110 replies to this topic

[Khobai]

With clan uacs coming they need to change how pinpoint works.

Daishi with x3 uac20s does 120 damage in less than 4 seconds (assuming .5 delays for ghost heat)

Pgi simply cant leave autocannons alone and expect uac20s not to completely break the game

[Bishop Steiner]

Khobai, on 09 February 2014 - 03:44 PM, said:

With clan uacs coming they need to change how pinpoint works.

Daishi with x3 uac20s does 120 damage in less than 4 seconds (assuming .5 delays for ghost heat)

Pgi simply cant leave autocannons alone and expect uac20s not to completely break the game

Heh. That's easy and ghost heat IS the solution. Second shot of the UAC would be a second ac20 shot in under .5 seconds, thus double tapping one automatically incurs ghost heat. It escalates from there.

[Black Arachne]

Jman5, on 07 February 2014 - 01:40 PM, said:

There has been a lot of hemming and hawing over the last year about what to do about jump snipers, pinpoint precision weapons, and PPCs specifically.

If PPCs are central to a lot of these problematic builds, why not just reduce the raw damage of PPC's? This way you reduce the overall damage of these high alpha pinpoint builds, increase Time to Kill, lower the amount of 1-hit item crits, and create better balance for weapons that aren't as accurate.

Instead of 10 damage, make the PPC do 8 damage.

PGI has shown they are willing to alter damage values for SRMs, LRMs, machine guns, and lasers. Why not change the PPC to something a little lower? 10+ precision damage introduces a whole new advantage that doesn't exist on weapons that are less than 10. You automatically 1-hit kill items any time you crit an exposed component.

Even if alternative lasers+ballistic builds have technically better DPS or damage/heat, you can't just slap Large Lasers on a jump sniper and continue business as usual. You have to use PPCs for your energy slots.

KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)

Apply that to Ballistics - energy weapons are already hampered a lot.

[Khobai]

Bishop Steiner, on 09 February 2014 - 04:06 PM, said:

Heh. That's easy and ghost heat IS the solution. Second shot of the UAC would be a second ac20 shot in under .5 seconds, thus double tapping one automatically incurs ghost heat. It escalates from there.

Ghost heat isn't a solution at all. You can Macro up the three uac20s to fire .5 seconds apart and there's no ghost heat at all. 20x6 damage. Even an Atlas is dead in two or three firings.

Autocannons are gonna have to change to burst fire I don't see any other way. Even heavily nerfed Clan weapons make our current weapons look like hello kitty bubble guns by comparison.

Edited by Khobai, 09 February 2014 - 05:25 PM.

[FupDup]

Bishop Steiner, on 09 February 2014 - 04:06 PM, said:

Heh. That's easy and ghost heat IS the solution. Second shot of the UAC would be a second ac20 shot in under .5 seconds, thus double tapping one automatically incurs ghost heat. It escalates from there.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but doesn't the current Ultra 5, if double-tapped, fire its second bullet 0.5 seconds after the first bullet? If so, that means that the Ultra 20 bypasses heat by definition. And even if that isn't how the current Ultra 5 works, you can just do this extremely, intricately difficult thing I like to call "waiting slightly longer than 0.5 seconds to fire again." It's super effective. You can still take advantage of double-tap without firing two bullets within 0.5 seconds. Honestly, even if the Clan UAC/20 fired 20 individual pellets per shot like an LBX, being able to double-tap with that thing would still utterly break this game in half.

That is a 12-ton, 8-slot weapon capable of dealing 40 damage within a very short period of time. Even if it was spread out like a buckshot, that would be an incredibly powerful weapon. Now imagine that it quite probably will have its damage split between only 2 projectiles. Even if you made it fire at literally random body locations like TT or our current SSRMs, it would still crush most of the mechs in this game. This is a 12-ton weapon that can carry the firepower of a Jagerbomb, by itself. Now remember that you can carry more weapons than just the singular CUAC/20. Prepare for a time-to-kill that makes Call of Doody look like Hello Kitty Island Adventure.


