98 replies to this topic

[MeiSooHaityu]

If there was one thing I would like to see the UA/C5 get, it is a toggleable fire rate. Have key dedicated to a toggle mode similar to the ECM.

Either have it normal A/C5 mode with no jam, or have it Ultra mode with random jam chance. This allows you to alter the fire rate on the fly in-game.

[Krujiente]

Mister D, on 31 January 2014 - 06:33 AM, said:

Lots of discussion about the current state of the UAC-5.
Thought I'd start my own.

Uac-5 seems to be in a state where it doesn't really work very well, and is less than reliable at best.
Had a brainstorm and would like to share my thoughts.

If it were possible to get the UAC changed, which of these would you guys prefer.

I came up with 6 reasonable alternatives, so please say which # you like or if you prefer it how it is.

1. Give UAC-5 its own internal heat regulation per weapon, allow it to fire a minimum of 2 shots before internal heat starts to roll the dice on jamming mechanic. Start at 0% chance for jam on first 2 shots, each shot after the first 2 adds 8-10% chance to jam with a maximum of 25% chance to jam. On a jam, C2J is reset to 0%, and 4 second cooldown before you can fire again.

2. Give UAC-5 a toggle mode via keybind, or as alternative code when its set to chainfire.
MODE 1 = Fixed rate of fire 1 shot every 1.2 - 1.3 seconds (slightly faster than AC-5)
MODE 2 = Burst fire (similar to suggestion 1) Allow first 2 shots always, every shot after that increases chance to jam by 8-10% with a maximum 25% chance to jam. On jam, reset C2J, 4 second cooldown to clear jam.

3. Give UAC-5 a full auto spindown mechanic, remove jam mechanic, start off at 0.8 shots per second (midpoint between AC-2 and AC-5), and on a curve, slow down the rate of fire until its at 1 shot every 5 seconds, give it a 5 second cooldown before its at fullspeed again.

4. Give UAC-5 a full-auto spinup, remove jam mechanic, starting at 1 shot every 2.5 seconds, and on a curve, speed up its ROF and multiply its heat to match over the course of say.. 4-5 seconds? Each time you let go of the firebutton, the ROF resets to 1 shot per 2.5seconds and starts the spinup fresh.

5. Give UAC-5 Fixed rate of fire, remove jam mechanic, midpoint between AC-2 and AC-5, say 1 second per shot, with heat at 1.5ish? to start?

6. Give UAC-5 its old stats back, remove jam mechanic, 3 shot burst with cone of fire spread slightly at 2 heat per shot, with 5 second cooldown. (similar in function to LBX mechanic) (dps will match Gauss roughly, but with inaccuracy because of spread)

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"edit"
Proposed change to UAC-5

I like what a couple of you guys have said about making the jamming mechanic a mini-game type deal.
So how about this?

1. Give UAC-5 its own internal heat regulation per weapon (as is)

Holding down the firebutton fires UAC-5 at a fixed rate of 1.45 (0.05 faster than standard AC-5)

Tapping shots allows for Burst fire.

UAC-5 allows you to fire a minimum of 2 shots before internal heat starts to roll the dice on jamming mechanic.

Start at 0% Chance To Jam on first 2 shots, each shot after the first 2 adds 8% C2J

UAC-5 has 30% maximum chance to jam.
On a jam, C2J is reset to 0%, and 4 second cooldown before you can fire again.

A jam can be cleared by pressing the firebutton again with a 40-45% chance to clear instantly, but at the cost of 1 Shell per try. (sound fair, or does it need to be 50%?)

Waiting out the 4 second cooldown on a jam, you do not lose a shell.

May need a .25 second delay when the jam starts, so you don't accidentially force a roll of the dice on clearing the jam.

Since the weapon will recieve an 8% chance to jam on its third shot regardless of whether you burst fire the 4th, this is the tricky part because to beat macros there will need to be a passive timer which will count any mouse clicks between firing intervals I think.
I dunno though guys, afterall this is going to be one heck of a job for the coder who would have to do all that
"edit"

Made a small illustration too.

