173 replies to this topic

[Strum Wealh]

Satan n stuff, on 20 February 2014 - 09:12 AM, said:

Ah thanks, then I assume that what's listed on smurfy's site is the total damage dealt?

Do you mean what's listed here?

The "10.00" is the total base damage (assuming all submunitions hit), with the second mouse-over (that is, the one over the crosshair) indicating a ~14% chance for any given submunition to deal 2 units of damage, an ~8% chance for any given submunition to deal 4 units of damage, and a ~3% chance for any given submunition to deal 6 units of damage.

Though, where Smurfy is getting those percentages is the question; 0.66*0.39 = 0.2574 (25.74%), 0.66*0.28 = 0.1848 (18.48%), and 0.66*0.06 = 0.0396 (3.96%), respectively...

[Gevurah]

You know what totally makes sense from a game design perspective? Completely redundant weapons, with one costing a little more that does the same thing, better, with additional modes and less cost.

The LBX has longer range. Smaller slotting. Less tonnage wasted, etc. I'll admit it'd be awesome to get an alt mode for it, but then who would even bother running the AC10? What value would it have beyond the 'canon only' graveyard?

I'd be in favor of alt ammo if it had some actual real honest to god negative vs an ac10, which in canon it really doesn't except that it's lostech and costs money and is rare. Not really an option for MWO.

As it is, it's a very viable weapon if used correctly. The fact that it can crit for a max of 60 damage, which a portion is transferred as structural damage on top of the direct structural damage, is nothing to sneeze at.

Edited by Gevurah, 20 February 2014 - 01:58 PM.

[wanderer]

Gevurah, on 20 February 2014 - 01:58 PM, said:

You know what totally makes sense from a game design perspective? Completely redundant weapons, with one costing a little more that does the same thing, better, with additional modes and less cost.

The LBX has longer range. Smaller slotting. Less tonnage wasted, etc. I'll admit it'd be awesome to get an alt mode for it, but then who would even bother running the AC10? What value would it have beyond the 'canon only' graveyard?

That's why I suggested a lower ROF and maximum range. Standard AC/10s would have more reach and put damage downrange quicker, LB-10X's would be poorer at max ranges (I suggest giving them 2x rather than the usual ballistic 3x) and deliver damage more slowly (but with the option for it's critseeking + lighter weight/crit space) when firing.

[Zyllos]

This is what the LB needs.

[LawDawg]

Roland, on 19 February 2014 - 09:57 PM, said:

No dude, you are overthinking it, which is exactly the problem with almost all of the ridiculous ideas surrounding this weapon.

Remove the silly "critical damage" nonsense.

Up the pellet damage to 1.4.

DONE.

Just do that, and see what happens.

^^ This ^^ Try it! No it wont be an LB-10X (10 Damage), but who gives a rats ass? The thing should have "Slugs" and it dont. This isnt TT.

[Varent]

Hickory, on 19 February 2014 - 04:53 PM, said:

Oh LB 10-X AC, why are you so expensive? Why do you appear worse than the AC-10? Why don't you have alternate ammo? Why Are you long ranged if your munitions are scatter-shot?

Well, Lets work through this step by step!

First off, I'm not going to be answering these questions in the order above because I have faith in your basic comprehension skills!

Second off! Alternate ammo? It's default ammo is the alternate ammo! It says at http://www.sarna.net/wiki/LB_10-X_AC :Quote, "The LB 10-X Autocannon is essentially a 'Mech-mounted shotgun, capable of firing special "cluster rounds" that split apart after being fired. LB-X Autocannons are able to use either the special cluster rounds or standard autocannon rounds,".
This means that the LB 10-X is already using the critical hit seeking "alternate" ammo. So the only thing left for it is to implement the ammo switching during a battle. (Unless for some reason you can already do this and I don't know.)

But why does it have a longer range than the AC-10 if it's first impression is a shotgun? The LB 10-X's name actually tells us the answer! The LB stands for "Light Barrel" or "Long Barrel" as I would prefer to call it as a longer barrel makes a weapon's accuracy better at longer range. This, however, is just speculation so don't take it too seriously.
(Light Barrel is the spectualtion stated at Sarna.net. Long Barrel is my own spectualtion, but both would make sense.)

Next up is expense. You might think that the LB 10-X is more expensive because it's lighter than it's AC counterpart, and you'd be right, but only by half. To be more specific, the LB 10-X is a, quote; "derivative of the standard and relatively primitive Autocannon/10 design used for centuries by every military in the Inner Sphere," and that by "Taking advantage of advanced materials such as Endo Steel, the company was able to reduce the weight of the weapon for only a slight increase in bulk and mated it with the advanced Mercury-VII targeting system to boost its effective range,".

