118 replies to this topic

[Thorqemada]

Well, i had the random oportunity to test a 1 vs 1 with an AC20 YLW and HBK and the YLW needed 2 shots and the HBK 3 to kill me in my multirole steady DPS SHD(P).

Tested to shot the AC20 Arm/Hunch but they twisted and turned and i wasted my DPS on the different bodyparts i faced while they did so.
They also used their ML, they were almost synched to the AC20 and the 1 second Beam-Duration is so short they can afford to stop twisting as nothing gets destroyed.

I maybe could have legged the HBK but i still would be dead and a tactical relocation is not possible as the JJs are more a "Sitting Duck Climbing Assistant" and they had faster/similar movement speeds compared to me (the YLW ~106, me ~97).

Its the expected result - i could prolong the time moving more defensive though that would only be "buying time".

I would expect that i have a chance to win again an AC10 (even Dual/Tripple AC5/AC2) setup bcs i have done so several times.

Its simply how the game mechanics of MWO work...

Edited by Thorqemada, 11 November 2013 - 03:25 PM.

[GalaxyBluestar]

Lupus Aurelius, on 10 November 2013 - 06:29 AM, said:

Minor issue in comparison with the others:

-Beam duration and damage during duration
-Double HS that are 1.4 heat per 10 sec. dissipation
-Ballistics (other than machine guns and LBX) doing pinpoint damage, instead of burst damage from multiple rapid fired shells.
-Firing times modified from TT that, combined with heat mechanics, that totally borked the relationship between weapons
-Modifying said firing times, but leaving heat dissipation the same as the 10sec TT turn

and still they "needed" the GH penalty because believe it or not even with your list people thought 4-6 LL for an assault loadout was OP.

guess those people love the dakka dakka flying around, over heated about 7 times in mordor because our wolfpack had lots of dakka and i wouldn't be seeing any kills or even good damage if i didn't keep up with them and spam. i would try and time a finishing blow but with hitdetection for a 250+ pinger being what it is i'm saddly better off jerking the fire button like a noob.

crazy times is 2013.

Edited by GalaxyBluestar, 11 November 2013 - 03:32 PM.

[RacerX]

I thank everyone for sharing their comments, experiences, and stories. Obviously my experiences are different than other. Case in point: I went nose to nose with a shut down Illya which had zero armor on any torso section. Here CT was bright red. She was shut down and not moving. Illya filled my screen and I stopped moving. I unloaded two LLs and two MLs into the CT. I wouldn't expect anything other than a kill shot with zero splash damage. Instead, the Illya restarted. I exchanged fire again and again I sunk all my lasers in to the CT. My CT went from Yellow to black in the matter of the time it took me to get two shots off.

I am not calling OP for anything. However, my direct experience is enough for me to ask if there is something weird, no heat related, with lasers and if anyone else has experienced anything similar. I ask that everyone keep in mind that just because your experience is different it doesn't invalidate someone else's.

Edited by RacerX, 12 November 2013 - 01:47 PM.

[DeathlyEyes]

Why is it that whenever a weapon gets relatively too powerful people call for nerfs. The problem lies with the alternative weapons being too weak. If laser duration was reduced, I would like to see as much as halved, weapons would become more viable. The gauss rifle nerf was unnecessary and has only caused it to become useless in high elo brackets since people use cover and by the time the weapon is charged there is a good chance the enemy is out of view. The gauss rifle (in close engagements) along with any other non duration weapon will be favored until duration weapons get shorter duration.

Edited by h4t3r4d3, 12 November 2013 - 04:34 PM.

[L Y N X]

I have 42 mechs to date. Except for Founders mechs, I paid for all of them with C-Bills. I believe all mine have at least one laser, many have 4 or more lasers. In every match I am in, I see red, green and Blue lasers zapping all over... Not sure the OP and others are playing the same MWO I've been playing, but if you learn how missiles differ from lasers and how ballistics differ from them both then you can combine these simulated weapon systems into precision instruments of virtual death and destruction! There is good entertainment value in putting in the time and effort to do so.

