35 replies to this topic

[Wraith 1]

Atlascannon

Atlascannon + XL

I kinda missed being able to fire 4 PPCs at once. This build can do that.

It's by far the least viable build I've ever used. It has downright atrocious armor and sustainable DPS for an AS7, and the standard engine version makes my gaussaphract look like a ballerina in terms of agility.
On top of this, when any medium or light pilots see that you don't have anything that works below 90 meters, you can practically see a lightbulb appear above their head.

It has one job, and that is trolling.
While it is a terrible mech, it has it's moments when it's a joy to pilot.
Moments like those include one-shotting a fresh Jenner or Catapult, or watching a Jagermech sheepishly walk back to their side of that ridge after they realize their XL engine is now a nice orange color.

I really want this to be a good sniper mech, but it isn't working out for me. So I thought I'd share it and see if anyone else could make it do something interesting.

Also, a nod to Koniving. His excellent "Superior standard heatsinks" video was what gave me the idea to abuse the fact that heatsinks increase your mech's heatcap.

[Ewigan]

Bad mech is bad.

But you already knew that, didn't you?
Lemme try to make a kind of viable build out of my RS for ya.

brb

back.
there you go: http://mwo.smurfy-ne...667b61c65e65d21

Actually i still run mine with 4 PPCs, a Gauss and a STD300.
it still works, but you can't alpha all your PPCs anymore. AND of course you are screwed if someone closes up to you

Edited by Ewigan, 25 September 2013 - 11:07 PM.

[Wraith 1]

Hmm, that does sound kinda fun. I might try that when I decide to actually make a reasonable mech out of this thing.

Another thing I was thinking of was 2PPC + 2LPL. Still a 40 point alpha, but it wouldn't suffer from the heat penalties. Just crippling amounts of base heat generation

[Koniving]

Wraith 1, on 25 September 2013 - 11:01 PM, said:

Also, a nod to Koniving. His excellent "Superior standard heatsinks" video was what gave me the idea to abuse the fact that heatsinks increase your mech's heatcap.

Lol, was about to throw in a recent build with a comment on you not being the only one to realize this joy before seeing the nod at the end. Thanks for the nod.





The score isn't fantastic, but considering the weapons and the close range brawling against multiple enemies, firing non-stop for very long periods of time, and not overheating despite this not being a heat neutral rig is enough to want to share it. The very first run got me 485, a kill and ripping an Altas's shoulder off in less than 30 seconds while under fire by an Atlas, Hunchback, Catapult, Jager, two Jenners, and some PPC sniper on top of an Alpine mountain somewhere.

Makes it a lot of fun to run.

Personally I'm hoping that PGI will realize that the rising threshold system is one of the two core issues causing the balancing tsunami they've been dealing with over the past year.

The other is armlock in its current form. Next time you get a chance, try playing in 3rd person and check out how different armlock is there. If armlock (and the crosshair in general while you move [not counting the range adjustment, just the bounce while walking]) worked like that in first person, our pinpoint issues would be largely gone too.

[Koniving]

Also random but I love it.

Name Withheld, on 19 September 2013 - 10:12 AM, said:

You do realize that if we cut the threshold now we would also need to change dissipation rates, remove ghost heat, and have to figure out a different way to balance the boats in game?

That's exactly the point. Which btw, ghost heat could be kept but it wouldn't be necessary on 90% of the builds weapons it's on currently.

(Another threshold abusing mech.)

With a threshold of 30, it'd shutdown on the 6th LRM-15 if I was standing still, even on Alpine. It'd shut down on the 6th LRM-15 while moving on Frozen City. But with MWO's current system, I get twice that limit. Without heatscale, I can fire 12 LRM-15s (two alphas) back to back and shut down. But in the video, there's times when I can fire 16 LRM-15s (rapid chainfire) back to back before shutting down.

Edited by Koniving, 28 September 2013 - 01:32 PM.

[Wraith 1]

Those builds are hilarious. The best I've done with my build was only around 400, and most rounds are around 290 before I either die horribly, or my team wins before I've even walked halfway there. Still worth it to be able to kill things in one shot.

I saw that thing with the crosshair movement on your youtube, I have to agree. I can't think of any other FPS or simulator where a sniper can fire an accurate shot while moving over rough terrain at 152 KPH.

[Autobot9000]

Atlases with XLs and Atlases with PPCs - the worst of the worst all collected in one thread.

My deepest congratulations to your builds.

