106 replies to this topic

[Roland]

Tesunie, on 08 January 2014 - 10:47 AM, said:

If you go by this ideology, then lasers should also shoot in one shot and hit only one location, instead of the beam durations we see now. Then, this topic should be about "doing lasers right" not "doing ac's right".

Honestly, they could.
The burn time of lasers was made in an attempt to combat what we saw in MW4, which was the utter dominance of laserboats, since they were hitscan weapons and did all their damage to one location.... which meant they were pretty much THE weapon to use. Something ridiculous like 85% of the shots fired in MW4 servers that tracked stats were laser shots.

However, while burn time did hamper laser dominance, it missed the key issue that comes from convergence. It didn't change the fact that you could combine a bunch if weapons to create huge alpha strike weapons.

Back in closed beta, prior to fixes to the netcode when travel time weapons were largely unusable for most players, what did you see? Mechs like the Hunchback 4p with huge numbers of medium or small lasers, and lots of speed to make travel time weapons miss due to netcode problems.

Then, PGI tried to nerf the small and medium lasers.

Then, once the netcode was fixed, the meta shifted to the large caliber weapons and PPC's. Why? Because they were the best way to generate large, point damage alpha strikes to a single location. Because that is the key to winning mechwarrior, and every single good player knows it. At one point, various bads disputed this notion that alpha strikes were king, but I think by now everyone realizes that this is just as true now as it was back in MW4.. which the old MW4 vets all tried to tell people.

PGI continues to try and make various changes to deal with this, but they are consistently just dancing around the real issue. {Scrap} like ghost heat was just a poor attempt to treat the symptoms, rather than the real problem.

Honestly, I personally don't mind the convergence... I don't mind having all my weapons hit one location. I can play that game.

However, the reason why I would tend to advocate for some kind of better convergence system at this point is that people keep complaining about the game that results from perfect convergence... and PGI kind of listens... but since they aren't fixing convergence, they are making OTHER changes which end up being even worse... They keep adding stupid {Scrap} to the game, like ghost heat, and gauss charging, in some misguided attempt to screw with weapons convergence without actually changing weapons convergence.

[verybad]

Roland, on 08 January 2014 - 10:18 AM, said:

Every AC20 in Battletech is single shot, and does its damage to a single location.

All the other talk is just fluff and doesn't mean anything. The garbage about different manufacturers and {Scrap} isn't actually part of the game. It has no impact on game balance.

Thank you!

I get so tired of people that think game design should be based around fluff that isn't even followed in the TT game.

If anything, lasers should have reduced fire times so they do more of their damage in single areas.

Nerfing everything isn't going to make the game better, just more nerfed...

[Bishop Steiner]

kesuga7, on 08 January 2014 - 10:57 AM, said:

a single shot 203mm i believe just to brace itself

Not so.

The only weapons listed in Battletech fluff that required "bracing" were Heavy Gauss Rifles, and those caused you to make a piloting roll if fired while moving, or fall over.

The ac20, in no form ever had such a restriction. Even the UAC version. And the Atlas certainly didn't. Heck the King Crab walked around with 2 of them, in it's arms (where the recoil impulse torque would be far worse) and the HBK-IIC had 2 UAC20s.

[Joseph Mallan]

FireSlade, on 08 January 2014 - 10:49 AM, said:

A quick an easy (may or may not be) to prevent weapon groupings from hitting a single point may just be in the whole aiming area of the game. PGI decided to go with instant aiming and close to instant convergence relying on skill to be the determining factor. That is fine and very unlikely to change.

My suggestion follows Newton’s Third Law of Motion and then uses a variable already in the game called impulse. Impulse is basically Kinetic force that causes our screens to shake every time we are hit with a projectile. By using impulse mixed with a math formula that would determine how much of a cone of fire to use; thus coming up with a Ghost Heat style balancing called “Recoil”. This would only matter if you fired more than 1 kinetic style weapon or a large caliber weapon in conjunction with others. So 6 MLs would still hit one point but 6 MLs + AC20 would spread the damage some or 2 AC10s may hit different locations. If the player/pilot waited between shots like if they fired the AC then waited 0.25-0.5 seconds before firing again that gives the mech time to absorb and compensate for the recoil allowing for pin point accuracy; but if they group too many weapons with impulse or do not allow for the mech to compensate then the damage spreads out some. Think of any FPS like Battlefront or even COD. Standing still and firing one shot while ADS and you get a bullet that hits the same spot every time. Now if you hold down the trigger and empty your magazine then you just spray the bullets and you may or may not kill the enemy.

