147 replies to this topic

[Hammerhai]

Which is where I chip in and lobby for bringing ac's down to the level of lasers and nerf them to ***** and gone. Because they are simply op compared to lasers. Why not boost lasers? Simple, TTK is probably still too high. So nerf, don't boost.
K thx bye.

[Insert link to commercial with mechs complaining about pin point damage.]

Note: The ballistics guys can rest easy, I suspect PGI wants pinpoint to give ppl the feeling of having teh skillz. But my Jenner is not happy about the state of lasers and srms.

[Bacl]

Lot of ballistic head here are saying that the guns are much heavier and requires ammo and this is correct, cant argue with that.

On the other hand however the energy side is much lighter for each individual pieces but to make them effective like the ballistic you need heatsinks, this is were the lightness of the energy suddenly dissapears. For an energy build to get close but never reach the dps and cooling efficiency of the ballistic build you need to fill your mech with heatsinks, and in the end all of these lovely devices end up more heavy and requires more tactical slots then a AC with its ammo.

We did a faceoff, no standing in front of each others but an actual duel, a twin ac5 jager vs a 4 large lasers stalker. The stalker was *****, there is no other words for it... Another thing is when your mech has 19 Double heat sinks and i chain large lasers, i shouldnt even be gathering heat, i should be heat neutral and yes accumulate heat when i shoot couple of them all at once.

The current heat system is broken and is too pro ballistic because they dont generate much heat in the first place, you can shut down by chaining medium lasers... This shouldnt be the case at all, the ballistics can alpha all day long, have pin point damage, longer range and much shorter cooldowns and are less affected by ghost heat if not at all. Lasers generate way more heat, do damage over time, reveals your position when fired, generally have even or shorter range than ballistic are heavily nerfed by the ghost heat and have longer average cooldowns then AC's.

No suprise here that the whole meta is turning around AC and the PPC ( because it does behave like a canon) since they are by far the best weapons around, Misiles have hit registrations problems and lasers are plain stupid when you check the amount of ressources required to make them "ok" while 1 AC 5 with couple tons of ammo will do the trick so much better.

NO this is far from being balanced and wai till the clans come out, there will be blood on the forums.

[Corvus Antaka]

run a 4 erlarge stalker with 24DHS vs a quad ac/5 jaegger. both have similar dmg per 4 seconds, ac/5 does more, and the ac/5 never makes heat.

in the ac/5 jaegger yu can do 1200dmg, in the stalker even ingored and firing endlessly pushing 900 is tough due to heat

[mania3c]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 03 February 2014 - 01:37 PM, said:

run a 4 erlarge stalker with 24DHS vs a quad ac/5 jaegger. both have similar dmg per 4 seconds, ac/5 does more, and the ac/5 never makes heat.

in the ac/5 jaegger yu can do 1200dmg, in the stalker even ingored and firing endlessly pushing 900 is tough due to heat

I can do 800-900 damage with dual PPC cicada pretty often

While my quad AC5 jagger was doing around 600-700 damage...(not using him anymore)..i think throwing random numbers is not helping anything..like my numbers..while they are not made up, they also say nothing..

[Corvus Antaka]

mania3c, on 03 February 2014 - 04:39 PM, said:

I can do 800-900 damage with dual PPC cicada pretty often

While my quad AC5 jagger was doing around 600-700 damage...(not using him anymore)..i think throwing random numbers is not helping anything..like my numbers..while they are not made up, they also say nothing..

max damage potential on a quad ac/5 jaegger with 240 rounds is 1200.

I can do 700-1000 dmg with 1 ERPPC spider as well.

however, the point is that right now energy weapons are at a significant damage hinderance to ballistics because ballistics have more ammo / enough to finish a round easily while outputting as much or more dmg in potential than pure energy boats.