Remember, heat is designed such that firing "too many" of a weapon in less than 0.5 seconds incurs a heat penalty. If you wait 0.5 seconds or longer, you are immune to heat. If you don't fire twice within 0.5 seconds, you ain't penalized. That is how heat works. And that is part of why it blows so hard; because an individually overpowered weapon can just laugh at it with impunity.

Edited by FupDup, 09 February 2014 - 05:37 PM.

[wanderer]

Quote

and the real culprit remains, convergence.

And since we can't fix that from the point of "everything hits the crosshair'd target", we need to fix it in terms of letting the target have options to spread damage/the weapon itself spreads/splashes. Fire eight mediums at something immobile and it burns, hit a moving target and those lasers end up cutting into 2-3 locations, hit a fast enough target and some damage gets lost as the sights slip off-target entirely. Other weapons that can deliver damage to a single spot need similar fixes, and that's the AC and the PPC at this point.

Quote

if you make weapons do splash damage then you shoot yourself in the foot when it comes to torso twisting to protect cherry red spots.

Why look, a potential benefit for PPC's vs. damaged targets.

[Rhent]

1. Scale JJ number needed for vertical height by weight class to poptart. LIght Mechs no penalty. Medium Mech slight penalty. Heavy Mechs penalty. Assault Mechs heavy penalty.

2. PPC fires a ball of plasma that hits for 5 damage and the remaining 5 points are a tail like a laser blast, so that if the target is torso turning the damage will be spread out.

Problem SOLVED.

[Tw1stedMonkey]

Trauglodyte, on 09 February 2014 - 12:43 PM, said:

Again, splash isn't a bad idea but it doesn't necessarily solve anything. If you can still mount 4-6 of them and only have to marginally pay attention to heat, then having them splash didn't solve anything. Furthermore, you make the PPC a semi-acceptable weapon for long range fire and crappy up close, which is fine, but then you turn the ER PPC, which is hotter than a Caustic Valley, Tourmaline, and Terra Therma three way, into utter garbage because you pay 15 heat for a long ranged energy ***** slap. Very few use them now and it would become even less with the change.

I swear, I keep saying this in just about every thread:

1. Remove the Lock Arms To Torso - it was intended to help new player but has been abused and bastardized by the meta community to get around the JJ nerfs

2. Fix JJs so that they're not as monstrous as they are now (needs a longer thrust and recharge w/ a turn nerf based on a static number for the JJ class instead of being locked into the mech's ground based turning rate and more heat)

3. Work on current weapons that are NOT in the meta (ie. LRMs, SRMs, and Pulse Weapons)

4. Add in heat based penalties once mech exceeds 40% of its heat capacity. These would include:

• the reduction of all non-heat sink based efficiencies up to -200% of current (if owned)
  
• HUD flicker and removal
  
• current JJ spread applied as a mech heats up to 200% of current

The last one is the biggest and most effective way of changing the current game. We have the mechanic in game already but probably 99% of the population doesn't even realize it. In the June 6th patch, JJs were altered to cause cockpit shake, reticle shake and *drum roll* add arm based weapon spread. We just need to apply this to the game as an on going environmental constraint. If we can get the game there doing just that, then talking about adding splash or burst mechanics may just end up being academic.

Boating 4-6 ppcs has already been solved by ghost heat, so why does it matter? The splash also helps newer or less skilled players by lessening the impact of perfect aim. Additionally it increases combat times and reduces"Coring" issues in some mechs with small LT/RT that rarely get targeted due to hitbox design/issues. Although I don't like lights (lol), it could also help with one-two shotting component problems that mechs like the locust are vulnerble to.

And so you are saying they have weapon spread implemented in-game right now for arm mounted weapons? That is a good start. I think fully actuated arms should have slightly more spread than single actuator arms (ie raven/stalker), with the least spread going with non-actuated torso mounts. The more I think about it the more I like the spread solution as long as it doesn't hurt single weapons or chain firing as much as the 30+ pinpoint shots (and without nerfing single/dual PPCs as much since they are a fairly hot build and vulnerable to close range.)

I don't really see arm lock as a feature that needs to be removed because some mechs have really bogus hardpoint designs that benefit from the arm lock (ie the Pretty baby's hardpoints are partially in the arms for both missiles and energy.) I do see how it could be abused to get better pinpoint damage though so it may need to be looked at.