This way we keep all the bonuses of ACs, PPCs, and the Gauss Rifle with less 30+ damage to a single location. It is simple, easy to understand (maybe not the way I said it), Cryengine is designed for something like this, and balances Ballistics some without the Ghost heat. No need to have Ghost heat for the AC2 or AC20 and lets us use the Ghost heat to balance the energy weapons. Now if only I can pass this idea to the Devs and see what they think.

I actually LOVE this idea! As a heavy weapons ***** I can definitely get behind this kinda thinking.




Did I just say I was a ***** and got behind something???

[Bishop Steiner]

verybad, on 08 January 2014 - 11:00 AM, said:

Thank you!



If anything, lasers should have reduced fire times so they do more of their damage in single areas.

THIS.

Give lasers the same durations as pulse lasers, and shorten the pulse laser duration even more. This would bring them back to par with PPC and Ballistics, considering their massive weight savings. Yes, I know you need Heatsinks too, but to drop an alp`ha and run, damage is damage. You can't expect heat neutrality on par with ballistics which also have to carry ammo (and can you know, run out, especially since you have to carry more ammo than in TT since everything has double armor)

[Joseph Mallan]

kesuga7, on 08 January 2014 - 10:55 AM, said:

hmm well the sarna ac 20 weapon varaint link you gave just redirected me to the main AC 20 page
whats the difference between all the damage in a single blow over a single shot like the 203 MM AC 20

Misquote sir, The Hunchback's AC20 removed 1/14 tons of armor in a single shot... If the Cannon was a rapid fire cannon it would read, 1 1/4 tons in a single burst. A single shot is just that One shot single projectile v single burst meaning multiple shells removing the armor.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Roland, on 08 January 2014 - 10:00 AM, said:

I know folks think that making AC's into some kind of trash burst fire weapon is useful, but it's really not, and it's gonna kill the weapon. The whole point of the AC20, even in the original battletech, was that it did 20 damage TO ONE LOCATION. This was WHY you used that gun. It was why it was better than 4 medium lasers. The problem that folks are generally running into isn't that the AC20 does point damage.. it's that when you combine a ton of guns, they all fuse into a single uber-gun. This has been a problem that has plagued mechwarrior FOREVER. We've seen the issue in every single mechwarrior title to date. A single AC20 in BT was a deadly weapon, because that single shot hitting a light mech's limb would tend to rip it off... or if it hit anyone's head, it'd kill that mech EVERY SINGLE TIME. The problem you're seeing in MWO, is that you can combine a bunch of weapons... like two AC20's, or PPC's and AC's, or whatever.. and suddenly you have the devastating power of the AC20, but at really long range. The answer isn't to make more weapons into burn time weapons... because the result is not going to change the fact that the best builds will still involve grouping together the largest alpha possible.

We've been saying this is the problem for a year.

But instead of fixing it, we get things like Ghost Heat. And the Gauss Rifle changes.

PGI has all but admitted an inability to fix/change convergence.

[MustrumRidcully]

Roland, on 08 January 2014 - 10:00 AM, said:

I know folks think that making AC's into some kind of trash burst fire weapon is useful, but it's really not, and it's gonna kill the weapon.

The whole point of the AC20, even in the original battletech, was that it did 20 damage TO ONE LOCATION.

This was WHY you used that gun. It was why it was better than 4 medium lasers.

The problem that folks are generally running into isn't that the AC20 does point damage.. it's that when you combine a ton of guns, they all fuse into a single uber-gun. This has been a problem that has plagued mechwarrior FOREVER. We've seen the issue in every single mechwarrior title to date.

A single AC20 in BT was a deadly weapon, because that single shot hitting a light mech's limb would tend to rip it off... or if it hit anyone's head, it'd kill that mech EVERY SINGLE TIME.