[NRP]

Wraith 1, on 25 September 2013 - 11:28 PM, said:

Those builds are hilarious. The best I've done with my build was only around 400, and most rounds are around 290 before I either die horribly, or my team wins before I've even walked halfway there. Still worth it to be able to kill things in one shot. I saw that thing with the crosshair movement on your youtube, I have to agree. I can't think of any other FPS or simulator where a sniper can fire an accurate shot while moving over rough terrain at 152 KPH.

That's because PPC boats were never really viable in the first place. They were always troll builds. Yet popular mythology and the whiny nature of this community elevated them to public enemy #1. So thank the community for ghost heat.

[Autobot9000]

NRP, on 27 September 2013 - 06:27 AM, said:

That's because PPC boats were never really viable in the first place. They were always troll builds. Yet popular mythology and the whiny nature of this community elevated them to public enemy #1. So thank the community for ghost heat.

What nonesense. PPCs are nerfed close to not-usable at the moment and their boating appearance has been overpowered in previous patches. To recall one part of the definition of overpowered: One choice in the game is more effective than all other competing choices and hence rules them out. This was the case with PPCs and Gauss and recently with U/ACs, in the beginning with LRMs. However some chassis naturally use some of these guns, some even above the arbitrary Ghost-heat thresholds. Ghost heat is a completely arbitrary and poor choice. They could have at least adapted ghost heat to chassis level to allow e.g. Awesomes 3 PPCs, but I guess a simple and first-look solution is the maximum we can expect from PGI.

If you want to nerf your loadouts effectivity there are two important factors: One is reduce the amount of guns on the build, the other is that heat naturally limits the usage of the guns regardless of the amount you're carrying. PGI chose the 2nd way, hence they allow people to use whatever loadout they want, but they make some of them unviable through an arbitrary heat addition, that is kind of cheesy. The correct inner-sphere and hence lore-consistent answer would hvae been to limit the build customization and leave full customization to the clan omnimechs. There are many other possibilities too, since it all revolves around pin point damage. PGI could have introduced less stable crosshairs to make it harder to direct all damage into one zone or they could have used tiled armor, where smaller pieces of armor make up a damage zone, hence again making it harder to penetrate. There are probably infinitely many ways to deal with the issues, they just chose solutions, that aren't lore-consistent and that explains the disappointment in the community. I know it's hard to face the truth, but it's just like that.

Edited by Autobot9000, 27 September 2013 - 09:55 AM.

[Lord Perversor]

Autobot9000, on 27 September 2013 - 09:45 AM, said:

What nonesense. PPCs are nerfed close to not-usable at the moment and their boating appearance has been overpowered in previous patches. Some chassis naturally use them, some chassis naturally use numbers of the same guns above the Ghost-heat thresholds. Ghost heat is a completely arbitrary and poor choice.

If you want to nerf your loadouts effectivity there are two important factors: One is reduce the amount of guns on the build, the other is that heat naturally limits the usage of the guns regardless of the amount you're carrying. PGI chose the 2nd way, hence they allow people to use whatever loadout they want, but they make some of them unviable through an arbitrary heat addition, that is kind of cheesy. The correct inner-sphere and hence lore-consistent answer would hvae been to limit the build customization and leave full customization to the clan omnimechs. There are many other possibilities too, since it all revolves around pin point damage. PGI could have introduced less stable crosshairs to make it harder to direct all damage into one zone or they could have used tiled armor, where smaller pieces of armor make up a damage zone, hence again making it harder to penetrate. There are probably infinitely many ways to deal with the issues, they just chose solutions, that aren't lore-consistent and that explains the disappointment in the community. I know it's hard to face the truth, but it's just like that.

While i do agree there should be other solutions to current weapon balance ( mostly the funar Heatsinks and it's raising heath treshold)

I think Ghost Heat fit on the lore, it punish Alpha strike wich it's supposed to be a desperate measure ( pilot forcing the fire rate and heat limits of the mech to get a kill) while leaving the pilots who can stager fire and figth calm ignore it

[Autobot9000]

Lord Perversor, on 27 September 2013 - 09:59 AM, said:

While i do agree there should be other solutions to current weapon balance ( mostly the funar Heatsinks and it's raising heath treshold)

I think Ghost Heat fit on the lore, it punish Alpha strike wich it's supposed to be a desperate measure ( pilot forcing the fire rate and heat limits of the mech to get a kill) while leaving the pilots who can stager fire and figth calm ignore it

Yeah overheating should be punished obviously. Even high heat levels are already punished in Battle Tech. If I remember the BT rule system correctly, then already at 5 heat points, that are not neutralized after subtracting heat sinks you lose already 1 movement point (equals 10 kph). As your level of excess heat rises there are more severe penalties. MWO doesn't even consider these rising penalties, it comes straight at your face with shutdown and internal damage instead of escalating the disadvantages. On top of it ghost heat is a non-linear phenomenon, very unintuitive and an arbitrary punishment without any rationales. Obviously a cause of frustration. I can accept such a system to hotfix a game, that has devolved, but I expect improvements and communication how these improvements are making progress until their appearance in a patch.

