26 replies to this topic

[Djinnetic]

This post is regarding energy weapon balance, in particular PPCs

I understand the thought process that went into ghost heat, but PPCs and ERPPCs are too hot to be useful compared to large pulse or er large lasers.

Before we start screaming to remove ghost heat, I'd like to suggest increasing travel time to the speed of light, as well as implementing a skill based mechanic for PPCs similiar to the recent GR change.

-You would have to charge the PPC before firing
(This seems like a given, if travel time is increased)

-Heat is generated as it charges, instead of upon discharge
(This could be a cool unique quirk of PPCs, as well as a good visual cue to the heat penalties of firing more than two at once before you actually fire)

-Another possiblity, is allowing the PPC to be fired before fully charged, for reduced damage based on the charge level
(This will also allow for better heat management, as you can discharge before you overheat)


TL;DR
In Battletech lore, PPC shots are described as a man made bolt of lightning. ATM it feels like we're hurling
plasma balls at each other.

Can we atleast test something like this on the public test server?

Edited by Djinnetic, 06 December 2013 - 05:57 AM.

[OneEyed Jack]

It's also described as a beam and only says like man-madelightning, not that it is a bolt of lightning.

[Joseph Mallan]

I have even read that it is a lash of charged particles... Just sayin'.

[JohnnyWayne]

Charge = Cooldown.
Reduced damage with "charge" = Plasma gun.

It has no beam, because a beam has no recoil. Even if it is "lightning" it is not speed of light. We have discussed this before elsewhere and the result was that a PPC bolt is as fast as a gauss slug, maybe a little faster.

Edited by JohnnyWayne, 06 December 2013 - 06:40 AM.

[Eaerie]

personally i think they need to swap the minimum range to the ERPPC instead of the normal PPC. I know that isnt cannon but it makes more sense to me. Or cause the ERPPC to cause backlash damage if fired at <90m

[Lightfoot]

No, because that charge mechanic they have for the Gauss Rifle doesn't work for Joystick using players. It takes more than a second to aim a joystick. Most Developers would have extended the time the Gauss Rifle holds the charge in light of this, purely as a Quality of Life adjustment, level the field of play for all players, etc. Encourage the broader group of players to keep coming back to MWO.

Anyway, it's a bad mechanic for a MechWarrior game that wants have a Clan Invasion... but can't because MWO is being held together with a bunch of weird nerfs. Like the one you want to be extended to the PPC.

I just want MWO to play like a normal MechWarrior game that is at least loosely based on Battletech, not Quake or Duke Nukem.

[General Taskeen]

Eaerie, on 06 December 2013 - 07:57 AM, said:

personally i think they need to swap the minimum range to the ERPPC instead of the normal PPC. I know that isnt cannon but it makes more sense to me. Or cause the ERPPC to cause backlash damage if fired at <90m

FYI, the actual Battle Tech PPC CAN fire in minimum range and suffers damage feedback consequences. Its sorely missing this ability in a real-time translation, and instead has a stupid "0 damage in min range" that they made in a patch. Because having 1 weapon in that game that does no damage up close makes sense for some reason. 3 PPCs is supposed to be scary no matter what, and frankly in my Awesome, I AM scared of something getting close otherwise my canon build become DEAD weight.

[Djinnetic]

JohnnyWayne, on 06 December 2013 - 06:36 AM, said:

Charge = Cooldown.
Reduced damage with "charge" = Plasma gun.

It has no beam, because a beam has no recoil. Even if it is "lightning" it is not speed of light. We have discussed this before elsewhere and the result was that a PPC bolt is as fast as a gauss slug, maybe a little faster.

I get that it's about as fast as a gauss slug, I'm saying it should be faster and have it's firing mechanic tweaked to put it in line with the other energy weapons.

[GRiPSViGiL]

I know lore for ish but it would be cool to have an energy AC2 type of weapon that spit out plasma balls at a high rate.

[Corvus Antaka]

someone miss the current dual PPC ac/20 meta?