The problem you're seeing in MWO, is that you can combine a bunch of weapons... like two AC20's, or PPC's and AC's, or whatever.. and suddenly you have the devastating power of the AC20, but at really long range.

The answer isn't to make more weapons into burn time weapons... because the result is not going to change the fact that the best builds will still involve grouping together the largest alpha possible.

Since the weapon glue effect that has plagued Mechwarrior titles for so long is not going away in this game, we need other solutions.

I think a weapon that can deal 20 points of damage every 4 seconds has still a good battlefield use. Even if that damage comes in a burst of 5-10 projectiles over less than a second. And it might allow us to avoid the worst effects of weapon glue.

Let's not forget that in the TT, a Large Laser also delivers 8 damage in one single blow, which is a big reason to use it, and later we had Heavy Lasers that also mostly were about more damage per shot. Would you turn these lasers into single damage projectile weapons because their main job is to deal more damage per shot (at the price of tonnage and heat)?

[Joseph Mallan]

DaZur, on 08 January 2014 - 10:54 AM, said:

In fairness... I don't recall much QQ'ing over 25 point alphas.

It did start. It did, but I think I actually shamed it out of existence.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 08 January 2014 - 11:10 AM.

[FupDup]

MustrumRidcully, on 08 January 2014 - 11:08 AM, said:

Since the weapon glue effect that has plagued Mechwarrior titles for so long is not going away in this game, we need other solutions.

I think a weapon that can deal 20 points of damage every 4 seconds has still a good battlefield use. Even if that damage comes in a burst of 5-10 projectiles over less than a second. And it might allow us to avoid the worst effects of weapon glue.

Let's not forget that in the TT, a Large Laser also delivers 8 damage in one single blow, which is a big reason to use it, and later we had Heavy Lasers that also mostly were about more damage per shot. Would you turn these lasers into single damage projectile weapons because their main job is to deal more damage per shot (at the price of tonnage and heat)?

How about Heavy PPCs w/ Capacitors? Basically an energy AC/20 that can reach out to PPC range (although 20 heat per shot would utterly cripple it with our terribad slow heat dissipation).

[Alexandrix]

I don't know about being less effective or whatever.But,I'll tell you one thing...the chain firing AC's from MW3 were sooooo much more fun and way more satisfying than the piddly,underwhelming sounding ac's we have in MWO.

When you pulled the trigger on a mw3 AC there was a cool *Brrrrt* sound while the gun fired off a few shots.
like this:

http://youtu.be/4olzluu1M4E?t=2m8s

and of course the sound was beefier and more impactful with the bigger ac's,I think the one in that vid is an ac 5 or 10,not sure.OH and get this....if you hit a light mech with enough rounds from the ac20 stream,it would knock the light mech on it's ***! how awesome would that be?

So,once again...even if it would be less effective it would be a hell of a lot more fun and satisfying ,for me anyways.And that's what games are supposed to be about right? fun? does anyone remember when we used to play games just for FUN??

[Sephlock]

You know, there is another possibility: Leaving the AC/20 as a single shot weapon, and having the smaller autocannons fire faster as described by the OP.


Alternatively, they could have autocannon behavior dependent upon chassis- so the Hunchback and Atlas could have single shot AC/20s, but a Raven would have a rapid fire model AC/20.

There'd be some issues with regards to how the same AC/20 somehow morphs between mechs, but that's neither here nor there .

[kesuga7]

Joseph Mallan, on 08 January 2014 - 11:07 AM, said:

Misquote sir, The Hunchback's AC20 removed 1/14 tons of armor in a single shot... If the Cannon was a rapid fire cannon it would read, 1 1/4 tons in a single burst. A single shot is just that One shot single projectile v single burst meaning multiple shells removing the armor.