Enjoy!

[JimboFBX]

Dude, it happened again, this time a battlemaster with orange cored CT armor. I unloaded my AC5,MG,2x ML, 4x flamer into it's CT and it didn't even change color. WTFF

[Inappropriate0780131]

Burst damage is just inherently better at killing things. It's like that in every game I've ever played. It's easier to apply the damage. The trade off is DPS. If you have good aim, the burst damage is going to be better. But if you find yourself missing shots the extra DPS from something like a laser or machine gun will help mitigate the difference between you and the guy that's using burst damage weapons.

Edited by Inappropriate0780131, 13 November 2013 - 06:16 PM.

[Diego Angelus]

Inappropriate0780131, on 13 November 2013 - 06:11 PM, said:

Burst damage is just inherently better at killing things. It's like that in every game I've ever played. It's easier to apply the damage. The trade off is DPS. If you have good aim, the burst damage is going to be better. But if you find yourself missing shots the extra DPS from something like a laser or machine gun will help mitigate the difference between you and the guy that's using burst damage weapons.

Problem is not burst damage lasers can do that as well but how much can you do it ? Ballistics can alpha non stop and manage heat while you just can't do that with lasers. ghost heat and how heatsinks work makes it impossible for lasers to be nearly as effective as Ballistics. Its just pain to watch your mech get hit over and over again while you are riding the line 90% of time and eventually you overheat because you have to do damage before you die.

[Inappropriate0780131]

Diego Angelus, on 13 November 2013 - 06:59 PM, said:

Problem is not burst damage lasers can do that as well but how much can you do it ? Ballistics can alpha non stop and manage heat while you just can't do that with lasers. ghost heat and how heatsinks work makes it impossible for lasers to be nearly as effective as Ballistics. Its just pain to watch your mech get hit over and over again while you are riding the line 90% of time and eventually you overheat because you have to do damage before you die.

None of the lasers are burst damage. They all require you to keep your reticule on the target until the laser is done firing. The burst lasers condense the damage down into a shorter timeframe, but they still aren't burst damage.

I run 2xAC/20 on my Jaeger, and I can alpha twice without overheating. 3 times if I'm lucky. So they can't alpha non-stop.

If you're talking about ac/2's being able to alpha non stop, well yeah. But I'd hardly call an AC2 a burst damage weapon, its closer to a rifle than it is a cannon. Ammo is supposed to be the balancing factor in this equation.. right now you get something like 60 shots per ton or something insane like that. They could probably just give the AC/2's slightly less ammo per ton and balance this without nerfing the damage output.

I run 4xSmall Pulse and 2xMedium Pulse on my Jenner, and its a lot easier to use than my 2xac/20 build. Sure the AC/20's let me put out insane damage when I get the opportunity to use them, but you have to plan ahead much farther than you do if you're running a light mech with lasers on it. And I don't by any means feel like the lasers are weak when i'm using them.

Edited by Inappropriate0780131, 13 November 2013 - 07:14 PM.

[YueFei]

Diego Angelus, on 13 November 2013 - 06:59 PM, said:

Problem is not burst damage lasers can do that as well but how much can you do it ? Ballistics can alpha non stop and manage heat while you just can't do that with lasers. ghost heat and how heatsinks work makes it impossible for lasers to be nearly as effective as Ballistics. Its just pain to watch your mech get hit over and over again while you are riding the line 90% of time and eventually you overheat because you have to do damage before you die.

That bolded portion is the mistake you're making. You put yourself into a situation that favors the heat efficient Autocannon user. Why not hug cover, shoot and scoot? Your lasers are much lighter in weight than his autocannons, use the weight savings to put in a bigger engine so you can stay 1 step ahead of him. Hell, even if you're not quite faster than him, if you can wear him down enough before he can finally get an angle on you to lay down a sustained barrage, you still have a chance to win. You can also make his DPS less *efficient* by defensive piloting, twisting, turning, and possibly jumping, while waiting for your lasers to recharge or waiting for your heat to bleed off.

