32 replies to this topic

[Artgathan]

Randalf Yorgen, on 07 December 2013 - 08:26 AM, said:

People are full of it when it comes to AC's. the AC is a SINGLE explosive Shell, be it AP, HEAT, HEAP, Squash Head , HE or what ever. It's not until the Uzile and the Rotary AC comes online in 3062 that the AC's start firing in bursts. People who say anything different are Battletech CLICK players and I have no time for that {Scrap}. GET WITH THE TIMELINE. why the hell do you think AC20s weigh 14 tons.

From http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Autocannon:

Quote

An Autocannon is a type of rapid-firing, auto-loading direct-fire ballistic weapon, firing HEAP (High-Explosive Armor-Piercing) or kinetic rounds at targets in bursts.

[stjobe]

Randalf Yorgen, on 07 December 2013 - 08:26 AM, said:

People are full of it when it comes to AC's. the AC is a SINGLE explosive Shell, be it AP, HEAT, HEAP, Squash Head , HE or what ever. It's not until the Uzile and the Rotary AC comes online in 3062 that the AC's start firing in bursts. People who say anything different are Battletech CLICK players and I have no time for that {Scrap}. GET WITH THE TIMELINE. why the hell do you think AC20s weigh 14 tons.
[...]
Want to argue this, ok, bring your proven science and show me.

Some choice quotes from sarna.net (i,e, TechManual, TacOps, etc):

Quote

An Autocannon is a type of rapid-firing, auto-loading direct-fire ballistic weapon, firing HEAP (High-Explosive Armor-Piercing) or kinetic rounds at targets in bursts. It is, basically, a giant "machine gun" that fires predominantly cased explosive shells
[...]
The exact same caliber of shell fired in a 100 shot burst to do 20 damage will have a shorter effective range than when fired in a 10 shot burst to do 2 damage
[...]
With the fluffed number of shells and caliber being specified, no Autocannon has been specified to be one shell fired for each "round" or burst of fire.

That enough "proven science" for you? The actual lore?

Edited by stjobe, 07 December 2013 - 11:18 AM.

[Jman5]

Randalf Yorgen, on 07 December 2013 - 08:26 AM, said:

People are full of it when it comes to AC's. the AC is a SINGLE explosive Shell, be it AP, HEAT, HEAP, Squash Head , HE or what ever. It's not until the Uzile and the Rotary AC comes online in 3062 that the AC's start firing in bursts. People who say anything different are Battletech CLICK players and I have no time for that {Scrap}. GET WITH THE TIMELINE. why the hell do you think AC20s weigh 14 tons.

The reason the AC has high damage at 3 times the range is because it explodes when it hits the target releasing all that damage to the location that it hits. What PGI didn't do but should have was have the rounds start to tumble and drop and drift off line once it went past 2 times it's optimum range making it next to impossible to get at hit at three times the range.

LASERS are intense beams of focused light. Over time and distance they suffer from many different things. Planet side, Diffusion and dispersion for starters. Diffusion is the dust and smoke particles bleeding off some of the energy and dispersion is caused as the beam starts to come undone and spread out over distance (Time and losing its focus frequency) in Atmosphere these two are the primary things that effect lasers (my background is Radar, same as lasers, just employed differently at a different frequency) and cause the signal to weaken over time and eventually disappear. If happens very quickly in atmosphere.

Lasers in Space would have 300 times the range but are affected by Gravity and Solar Wind. Yes Gravity can bend light beams and waves and cause the laser to bend and twist over time causing its accuracy to be lost at say 10 times range when fighting close to a source of gravity. (Star, Planet, Singularity)(it's why the American SDI initiative isn't the end all and be all that they claimed it was going to be back in the 1980's) Solar Wind is something else to consider as it is made up of charged particles that are thrown off by a Star and could cause some dispersion and a lot of diffusion so the effective range of Lasers in a moderate Solar storm would only be about 5-8 times their range.

Want to argue this, ok, bring your proven science and show me.

I'm sorry, but we are talking about balance, not justifying some BS, PSEUDO-SCIENCE, FANTASY LORE. This whole game is full of impossible and unrealistic things. I don't give a damn if my lasers shoot My Little Pony characters as long as the numbers are fair.

Back on the topic of balance...

I agree with the OP and several of you that the range discrepancies are a problem. In fact I think range is one of the biggest issues right now for balance. In part it's because we are missing several weapon types. Without an ER medium laser and ER Small Laser, there is a huge hole for smaller mechs. Upgrading from 1 ton medium lasers to 5 ton large lasers is a huge hit for mediums and lights.

