1080 replies to this topic

[Varent]

Mcgral18, on 03 January 2014 - 10:57 AM, said:

In the way that the MG is the same as a laser. It's hitscan and has 2X range. They would be sufficiently different, unlike ACs and PPCs.

Although burst length...longer or shorter than Pulse lasers?

machine gun is not the same as laser...

Less damage, constant damage, no heat, less range. Higher crit rate.

Very different.

perhaps a better example is in order.

large laser vs ac10.


Effective weight of an ac 10 is 14-15 tons with ammo.
Large laser is 5 tons.

so... 10 tons more... ya thats a major disadvantage.

Ac10 uses up 9-10 slots (with ammo)
large laser uses up 2

So you also have to spend alot of area to use the weapon as well.


Ac10 does 10 damage
large laser does 9 damage

One less damage, so pretty close to one another overall damage wise with the ac10 having a slight edge.

Max range of large laser is 900
max range of ac10 is 1350

That said Those ranges can be decieving since most fighting occurs closer then that and tends to occur around 700-800 meters. I would say if your smart honestly you can take those ranges heavily out of the equation there as long as you use cover.

ac10 heat is 3
large laser heat is 7

Ok so the large laser is hotter however given the fact that you have 10 tons of weight to play with you can also afford more heat sinks.

ac10 has ammo
large laser does not

This means that you have to worry about ammo explostions and when you run out of ammo your done where as the laser can keep going and you can use it more effectively to supresss.

Now lets look at the proposed change.

ac10 with a burst fire
Large laser with its stream.

This now means that the major proponent of this weapon (its direct fire damage) is taken away. So if your running about 2 extra double heat sinks to help dissipate the heat, that would put you in line with the heat of the ac10 while still using up less slots.... So you have 2 streaming weapons and one uses up less slots, roughly similiar weight, does not rely on ammo and has more versatility and less drawback....

And you want to make this weapon stream.... why?

The Faceless, on 03 January 2014 - 11:06 AM, said:

You are correct that it could be read either way and that the single round DOES fit the shooter model better but I really feel that this game would be better off without the twitch shooter gaming mechanic being a dominating the way the game is played (which seems to be the way a lot of people are currently playing the game). Besides, if they went with a short burst of rounds that could impact multiple areas of a mech (even if the burst was shorter than the current laser duration's) it could help.

I understand how you feel... in many ways I feel the same having grown up on battletech. But that does nothing to disprove the fact that in the current environment and with games needing to make money to survive as a business, a shooter is a better model to attract players.

Edited by Varent, 03 January 2014 - 11:35 AM.

[Artgathan]

Varent, on 03 January 2014 - 11:20 AM, said:

machine gun is not the same as laser...

Less damage, constant damage, no heat, less range. Higher crit rate.

Very different.

perhaps a better example is in order.

large laser vs ac10.


Effective weight of an ac 10 is 14-15 tons with ammo.
Large laser is 5 tons.

so... 10 tons more... ya thats a major disadvantage.

Ac10 uses up 9-10 slots (with ammo)
large laser uses up 2

So you also have to spend alot of area to use the weapon as well.


Ac10 does 10 damage
large laser does 9 damage

One less damage, so pretty close to one another overall damage wise with the ac10 having a slight edge.

Max range of large laser is 900
max range of ac10 is 1350

That said Those ranges can be decieving since most fighting occurs closer then that and tends to occur around 700-800 meters. I would say if your smart honestly you can take those ranges heavily out of the equation there as long as you use cover.

ac10 heat is 3
large laser heat is 4

Ok so the large laser is hotter however given the fact that you have 10 tons of weight to play with you can also afford more heat sinks.

ac10 has ammo
large laser does not

This means that you have to worry about ammo explostions and when you run out of ammo your done where as the laser can keep going and you can use it more effectively to supresss.

Now lets look at the proposed change.

ac10 with a burst fire
Large laser with its stream.

This now means that the major proponent of this weapon (its direct fire damage) is taken away. So if your running about 2 extra double heat sinks to help dissipate the heat, that would put you in line with the heat of the ac10 while still using up less slots.... So you have 2 streaming weapons and one uses up less slots, roughly similiar weight, does not rely on ammo and has more versatility and less drawback....

And you want to make this weapon stream.... why?



I understand how you feel... in many ways I feel the same having grown up on battletech. But that does nothing to disprove the fact that in the current environment and with games needing to make money to survive as a business, a shooter is a better model to attract players.

This argument is disingenuous at best. For starters, a Large Laser generates 7 heat, not 4.

A Large Laser weighs 5 tons, requiring 5 extra external DHS to keep it "heat neutral". This brings it to 10 tons and 17 critical slots.