See, Mister D, the statement at the beginning of the thread Ultra being ineffective is... well. false. The UAC5 has a 75% to successfully double your DPS ( with reoccuring checks every time you skip the cooldown ) over an AC5 for 1 Critical slot, and 1 ton extra. If you don't shoot before your cooldown spins around, you still have a 100% effective AC5. Your suggestions make it in all ways better then a regular AC5, for one singular extra ton. Let's not forget the AC5 is currently THE meta autocannon. It will be Ultra-pocolypse again. I was there and I don't want to see it again. An idea, would be to decrease the jam chance and maybe have a compouding one like you suggest (as long as you don't get to fire more then 2 per cooldown, this isn't a rotary 5 its an ultra 5 despite what it looks like) There is an flavor-piece that says that the vibrations from ultra firing causes accuracy issues. Why not implement that as part of the trade off from it being EMPHATICALLY better for one ton? I'd still use it. Every time you double tap the cooldown it sends a shot errant in a small cone so maybe you can't splat the same spot over and over again, but you can use it for brawling more effectively. I like ultras how they are, but I would also like more weapon-variety, these mechanics that are thought about are complicated. More complicated then the ghost heat system you all whine about. But it may add another twist of give and take to mech building.

[Cyborne Elemental]

Wall of text hurts my eyes.

The whole reason behind thinking of ways to improve to jamming mechanic, is for SINGLE UAC-5 usage.
It should be a viable weapon for medium mechs as well as assaults.

After alot of thought and play with the weapon, it is indeed a powerful weapon, but the 30% chance to jam after even a single shot and the current mechanics of the UAC5 destroys the usefulness of it as a single primary.

Maybe it needs a little more heat per shot as well on top of my proposed adjustment, to balance out Dual or Triple setups.
That way it will still useful as a single weapon, but mechs with more tonnage to play with will have to allocate more weight into HS than they would otherwise, thus balancing things slowly towards "good" instead of huge nerfs in 1 way or the other.

Look what happened to the AC-20, it was deemed so powerful and complained about so much that they not only nerfed it hard, but nerfed the next best weapon as well.

Balance things out slowly from patch to patch, instead of making huge changes in how stuff works.

Between myself and the good ideas of the other posters here, a better solution has been presented.

Maybe it needs more refinements still to be accepted, but I feel a good balance has been layed out.

Odds are that the devs will never even see this thread, and odds are even lower that my suggestion will even be considered for implementation.

You guys sure are fighting pretty hard against its improvement for gameplay sake across all mechs.

I don't play META style mechs, and I refuse to be forced into playing that way ever, even if it means I get beat down every single game by easy noobish setups such as trip PPC, or 2xppc + 1 Gauss poptart configs, or trip or even quad UAC5 loads.

I won't even field UAC-5 in a game anymore, its just not worth the risk, and thats not how it should work.
When a weapon has to be nerfed to the point of near uselessness or cheated around with Macros and scripts, it may as well either be 1 of 2 things, fixed, or removed.

I would prefer to see it fixed.

Edited the first post with heat changes and small refinement.
btw are you guys able to see the graph picture I posted?

Edited by Mister D, 04 February 2014 - 09:23 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Krujiente, on 03 February 2014 - 02:05 PM, said:

See, Mister D, the statement at the beginning of the thread Ultra being ineffective is... well. false. The UAC5 has a 75% to successfully double your DPS ( with reoccuring checks every time you skip the cooldown ) over an AC5 for 1 Critical slot, and 1 ton extra. If you don't shoot before your cooldown spins around, you still have a 100% effective AC5. Your suggestions make it in all ways better then a regular AC5, for one singular extra ton. Let's not forget the AC5 is currently THE meta autocannon. It will be Ultra-pocolypse again. I was there and I don't want to see it again. An idea, would be to decrease the jam chance and maybe have a compouding one like you suggest (as long as you don't get to fire more then 2 per cooldown, this isn't a rotary 5 its an ultra 5 despite what it looks like) There is an flavor-piece that says that the vibrations from ultra firing causes accuracy issues. Why not implement that as part of the trade off from it being EMPHATICALLY better for one ton? I'd still use it. Every time you double tap the cooldown it sends a shot errant in a small cone so maybe you can't splat the same spot over and over again, but you can use it for brawling more effectively. I like ultras how they are, but I would also like more weapon-variety, these mechanics that are thought about are complicated. More complicated then the ghost heat system you all whine about. But it may add another twist of give and take to mech building.

On TT you had about a 35% chance to hit with 2 shells double tapping. So on a DpS perspective it should rate between an AC5 and AC10 for DpS counters. At last that is my feel on the issue. It should be better than an AC5 but not quite as good as an AC10.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

I haven't read this whole thread, but I dislike the concept that I can use a macro to safely fire my UAC/5 indefinitely, and still doubletap if I want.

