102 replies to this topic

[VXJaeger]

Deathlike, on 13 September 2013 - 10:31 AM, said:

I suggest you read this:
http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__2747031

It's not a coincidence.

Straight to goal bro
I'm fan of ballistics 'cause they are the most difficult weaponclass, and didn't give much attention before although noticed those. This last "Ilya"-clowning brought it all together, and clear "motus operandi" can be seen when you look at it now

Edited by VXJaeger, 13 September 2013 - 11:14 AM.

[Punk Oblivion]

Kaeb Odellas, on 13 September 2013 - 05:26 AM, said:

Look, if you purchased a Hero mech to exploit an overpowered weapon system and gain an edge on the enemy than you are paying to win, and thus deserve to get burned when the weapon gets balanced. I have no sympathy for you.

I have been waiting for the Ilya to be on sale for a long time now. I am going to exploit the OP UAC5 this weekend to grind out XP on some shiny new phracts :-P

But really I am going to use the Ilya for my long time MWO fantasy, triple LB10-X's!

Also not that it matters because it seems the choice has already been made, But I would like to see the UAC5 be changed in one of these two ways:
Have a button that switches the UAC5 into/out of ultra mode. When in Ultra mode, the cannon either
1) Fires a 3 round burst (maybe over 1 second) then goes on a 3-4 second cooldown
OR
2) Fires at triple the speed, but causes triple the heat for each shot. That's 3 heat for 5 damage, even hotter then the AC2. Also the barrels should glow red while firing like this

[Kin3ticX]

Roland, on 13 September 2013 - 10:03 AM, said:

Apparently, the plan is this:
1) Inexplicably buff a weapon which is already considered very good.
2) Allow that buff to result in a ton of certain hero mechs to appear on the field, making new players say, "That mech is good!"
3) Put that mech on sale, and get all those player to buy it.
4) Nerf the weapon back to a reasonable state, reducing the utility of those mechs those people bought
5) Profit and laugh

+1

[Amaris the Usurper]

The original post has been updated with error bars.

[Itsalrightwithme]

Amaris the Usurper, on 13 September 2013 - 09:19 AM, said:

Yes, I will do that. I will even show how the spread changes when multiple guns are used.

Excellent work, Amaris!

Great that you quantitatively showed that boating uAC5 decreases its variance, that's an important demonstration by Monte Carlo ;-).

[The Boz]

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

Problem is ALL weapons in the game except the lasers should have spread not just the UAC5. Doing so would fix pretty much everything and maybe remove the ghost heat system since its supposed to prevent boating, babies dont like boating bacuse they alpha all damage on 1 spot. No more pinpoint on the go=> no more focused alpha damage=> boating becomes less effective but not completly useless=> not need to have that damn ghost heat weapon linkage in the first place.

I 100% agree with you about the spread cone, but on all non lasers weapons, since they do their damage over time it would balance things between the direct damage but slightly innacurate vs the pinpoint but overtime.

Not inherently, no. Only some weapons should have spread when fired alone. The MG, UACs, missiles, LBXs. But firing more than two should cause some kind of recoil or structural vibrations or targeting computer overload or something, so that you get weapon spread.
Lasers (normal and pulse, but not PPCs) would be exempt from generating any of those vibrations, but would be subject to them if fired alongside a pair of autocannons.
Alpha strikes would have spread based on all the "feedback" from each gun fired, calculated before firing.
Moving would also introduce some spread, relative to both the % of maximum speed (engine strain) and absolute speed. A Jenner with a max speed of 150 would have the same spread at 75kph as a 50kph Atlas has at 50kph. That same Jenner would have significantly less spread at 25 than the Atlas at 25.
There. System fixed.

[MisterPlanetarian]

The Jam mechanic itself is really lame and should go. I'd rather see something controllable like barrell overheating or heat in general so you get a rate of fire focused burst weapon out of it. Double tapping could generate more heat which means you have to take breaks from firing more. Regular AC's need a base rate of fire to match the UAC's single shot.

[Rumjaku]

TOGSolid, on 12 September 2013 - 10:35 PM, said:

Prove that player B macro'd his UAC/5s and isn't just using a metronome to maintain a perfect shot pattern.

Doing this ASAP!

[TOGSolid]

Rumjaku, on 13 September 2013 - 06:52 PM, said:

Doing this ASAP!

It's a pretty neat little trick that will help you develop the muscle memory required to slow fire them without any ****.

[Viral Matrix]

valrond, on 11 September 2013 - 10:24 AM, said:

Agreed, they should both have 1.5s cooldown, and the UAC5 about a 20% jam rate. Oh, and make the UAC% default shooting mode the standard, non-double tap. If you want to double tap, do it manually.

Yes, a thousand times, yes. From the description this is how i thought they worked.

But instead they are AC/2s that do 5 damage and have a chance to jam without any way for the player to avoid jamming, besides not firing at all.

[EddieDaHead]

stats class run amok

[Chemie]

so current UAC is 5.23 DPS and when they change the cooldown to 1.5s next week, it will drop to 4.32dps (compared to AC5 at 4). Only marginally better than AC5.

But AC10 is 4 tons less than 2xUAC 5 and still deals 4 DPS. I would assume AC10 becomes the next best thing.

(Gauss DPS has been terribely nerfed because the 0.75 is added to the cooldown now so I think gauss is the lowest DPS ballistic except for MG)

[TOGSolid]

Chemie, on 14 September 2013 - 09:20 AM, said:

so current UAC is 5.23 DPS and when they change the cooldown to 1.5s next week, it will drop to 4.32dps (compared to AC5 at 4). Only marginally better than AC5.