And before you start typing, there is no way that a "targeting system" could increase the range of effectiveness without the weapon itself being physically capable of longer range. Meaning the before stated speculations still make sense.

Many thanks for reading this post! I hope this made sense and cleared the fog for those of you who didn't quite understand the LB 10-X AC! Though this all means that there is still some mechanics to be implemented before the LB 10-X AC stands above the AC 10 as it should, it's still good as a long range "pester weapon" and "weapon removing" cannon. Not to mention it appears to fly faster and straighter than it's AC counterparts.

At close ranges the spread is very negligible at best. Also its a pretty tight spread, you can get all your shots onto a mechs torso pretty far out.

It weighs less, takes up less slots, uses less heat, has more range, has higher crit rate.

Im not exactly sure what your complaining about. Its a great brawling weapon. It also excels quite nicely against light mechs.

[General Taskeen]

All PGI had to do was take a study course and force their design leads and team to play old Mech Warrior games to get ideas.

Low and behold Devs test out the LB-X in every old Mech Warrior game and note how it did bonus damage with cluster shot against armor and had range as advantage, even with a cluster shot. "Wow cool," Says Dev. "Let's make it good and very useful like that, so that's how you make an LB-X gun in a MechWarrior game!"

In an Alternate Universe anyways.

Edited by General Taskeen, 20 February 2014 - 03:33 PM.

[Bhael Fire]

Zerberus, on 19 February 2014 - 07:19 PM, said:

Seriously, name one GOOD reason ( i.e. not "I like how the barrel looks") that anyone in their right mind would still use an AC 10 if the LBX had slugs...

If the LB-X slugs had reduced range and projectile speed, that would be impetus enough for many to use a stand AC/10.

[LawDawg]

Bhael Fire, on 20 February 2014 - 03:47 PM, said:

If the LB-X slugs had reduced range and projectile speed, that would be impetus enough for many to use a stand AC/10.

FFS man............Fix the LB in its form, the way it is now. Can you imagine if they ADDED to it! (SLUGS) The servers would melt! Dont ask to much at one time sir!

[Bhael Fire]

SLDF LawDog, on 20 February 2014 - 03:57 PM, said:

FFS man............Fix the LB in its form, the way it is now. Can you imagine if they ADDED to it! (SLUGS) The servers would melt! Dont ask to much at one time sir!

There'd be nothing wrong with the LB-X in its current form if it also fired slugs as long as the slug weren't as good as standard AC/10 shells.

That way it would have more flexibility and tactical options open to it, making it a more desirable option than it is now.

[LawDawg]

Bhael Fire, on 20 February 2014 - 04:02 PM, said:

There'd be nothing wrong with the LB-X in its current form if it also fired slugs as long as the slug weren't as good as standard AC/10 shells.

That way it would have more flexibility and tactical options open to it, making it a more desirable option than it is now.

If they make it fire "Slugs", they are violating the AC-10 ground. That will make the AC-10 Obsolete. Which is why they havent/wont do it.

Thats fine and dandy. Just up the damage of the rounds the LB-10x spits out to make it a more competitive brawler weapon.

<EDIT> Its a game, not EVERYTHING has to be TT. It cant be. Changes have to be made due to the speed at which we play. Adjust.

Edited by SLDF LawDog, 20 February 2014 - 04:15 PM.

[Varent]

Bhael Fire, on 20 February 2014 - 04:02 PM, said:

There'd be nothing wrong with the LB-X in its current form if it also fired slugs as long as the slug weren't as good as standard AC/10 shells.

That way it would have more flexibility and tactical options open to it, making it a more desirable option than it is now.

Varent, on 20 February 2014 - 03:28 PM, said:

At close ranges the spread is very negligible at best. Also its a pretty tight spread, you can get all your shots onto a mechs torso pretty far out.

It weighs less, takes up less slots, uses less heat, has more range, has higher crit rate.

Im not exactly sure what your complaining about. Its a great brawling weapon. It also excels quite nicely against light mechs.

I fail to see how its not a good tactical option. I use it on several builds and quite enjoy it.

[Bhael Fire]

Varent, on 20 February 2014 - 04:17 PM, said:

I fail to see how its not a good tactical option. I use it on several builds and quite enjoy it.

Right now, it's ok; I use it on some of my light-hunters. But it has limited tactical use and could use an extra incentive to make it more flexible. Allowing it to use slugs would give it that flexibility so it could be used in more applications.