[Jaeger Gonzo]

The actual battletech PPC, has minimum range penatly, but that can be overdrived with risk of weapon explosion according to tactical ops, by deactivate field inhibitors.
So if we are agree that minimum range dificult is well represented in actuall GR mechanics, the PPC should have same neg quirk, with ability to override this with expl chance. Easy to do.
GR minimum range is 2, PPC is 3.
So PPC should have little longer charge time. I would extend release time for both, as I find it little too short.
Adding an overide possibletes for PPC would complite this weapon to the lore so good.

[Lightfoot]

Group-Fire is the cornerstone of mech operation and design. Please don't try to overwrite it with a pastiche of nerfs from other games.

It's like the Swayback gets 8 MLAS and a SLAS, should it fire one at a time? No, it would not need 8 if it did because 5 MLAS would be over it's cycle-time operational limit. The Swayback fires the MLAS as a single array unless it gets too hot, when it might drop down to 4 at a time if need be.

It's not a meta to match an AC20 with 2 PPCs, which is not very imaginative anyway.

One more nerf like the Gauss Nerf and you will see a mass exodus from this game. The gauss nerf is at about 50% like and 50% hate. It's an unnecessary nerf because at DPS/payload ton the Gauss is the weakest ballistic and that's just a fact. So it was nerfed to cover for extraneous problems like the mechs being too weak and pop-tarting. That doesn't fix anything and now MWO is getting the nerf-Clan Invasion because nothing has ever been fixed just covered-up.

MWO better get back to Battletech and MechWarrior simulation and stop relying on the Quake style nerfs if it wants to achieve excellence.



.

Edited by Lightfoot, 06 December 2013 - 08:43 PM.

[Dalorante Corbanis]

META MWO 25/01/2014

2xPPC (Ac20/Ac10/UltraAc5)

We have not move forward of a thumb.

MWO=No Battletech

[Skyfaller]

GRiPSViGiL, on 06 December 2013 - 06:59 PM, said:

I know lore for ish but it would be cool to have an energy AC2 type of weapon that spit out plasma balls at a high rate.

Light PPC's

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Light_PPC

[KursedVixen]

The other problem is PPc's are too slow still.

[MechWarrior679696]

I'd be fine with PPCs practically insta-hitting if they got a bit of an accuracy penalty. We've all seen how a lightning bolt behaves; they arc and fork and sometimes even twist to take the path of least resistance, which is dependent entirely on atmospheric conditions. Now, PPC bolts carry not just current but charged particles, which would ostensibly be what lets them take a straighter path through the air and deal a kinetic component of damage to their target. But still, that mass can't be that huge or they'd need ammunition, and even traveling at a mere fraction of C a tiny amount of mass can impact with tremendous force. It can also jump around quite a bit in that barely measurably short span of time; even at room temperatures and pressures, gases can have an RMS movement that is just crazy, and let's not even get started with charged particles. In fact, before I go in for too much technobabble here...

You want a more accurate depiction of what a PPC theoretically should look like? Look at the Tesla Coils from Red Alert. Or just look at a lightning strike. Or this:

Now that is what I'd like to see in-game. An arcing spear of lightning, so bright it leaves a trail of purple across your vision, slamming into the side of an enemy mech nearly instantaneously with an ungodly sizzling noise. It might not hit precisely where you aimed at him - heck, you could even add a slight homing trait or some random behavior to the weapon, what with it seeking the path of least resistance - but you know that when he's hit he's hurting, and you've just screwed up his locks and sensors big time.

[Fakirzoran]

Per http://www.sarna.net/wiki/PPC


The Particle Projector Cannon (or PPC) is a unique energy weapon. PPCs fire a concentrated stream of protons or ions at a target, causing damage through both thermal and kinetic energy.^[3] Despite being an energy weapon, it produces recoil. The lethality of the weapon rivals that of higher-caliber autocannons; just three shots from a PPC will vaporize two tons of standard military-grade armor.^[4] Targets hit by multiple, simultaneous PPCs can also suffer electrical side-effects, such as overloaded computer systems or targeting sensors.^[5] The ion beam also extends to much farther ranges than autocannon fire, though PPCs generate large amounts of waste heat.