Compared to a Heat Neutral AC/10, with 2 tons of ammo (that's 17 tons and 15 slots). The differences are not quite so vast anymore.

Furthermore, the Burst Fire mechanic behaves differently from the Laser mechanic. The burst, once fired, does not require you to keep staring at the target - it would (presumably) be fire and forget (like an SRM volley). Given a short enough burst time (less than 0.5 seconds), the AC still offers advantages over the Laser.

[Mcgral18]

Varent, on 03 January 2014 - 11:20 AM, said:

machine gun is not the same as laser...



And you want to make this weapon stream.... why?

The machine gun is programmed as a laser with a cone of fire, no way to ignore that.

As for the second point, why do you want a weapon that exploits an armor system that isn't made for a FPS? Weapons do more damage than they are supposed to do, even with doubled armor taken into account. The least they could do is make them spread that excessive damage.

[Varent]

Artgathan, on 03 January 2014 - 11:29 AM, said:

This argument is disingenuous at best. For starters, a Large Laser generates 7 heat, not 4.

A Large Laser weighs 5 tons, requiring 5 extra external DHS to keep it "heat neutral". This brings it to 10 tons and 17 critical slots.

Compared to a Heat Neutral AC/10, with 2 tons of ammo (that's 17 tons and 15 slots). The differences are not quite so vast anymore.

Furthermore, the Burst Fire mechanic behaves differently from the Laser mechanic. The burst, once fired, does not require you to keep staring at the target - it would (presumably) be fire and forget (like an SRM volley). Given a short enough burst time (less than 0.5 seconds), the AC still offers advantages over the Laser.

my mistake on the heat, corrected that I was doing the math on where the heat would reside with double heat sinks implimented etc etc. Fixed that.

and by your same reasoning you would also need more heat sinks to make the ac10 heat neutral, so lets not go that route since then you just increase the weight of both weapons.

2 double heat sinks would bring the weapon roughly in line with the ac10 to an appropriate matter. That said how is that 'burst' implimented without it being you having to stay on target? I would love to know how you do that, you cant have a 'stream' of shells without them coming out of a cannon in a stream. Then you get into the mechanics of how long are you holding it while the stream is fired.

I still hold for the weight the large laser would be MUCh better in all of those circumstances. There is no reaason to make it a stream unless you want to rework all of the mechanics with energy weapons and then reduce all the weight of ac and up there ammo to make up for the overt nerf.

[Varent]

Mcgral18, on 03 January 2014 - 11:30 AM, said:

The machine gun is programmed as a laser with a cone of fire, no way to ignore that.

As for the second point, why do you want a weapon that exploits an armor system that isn't made for a FPS? Weapons do more damage than they are supposed to do, even with doubled armor taken into account. The least they could do is make them spread that excessive damage.

You ignored everything else regarding the laser vs machine gun... anyways...

Why? Because it works? Im sorry your not having fun, truly and genuinly I am if your not enjoying this game. But believe it or not other people are. They enjoy the system and the interactions of weapons to mechs.

I will say as I have said before many times, Jump jet sniping has made a meta that some find unfavorable but altering weapons will not help that. Altering jump jets will. Weapons are actually interesting and fun the way they are now. The only reason I can think of someone not having fun is if they just want to play light mechs and dont ike being one shot, in which case all I can say is.....

"your a light mech, it happens, its part of the game and lore supports it."

If i cried about the times ive died to being one shot I would be on this forum making a new thread every day. Instead I smile, hop in a new match and keep playing and usually rack up more kills then deaths and defeat those mechs using large ac anyhow.

[Artgathan]

Varent, on 03 January 2014 - 11:40 AM, said:

my mistake on the heat, corrected that I was doing the math on where the heat would reside with double heat sinks implimented etc etc. Fixed that.

and by your same reasoning you would also need more heat sinks to make the ac10 heat neutral, so lets not go that route since then you just increase the weight of both weapons.

2 double heat sinks would bring the weapon roughly in line with the ac10 to an appropriate matter. That said how is that 'burst' implimented without it being you having to stay on target? I would love to know how you do that, you cant have a 'stream' of shells without them coming out of a cannon in a stream. Then you get into the mechanics of how long are you holding it while the stream is fired.

I still hold for the weight the large laser would be MUCh better in all of those circumstances. There is no reaason to make it a stream unless you want to rework all of the mechanics with energy weapons and then reduce all the weight of ac and up there ammo to make up for the overt nerf.

I did alter the weight of the AC/10 to include 3 DHS - 17 tons. You can't simply say "we can't include a fundamental game mechanic" when balancing the weapons out. It increases the weight of the LL much more than that of the AC/10.