yea i burst and single shot , i was just wonked out on blow being something different over single shot heh
however battletech (lore,TT, games Etc) isn't too consistant with AC fire hit types lol
like i said though if recoil was added into the game and going at faster speeds/jumpjetting would cause your mech to be less stable it would be a good non-weapon buff/nerf


remember its Pinpoint Ac 20 damage where damage is based on Dice rolls unlike ingame with higher fire rates,aiming,armor Etc. that are not present in Tapletop
Nerfs and buffs to put emphasis on a weapons or mechs role is always welcomed to me such as a speed nerf to a 270 brawler implied weapon and the nerf to me isn't because i couldn't adapt or stuff like that :L , but make it more suited for its role


Edit: why is a speed nerf to a brawler purposed weapon so bad anyway?! (It was intended to be used within 320 meters in MWO)

Edited by kesuga7, 08 January 2014 - 11:31 AM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Joseph Mallan, on 08 January 2014 - 11:07 AM, said:

Misquote sir, The Hunchback's AC20 removed 1/14 tons of armor in a single shot... If the Cannon was a rapid fire cannon it would read, 1 1/4 tons in a single burst. A single shot is just that One shot single projectile v single burst meaning multiple shells removing the armor.

more to the point, it doesn't matter.

The AC was always a generic catchall for Autoloading Cannon, which can be any cannon with an autoloader, be it s 23mm russian rapid fire, to a paladin 155mm single shot howitzer. It's why different cannons listed as AC5s ranged from 75mm to 120mm. (And let's face it, a 120mm rhinemetal smoothbore going full auto? If you can't figure out the engineering hurdles there, well, you don't belong in this conversation). They were both single shot and burst weapons. Yes the novel writers defaulted to burst weapons, because it makes for a cooler read to think that your mech has a 180mm machine gun.

And most of the game devs, like the novel writers never served a day in the military, or remotely understood how firearms work, let alone heavy weapons, so relying on their fluff descriptions is like relying on hollywood movies for gun facts.

The devs for THIS GAME, chose to use single shot weapons to help differentiate between the weapon types, vs DPS and such. So they ARE and will be single shot weapons, period. I for one, like the distinction between weapon classes.

What IS incumbent on the devs to do, is use the peripheral coding for things like convergence, recoil, movement induced inaccuracy to reign them into balance.

But hey, that is not a nice splashy overreactionary QQ headline to splash, so it makes too much sense for most of the forums to grasp.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 08 January 2014 - 11:16 AM.

[kesmai]

an ac shot in Battletech can range from 1 up to 10+ projectiles.
but hey thats just fluff.
a shot is a measurement for the cannister of ammunition loaded into the autocannon.

Edited by kesmai, 08 January 2014 - 11:19 AM.

[xMEPHISTOx]

kesmai, on 08 January 2014 - 09:54 AM, said:

stop the fantasy numbers and start with modelling ac´s according to lore.
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Autocannon

While I agree with you and initially was quite irritated when read that they had nerfed the AC20/10, however after having played my Victor VTR9S (2ppc/1ac20) last night (videos will be available soon on my youtube of post nerf ac20 http://www.youtube.c...MEPHISTOxGaming) I realized it was not all that bad. It was definitely a marked difference in the velocity but still very usable, just do not shoot outside of 4-500 meters at those distances it takes to long and target can maneuver out of the way for the most part, not worth the potential waste of ammo vs. likelihood of hitting.
I am not sure of the velocity according to lore, but considering the extreme weight of the shell the decreased velocity seems relevant in all honesty.

The bottom line is the same with all nerfs. They only hurt those who whine for them as the good players will adapt and adjust and continue stomping the baddies as they continue to whine instead of learning to be better. The 'It cant be me that sucks, the weapon is OP' mentality is so fail and those who have that attitude will never be good.

Note - The Sarna link you have provided gives us no information on the BT lore velocity (only says 'high velocity' but no specifics) for the AC20, so how are we to compare to what we have>?


***edited for addition.

Edited by xMEPHISTOx, 08 January 2014 - 11:27 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

kesmai, on 08 January 2014 - 11:18 AM, said:

an ac shot in Battletech can range from 1 up to 10+ projectiles.
but hey thats just fluff.
a shot is a measurement for the cannister of ammunition loaded into the autocannon.

Precisely. It was the discretion of the writer. I'd be terrified of an AC that could throw 90 203mm shells a minute!!! One every 4-5 seconds is good for me!