This is because in a heated battle any energy based mech has to take breaks from firing. ballistics based mechs do not. since ammo is sufficient to finish & win matches easily, it is obviously smarter to choose guns that will not prevent you from firing or kill you via overheating.

light mech snipers are a little different since they can skirt a battle, pick off the wounded, and various other factors. your example is interesting, but not surprising, and not illustrative of the issue the game is experiencing - an issue in direct violation of what PGI themselves said they wanted to avoid - the "endlessly firing 4 mlaser jenner"

humourously your post does however illustrate that thte normal PPC's heat efficiency allows it to almost be on par with ballistics, further showcasing why the PPC and low heat ballistics combos are the most popular and effective choices.

[Bacl]

mania3c, on 03 February 2014 - 04:39 PM, said:

I can do 800-900 damage with dual PPC cicada pretty often

While my quad AC5 jagger was doing around 600-700 damage...(not using him anymore)..i think throwing random numbers is not helping anything..like my numbers..while they are not made up, they also say nothing..

Also i would like you to make some tests, could you run that same cicada but replace the PPc with large lasers? We dont play the same way at all but with your playstyle i wonder how much damage you can score at the end of the game, mind making a few rounds like that and share the damage you score? I m not really a medium pilote so i cant speak for that class.

What i do know is that the lower the tonnage the more heat efficient you are ( if it does make sense...) but running assaults with 4 large lasers are a waste of tonnage on a team, saddly most of my mechs are energy boats.....

Edited by Bacl, 04 February 2014 - 06:19 AM.

[Serpentbane]

Id still like to have extra hardpoints on the rear of the mechs. None for lights, a few for meds, more for heavies, and even more for Assaults.

This way one could llace HS on the back to make mechs more heat effective. These couldbe 2.0 HS also.

But, being a low armored area, hits in the back would easely destroy the HS, making the mech hot. Or, if balistic build have ammo there, they would easely risk ammo explotions.

This would not solve the problem, but make it a little better, and open for more tactical play as ripping HS of effectively makes the mech less effective in combat.

Also I do make sense for the assaults to have more hardpoints than lights.

[TB Freelancer]

Joseph Mallan, on 22 January 2014 - 04:31 AM, said:

This being said, 1 PPC and 6 Mediums on a Battlemaster needs to be more powerful! 23 double heat sinks(38.2 heat dispatation) should handle 34 points of heat like a Boss. To top it off I even have the cool run efficiency and you just can't get energy boats to run right! I should not be overheating.

That's because those weapons would produce 85 heat over 10 seconds if fired continuously. With heat sinks dissipating heat at table top rates, you would need 85 single heat sinks, or 46 (1.4) DHS (accounting for the 10 'true' DHS in the engine) to run that thing heat neutral.

With weapons firing about 4 times faster on average than TT turns, heat dissipation most definitely has to be looked at because the threshold acts as nothing more than a buffer and completely ignores the problem. Actually it makes the problem worse, because once you've overheated your Battlemaster you're waiting for it to cool down from the 70s or 80s prolonging the time you're useless.

Out of the gate from 0% heat sure you can fire most energy weapons just fine. But once you fill that buffer, you're reduced to TT rates of fire because your cooling is acting at TT rates.

Just some fun MWO facts.
Number of heat sinks required for heat neutrality;
Each medium laser needs 10 heat sinks
Each PPC needs 25 heat sinks
Each ERPPC needs 38 heat sinks
Each Large Laser needs 17 heat sinks
Each ER Large Laser needs 20 heat sinks

What we have right now is so ludicrously broken that an awful lot of stock builds stall out in around 10 seconds and need to spend more time cooling than fighting.

Ballistics aren't OP, neither is the instant damage of ballistic style weapons. They're simply benefiting from sitting below a certain threshold where the broken heat system leaves them and mixed builds largely unaffected. Being able to carry enough ammo to easily kill a dozen mechs and that ammo almost never exploding is another big benefit.

I've suggested this recently, but I think PGI should phase out the heat threshold entirely on heat sinks over the course of several months, and very slowly bump the heat dissipation that heat sinks produce while keeping a 2:1 ratio between double and (again 1.4 incrementally bumped up to 2.0) single.

Being a real time shooter, where things should end up is anyone's guess, particularly with all the weapons firing at rates anywhere from 2x to 20x faster than TT rates....


....sadly I expect another Rube Goldberg solution to the problem.