We can't just wait with this imbalance for 6 months to a year until clans finally arrive and we get low-ton energy weapons with decent range. There needs to be some sort of interim solution at the very least.

Personally, I feel like the developers overestimate the strength of lasers. They focus on damage numbers and weight, but fail to see problems with them in practice.

For example:
Beam duration is a major weakening factor. Your damage will spread to several misc. components when you fight because it's a channeling weapon. What's more is that the faster your mech is, the more wildly your beams will dance around. Now surprise surprise which mechs are forced to use low-ton lasers more? Faster light/medium mechs. So the weapons we are pigeonholed into using are also weakest when we use them.

Edited by Jman5, 07 December 2013 - 12:06 PM.

[Wolfways]

I asked long ago in an ATD why ballistics were so OP compared to energy weapons. The answer was partially because ballistics had to buy ammo (R&R).
Of course we no longer buy ammo...

[Sable Dove]

OneEyed Jack, on 07 December 2013 - 05:17 AM, said:

What? 7 hexes was the "sweet spot." Still in short range, but they suffered no min range modifiers. At 6 hexes or less, they suffered modifiers. 6 hexes is 180 meters, not 540. 540 meters is approaching their MAX range, not minimum.

Ah, I misunderstood what I read. I didn't realize that 'minimum range' simply meant a penalty. Which explains why the PPC had a minimum range of 270m, but also a minimum range of 90m.

But then my suggestion is still valid. Reduce the agility of missiles so that at short ranges, they have a hard time hitting moving targets. Having a pattern that spreads (slowly) as they fly would take care of the long-range penalties. Should probably keep the hard minimum range though, to prevent people from just boating LRMs and hugging enemies to death.

[Biglead]

Wow, I just remembered back in closed Beta when missles had a 630m range. That was ******* horrible and I'm glad PGI took the liberty to adjust numbers.

[Durant Carlyle]

stjobe, on 07 December 2013 - 03:28 AM, said:

But that's just fluff and lore; game-play balance wise it doesn't make sense to have ballistics fire further than missiles or energy, especially not when the effects of it is that the AC/20 is a more damaging weapon than the AC/10 at 500m, and that ballistics are better and more accurate long-range weaponry than LRMs.

I agree with you. I'd like to see the game return to using standard BattleTech ranges. They worked very well for previous games.

It isn't going to happen though -- just like my other dream of having a fixed heat capacity and heat sinks only affecting dissipation, as well as having real 2.0 double heat sinks. Oh, and having longer base sensor ranges on medium and especially light 'Mechs.

[MustrumRidcully]

Asmudius Heng, on 07 December 2013 - 04:24 AM, said:

I think there was some extreme range catagory with a horible negative to hit in TT that was advanced rules only

Yup, there was. I don't think it used triple range for ballistics. And if they translate that negative to hit with a damage drop off, it should logically start at least once you go beyond the weapons close range - after all, the to-hit difficulty increases compared to close at medium and long range, too.

[Asmudius Heng]

MustrumRidcully, on 08 December 2013 - 02:18 AM, said:

Yup, there was. I don't think it used triple range for ballistics. And if they translate that negative to hit with a damage drop off, it should logically start at least once you go beyond the weapons close range - after all, the to-hit difficulty increases compared to close at medium and long range, too.

No there was no difference between balistics and energy weapons in TT raneg wise.

This is a mechanic designed for real time games for balance purposes.

If energy weapons were allowed the same range people would snipe with them all the time because there is no ammo loss and at sniper range you can hide n cool down easily.

If balistics had the same damage drop off as lasers then perhaps thier appeal might be much less in favour of non ammo based weapons which are much lighter.

I would be interested to see the accuracy of balistics weapons at extreme range though to see if firing at that range is actually pretty inefficient ammo wise - if so i think its all good and balistics users would be better off making sure they are targeting stationary targets at long range only

[MustrumRidcully]

Asmudius Heng, on 08 December 2013 - 03:02 AM, said:

No there was no difference between balistics and energy weapons in TT raneg wise.

This is a mechanic designed for real time games for balance purposes.

If energy weapons were allowed the same range people would snipe with them all the time because there is no ammo loss and at sniper range you can hide n cool down easily.

If balistics had the same damage drop off as lasers then perhaps thier appeal might be much less in favour of non ammo based weapons which are much lighter.