[Void Angel]

I can easily generate a 'lore' explanation if you like, but even if there isn't one, the Heat Scale system is not 'arbitrary.' It's based on specific rationale to combat specific problems - you (and I) can disagree with the rationale, but pretending that it doesn't exist marginalizes your argument.

[Autobot9000]

Void Angel, on 27 September 2013 - 02:51 PM, said:

I can easily generate a 'lore' explanation if you like, but even if there isn't one, the Heat Scale system is not 'arbitrary.' It's based on specific rationale to combat specific problems - you (and I) can disagree with the rationale, but pretending that it doesn't exist marginalizes your argument.

Well, I know you're doing your best to sound serious and grown up and such, but looking at your argumentation I can't find a single valid point just fluffy fluff aka hot air. That kinda makes your post entirely irrelevant doesn't it? Good troll attempt though you still might need to find people interested into your trolling.

Edited by Autobot9000, 27 September 2013 - 05:04 PM.

[Koniving]

NRP, on 27 September 2013 - 06:27 AM, said:

That's because PPC boats were never really viable in the first place. They were always troll builds. Yet popular mythology and the whiny nature of this community elevated them to public enemy #1. So thank the community for ghost heat.

Actually, it's the way that PGI chose to apply a new kind of heat system where your threshold rises with your heatsinks. Battletech (1987 and 1989), The Battletech 32 player simulator (1992), MW2 (the original, expansions and PSX version got a 10 point increase for an "arcadey feel"), and MW3 all had 30 points as a hard cap.

Tabletop does too.

Example: All mechs have 30 summary/excess heat as their threshold. That's heat which has not been sunken during 10 seconds.
Awesome with 10 standard heatsinks, 3 PPCs.
3 PPCs = 30 heat.
10 heatsinks sink 10 heat in 10 seconds.
Apply 10 seconds of cooling. 20 heat out of 30 threshold. 66.67% heat after 10 seconds.
Now watch this.
3 PPCs = 30 heat.
Apply 1 second of cooling from 10 heatsinks.
29 heat out of 30. 96.67% threshold.
Apply 0 seconds of cooling from 10 heatsinks
30 out of 30. 100% threshold, shutdown.
Notice something?

Now 15 DHS. 15 DHS sinks 30 heat in 10 seconds.
3 PPCs = 30 heat.
Fire PPCs, generate 30 heat, wait 10 seconds, 0 heat.
Now let's try this again.
Fire PPCs, generate 30 heat, wait 1 second. 27 heat out of 30.

Notice something yet?

Now watch this.


Have you noticed it yet?

How about now? Wait, 2 PPCs at the same time with 15 DHS and I only generated -- 25% heat?

Was it any wonder we needed the ghost heat?

So where's our fix to the actual cause of the issue?

As a side note: My Victor has a threshold of 88.56 and 2 ER PPCs. I don't even have it mastered yet, or we'd add another 10% to my threshold thanks to elite skills doubling basics. After that 10%, I could fire 90 heat and still not shut down. But on tabletop, even with a full 10 seconds of cooling and chain firing all 6 shots, I'd STILL shut down and be shut down for another 10 seconds.

Scary, isn't it?

For comparison, the only mechwarrior game to falter from the 30 threshold pattern aside from Playstation and "Arcadey" versions of MW2 (which had 40 threshold; the same as our Non-Champion Trial Mechs) is MW4.. The game considered to have killed the franchise with its 60 threshold.

As a side note: With 10 DHS you get 50 threshold. Add in master skill sand you get 60 threshold. And it just keeps going up...and up... and up.. and up. A non-realistic build breached 100 threshold. I'll get it even higher with a realistic build with clan DHS and be able to carry 4 Clan ER PPCs, without the pilot skills.

In MW:LL, the Gauss Rifle fires once every 6 seconds. The PPC and ER PPC once every 7 seconds. And if you fired 2 ER PPCs at once... you shut down. Why? 30 heat.

In MWTactics, they switched the movement and firing phases around. Why? They realized in order to benefit from 10 seconds of cooling, you had to fire at least one shot at 0 seconds, and then you chain fire because if you didn't, 3 PPCs or 2 ER PPCs would shut you down instantly. Watch some of the vids. One used an Awesome with 3 ER PPCs, and what was the firing pattern? Very, very slow to shoot, as he allows heat to sink over time.