When I said you don't have to stay on target I meant that you don't need to keep staring at the target once the last shell has left the cannon. With a sufficiently short burst the "time on target" can be reduced, allowing for snap shots. Also, depending on the number of shells fired in each burst, each "tick" of damage will be much more effective than those of a laser. Consider that the LL fires in 10 "ticks" - each dealing 0.9 damage. An AC/10 firing a 5-round burst would be dealing 2 damage per "tick", slightly more than double the LLs value.

Edited by Artgathan, 03 January 2014 - 11:52 AM.

[Varent]

Artgathan, on 03 January 2014 - 11:51 AM, said:

I did alter the weight of the AC/10 to include 3 DHS - 17 tons. You can't simply say "we can't include a fundamental game mechanic" when balancing the weapons out. It increases the weight of the LL much more than that of the AC/10.

When I said you don't have to stay on target I meant that you don't need to keep staring at the target once the last shell has left the cannon. With a sufficiently short burst the "time on target" can be reduced, allowing for snap shots. Also, depending on the number of shells fired in each burst, each "tick" of damage will be much more effective than those of a laser. Consider that the LL fires in 10 "ticks" - each dealing 0.9 damage. An AC/10 firing a 5-round burst would be dealing 2 damage per "tick", slightly more than double the LLs value.

to make it heat neutral.. which is really pointless... dont use heat neutral weapons in this game.. its a bad way to play, Ride the heat and learn to use it.

That said. This still makes the large laser a more potent and way more versatile weapon. Under most battle field conditions you are majorly overpowering the large laser by doing this.

[General Taskeen]

Varent, on 03 January 2014 - 10:52 AM, said:

That would make them exactly like lasers just slightly less duration. That would not fit for there weight requirements.

Um, just no. A laser is a laser - duration in the game. And an AC distributes damage from a physical object leaving your gun. The instant the shell hits, it does damage to that area. Lastly lasers don't have ammo, how much they can fire is only determined by heatsinks.

So not the same, ever, basically.

[Varent]

General Taskeen, on 03 January 2014 - 11:59 AM, said:

Um, just no. A laser is a laser - duration in the game. And an AC distributes damage from a physical object leaving your gun. The instant the shell hits, it does damage to that area. Lastly lasers don't have ammo, how much they can fire is only determined by heatsinks.

So not the same, ever, basically.

read the threads above, they want a stream of shells, in game mechanics, yes they are the same if they want that change.

[Joseph Mallan]

Varent, on 03 January 2014 - 12:03 PM, said:

read the threads above, they want a stream of shells, in game mechanics, yes they are the same if they want that change.

I just hope they don't get it. I like my ACs being thumpin' damage.

[Sandpit]

General Taskeen, on 03 January 2014 - 11:59 AM, said:

Um, just no. A laser is a laser - duration in the game. And an AC distributes damage from a physical object leaving your gun. The instant the shell hits, it does damage to that area. Lastly lasers don't have ammo, how much they can fire is only determined by heatsinks.

So not the same, ever, basically.

Uhm not if AC did burst damage which was the point of his comparison. So yes the same if they changed AC to burst fire which was the whole point

[Mcgral18]

Sandpit, on 03 January 2014 - 12:05 PM, said:

Uhm not if AC did burst damage which was the point of his comparison. So yes the same if they changed AC to burst fire which was the whole point

Each shell would still do 2-5 damage, which still hurts plenty compared to grazing with a laser.

We could always cut the refire rate down and decrease damage accordingly if you still want single shot weapons, just bring their alpha potential down. They'll still do more damage than intended by comparison to TT.

[Varent]

Mcgral18, on 03 January 2014 - 12:16 PM, said:

Each shell would still do 2-5 damage, which still hurts plenty compared to grazing with a laser.

We could always cut the refire rate down and decrease damage accordingly if you still want single shot weapons, just bring their alpha potential down. They'll still do more damage than intended by comparison to TT.

They would be inbalanced if you did that.

They are in a good place right now.

[Mcgral18]

Varent, on 03 January 2014 - 12:22 PM, said:

They would be inbalanced if you did that.

They are in a good place right now.

And we disagree.

[Sandpit]

Varent, on 03 January 2014 - 12:22 PM, said:

They would be inbalanced if you did that.

They are in a good place right now.

Agreed

[Varent]

Mcgral18, on 03 January 2014 - 12:23 PM, said:

And we disagree.

least we can agree to disagree civily

for that 07 good sir

[Trip Hammer]

Varent, on 03 January 2014 - 11:20 AM, said:

machine gun is not the same as laser...

Less damage, constant damage, no heat, less range. Higher crit rate.

Very different.

perhaps a better example is in order.

large laser vs ac10.