[Bhael Fire]

SLDF LawDog, on 20 February 2014 - 04:13 PM, said:

If they make it fire "Slugs", they are violating the AC-10 ground. That will make the AC-10 Obsolete. Which is why they havent/wont do it.

If you read my previous post about LB-X slugs, you'll noticed that I suggested that they be inferior to AC/10 shells.

If the LB-X's slugs had shorter range and slower projectile speed, that would allow the AC/10 to remain as a viable option for those that value pin-point damage, extra range and faster projectile speeds.

So basically, the player would need to load up both slug and shot ammo, then select which "mode" they are firing the LB-X in when they fire the weapon.

They could list both the LB-X slug and LB-X modes in the HUD, then prevent the player from putting them in the same group (so if you put LB-X slug in group 1, then tried to assign LB-X shot to group 1, it would un-group the other one from group 1 and vice versa). Both modes would share the same cooldown.

Edited by Bhael Fire, 20 February 2014 - 04:41 PM.

[verybad]

Hickory, on 19 February 2014 - 05:17 PM, said:

Well, that's a bit unfair to PGI don't you think?

It's not unfair at all to them. It's free to play, but it's designed to get lots of money out of long term fans, and it IS was doing so (I think the money flow has been shirnking due to the lack of improvement.)

They could spend more moneu on balancing all the weapons that make sense, or they can spend more money on a $500.00 golden skin. ..

Better game, more long term money longer life. More short term money, worse, and shorter lived game.

That simple.

[Varent]

Bhael Fire, on 20 February 2014 - 04:25 PM, said:

Right now, it's ok; I use it on some of my light-hunters. But it has limited tactical use and could use an extra incentive to make it more flexible. Allowing it to use slugs would give it that flexibility so it could be used in more applications.

I dont feel I need to list all the advantages its ALREADY getting over the ac-10. Why on earth give it more?

[Roland]

Varent, on 20 February 2014 - 04:17 PM, said:

I fail to see how its not a good tactical option. I use it on several builds and quite enjoy it.

It has already been proven, conclusively, that this is not the case.

Your belief that it is a viable weapon is based in misconceptions. It is not remotely viable.

This is not a matter of opinion. This is not due to people simply not being good enough with the weapon. This is a concrete fact which has already been demonstrated using concrete empirical evidence. It's been proven so many times at this point, that I'm not going to bother repeating the argument. You can go look for other threads, showing just exactly how terrible the weapon is even at short range. The only time you aren't suffering significant spread (which effectively makes the weapon inferior in ANY niche) is when you basically have the barrel in the mouth of the targeted mech... which reduces any utility to such a small set of engagement circumstances as to mean that the weapon is overall at a massive disadvantage compared to other weapons.

I'm sure you're going to go on about how it's really awesome for you and whatever... doesn't matter. I don't care any more. Keep using it, but know that it's been conclusively shown to be trash tier garbage.

[Varent]

Roland, on 20 February 2014 - 05:04 PM, said:

It has already been proven, conclusively, that this is not the case.

Your belief that it is a viable weapon is based in misconceptions. It is not remotely viable.

This is not a matter of opinion. This is not due to people simply not being good enough with the weapon. This is a concrete fact which has already been demonstrated using concrete empirical evidence. It's been proven so many times at this point, that I'm not going to bother repeating the argument. You can go look for other threads, showing just exactly how terrible the weapon is even at short range. The only time you aren't suffering significant spread (which effectively makes the weapon inferior in ANY niche) is when you basically have the barrel in the mouth of the targeted mech... which reduces any utility to such a small set of engagement circumstances as to mean that the weapon is overall at a massive disadvantage compared to other weapons.

I'm sure you're going to go on about how it's really awesome for you and whatever... doesn't matter. I don't care any more. Keep using it, but know that it's been conclusively shown to be trash tier garbage.

opinion and preference =/= empirical evidence or fact.

the FACT is the weapon has alot of good things going for it. It has a niche. It has ALOT of benefits to it. Its AMAZING vs light mechs and great when mixed with other crit items like machine gun as well as some direct fire.

the FACT that you feel that it should do something else does not mean that by itself it is not a great weapon.

the OPINION you have is that it underperforms compared to the ac10. While the ac10 may have the ONE advantage of not being a spread weapon. The lbx has advantages in literally EVERY OTHER WAY.

And no, you dont have to have the gun in the enemies face. You can be probly about the same range you would be fighting with srm and do just fine.

What we have here is a failure for you to recognize the strengths of the gun and instead you simply want it to suit your own playstyle instead of conforming to the playstyle the weapon is strong in.