The breakdown of the pattern I saw on MWTactics

Spoiler

0 seconds. Fires 1 ER PPC + 15 heat.
1 second, sunk 3 heat. 12.
2 seconds, sunk 3 heat. 9.
3 seconds, sunk 3 heat. 6. Fires ER PPC + 15 = 21.
4 seconds, sunk 3 heat. 18.
5 seconds, sunk 3 heat, 15.
6 seconds, sunk 3 heat, 12.
7 seconds, sunk 3 heat, 9. Fires ER PPC + 15 = 24
8 seconds, sunk 3 heat, 21.
9 seconds, sunk 3 heat, 18
10 seconds, sunk 3 heat, 15. Stop.

45 - 30 = 15 out of 30 max. Notice what was required to not shut down?

That's why PPCs and ER PPCs were never viable to be boated in past games. The threshold and the heat never allowed them to be viable. But MWO allows it. It actually encourages it by its very design!

Edited by Koniving, 27 September 2013 - 05:35 PM.

[Autobot9000]

There's some truth in there Koniving, but you are missing the main issue: Ghost heat was introduced to reduce pin point damage. PPCs deliver such damage as well as Gauss rifles. Did their change fix the issue? Not at all. Never were double Gauss snipers actually more efficient than right now. Is that a niche? No it isn't. My Jager is racking up kills like he never has. I can kill 2 lances of mechs now but the Gauss rifle has lost its purpose for anything else. What about the PPC? Yeah, people rarely snipe purely with PPCs now, but does that remove snipers? No they just move to other builds, that deliver the same pin point accuracy as before. Namely Gauss+2PPC or AC10+2PPC if you want to circumvent the fact, that the Gauss is now useless in standard skirmish fighting. You can even boat 3 PPC - the ghost heat from that is still manageable, so 3 PPC+Gauss - still working. Believe it or not, but they killed a lot of nice chassis, because the heat thresholds are so poorly thought out and are the wrong system to start with. On the other hand they strenghtened other chassis. In total nothing is on the reward side and a lot on the down side. Nice accomplishment. The fact, that MWO guns are fireing far faster than allowed in table top has nothing directly to do with the introduction of the ghost heat, which was purely addressed to remove pin point boat loadouts and obviously failed to accomplish its goal as lined out above. PGIs remedy for fast fireing guns was doubling the armor in comparison to table top which was at the same time their first failed attempt to fix pin point issues and left us with weak LRMs! Do you see a pattern here? Each time they are trying to fix something with a non-related fix they bring more trouble. That's not surprising, it's to be expected by someone who's got a little bit of sanity.

Edited by Autobot9000, 27 September 2013 - 05:37 PM.

[Hexenhammer]

I've seen that build in a few videos. They were sticking to the water and blasting everything they could. It looked fun but if I see that build in game I'm gonna NOM NOM NOM NOM your no short range atlas like I would an all LRM boat.

[Koniving]

Autobot9000, on 27 September 2013 - 05:31 PM, said:

There's some truth in there Koniving, but you are missing the main issue: Ghost heat was introduced to reduce pin point damage. PPCs deliver such damage as well as Gauss rifles. Did their change fix the issue? Not at all. Never were double Gauss snipers actually more efficient than right now. Is that a niche? No it isn't. My Jager is racking up kills like he never has. I can kill 2 lances of mechs now but the Gauss rifle has lost its purpose for anything else. What about the PPC? Yeah, people rarely snipe purely with PPCs now, but does that remove snipers? No they just move to other builds, that deliver the same pin point accuracy as before. Namely Gauss+2PPC or AC10+2PPC if you want to circumvent the fact, that the Gauss is now useless in standard skirmish fighting. You can even boat 3 PPC - the ghost heat from that is still manageable, so 3 PPC+Gauss - still working. Believe it or not, but they killed a lot of nice chassis, because the heat thresholds are so poorly thought out and are the wrong system to start with. On the other hand they strenghtened other chassis. In total nothing is on the reward side and a lot on the down side. Nice accomplishment. The fact, that MWO guns are fireing far faster than allowed in table top has nothing directly to do with the introduction of the ghost heat, which was purely addressed to remove pin point boat loadouts and obviously failed to accomplish its goal as lined out above. PGIs remedy for fast fireing guns was doubling the armor in comparison to table top which was at the same time their first failed attempt to fix pin point issues and left us with weak LRMs! Do you see a pattern here? Each time they are trying to fix something with a non-related fix they bring more trouble. That's not surprising, it's to be expected by someone who's got a little bit of sanity.