Effective weight of an ac 10 is 14-15 tons with ammo.
Large laser is 5 tons.

so... 10 tons more... ya thats a major disadvantage.

Ac10 uses up 9-10 slots (with ammo)
large laser uses up 2

So you also have to spend alot of area to use the weapon as well.


Ac10 does 10 damage
large laser does 9 damage

One less damage, so pretty close to one another overall damage wise with the ac10 having a slight edge.

Max range of large laser is 900
max range of ac10 is 1350

That said Those ranges can be decieving since most fighting occurs closer then that and tends to occur around 700-800 meters. I would say if your smart honestly you can take those ranges heavily out of the equation there as long as you use cover.

ac10 heat is 3
large laser heat is 7

Ok so the large laser is hotter however given the fact that you have 10 tons of weight to play with you can also afford more heat sinks.

ac10 has ammo
large laser does not

This means that you have to worry about ammo explostions and when you run out of ammo your done where as the laser can keep going and you can use it more effectively to supresss.

Now lets look at the proposed change.

ac10 with a burst fire
Large laser with its stream.

This now means that the major proponent of this weapon (its direct fire damage) is taken away. So if your running about 2 extra double heat sinks to help dissipate the heat, that would put you in line with the heat of the ac10 while still using up less slots.... So you have 2 streaming weapons and one uses up less slots, roughly similiar weight, does not rely on ammo and has more versatility and less drawback....

And you want to make this weapon stream.... why?

All good points and I see where your going with this. However the AC10 does have a better rate of fire and doesnt suffer from ghost heat as much as the LL. But the post was about the fact that AC's and PPC currently have Instant pinpoint damage that can affect the game in a negative way. The only other suggestions that I've seen center around convergence and in its own way this does the same thing.

Varent, on 03 January 2014 - 11:20 AM, said:

I understand how you feel... in many ways I feel the same having grown up on battletech. But that does nothing to disprove the fact that in the current environment and with games needing to make money to survive as a business, a shooter is a better model to attract players.

Your are correct about needing to attract players, but it gall's me that they have to pander to the lowest common denominator to do so, and frankly a Mech Game Twitch Shooter is not all that satisfying to me where is where the meta is coming around to once again. I think that a lot of what we are seeing as problems with the current meta break down to heat accumulation and dissipation problems that are created when you port a 10 second round TT game to a real time shooter.

Anyway, I'm just discussing the issue and I'm not going to berate the point as I'm not convinced that my suggestion will solve the problems without causing new ones.

[Varent]

The Faceless, on 03 January 2014 - 12:45 PM, said:

All good points and I see where your going with this. However the AC10 does have a better rate of fire and doesnt suffer from ghost heat as much as the LL. But the post was about the fact that AC's and PPC currently have Instant pinpoint damage that can affect the game in a negative way. The only other suggestions that I've seen center around convergence and in its own way this does the same thing.




Your are correct about needing to attract players, but it gall's me that they have to pander to the lowest common denominator to do so, and frankly a Mech Game Twitch Shooter is not all that satisfying to me where is where the meta is coming around to once again. I think that a lot of what we are seeing as problems with the current meta break down to heat accumulation and dissipation problems that are created when you port a 10 second round TT game to a real time shooter.

Anyway, I'm just discussing the issue and I'm not going to berate the point as I'm not convinced that my suggestion will solve the problems without causing new ones.

True all around. As I said, while it does sadden me on one end. I still appreciate the game for what it is on the other. And I would like to see it survive as thus.

[Cimarb]

Varent, on 03 January 2014 - 01:24 PM, said:

True all around. As I said, while it does sadden me on one end. I still appreciate the game for what it is on the other. And I would like to see it survive as thus.

All of us want the game to survive. It's how it will survive that we are disagreeing on.

Varent, quit bringing up jump jets! An AC40 jäger is as meta as it gets right now and I haven't found a single place to stuff a jump jet, lol. Same with a Phract (all but one, granted).

[Varent]

Cimarb, on 03 January 2014 - 02:33 PM, said:

All of us want the game to survive. It's how it will survive that we are disagreeing on.

Varent, quit bringing up jump jets! An AC40 jäger is as meta as it gets right now and I haven't found a single place to stuff a jump jet, lol. Same with a Phract (all but one, granted).

Because... I have always beaten ac40 jagers? That is a whole nother argument there... and I bring up jump jets because I feel that is the main issue as to why people have problems with the weapon systems the way they are. Ive stated my opinion multiple times and just as much as people are entitled to stating there thoughts on weapons, im entitled to stating my thoughts on jump jets... and come now im being pretty civil here.

That said ..... are we disagreeing on how best to make it survive, or are we disagreeing on how it will survive based on playership and finished product?