532 replies to this topic

[Zerstorer Stallin]

So basically lasers are the most balanced weapons ( not so much pulse ). Mainly this was tackled before launch with the Damage over time model they currently have. This was done to avoid the boating pin point problem of battletech games of the past. How ironic they didnt figure out some mechanic to avoid it in PPC's, Gauss and AC weapons, leading right back to the problem they were avoiding in the first place, CONVERGENCE ! why not just say PPC's, Gauss, ac 10, 20 do a spread damage to the the other areas and instead of all to one and the problem would pretty much go away. You could ditch ghost heat, and just tweak with rof.

Edited by Zerstorer Stallin, 29 October 2013 - 01:49 PM.

[Bront]

Part of the reason ERPPCs are a hot topic is the way PPC minimum range is handles. No damage below 90m is dumb, and results in mechs that would normally discourage lights to sudenly have to fear them closing. Beyond that, heat is such a huge problem for non-balistic weapons that the ERPPC, being the hottest weapon in the game, exaserbates that.

Honestly, I think a good solution would be increase ammo capacity for balistics and missiles (missiles need it even more, LRM mechs have it hard, and SRMs got no love, though honestly they didn't really need much) and lower heat slightly on almost all energy weapons (including the PPC by 1 and ERPPC by 1.5). Folks crying unfair due to ammo on balistics have less to worry about, folks worried about heat due to energy builds get satiated a bit, and heat comes more in line with some sort of balanced reality.

[Wolfways]

Bront, on 29 October 2013 - 01:49 PM, said:

Folks crying unfair due to ammo on balistics have less to worry about, folks worried about heat due to energy builds get satiated a bit, and heat comes more in line with some sort of balanced reality.

To be balanced with lasers ballistics need a huge nerf, not a buff! Nothing is anywhere near as powerful as AC's.

[Hellcat420]

Wolfways, on 29 October 2013 - 01:53 PM, said:

To be balanced with lasers ballistics need a huge nerf, not a buff! Nothing is anywhere near as powerful as AC's.

or put 100% rearm cost back in the game and the ballistics will be fine as they are.

[Wolfways]

Hellcat420, on 29 October 2013 - 01:56 PM, said:

or put 100% rearm cost back in the game and the ballistics will be fine as they are.

Even if it was the excuse PGI used for ballistics being OP, out of game costs do not balance in game power. That's like saying lasers are for new players until they can afford ballistics

[JohnnyWayne]

Rearm? I have 85 mil C-Bills, I laugh at you.

[Lupus Aurelius]

Wolfways, on 29 October 2013 - 01:53 PM, said:

To be balanced with lasers ballistics need a huge nerf, not a buff! Nothing is anywhere near as powerful as AC's.

More true than you know.

Ballistic firing speeds average at 2.36sec, or 4.24 times faster than BT, with average damage of 8.39, and an average heat of 2.14 .

Energy weapons firing speeds average 3.14 sec, or 3.19 faster than BT, with average damage of 6.67, and an average heat of 6.34 .

-Even though the heat reservoir is increased from TT, the heat dissipation of DHS external to the engine has been severely nerfed at 1.4 heat/10 sec.

-By varying the firing speeds of weapons from the original once per 10 seconds, the relative damages of those weapons have been drastically changed. An AC2 fired once every 10 seconds for 2 damage, the Gauss fired once every 10 seconds for 15 damage, the ERLL fired 8 damage (TT) in 10 sec.

-ACs, with lower heat, can fire 4 times faster and still not cap out the heat, but energy weapons firing barely over 3 times faster cannot, because the average heat for energy is 3 times greater than for ballistics, and the heat dissipation rates remain based on the 10 sec TT turn. Heat generation went up, but dissipation remained the same.

Ballistics fire on average 1.33 times faster with an average of 1.26 times more damage, than energy weapons. If you ratio the differences to bring them in line, in the 2.36 average firing time, energy weapons average 4.76 damage, vs 8.39 of ballistics. Thats half the damage in the same amount of time, on average.

This all would be obvious to a lobotomized chimp, and should have stood out like a sore thumb to PGI. In reality, ballistics have always been OP in MWO, but it took severely nerfing the energy suite to make it so visible.

A solution? A quick fix would be to bring things back to the same relative values in TT. If it fires 4 times faster than TT, have it generate 1/4 damage and 1/4 of the heat. Hard cap heat at 30, make DHS dissipate at 2.0 instead of 1.4. That would bring things back into the same relative balance from TT, and that that point, you look at armor and heat cap for mechs.