[Zolaz]

Lasers are not working real well at the moment. Anything going around 100kph makes the matter worse with bad hit detection programming. Ghost Heat made it so that you cant boat lasers so that aggravates the problem because you are limited to how many lasers you can bring.

It is a shame that PGI cant seem to get a handle on getting weapons right. I mean ... it has been over a year. Maybe they want to hire some of those guys working on the United States' implementation of the affordable health care website to improve PGI's efficiency.

[Lykaon]

JigglyMoobs, on 09 November 2013 - 03:01 PM, said:

Lasers are ineffective due to HSR and latency issues. It has nothing to do with duration except that damage over time exacerbates hit detection. I've had multiple games when perfectly aimed laser shots (ie reticle locked on a single component) do much less than expected damage. What's happening is that in reality the game thinks your reticle is moving all over the mech when in fact it looks to you like it's smooth and locked.

If anyone has ever played quake live, try the lightning gun with truelightning set to 0. You'll see the difference between where you think you're aiming a hitscan, damage over time weapon and where the server thinks you are aiming, with even just a little bit of latency.

For MWO, I think there might be a way to solve this: use a centroid estimation system to estimate the centerpoint of the player's aim after a brief sampling period, say, 100 ms. This would have never worked for Quake because movement was so much faster and there was no acceleration or deceleration (ie movement vectors change instantaneously), but for mwo, since mechs are moving slower, and have momentum, maybe it can work.

This has been my conclusion as well.I have had several experiences with what appears to me to be reduced damage effects with lasers.

I recently had a battle my Battlemaster (PPC/6 M Lasers/2 MGs) VS a Jagermech (2 AC5/2 MGs/2 M lasers)
What I saw was three blasts of six medium lasers hit only the right torso of the Jagermech accompanied by a constant spray from the machine guns and one PPC hit before coming into min range of the PPC.

So in total just from the medium lasers I should have seen 6x5=30 30 x 3= 90 NINTEY damage done to the Jager's right torso add in the PPC for 100 and aproximatley 8 seconds of MG fire for good measure and by my point of view that Jager shrugged off around 112 damage to one side torso.

The Jager won without having the side torso destroyed.

Now let me make it clear.On my screen all my hits were precise and on target all 100+ damage struck my intended target (the side torso)

Next match....Highlander vs my Battlemaster similar results three salvos of 6 medium lasers all to the right torso plus 2 PPC hits and several seconds of MG fire the Highlander won with mild internal structure damage to the side torso.End of match 0 kills 1 assist 67 damage???

Battle master vs shadow hawk this time I said screw it and pulled out my Battlemaster D with twin AC5s and a PPC.

Nuked the shadow hawk at 400m with under 8 seconds of engagment time.Next was a Jager with twin 20s nuke it at 400m through a side torso.Next was another battlemaster won that fight as well (alright the enemy BLR was already scrap when I saw him so it was a kill steal if anything) end of match 3 kills 6 assists 630 damage.

[Bacl]

Roadbeer, on 11 November 2013 - 02:16 PM, said:

I think I said it earlier in this thread, each system has it's pros and cons.

The Pro with ballistics is that it's direct damage, and low heat. The cons are ammo limitation, explosive potential if the ammo box is breached and finite hardpoints

Energy weapons have the opposite of both the pros and the cons.

This, seems to me, like balance.

I would agree on you if we were simply lookinh at weapon<s numbers out of the box, however where is lost balance is when you equip them on the mech and then have to support with either ammo or heat sinks, this is were it is thrown off balance.

I messed around a bit in the mech lab and this is what i got:

Batlle master 1G std engine 200

1 AC5 DPS is 3,33 with 229% cooling effiency for 6 tons and 4 critical slots.
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...1960e2a771055ea

Now same build with medium laser tying to match the AC 5 dps is: 3 medium laser with 8DHS for a total of 11 tons and 27 critical space topped with a cooling efficiency of 91%
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...f79ca1db02e867c

If you balance the whole thing to the tonnage that Ac 5 will get 3 tons of ammo for a total of 7 critical space and 90 shells, this is huge for 1 single canon.