[Strum Wealh]

Djinnetic, on 06 December 2013 - 05:56 AM, said:

In Battletech lore, PPC shots are described as a man made bolt of lightning. ATM it feels like we're hurling
plasma balls at each other.

OneEyed Jack, on 06 December 2013 - 06:09 AM, said:

It's also described as a beam and only says like man-madelightning, not that it is a bolt of lightning.

Joseph Mallan, on 06 December 2013 - 06:13 AM, said:

I have even read that it is a lash of charged particles... Just sayin'.

"Unlike other particle cannons, the Parti-Kill does not use an energy collection capacitor or similar chamber. Instead, it uses a series of magnetic collection bottles that gather their energy straight from the fusion reactor. These energies are then channeled through a larger magnetic bottle and released from the cannon. This fires an energy 'shell' that loses cohesion and disintegrates at 540 meters. The Parti-Kill's bolts are unstable at ranges under 90 meters." - TRO 3026, pg. 64, describing the Parti-Kill PPC mounted on the Manticore Heavy Tank

Basically, PPCs are particle beam weapons, firing singular "bolts" (short-lived charged particle beams/pulses) composed of subatomic particles or whole atoms.

IMO, they work best (and are able to (at least partially) overcome realistic PBW limitations, like blooming & beam-absorption) when imagined to work similarly to an electrolaser (like the one developed by the US Army): using lasers (relatively weak ones, in comparison to those used as 'Mech-grade weapons) to form an electrically conductive "laser-induced plasma channel" (LIPC), then projecting the charged particle beam/bolt along the LIPC (and, ideally, to the desired target) fractions of a second later.

[ManDaisy]

Also, rather then shooting anything out of a cannon like thing per say, they are really directing the flow of the cascading effect to the target, with most of the innitial energy being at the point of focus, over 90 meters away for safety sake.

http://en.wikipedia....ctron_avalanche

The "medium" in the absense of air, for sci fi sake, would be some other fuel source, fired along with the electro laser? That would provide for the explosive force for the shockwave, when damage is not due to random electronic current?

So it may not be an electronic cascade but a particle to particle nuclear cascade with electron products along for the ride that gives the lightning effect.

So the big ball shoots out and bangs into other ball, dragging em along all the while following the line telling it where to go cause the line is a big tube of least resistance, then more balls join in and pop making the big ball go faster and its a party...

what was I talking about again?

Edited by ManDaisy, 26 November 2014 - 12:43 PM.

[MechWarrior679696]

ManDaisy, on 26 November 2014 - 12:20 PM, said:

what was I talking about again?

Whatever it was, it's given me the idea for using mechs with fission engines, and then putting on guns that basically consist of compression chambers and barrels with ceramic inner coating and magnetic guide rails, then putting a ferrite- and aluminium-based radioisotope-spiked fuel in and using some of the material from the fission pile to kick-start a nuclear reaction in the compression chamber, compress it with a massive hydraulic ram or maybe even an explosive charge, and then opening up the front to let it spit out in a spear of nuclear slag which will likely just heat up with the introduction to even more oxygen. The thermite-like radioactive paste would likely melt or basically sandblast its way through armor and at the same time wreak havoc with any EM-sensitive equipment, plus as an added bonus poison the immediate area with deadly fallout. I'd use it as a "scorched earth" weapon against the clan invasion.

I give you, the Desolator mech. "Spread the doom!"

Or, you know, if you're boring you could possibly do the same thing with just the compression chamber and some two-component fuel with one component being strongly acidic to get a shitload of gas expansion and heat, add magnesium, and heat with the help of induction, then just spray liquid thermite at people. Hm... Superheated Liquid Amalgam Gun. SLAG Cannon. I like it.

Who else here wouldn't be opposed to seeing the introduction of a faction in some universe such as Battletech who are not opposed to using the most horrible, ruthless, terrifying means and methods? I mean, it's the best way to get **** done, after all.

Edited by Mr Huge, 26 November 2014 - 03:02 PM.