Edited by Lupus Aurelius, 30 October 2013 - 08:10 AM.

[Lupus Aurelius]

Wolfways, on 29 October 2013 - 01:53 PM, said:

To be balanced with lasers ballistics need a huge nerf, not a buff! Nothing is anywhere near as powerful as AC's.

PGI's brilliant plan:

-Speed weapon fire 2.5 to 19 times faster
-Leave heat dissipation rate the same as TT's 10 second round.
-And nerf DHS external to engine to 1.4 heat dissipated per 10 seconds

Anyone with half a brain should have know immediately what that would do...

[Vodrin Thales]

Kittenkrusher, on 06 November 2013 - 02:59 PM, said:

This i have to agree with since they took out repair and re-arm AC and Srm/Lrm have been spammed at will ... i dont think we would all be so eager to slap as many of these on a mech as we could if we had to pay for the ammo....

I have almost 100 million C-bills in my bank right now, so why would cost be an incentive for me not to fire at will? Repair and rearm for weapon balance only penalizes new players.

[Karl Streiger]

Vodrin Thales, on 06 November 2013 - 03:38 PM, said:

I have almost 100 million C-bills in my bank right now, so why would cost be an incentive for me not to fire at will? Repair and rearm for weapon balance only penalizes new players.

Right thats why the supply of spare parts and ammunition has to be solved independend of C-Bills or MCs

[Lupus Aurelius]

Repair and rearm isn't the answer.

Remove convergence.
Slow ballistic ROF.
Or increase ballistic heat.

Partially "porting" damage and heat dissipation from BT, nerfing the dissipation of DHS, and increasing weapon ROF from 19xs faster (AC2) to 2.5 times faster (AC20), obviously the result would be to give ballistics a huge advantage as far as sustainability.

This should have been glaringly evident to PGI, anyone can see this without any math. ERPPC heat at 15 atm is ludicrous, and I can only attribute it to a knee jerk reaction by Paul due to overreaction to PPC boating. No one was boating 4-6 ERPPCs, and the heat increase was totally unnecessary with the introduction of ghost heat.

PGI needs to massively fix the heat system, and do something about the nigh unto omni mech fitting capabilities, or create limits as to how many of a specific weapon can be mounted. Unfortunately, they still remain silent on this topic.

(yea, ok, I did necro this...)

Edited by Lupus Aurelius, 20 November 2013 - 07:51 AM.

[Almond Brown]

Bront, on 29 October 2013 - 01:49 PM, said:

No damage below 90m is dumb, and results in mechs that would normally discourage lights to suddenly have to fear them closing.

stuff

Having nothing but ALL PPC's on your Mech, with no other weapons, is the DUMB bit actually. Especially doing so knowing the 90m limitation. LOL

[Vodrin Thales]

Hellcat420, on 29 October 2013 - 01:56 PM, said:

or put 100% rearm cost back in the game and the ballistics will be fine as they are.

No they won't (assuming you believe they are overpowered). There are plenty of players out there with in excess of 300 million C-bills. Making those players able to use ballistics at will while others have to use (inferior) energy weapons is a terrible idea.

[Black Ivan]

Wolfways, on 29 October 2013 - 01:53 PM, said:

To be balanced with lasers ballistics need a huge nerf, not a buff! Nothing is anywhere near as powerful as AC's.

Exacctly his. Due to PGIs heat system energy weapons are lacking back to heat efficent ballistics.

[Bront]

Almond Brown, on 20 November 2013 - 11:36 AM, said:

Having nothing but ALL PPC's on your Mech, with no other weapons, is the DUMB bit actually. Especially doing so knowing the 90m limitation. LOL

I agree with that too to some extent, it should be a choice, but it shouldn't be the only way to go.

[Blurry]

I agree they run way too hot. I picked one up recently and went to the testing grounds and immediately switched it to a regular ppc. Way to high a price to pay for the little bang that you get. Better off getting an AC. But if you dont have a loadout for ballistics like some thunderbolts I would just go with regular ppc. When 1 shot is 30% of your heat with extra heat sinks ya it hurts way too much to run.