[Roland]

Varent, on 20 February 2014 - 05:15 PM, said:

opinion and preference =/= empirical evidence or fact.

That's why I pointed out that it's not an opinion. It's been empirically proven.

We've done the math, and run the numbers. We've done actual testing, in game, and shown exactly how wide the spread is.

It's not a matter of preference or opinion. Like I said, the evidence has already been gathered.. you can go find the threads containing it.

Quote

the FACT is the weapon has alot of good things going for it. It has a niche. It has ALOT of benefits to it. Its AMAZING vs light mechs and great when mixed with other crit items like machine gun as well as some direct fire.

Nope, everything you said here is wrong.

And the thing is, you're not the first to say those things. They are the STANDARD statements presented by people who don't understand how the weapon works, and have been conclusively refuted.

For instance, it's not amazing vs. light mechs. It's easily one of the very worst weapons in the game against light mechs. It will do no significant damage, and is literally INCAPABLE of concentrating damage on a light mech. Even at short range, the spread pattern is so large that it cannot possibly land more than 2-3 pellets on a single component of a light chassis.

Again, not opinion. Fact. I recently took a number of screenshots at varying ranges, clearly demonstrating this was the case. Your belief that it is good against light mechs is purely a misconception on your part. You may believe that it is effective against light mechs, but it is not. Almost every other weapon in the game is superior for killing light mechs.

Quote

What we have here is a failure for you to recognize the strengths of the gun and instead you simply want it to suit your own playstyle instead of conforming to the playstyle the weapon is strong in.

There is literally no playstyle that you could possibly engage in which would not benefit from switching the LBX-10 out for a different weapon.

[Varent]

Roland, on 20 February 2014 - 05:26 PM, said:

That's why I pointed out that it's not an opinion. It's been empirically proven.

We've done the math, and run the numbers. We've done actual testing, in game, and shown exactly how wide the spread is.

It's not a matter of preference or opinion. Like I said, the evidence has already been gathered.. you can go find the threads containing it.

I play with it. Ive tested it. Ive worked with others with it. The lbx is a better brawling weapon then the ac10. The ac10 is a better precision weapon then the lbx.

Ive read the threads. Ive done my own testing. Based off my testing and experience Ive found within srm range the lbx outperforms the ac10.

Roland, on 20 February 2014 - 05:26 PM, said:

Nope, everything you said here is wrong.

And the thing is, you're not the first to say those things. They are the STANDARD statements presented by people who don't understand how the weapon works, and have been conclusively refuted.

For instance, it's not amazing vs. light mechs. It's easily one of the very worst weapons in the game against light mechs. It will do no significant damage, and is literally INCAPABLE of concentrating damage on a light mech. Even at short range, the spread pattern is so large that it cannot possibly land more than 2-3 pellets on a single component of a light chassis.

Again, not opinion. Fact. I recently took a number of screenshots at varying ranges, clearly demonstrating this was the case. Your belief that it is good against light mechs is purely a misconception on your part. You may believe that it is effective against light mechs, but it is not. Almost every other weapon in the game is superior for killing light mechs.

I think your using the weapon wrong. If your just using the one lbx then yes it probly wont do much. If you use multiple lbx, if you mix it with other weapons its quite effective indeed. What you are doing is trying to bully your own opinion based off your playstyle and the playstyle of others. That in essence is 'Completely Wrong' and inadequate as a statement of fact. At close range a nice burst from an lbx 10 will normally land about 80% of the shot on a light if your just aiming for center torso. If your aiming for legs you can usually land about 60% id say. Its much easier to aim since you literally dont have to worry about miss and jsut lead slightly. The fact of the matter is your are looking at it towards aiming for precision as upposed to aiming for effect.

If facing a light mech I would gladly have an lbx that I could count on to hit the legs of a light consistently instead of hoping and praying to land a shot with an ac10.

Roland, on 20 February 2014 - 05:26 PM, said:

There is literally no playstyle that you could possibly engage in which would not benefit from switching the LBX-10 out for a different weapon.

Brawling comes to mind on many levels. In fact I run a dual lbx jager with machine gun and a few lasers that I enjoy immensly. I also use a uac5/lbx jager as well that I like. I have a dual lbx atlas. I also have a dual lbx / 4 medium laser catpult. I also have an lbx streak medium laser shadowhawk that im quite fond of. Lastly I have an lbx 4 medium laser cicada with ecm I use too.

The bottom line is the weapon doesnt fit your playstyle or expectations. for all the benefits it has and for the less weight and size. I cannot see your argument when all your losing is precision. And when fighting larger mechs thats mostly nulfied at true brawling ranges when your spread can easily fit into a torso section.