Edited by Tw1stedMonkey, 10 February 2014 - 08:27 AM.

[Mazzyplz]

yes nerf my ppc awesome that cant fly and overheats in 1 shot... it's OP!!!!

maybe after making my ppc awesome useless you will be able to defeat flying victors with autocannons - idk how but hey! seems that logic is not that important here


also, why don't we buff autocannons while we're at it.
it's not like ppc users ever need to fight AC users, right? lets put the energy builds right in the trash, and if a ppc user wants to defend himself from an AC user, make his engine explode instantly! pretty sweet idea huh?

Edited by Mazzyplz, 10 February 2014 - 08:26 AM.

[Kazma]

JJs are definetly not the problem. PPC Poptarts would still do 30 pinpoint damage on long range even without them.

I just searched for another suggestion I've seen some time ago and found it:
http://mwomercs.com/...391-ppc-damage/
probably the best idea I've seen so far, but very unlikely to be ever implemented because that'd be too much work for PGI
This would make them something between Laser and AC weapons

There was also a much simpler suggestion to make make the damage and heat by half but increase reload.
http://mwomercs.com/...crazy-ppc-idea/

[Mazzyplz]

Kazma, on 10 February 2014 - 08:25 AM, said:

JJs are definetly not the problem. PPC Poptarts would still do 30 pinpoint damage on long range even without them.

I just searched for another suggestion I've seen some time ago and found it:
http://mwomercs.com/...391-ppc-damage/
probably the best idea I've seen so far, but very unlikely to be ever implemented because that'd be too much work for PGI
This would make them something between Laser and AC weapons

There was also a much simpler suggestion to make make the damage and heat by half but increase reload.
http://mwomercs.com/...crazy-ppc-idea/

ok half the damage, half the reload time, half the heat... sure.

and what happens when the ac40 jager turns the corner, the ppc awesome shoots 3 ppc for 15 dmg and has to wait 2 sec to do 30 and 4 to do 45.

while the jag does 40 and 80 after 4 sec. and i'm not talking only about ac40, any ac20 from even a hunchie will have a lot more bang for the buck, the ac20 would do 20, in 4 sec 40... and it's only ONE ac20. i was comparing it to 3 PPC above (take a look, 3 ppc for 5 dmg each)

no... the hardpoints then would be even worse, people would flock to AC mechs even more

ppc SHOULD be half the damage of the AC20, not ONE QUARTER.

if you wanna nerf the ppc this way you need to nerf the autocannons also if you make the ppc do 5 then AC20 does 10. - ppc is not the only projectile pinpoint weapon, in fact among those, it is PRETY FREAKIN WEAK

Edited by Mazzyplz, 10 February 2014 - 08:39 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Bishop Steiner, on 09 February 2014 - 04:06 PM, said:

Heh. That's easy and ghost heat IS the solution. Second shot of the UAC would be a second ac20 shot in under .5 seconds, thus double tapping one automatically incurs ghost heat. It escalates from there.

And unlike PPCs that Ghost heat is a whopping +14 with the first double tap. Twin Ultra 20 should melt the user in about 3-4 shots!

Khobai, on 09 February 2014 - 03:44 PM, said:

With clan uacs coming they need to change how pinpoint works.

Daishi with x3 uac20s does 120 damage in less than 4 seconds (assuming .5 delays for ghost heat)

Pgi simply cant leave autocannons alone and expect uac20s not to completely break the game

And recoil would solve the convergence issue right up.If you survive the heat of double tapping with the UAC20, keeping a Mech on target when firing 2 12 ton cannons should have the mech suffering whiplash and spinal decay post haste.

[Mazzyplz]

Joseph Mallan, on 10 February 2014 - 08:39 AM, said:

And unlike PPCs that Ghost heat is a whopping +14 with the first double tap. Twin Ultra 20 should melt the user in about 3-4 shots!


And recoil would solve the convergence issue right up.If you survive the heat of double tapping with the UAC20, keeping a Mech on target when firing 2 12 ton cannons should have the mech suffering whiplash and spinal decay post haste.

