 07:12 AM, said:

PPCs are not long range. Your argument is wrong.

PPCs are long range. Your "argument" is wrong.


Except, unlike you, I'll actually elaborate:
Short range: 0-300
MGs (out to 200 ish)
SL (180 ish)
SPL (180 ish)
MPL (180-300ish)
SRM (270)
SSRM (270)

Medium Range
ML(270-500ish)
AC20 (270-600ish)
LPL (300-500ish)

Long range
LL (450-800ish)
ERLL (675-1200)
PPC (540-950)
ERPPC (810-1400)
AC10 (450-1000)
AC5 (600-1400)
UAC5 (600-1400)

etc..etc.. (and yes, I know loasers go out to 2x, and ballistics out to 3x their ranges, but I don't consider doing .1 damage to actually be worth noting..)

So YES... PPCs are long range.

[JohnnyWayne]

Are they? 540 m is long range? No. Why?

270m are short range. Then lets just assume the double is mid range. Above is long range. Personally Id set the marker mid range is until 590 - 600m.

But regular PPCs are definitly mid range.

Do you even see how small that mid range bracket is? That is not right and thats it. It's not about the max range. That damage dropoff is a MWO invention.

BTW: AC10, LL are also midrange. 270-300 m midrange? You know thats 2 steps and you are in short range. Just NO.

Edited by JohnnyWayne, 13 September 2013 - 07:31 AM.

[Dimento Graven]

JohnnyWayne, on 13 September 2013 - 07:28 AM, said:

Are they? 540 m is long range? No. Why?

270m are short range. Then lets just assume the double is mid range. Above is long range. Personally Id set the marker mid range is until 590 - 600m.

But regular PPCs are definitly mid range.

Do you even see how small that mid range bracket is? That is not right and thats it.

Lord love a duck, the ranges are set by the original TT values:

Yes, PGI has done some unfortunate 'tweaking' of the values here and there, but the ranges are based from TT values. Just do some simple math and multiply the range value by 30 (each hex in BT was 30 meters), and you'll understand what constitutes "short", "medium", "long", and "extended" ranges...

Man, non-BT educated people, I swear...

Edited by Dimento Graven, 13 September 2013 - 07:39 AM.

[JohnnyWayne]

No word about extened range on Sarna. Long range for PPCs: 18*3 = 540. Nuff said, have a nice day. Just because its called long rang it doesn't mean that it automatically is a long range weapon.

And just in case you didn't notice: I wasn't talking about TT in the first place for weapon range. And more just in case: I knew that before. Don't know what you want to say with that... The discussion was about PPC being a long or a mid range weapon.

Edited by JohnnyWayne, 13 September 2013 - 07:40 AM.

[Corvus Antaka]

pfft.

2 ERPPC and an ac/10 with a meager 12 DHS works just fine. Take some coolant if you have too. Pace your shots. Don't miss so much.

imho ERPPC could even stand a heat hit to 17 heat, 15 still feels kinda easy. PPC at only 10 seems overly generous for the pinpoint damage frankly.

[Dimento Graven]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 13 September 2013 - 07:34 AM, said:

pfft.

2 ERPPC and an ac/10 with a meager 12 DHS works just fine. Take some coolant if you have too. Pace your shots. Don't miss so much.

imho ERPPC could even stand a heat hit to 17 heat, 15 still feels kinda easy. PPC at only 10 seems overly generous for the pinpoint damage frankly.

Nah, 15 is the original TT value and that has worked for nearly 30 years so, why change it?

JohnnyWayne, on 13 September 2013 - 07:34 AM, said:

No word about extened range on Sarna. Long range for PPCs: 18*3 = 540. Nuff said, have a nice day. Just because its called long rang it doesn't mean that it automatically is a long range weapon.

And just in case you didn't notice: I wasn't talking about TT in the first place for weapon range. And more just in case: I knew that before. Don't know what you want to say with that...

That should be 24*3 = 720, which is the maximum extended range from TT values.

[JohnnyWayne]

Maybe, because we don't have double heat sinks but three times the fire rate?

We have the max range of 540 ingame. So thats the only value that matters here. Thats not long range.


As you can clearly see, the game does not resembel TT in an approriate manner so you can't set these numbers as the "best state". Currently PPCs are underperforming under the set circumstances and your "oooh TT stats are sooo great! @_@" cries won't change that a bit. Either way, you have to adapt the rest of the game or the PPC. Now choose.

Edited by JohnnyWayne, 13 September 2013 - 07:44 AM.