Shlkt, on 17 February 2014 - 09:45 AM, said:
SRMs need a niche. Right now they're half-decent weapons if you can get in range and if the target is large. IMO they're still worse than ballistics overall, but competitive with energy weapons for brawling due to lower heat.
That's too many drawbacks for a weapon that doesn't excel at anything.
I fear a pure damage boost would make them too powerful vs. targets with large hitboxes. An Atlas or an Awesome, for example, will take a lot more concentrated damage than a Spider. But perhaps an anti-assault weapon is not a bad thing?
I'd like to see them boosted in a way that makes them attractive in the current meta: alpha potential. Increase their cool down rates but boost the damage to compensate, holding DPS fixed but giving them more front-loaded damage. That'll appeal to a lot of players while still maintaining their current drawbacks (damage spread, range issues). A splatcat ought to be a scary sight - at least as scary as an AC/40 Jager - 'cuz he's probably only gonna get one or two shots before his ears get blown off.
More alpha potential just reinforces the current meta. It doesn't provide SRMs a better "niche". The current 2xPPC+2xAC/5 meta has a few major advantages going for it:
1) Concentrated high damage at mid/long range.
2) Steady DPS at low heat at close range.
3) High projectile speeds that make hitting a target easy.
And one thing against it:
1) Big weight penalty
2) Moderately high heat alpha strikes.
By contrast, the advantages for SRMs:
1) Do high damage at close ranges for moderate heat.
2) "Crit seeker" chance to damage internals.
3) Moderate close range DPS
4) Good damage/weight
And the negatives:
1) Don't work outside 270m
2) Wide damage spread increases time-to-kill
3) Slow projectile speed makes it difficult to hit moving targets
4) Moderately heat-inefficient (sligtly better than lasers)
A fix to this without big damage buffs to SRMs (and the potential balance issues those open up) is to reduce some of the benefits of the PPC+AC meta while reducing the negatives to using SRMs.
For example, you might increase SRM speed by 100m/s (in all likelihood this would improve hit detection at the same time, so far as I understand the game engine and netcode difficulties) while reducing heat by 0.5 points per launcher and increasing max range by 90m (at the cost of an increasing spread at those ranges). In the process you'd improve accuracy (and hit detection) for SRMs, increase the effective range, and give 'mechs with energy/ballistic loadouts better heat-efficient options for brawling, but without renewing the potential for heavy/assault missileboats to one-shot mediums.
As for combatting the current meta... you also have to be mindful of the role of each system individually. Currently, neither PPC boats nor light-AC boats are particularly dominant, though the light-AC+PPC combination is very strong. I've discussed that above, but let's look at each system individually:
Positives for PPCs:
1) High projectile speed improves accuracy
2) High concentrated damage
3) Long range
4) Decent damage/weight
Negatives for PPCs:
1) High heat
2) 100m minimum range (ERPPCs trade this for even worse heat)
3) Low DPS
Positives for AC/5:
1) High projectile speed improves accuracy
2) Moderate concentrated damage
3) Long range
4) Decent DPS
Negatives for AC/5:
1) Low alpha
2) High weapon weight and crit space for damage potential
3) Moderately high ammo consumption
4) More ammo = more chances for ammo explosions
So there are a few issues - if you slow down the projectile speed of a PPC, it synchs with heavier autocannons.
Reducing the range of either weapon effectively makes them obsolete (replaced with heavier autocannons and pulse lasers).
Reducing AC/5 DPS makes them useless as a stand-alone weapon.
Making PPCs beam weapons makes them obsolete compared to lasers, and encourages combining them with Large Lasers in an Alpha to avoid Ghost Heat penalties.
There isn't an awful lot to do with either system individually, besides possibly creating another linked Ghost Heat penalty. The problem with the high-alpha sniper meta is the same as it always was, instant convergence treating multiple projectiles like a single ultra-high-damage projectile. Creating some kind of CoF effect for high-alphas is probably the only true cure, except perhaps forcing everyone to use chain fire exclusively...
And amusingly, the only systems that would get significantly screwed by forcing chain-fire would be AC/2s and MGs, as missiles and lasers already spread damage and are more heat efficient chain-fired, the other autocannons and PPCs are quite nicely balanced chain fired, and even Flamers are often chain-fired to avoid the exponential heat build-up. Time-to-kill would also be increased in most cases. I suspect forcing chain-fire would be an unpopular option to pursue at this point, but it is intriguing.
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