[Mister Blastman]

Roland, on 08 January 2014 - 10:00 AM, said:

I know folks think that making AC's into some kind of trash burst fire weapon is useful, but it's really not, and it's gonna kill the weapon.

The whole point of the AC20, even in the original battletech, was that it did 20 damage TO ONE LOCATION.

This was WHY you used that gun. It was why it was better than 4 medium lasers.

The problem that folks are generally running into isn't that the AC20 does point damage.. it's that when you combine a ton of guns, they all fuse into a single uber-gun. This has been a problem that has plagued mechwarrior FOREVER. We've seen the issue in every single mechwarrior title to date.

A single AC20 in BT was a deadly weapon, because that single shot hitting a light mech's limb would tend to rip it off... or if it hit anyone's head, it'd kill that mech EVERY SINGLE TIME.

The problem you're seeing in MWO, is that you can combine a bunch of weapons... like two AC20's, or PPC's and AC's, or whatever.. and suddenly you have the devastating power of the AC20, but at really long range.

The answer isn't to make more weapons into burn time weapons... because the result is not going to change the fact that the best builds will still involve grouping together the largest alpha possible.

Well the problem is the developers refuse to remove/fix/correct convergence. They either...

a. Don't want to
b. Don't know how to
c. Don't care

Convergence is the real problem. It has been for over a year and a half. They haven't even once made an attempt to address it nor have they even commented much on it.

[Varent]

xMEPHISTOx, on 08 January 2014 - 11:18 AM, said:

While I agree with you and initially was quite irritated when read that they had nerfed the AC20/10, however after having played my Victor VTR9S (2ppc/1ac20) last night (videos will be available soon on my youtube of post nerf ac20 http://www.youtube.c...MEPHISTOxGaming) I realized it was not all that bad. It was definitely a marked difference in the velocity but still very usable, just do not shoot outside of 4-500 meters at those distances it takes to long and target can maneuver out of the way for the most part, not worth the potential waste of ammo vs. likelihood of hitting.
I am not sure of the velocity according to lore, but considering the extreme weight of the shell the decreased velocity seems relevant in all honesty.

The bottom line is the same with all nerfs. They only hurt those who whine for them as the good players will adapt and adjust and continue stomping the baddies as they continue to whine instead of learning to be better. The 'It cant be me that sucks, the weapon is OP' mentality is so fail and those who have that attitude will never be good.

Well said.

Mister Blastman, on 08 January 2014 - 11:25 AM, said:

Well the problem is the developers refuse to remove/fix/correct convergence. They either...

a. Don't want to
b. Don't know how to
c. Don't care

Convergence is the real problem. It has been for over a year and a half. They haven't even once made an attempt to address it nor have they even commented much on it.

they have already said convergence works against true hit reg.

[Shade4x]

The problem is the combination of weapons, not the individual weapon itself. This is one of those points that TT does not translate well into actual game play. I think this AC change was one of the first changes where it didn't make the game worse, like the heat scaling, and it honestly made sense. AC/20 was always a short range weapon were AC/2's and Gauss Rifles were long range. Though the Gauss charge was rather stupid in my oppinion.

The problem is that it is far to easy to specialize in long range high damage alpha's that allow you to cool down heat with little to no danger of being attacked. This is mostly a map design issue. Once SRM's get fixed and if they make some adjustments to brawling, these high point alpha's won't matter as much, since you really can keep up 30 point alpha's with the heat the way it is. Increasing the armor for all mech's at a flat rate would do this, so would editing the maps to allow for multiple brawling paths. Decreasing projectile speed helps, but most people are not using ac/20's to snipe, they are using 2x UAC/5 2x PPC's. If they would increase the useability of Pulse lasers, it would go a long way to making the game more fun.

As for making AC's shoot multiple rounds, that is cool and all, but it's essentially turning all AC's into lasers. They would need something like bonus to stripping armor, or comulative screen shake to make any type of sense. Think of the machine gun. What works better, a machine gun or a small lasers? They have the same dps. The MG also has a bonus to internals. Yet i'd rather have 4 small lasers then 4 machine guns.