If you are going to do it, make it so I don't have to use a macro. I hate macros.

[SI The Joker]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 04 February 2014 - 09:51 AM, said:

I haven't read this whole thread, but I dislike the concept that I can use a macro to safely fire my UAC/5 indefinitely, and still doubletap if I want.

If you are going to do it, make it so I don't have to use a macro. I hate macros.

Well apparently I was under a misconception about how jamming worked, so if you looked at my post early in this thread... disregard it. Supposedly the UAC5 and AC5 are exactly the same now, except that the UAC5 can jam, weighs more and has a double tap mechanic. I'm still not buying that, though.

I went and played in the testing grounds counting how many shots it actually takes an AC5 versus a UAC5 to remove limbs, core mechs etc. UAC5 clocked in at 1 less shot than the AC5 to remove limbs / core a mech consistently.

Can someone help me understand why that would be the case? It looks to me that the UAC5 does do more damage?

[Cyborne Elemental]

Yeah, UAC5 is a hardsell for any mech that can't run duals.

If you're using it in say a Blackjack, or Cicada as your primary and it jams at anytime during combat, you're pretty screwed.

[Cyborne Elemental]

After adding in heatup during burst, a dual setup will generate the same heat per damage as an AC-10.

Seems fair, still lighter, still 1 less crit, potential to do AC10 damage, just alot smoother jamming mechanics so that lighter mechs can actually use it now as a single primary as well.

Restricting it to only being useful at 18 tons in dual setups or more is still a bad idea because it not only encourages boating it, it requires it.

[Fiona Marshe]

One of the major problems is that the UAC jam time is too short (4 seconds!!?!!? woopeee). A triple UAC build just waits for the cooldown then repeats again.

The Jam time needs to be at least 12-20 seconds to force them to disengage.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Fiona Marshe, on 06 February 2014 - 02:28 AM, said:

One of the major problems is that the UAC jam time is too short (4 seconds!!?!!? woopeee). A triple UAC build just waits for the cooldown then repeats again. The Jam time needs to be at least 12-20 seconds to force them to disengage.

Except the jam time is brutal when it's your only UAC and your main weapon.

My Shadow Hawk was running one UAC5, and I finally got fed up and swapped for a regular AC5 due to the jam's happening at the worst time and leaving me in real bad shape.

[Joseph Mallan]

See that is the trade off to have a gun fire above its cyclic limit. It sucks but it is supposed to be the drawback to having that volume of fire. I hardly used Ultras on TT as I did not like the risk of jamming.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Joseph Mallan, on 06 February 2014 - 05:48 AM, said:

See that is the trade off to have a gun fire above its cyclic limit. It sucks but it is supposed to be the drawback to having that volume of fire. I hardly used Ultras on TT as I did not like the risk of jamming.

Yeah...except the drawback gets mitigated as you add more UAC's.

It's always the problem with this game for some reason.

One of a weapon tends to be mediocre/balanced. Put 2 or 3 of them, and pair them with 2 or 3 similar weapons and it all goes out the window.

It's why I've always been a proponent of varied load outs. But it really is an issue with the hardpoint system when you start getting to the larger mechs.

[Joseph Mallan]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 06 February 2014 - 06:28 AM, said:

Yeah...except the drawback gets mitigated as you add more UAC's.

It's always the problem with this game for some reason.

One of a weapon tends to be mediocre/balanced. Put 2 or 3 of them, and pair them with 2 or 3 similar weapons and it all goes out the window.

It's why I've always been a proponent of varied load outs. But it really is an issue with the hardpoint system when you start getting to the larger mechs.

Momma always says, "To much of a good thing, is bad for you."

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Joseph Mallan, on 06 February 2014 - 06:29 AM, said:

Momma always says, "To much of a good thing, is bad for you."

Preach on.

[Krujiente]

Mister D, on 04 February 2014 - 08:20 AM, said:

Wall of text hurts my eyes.

The whole reason behind thinking of ways to improve to jamming mechanic, is for SINGLE UAC-5 usage.
It should be a viable weapon for medium mechs as well as assaults.

After alot of thought and play with the weapon, it is indeed a powerful weapon, but the 30% chance to jam after even a single shot and the current mechanics of the UAC5 destroys the usefulness of it as a single primary.