I would be interested to see the accuracy of balistics weapons at extreme range though to see if firing at that range is actually pretty inefficient ammo wise - if so i think its all good and balistics users would be better off making sure they are targeting stationary targets at long range only

It's difficult to say, because we don'T have the weapon data drilled down to that level of precision.

But as an example, my personal statistics:

AC/20: 6,135 shots fired, 77,026 damage inflicted. 12.5 damage per shot. That means I have a damage utilization of around 62.7 % (e.g I deal 62.7 % of the damage on average that I could deal ,or 33.3 % of my damage is wasted.
Gauss Rifle: 3,488 shots fired, 31,652 damage inflicted. That means I have a "damage utilization" of around 60 %.
AC/5: 376 shots fired, 815 damage inflicted. 2.17 damage inflicted per shot. That means I have a damage utilization of around 43 %.
For the Large Laser: 1,799 shots fired, 7,830 damage inflicted. 4.35 damage per shot. That means I have a "damage utilization" of around 48 %.
For the ER Large Laser: 33 shots (yeah, I don't use it much), 143 damage inflicted. 4.33 damage per shot. That means I have a "damage utilization" of around 48 %.
For the Medium Laser:
6,630 shots fired, 16,711 damage inflicted. 2.52 damage per shot. That means I have a damage utilization of around 50 %.

My observations:
It doesn't really seem as range or projectile speed is a major factor in my precision with ballistic weapons. Despite the Gauss being used at longer ranges than the AC/20, the precision is similar. The AC/5 has however a much worse - but it lies range-wise between Gauss and AC/20. Its projectile is faster than the AC/20, and I believe most of those Gauss Shots where before the Gauss got its speed increase, so it the AC/5 was also faster. It seems unlikely a faster projectile speed makes me less precise. What is notably different however is its rate of fire. A faster rate of fire might make me less precise. That is something I always suspected (confirmation bias showing?) - if you need to fire more often, you have less time to aim and you also might need to take more risky shots since you want to use that ROF.

For Lasers, the differences are marginal, though there might be a tendency to be more precise at closer range (but it's just a 2 % difference. The ER Laser I didn't use very often, so I might have not really utilized its range?)

I wonder what other people's statistics say on this matter. I might be a unique snowflake. But I doubt that. (I figure there are plenty that hit better than me, but are there people that are masters with lasers but suck with ballistics?)

[C E Dwyer]

Drop off ranges are badly done in MWO.

were used as a balance mechanism, before heat scale, these are the only area's pgi should touch or balancing until HSR can be improved alot more,

either auto canons (not gauss rifles, they've been hurt enough) need a max range damage drop off nerf, or lasers need a buff.

My feeling would be to nerf the drop off range of auto canons, as this would promote the gauss as the true sniper weapon, and bring down engagement ranges.

Would also by default make the zoom module slightly nerfed. first of it was so useless it was hardly ever used and now it makes the long range sniping the predominate meta, which in turn nerfs the lrm

which while is quite comon at the low end to make up for poor shooting skills, high end it maight help it being seen on a few more mechs. ( but is never really going to find favor with the high elo players, as zoom and ac2 /5 combo's is so much better, for those that can aim)

[C E Dwyer]

damage stats need a wipe I think as Mustrum your gauss readings are squiffy, due to the delay in shooting added when they nerfed the gauss firering mechanism.

which while its no where near as bad as many make out it is still harder to hit a target.

would be nice if we could see your figure before and after the guass changes, but pgi don't provide stats in that detail

[MustrumRidcully]

Cathy, on 08 December 2013 - 04:00 AM, said:

damage stats need a wipe I think as Mustrum your gauss readings are squiffy, due to the delay in shooting added when they nerfed the gauss firering mechanism.

True, but if we take them mostly as the pre-nerf Gauss Rifle, I think it's pretty useful for what we want to figure out in the comparison lasers vs ballistics. (or hit-scan damage over time vs slow single projectiles)

Quote

would be nice if we could see your figure before and after the guass changes, but pgi don't provide stats in that detail

You can assume that the figure is mostly pre-Gauss change. I think I used them only in one or two matches after the change just to see how they are. I didn't like them, and I had mastered the Jagermech anyway and was looking for something else. And then I moved on to the Stanley Parable, a bit of Bioshock Infinite and just finished leveling my Imperial Agent, so there hasn't happened much in my stats for a while.