SHOULD*

but we know pgi

[NRP]

Some people just want PPCs completely eliminated from the game. Of course, they don't seem to have the intellectual honesty to actually admit it, but their agenda is pretty clear. It makes me understand somewhat the competitive community's frustration with "those that cry Nerf" on every single thing.

If there is a problem, it's with ballistics, not PPCs. To prove it to yourself, go run any Awesome, any Quickdraw, a HGN 733P, or any Stalker that isn't a Misery. See how your effectiveness plummets along with your enjoyment.

PPCs need to be buffed, not nerfed. There are already huge downsides to running an energy build. We don't need any more downsides.

[Joseph Mallan]

Mazzyplz, on 10 February 2014 - 08:41 AM, said:

SHOULD*

but we know pgi

Yes we do. Hit them in the wallet and they fold like a Valentine's day card.


Gentle reminder that those of you with a significant other, Friday is the Lover's Holiday.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 10 February 2014 - 08:59 AM.

[DONTOR]

Reducing damage doesnt necessarily fix all our problems, mainly because when clans are introduced the clan ppcs will be dishing 15 damage. Or 12 based on your damage reduction idea, I think a minor splash effect should be implemented to fix both of these issues. If you hit the CT 10% damage goes to both side torsos so it would end up with 80% CT,10%LT,10%RT. If you hit a side torso it would do 80%, with 10% to the adjacent arm and 10% to the CT. A leg hit would do 90% and 10% to the CT. This would spread out some of the pinpoint damage while keeping the damage the same.

[Bacl]

Reducing the damage on the PPc would nerf ( once again) the only viable energy weapon in the game... Lasers are lacking and falling way behind any AC and the current heat system doesnt support them so their overall potential is extremely decreased. They are not primary weapons they are simply support for the AC or back up weapons just in case you run out of ammo.

PPC got nerfed on heat, on projectile speed and got linked with the ERPPC for the infamous ghost heat. Energy boat mechs like the Stalkers, Awesomes and Quickdraws do rely on PPC since its the only energy weapon with ''low drawback''.

I dont mind if you reduce the damage then the heat should follow, 8 damage for 8 heat. But in the end that would be nerfing again the energy boat chassis. The reason why PPc are still part of the meta is because they act like AC and are ''being dealt'' with heat by using cover too cool down, yes i am currently pointing at poptarts. This jump/ shoot/ hide gimmick is giving them a huge advantage compared to regular mechs and because of this dont really suffer the drawbacks of shooting 2 some time 3 PPc's since they get back in cover right after shooting.

Some wont agree with what i am about to say but the 4PPC Stalker was a strong build but is was far more manageable than the popers that are barely exposing themselves to shoot you, the 4PPC stalker had to get out in the open.

So long story short its not the weapon the problem its the application, nerfing poptarts will reduce the PPC use. Just reducing the PPc damage will just be another nerf to the ernegy arsenal...

[Vidarok]

How about this...

1. Wherever the PPC hits, it deals 6 damage. The rest, 4 damage, is spread onto other parts near the impact point.

2. Autocannons should follow this rule aswell. An AC20 will deal 12 damage to where it hits and 8 damage to the surrounding area.

Boom, 2xPPC + AC/20 meta destroyed!

60% pinpoint damage and 40% area damage. The numbers are of course subjective, just mere examples. I know this is not an original suggestion but it seems good to me. Otherwise we'll need to have them shoot several rounds after each other, like in the old games.

[Jman5]

Why do people keep bringing up projectile speed like the PPC is slow? It has a speed of 1,500. That makes it the 3rd fastest projectile in the game. Only the AC/2 and Gauss beat it out. Everything else is slower! There is nothing about the PPC that is slow, which makes it incredibly easy to aim even against moving targets from a distance.

[FupDup]

Jman5, on 10 February 2014 - 09:54 AM, said:

Why do people keep bringing up projectile speed like the PPC is slow? It has a speed of 1,500. That makes it the 3rd fastest projectile in the game. Only the AC/2 and Gauss beat it out. Everything else is slower! There is nothing about the PPC that is slow, which makes it incredibly easy to aim even against moving targets from a distance.

Technically, the PPC is actually the 2nd fastest. The AC/2 and Gauss are both tied for 1st at 2000 m/s.