For fun lets go for the dual AC 5 build that has 6,66 DPS with 114% cooling efficiency
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...303fcdb1f90ee12

To match the dual Ac5 DPS with medium lasers, i simply cant with DHS since i dont have enough critical space to do so...
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...748af547c8d073b

So i tried with single heat sinks, used 6 medium lasers and filled every single critical space available to slot single heat sinks and i still cant match the DPS or the cooling efficiency of the dual AC5 while he can use that extra tonnage for literally tons of ammo.
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...aa95d15c82b952c


I know in my example i used 6 medium lasers instead of 4, why? Because with only 4 i never managed to get close enough of the AC DPS so with 6 i could go a tad closer to the magic numbers. I took medium lasers and AC 5 as example but i did so with all lasers ( no pulse tho) and all canons except the AC 20 since i would have to compare it to a PPC and thats another story.
So in the end the lasers recycle time is good but the heat is way too much/ or the heat is fine but the heatrsink system ( as mentionned many times) is broken and doesnt support energy build very well. Righjt now the only way Ballistic weapons are unreliabale is when they are coupled with an energy one since you will trade heatsinks for ammos so your mech wont be able to cool off that easily.

So to sum it up, lasers requires more critical slots and tonnage than ballistic to be (almost) on the same level in therm of dps and you also consider the fact that they do their damage over time, have less range, are being chained by the ghost heat and reveals your position every time you shoot... I think it is safe to say that some balancing have to be maid.

Edited by Bacl, 14 November 2013 - 05:57 AM.

[3endless8oogie]

Lykaon, on 14 November 2013 - 04:02 AM, said:

This has been my conclusion as well.I have had several experiences with what appears to me to be reduced damage effects with lasers.

I recently had a battle my Battlemaster (PPC/6 M Lasers/2 MGs) VS a Jagermech (2 AC5/2 MGs/2 M lasers)
What I saw was three blasts of six medium lasers hit only the right torso of the Jagermech accompanied by a constant spray from the machine guns and one PPC hit before coming into min range of the PPC.

So in total just from the medium lasers I should have seen 6x5=30 30 x 3= 90 NINTEY damage done to the Jager's right torso add in the PPC for 100 and aproximatley 8 seconds of MG fire for good measure and by my point of view that Jager shrugged off around 112 damage to one side torso.

The Jager won without having the side torso destroyed.

Now let me make it clear.On my screen all my hits were precise and on target all 100+ damage struck my intended target (the side torso)

Next match....Highlander vs my Battlemaster similar results three salvos of 6 medium lasers all to the right torso plus 2 PPC hits and several seconds of MG fire the Highlander won with mild internal structure damage to the side torso.End of match 0 kills 1 assist 67 damage???

Battle master vs shadow hawk this time I said screw it and pulled out my Battlemaster D with twin AC5s and a PPC.

Nuked the shadow hawk at 400m with under 8 seconds of engagment time.Next was a Jager with twin 20s nuke it at 400m through a side torso.Next was another battlemaster won that fight as well (alright the enemy BLR was already scrap when I saw him so it was a kill steal if anything) end of match 3 kills 6 assists 630 damage.

something is broken since the last patch.

[Ngamok]

Don't know about you guys, but when I fire 6 medium lasers at something, it does a lot of damage. Nothing like what the OP describes.

[Almond Brown]

Mawai, on 10 November 2013 - 07:31 AM, said:

Just to add 2 cents ...

My experience lately is that there may be a hit detection issue with lasers. There appears to be hit detection issues with the other weapon systems .. it isn't surprising that lasers suffer the same way. However, the problem is harder to diagnose with lasers since instead of hit or miss you get part of the beam duration hitting and other parts missing ... so it almost always does some damage to some part of the mech. It is easy to write this off as aiming issues or the fact that DOT weapons can hit multiple components ... but I would say that at least a portion of the issue is hit detection.