[Maxx Blue]

I play with PPC's quite a bit at the moment, and I'm running regular PPC's almost exclusively. It just takes way too many heat sinks to effectively cool ER's. I tend to run them in pairs, since that is the most you can use without hitting ghost heat. Doing a little back-of-the-envelope math, you need at least 15 double heatsinks if you want fire two ERPPC's twice in a row without overheating. If you want to fire them three times in a row without overheating, that takes a minimum of 19 heat sinks. Four times in a row takes at least 23 heat sinks, and that is pretty close to the maximum number of heat sinks you can fit on most mechs. If you mount nothing but two ER-PPC's, heat sinks, an engine and some armor you can usually make it up to about 22 heat sinks in a 65-70 ton mech. Many of the Assaults can fit 24 heat sinks because you don't need to resort to an XL engine to get three or four HS slots in the engine. Beyond that I found out that, if you leave off pretty much all the armor, you can squeeze 26 heat sinks and 2 ER-PPC's into a Protector. That would let you fire five times in a row without overheating...just barely...if you were not on a hot map.

So, if you take an 80-85 ton mech, give it normal armor, a big standard engine, two ER-PPC's and all the heat sinks you can fit with nothing else, you can fire your two weapons four times in a row without overheating. That is the best you can do with out hitting ghost heat. If you drop down to only one ER-PPC, then you can fire it back-to-back as long as you want with only 19 double heat sinks. you can take less and still be able to fire it enough times back-to-back that it isn't a problem as long as you fire nothing else.

Now, if you are feeling frisky and want to alpha three ER-PPC's at once...well you can do that exactly once without overheating. I can't find a single possible build that would give enough dissipation and capacity to fire three ER-PPC's more than once without overheating thanks to ghost heat. If you feel really silly and build a mech with four ER-PPC's, I'm pretty sure there is no possible build that will not instantly overheat when you alpha them. So, mounting more than two ER-PPC's is essentially useless. You can't have any other weapons, and you can't fire fast enough to make it viable.

The way things stand right now, you can realistically use a single ER-PPC on mechs lighter than about 70 tons if you want to. To use two ER-PPC's at the same time without cooling downtime becoming a problem, you really need to be in assault, and you really need to fill up all the crit space possible with DHS's. Anything less and it becomes difficult to fire enough to effectively hold ground. More than two ER-PPC's on ANY mech just doesn't work. The min-range of regular PPC's is annoying, but cutting the heat by a third at least makes them usable. Now, I lived through PPC-warrior, so I'm not saying we need to go back to that, but it does seem like ER's could stand to be a little bit less painful. Right now, it is hard to ever justify taking ER-PPC's unless I am in a light and only taking one. I would like dual ER-PPC's to be a bit more viable on something. I don't care if it is only assaults, but it seems like SOMETHING ought to be able to effectively mount two ER-PPC's without taking up the entire rest of the mech with heatsinks to do it.

[badaa]

dont realy hav a problem with the heat of er/ppcs any more but i wish they did more damage

on a side note does any one remeber ppc damage in beta could hav sworn it was 15 dmg at

one point

[Solis Obscuri]

I love every time I see a new thread using a collection of charts and mathematical models spun from whole cloth in order to justify removing waste heat generation from a powerful weapon systems whose only drawback is high waste heat generation.

[Karl Streiger]

Solis Obscuri, on 20 November 2013 - 05:58 PM, said:

I love every time I see a new thread using a collection of charts and mathematical models spun from whole cloth in order to justify removing waste heat generation from a powerful weapon systems whose only drawback is high waste heat generation.

Look friend, i was highly opposed to this idea... although the ER-PPC is indeed one of the most powerful weapons in game...even the feared AC 5 hardly can deal that amount of damage at extreme range - and you don't have the drawback of minimum range.
The ratio PPC towards ER-PPC is adequate eighter...and the PPC isn't bad. Its used often.

So if the ratio ER-PPC to PPC is good - why hardly anybody uses the ER-PPC (I do, but I'm no representive)
I was toying with the idea to build a "Thug" Like Object:
2 ER-PPCs, 2 SRM 6 - not the worst weapon combination - have had a Catapult C1 - in closed beta with SHS and acceptable speed.
So if mount on a 75-80t chassis with DHS ER-PPC should work. I was able to create a Orion or an Awesome with 19-20DHS.
I was shocked...i did overheat in 10seconds - using only the ER-PPCs.... heck my Mech would even overheat when I only use 1 ER-PPC.

The funny part is - without any basic skill - i can fire both ER-PPCs 3 times before my mech shutdown.
Well at least I'm able to do the same - without any additional heatsinks - leaving 10tons for other weapons. For example a AC 5 for the Orion? That would be helpful during the cool down of the ER-PPCs

TL;DR
So the problem of ER-PPCs beeing to hot - is obviously not the heat itself its the heat system.

Edited by Karl Streiger, 28 November 2013 - 05:09 AM.