Maybe it needs a little more heat per shot as well on top of my proposed adjustment, to balance out Dual or Triple setups.
That way it will still useful as a single weapon, but mechs with more tonnage to play with will have to allocate more weight into HS than they would otherwise, thus balancing things slowly towards "good" instead of huge nerfs in 1 way or the other.

Look what happened to the AC-20, it was deemed so powerful and complained about so much that they not only nerfed it hard, but nerfed the next best weapon as well.

Balance things out slowly from patch to patch, instead of making huge changes in how stuff works.

Between myself and the good ideas of the other posters here, a better solution has been presented.

Maybe it needs more refinements still to be accepted, but I feel a good balance has been layed out.

Odds are that the devs will never even see this thread, and odds are even lower that my suggestion will even be considered for implementation.

You guys sure are fighting pretty hard against its improvement for gameplay sake across all mechs.

I don't play META style mechs, and I refuse to be forced into playing that way ever, even if it means I get beat down every single game by easy noobish setups such as trip PPC, or 2xppc + 1 Gauss poptart configs, or trip or even quad UAC5 loads.

I won't even field UAC-5 in a game anymore, its just not worth the risk, and thats not how it should work.
When a weapon has to be nerfed to the point of near uselessness or cheated around with Macros and scripts, it may as well either be 1 of 2 things, fixed, or removed.

I would prefer to see it fixed.

Edited the first post with heat changes and small refinement.
btw are you guys able to see the graph picture I posted?

Its totally worth the risk, I use SINGLE ULTRAS all the time. You just don't hold down the fire button when you aren't in cover. You can spray all you want when you can just let it jam you hide. If you get stuck in close quarters or in the open, you should be torso twisting and getting shots popped off where you can often times not really getting a huge chance to invoke the jam until you get the enemy mech weak enough to hit the big shiny alpha button. Sending a salvo of SRMs and BLAPBLAPBLAP careening towards a vital section,

Joseph Mallan, on 04 February 2014 - 09:40 AM, said:

On TT you had about a 35% chance to hit with 2 shells double tapping. So on a DpS perspective it should rate between an AC5 and AC10 for DpS counters. At last that is my feel on the issue. It should be better than an AC5 but not quite as good as an AC10.

it has LESS of a chance to jam in this when double tapping. I don't really get your logic there. It IS better then the AC5 because it IS an AC5, with a double tap risk/reward ability. All of this while still being in most cases better then the AC10, because the AC10 is currently in a pretty sorry place.

[Krujiente]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 04 February 2014 - 09:51 AM, said:

I haven't read this whole thread, but I dislike the concept that I can use a macro to safely fire my UAC/5 indefinitely, and still doubletap if I want.

If you are going to do it, make it so I don't have to use a macro. I hate macros.

I also don't use a macro, I just watch the cooldown bar/get the rhythm down. I have a pretty good internal clock though I dunno. I would like a select fire option, but I don't think the weapon needs a buff.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Krujiente, on 06 February 2014 - 02:12 PM, said:

I also don't use a macro, I just watch the cooldown bar/get the rhythm down. I have a pretty good internal clock though I dunno. I would like a select fire option, but I don't think the weapon needs a buff.

I have times when I can get into a rhythm, but other's where it's really hard too. But in the end it stinks that I can use a macro to circumvent the whole process.

I don't think it needs a buff, I just want them to look at the mechanic.

[Cyborne Elemental]

What if the JAM cooldown was up higher, like 8 seconds then? Then the Unjam mechanic has a more solid purpose.
I just worry that if its that high, players are just going to be mashing the unjam and wasting tons of ammo.

I would still love to get a smaller variant of the LBX or UAC to deal with lights, something that can fire fast.
AC-2 probably used to be good at it, but you can't stagger shots without melting down now.

Edited by Mister D, 09 February 2014 - 12:07 PM.

[Cimarb]

Mister D, on 09 February 2014 - 12:04 PM, said:

What if the JAM cooldown was up higher, like 8 seconds then? Then the Unjam mechanic has a more solid purpose.
I just worry that if its that high, players are just going to be mashing the unjam and wasting tons of ammo.

I would still love to get a smaller variant of the LBX or UAC to deal with lights, something that can fire fast.
AC-2 probably used to be good at it, but you can't stagger shots without melting down now.

It should be high to make the unjam mechanism needed. 8-10 seconds would be a minimum, IMO.

If the autocannons were normalized, instead of all being variants of an AC20 like they currently are, then you would have those smaller variants.