With ballistic weapons ... they either hit or miss ... so a AC's easily core mechs when they hit. Lasers on the other hand ... part of the duration hits and part misses.

stuff

Out of morbid fascination here is my Large Laser stats line:

Large Laser - 2580 - 2,222 - 86.12% - 12,079

According to this, I hit/make contact with my target 86.12% of the time. But of those connects, I only generate 5.43 damage as an average. So my 9 point weapons is actually only 60% effective versus the pin point based weapons.

Here is my AC20 line:

AC/20 - 2,421- 1,469 - 60.68% - 26,556

I only make contact 61% of the time but generate 18.0 points as an average. So my 20 point weapon has a 90% effective rate.

What is needed is a way to bring those two "effective" values more in line when comparing the 2 different, hit-scan vs pin point, damage application systems. You cannot blame any player(s) who take any weapon that is 90% effective versus one that is only 60%.

Of course YMMV per weapon and I will test this on another account to see if it is indeed consistent.

P.S. Just checked the ML. Way more Matches played with that weapon but the same exact 60%. Hmm, curiouser and curiouser...

P.S.S. See you on the Ballisticfield lads and lasses.

Edited by Almond Brown, 14 November 2013 - 11:37 AM.

[TheFlyingScotsman]

The hidden problem here is hit-loss due to command overload. It happens with MGs, SRMs and LRMs, also. The Ls and PLs strike with a vast amount of miniscule individual hits over time, and in a perfect engine/network setup, this would be fine. But as proven by the amount of hit-non-registration and lag/packet-loss present with MGs, LRMs and SRMs also when fired en masse, this is a deeply seeded coding issue.

The only way to resolve it for now is to reduce the number of rounds and increase their effectiveness. In a raw example, MGs might be changed to have 1/4 their current ROF and be given x4 damage.

No weapons are in more dire a need of this far-less-overwhelming (to the servers and clients) method currently employed than Lasers and MGs, in that order. Honestly, the current system is great in a romanic, "what-we-intended" sort of way, but it plainly, simply, and observably does not work.

Please change it so that lasers and other weapons that use a masse of individual shots can return to being effective (in any way) compared to ACs and Streaks, which deal their damage (mostly) correctly. ACs and Streaks stand alone in this regard.

[JimboFBX]

that might be it. maybe it's a three stooges through the door kind of thing.

also I've noticed instances where I've seen other mechs fire and appear to have no convergence. maybe that's happening here

[Abivard]

Like The flying scotsman said above.

When there is a lot of mgs, missiles and lasers going off, your lasers and mgs start getting 'hit-loss' all that stuff overloads the system, making the hits vanish into electronic limbo.

Also with lasers.. you are holding it steady on target, you really are, but the game thinks your aim is dancing all over the place.

AC is not op, it just doesn't suffer from bugs/bad coding.

As PGI favors band-****;
reduce laser beam duration by half
get rid of MG's

[Lykaon]

Ngamok, on 14 November 2013 - 07:39 AM, said:

Don't know about you guys, but when I fire 6 medium lasers at something, it does a lot of damage. Nothing like what the OP describes.

I believe the problems occur when Host State Rewind would be a factor in damage calculation.If you and your target have similar ping HSR isn't as much of a factor.

I believe what may be ocuring is HSR calculates your point of impact once per shot.This is great for ballistics since each shot is a distinct volume of damage equal to the total possible damage.You either hit with all damage or missed with all damage.

Now with a duration beam of a laser HSR calculates your hit for the initial impact and applies damage from the laser and then,loses track of the rest of laser's burn duration.So if your initial hit was on target HSR applies damage but then your target moves HSR has already calculated the hit once and does not update damage or location hit because it has already completed it's calculations the rest of the beam misses.Also if this is what is happening then HSR calculates the initial firing and will not register hits or damage from a laser shot that initially missed the target but was later swept onto the target.

At least this is my current theory I am testing by recording my perceived damage to actual damage and then comparing ping values to determine accuracy.