Paul never said it was to reduce pinpoint. It was to reduce high alpha. However to actually target high alpha, dealing with the threshold situation would have been the way to cut the root of the problem, thusly removing every issue except the ballistic one.

And how do you solve the ballistic high alpha? Multi-shot variants (they spread damage: In lore single shot variants are RARE, and almost unheard of in some cases. For example there's only one UAC/20 I found in Battletech / Sarna where it's a single shot variant, mounted on the Cauldron Born and there's a book where one of the sub plots is testing the viability of a 203mm UAC/20 from the Cauldron Born on an Atlas. The Atlas FELL ON ITS BACK firing it!), and slower single shot variants. (A Jager with a single shot AC/20 would lose its balance easier than the Atlas did. Now that Raven carrying one? Would rip its own arm off.) We just took care of the ballistic side.

Have some multi-shot variant examples demonstrated in MWO. (Note the Devastator mentioned is actually a UAC/20 and the Chemjet Gun is actually a 4 shot AC/20. The Atlas's Deathgiver 100mm is a 15 shot. The King Crab's Deathgiver 120mm is a 12 shot AC/20. The Hunchback's To--whatever the spelling is, is a 5 shot AC/20 in lore. The twin UAC/20 Hunchback II-C? Both are 6 shots to do 20 damage. Soon as the ghost heat issue with the AC/2s is fixed I can demonstrate other weapons.)

MW:LL has a few AC variants for each AC. One that I got to use fired a shot every 0.4 seconds, and yet the mechs all have 1x armor. It takes forever to kill one. Why? That Ac/5's shots do 1 damage, totaling 5 damage over 2 seconds. MWO's AC/5 fires once every 1 and a half seconds. Neat, huh? The Gauss fires once every 6 seconds and the PPCs once every 7 seconds; minimizes pinpoint damage.

But back on topic, Paul explicitly states over and over again it is not to address pinpoint damage at all. You're thinking of Homeless Bill's idea (which actually is identical to ghost heat, but is ghost accuracy and MUCH more consistent... but ultimately far from ideal).

If you want to address pinpoint without a lot of work? Take a look at these.

First, the first person view.


Next, a visual demonstration of mech movement.


Next, the third person view.


And for it in another person's video as a perfect quicky in 10 seconds or less to summarize the whole thing.

Now take the third person crosshair, both the bounce and the "Armlock" of it (with the armlock optional), and throw it into first person. Pinpoint issue solved. No cone of accuracy, no random chance, no penalty system of any kind. Stand still for pinpoint. Move for being less accurate, but know that if you have a little skill on your own end you can time your shots and fire when the moment is perfect.

Of course, there are much better ways to do it, but that's the one with the least bit of work and the most likely one to occur in MWO in the near future. The better way than that requires completely redoing the core aiming mechanics in MWO by removing convergence entirely.

Edited by Koniving, 28 September 2013 - 01:34 PM.

[Void Angel]

Autobot9000, on 27 September 2013 - 05:03 PM, said:

Well, I know you're doing your best to sound serious and grown up and such, but looking at your argumentation I can't find a single valid point just fluffy fluff aka hot air. That kinda makes your post entirely irrelevant doesn't it? Good troll attempt though you still might need to find people interested into your trolling.

That's because it's an assertion regarding established fact, not an argument. The first part of your statement was an argument, however - and I stopped reading closely when you began by poisoning the well with a personal attack. PGI's reasons for using the heat scale have been explained to you at length - you can disagree with them, but claiming that they are arbitrary is simply a lie.

Edited by Void Angel, 27 September 2013 - 09:43 PM.

[Koniving]

More specific on the topic of my last post:

Quote

It was to reduce high alpha boating.

But on topic I made another wickedly sick Standard heatsink build. Enjoy this epic rush!



Note: Tabletop heat percentages out of 30 without any cooling applied are given to demonstrate how impossible this would be without 10 seconds between each shot.

[ShadowbaneX]

Koniving, on 28 September 2013 - 10:04 AM, said:

More specific on the topic of my last post:

But on topic I made another wickedly sick Standard heatsink build. Enjoy this epic rush!

Note: Tabletop heat percentages out of 30 without any cooling applied are given to demonstrate how impossible this would be without 10 seconds between each shot.

A friend of mine used to run a similar build, only with a 200 Standard and no AMS allowing for 47 SHS. He used to just melt the enemy team.