But AC10 is 4 tons less than 2xUAC 5 and still deals 4 DPS. I would assume AC10 becomes the next best thing.

(Gauss DPS has been terribely nerfed because the 0.75 is added to the cooldown now so I think gauss is the lowest DPS ballistic except for MG)

Not really. The AC/20 is still better to fit if you have the space as it does 5 DPS which after the UAC/5 nerf will make it the highest DPS autocannon in the game. The LB-10X, AC/10, UAC/5, and AC/2 will all do around 4 DPS roughly, with the AC/5 lagging behind at 3.33 DPS.

Edited by TOGSolid, 14 September 2013 - 09:36 AM.

[Psilos]

It's not so much that the dps is to high for the uac5 it's that it effectively never overheats. I believe this little example illustrates this point:

4 ac2 has a dps of 15.38 (3.84 per ac2) and weighs 24 tons.
3 uac5 w/ double fire mode has a dps of 15.69 (5.23 per uac5) and wights 27 tons.

In other words you can do the same dps and do as you please w/ a free 3 tons with a 4 ac2 build, you also never jam and have a better range and bullet speed. Now the obvious thing we have glossed over is the 4 ac2 build will over heat in approximately 10 sec where as the 3 uac5 takes around 2 min of none stop firing to overheat. A simple solution would be to make a heat penalty for firing more then 2 uac5s at a time possibly for firing more then 1 at a time.

In conclusion when you compare the dps to weight of the ac2 and uac5 the uac5 sits exactly where it should it weighs 1.5 times more and only does 1.36 times the dps has less range and bullet speed.

[Amaris the Usurper]

The 5:1 heat efficiency figure is a major advantage for the UAC/5, as it is for the AC/5, but is not in itself the reason for the current imbalance.

The problem is that the UAC/5 can be expected to put out 7 DPS over a 5-second burst and is only slightly heavier and bulkier than the AC/5, which can only manage 3.33 DPS. With 3 guns, that amounts to 105 damage, which is enough to kill or severely cripple most mechs. This, when added to the potential for long-term sustained damage at 5.23 DPS (per gun) without the possibility of overheating, is what creates the imbalance.

By contrast, a 4 x AC/5 build will only do 60 - 80 damage, which is nasty enough, but the fit is very heavy, and you have to make a lot of sacrifices in other areas. The build is only comfortable on the CTF-4X (the Jagermechs are almost joke builds), but it has bad weapon placement, can't jump, and is still rather slow. The 3 x UAC/5 Ilya, on the other hand, is not slow and has a good secondary armament.

[tayhimself]

Punk Oblivion, on 13 September 2013 - 10:41 AM, said:

Also not that it matters because it seems the choice has already been made, But I would like to see the UAC5 be changed in one of these two ways:
Have a button that switches the UAC5 into/out of ultra mode. When in Ultra mode, the cannon either
1) Fires a 3 round burst (maybe over 1 second) then goes on a 3-4 second cooldown
OR
2) Fires at triple the speed, but causes triple the heat for each shot. That's 3 heat for 5 damage, even hotter then the AC2. Also the barrels should glow red while firing like this

Is this some sort of joke or are you

[Itsalrightwithme]

Here's the latest DPS v. HPS plot, based on the 12 Sept 2013 patch.

Even without double-firing, with the current cooldown time uAC5 is already ahead of AC10 and LB 10-x in terms of DPS, and compared to the AC5 it is WELL ahead. I personally think the uAC5 DPS (without double-firing) should be between the AC5 and AC10. No, I didn't put in jam probabilities, since there are so many macro users out there.

[Amaris the Usurper]

Itsalrightwithme, on 17 September 2013 - 04:51 AM, said:

I personally think the uAC5 DPS (without double-firing) should be between the AC5 and AC10. No, I didn't put in jam probabilities, since there are so many macro users out there.

PSA: Macroing doesn't allow you to double-fire without jamming.

A macro is just a script that replicates a sequence of button presses with a given timing. There is no way to magically avoid jamming without a macro; consequently, there is no way to do this with a macro. All user inputs are interpreted by the game's internal logic, which is unaffected by macroing.

The two main uses of macroing are to

• group fire at the maximum possible single-shot rate (every 1.1 s) without risking a jam or
  
• produce annoying double-shot chain fire (every 1.1/(2*3) or 1.1/(2*4) s with 3 or 4 guns, respectively) for purposes of suppression, at the risk of jamming.

When the latter happens to you, it might seem as if your attacker is somehow avoiding the jam mechanic. In reality, given the current jam probability, it is simply that he is unlikely to have more than one gun jam over a short burst. This is unrelated to the macro.



On the other hand, your figure gives roughly the correct short-burst damage figure and shows how out-of-line the current UAC/5 is with other weapons. You might want to consider adding a third axis for weight, so that we could see (roughly) which high-DPS/high-DPH weapons are also quite heavy.

Edited by Amaris the Usurper, 17 September 2013 - 11:36 AM.

[Buso Senshi Zelazny]

I think I like the changes to the UAC/5



The single-shot DPS is the same as an AC/5, and the double-shot DPS is pretty close to what it was with 1.1 s recycle and 25% chance to jam, about 3.8 by my numbers.

If you use a macro to avoid jamming, you might as well take AC/5's for less weight and more ammo, and the double-tap gives you a slight boost in DPS. Going to run a simulation of my own to see peak short-term DPS numbers.

[Amaris the Usurper]

The original post has been updated with analysis of the new UAC/5 numbers.

Edited by Amaris the Usurper, 17 September 2013 - 11:42 AM.