25 replies to this topic

[ColonelMetus]

howdy , i was recently using science to study the effects of the gauss rifle nerfs on game play and i came to the following conclusion.

the nerf to gaus rifle caused all the gauss rifle users to do this

"i'll just drop ONE heat sink or medium laser and swap it out for TWO AC 5"

and now thats where we live today.

soon double AC 5 will be nerfed and we will just fight each other with profanity and small lasers

[Vanguard319]

And what science did you use to ascertain this conclusion? Proof or this is just trolling.

[Whatzituyah]

Vanguard319, on 16 March 2014 - 08:09 PM, said:

And what science did you use to ascertain this conclusion? Proof or this is just trolling.

But if we use science we will discover that the mechs can't use the weapons at all because of physics, weight, and gravity! "jking" I think what you meant to say what method did you use to ascertain this conclusion?

[Daekar]

He used the science of comparing current meta to past meta and noting a near correlation in tonnage.

Not that I'm saying he's right, but the argument could be made.

Personally, as someone who refused to use gauss until it was given a much needed kick in the butt to bring it in line with other weapons, I think it needs a slight buff. The charging time should be subtracted from the refire rate to slightly boost DPS, because right now the DPS is abysmal for such a large weapon. I built a dual-gauss Cataphract the other day (dual gauss virgin before that) and I was underwhelmed. That mech is running AC2/AC5s now.

[Wesxander]

Gauss rifle has been nerfed. The problem is people who are making decisions favor ac 20's so they keep finding way to bring weapons down to make the ac 20 more favored. This includes upping ac 20 range for full damage and more. They have completely ignored the literature in battle tech that while an ac 20 might have longer range it loses ability to penetrate diamond steel armor composite that mechs field as protection. Instead they focus on modern tanks think higher caliber should have mega ranges and mega armor pentration. This is not the case when armor protection is supposedly superior to anything previously discovered. If you would like a historically accurate comparison it would be a sailing vessel engaging an iron side. Both have the same cannons but only 1 side can actually do damage to the other. Again the designers of the game choose to ignore battletech literature and decide that an ac 20 should do more damage than feasible at longer ranges.

The gauss rifle should have a long load time to equate the charging of the coils. Once the coils are charged it takes virtually very little electricity maintain a charged coil versus a discharged one. The effect is similar to a old style transformer coil. This would mean in game that a gauss rifle has a longer load time than any other weapon, but once ready is ready to fire regardless.

In old style battle tech lights used to dread engaging a gauss rifle mech for fear of being cored in one shot. Now with the way it is once a light gets in moving fast and hard the gauss rifle mech is in serious trouble. He's got charge up fire , and hope for luck rather than skill in killing a light.

The result is gauss rifles are extremely popular in 3050 and 3055 due to they are the one tech when the clans invade that helps the innersphere stop the clans. Again this is ignored by someone in charge. In fact tech comparsion wise the gauss rifle for the clans is only better by innersphere one by being more compact taking up slightly less space and weight. Same range same damage.Which Is why the innerspheree begins fielding mechs like the Gunslinger and the Comguards turn to King Crabs refitted with dual gauss instead of ac 20's.

[Lightfoot]

@OP

Yes, you are correct. In fact most players switched as soon as the Gauss de-sync was announced because it is so obvious that 2xac5 are much better than one gauss rifle for only one ton more.

The real deal is 2xUAC-5's though. Although they sometimes jam, they sometimes fire double rounds, sometimes 2 to 3 times in a row, so 60 damage in under 4 seconds, 600 meter range does happen. At close range this does not miss Lights because it tends to spew the rounds into a narrow cone like a super-powered LB-X. Obviously much better than a single Gauss Rifle for just 3 tons more.

You might say gee whiz, why does this happen? I thought the Gauss Rifle was the top long range gun! It happens because Mechs are not first person shooter avatars carrying just one gun. Mechs carry arrays of weapons fired in groups with "Group-Fire" selections on your HUD.

So, when calibrating the damage of the weapons you use a formula that matches DPS per ton of payload weight used. And here is that chart. Don't laugh that MGs are on top, 15 tons of MGs would melt any Mech in seconds.

weapon................................dps=dps/ton
-----------------------------------------------------------------
machine gun........................1.00= 2.0
ac2.......................................3.85= 0.64
ULTRA AC/5........................3.33= 0.37 to 0.67
ac5.......................................3.33= 0.41
lb 10-x..................................4.00= 0.36
ac20.....................................5.00= 0.35
ac10.....................................4.00= 0.33
gauss rifle.............................3.75= 0.25
5 sec recharge.....................3.00= 0.20

Clan Gauss Rifle..................3.75= 0.31
5 sec recharge.....................3.00= 0.25
Clan UAC 20........................5.00= 0.41 to 0.75

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Now the correct and balanced adjustment for the Gauss Rifle is to give it a longer recharge than an AC20, probably 5 to 5.5 second recharge would set the long range requirement to be competitive. But yeah the Gauss Rifle is the weakest ballistic in MechWarrior and ruining it with a de-sync that few can control only made the problem worse since it was replaced by twin UAC-5's doing double to triple the DPS.

Edited by Lightfoot, 17 March 2014 - 04:59 AM.

[CCC Dober]

The de-sync of the Gauss was a pretty desperate move by the looks of it.

Cutting the damage was obviously not an option because it would defy reason (hyper velocity gun). Usability was reduced Instead, which is pretty backwards when you consider both the lore and other options available. Such as cutting the rate of fire by upping the reload time (like many MW games did successfully before). On the upside, the weapon supposedly doesn't explode anymore, but the same can be said for Autocannons in general, so it didn't make the Gauss preferable.

All in all there was some pretty bad decision making involved when it comes to the Gauss. One can look back to past games and see what worked and what didn't. Long reload times and low ammo for powerful weapons were there for a reason. Similarly low damage for spam weapons was inevitable in order to avoid abuse or match results that defied all reason. Those lessons have been learned the hard way, repeatedly. PGI can simply avoid mistakes like that by sticking to proven, working solutions instead of finding things out the hard way (which is what happens right now).

[Joseph Mallan]

ColonelMetus, on 16 March 2014 - 07:56 PM, said:

howdy , i was recently using science to study the effects of the gauss rifle nerfs on game play and i came to the following conclusion.

the nerf to gaus rifle caused all the gauss rifle users to do this

"i'll just drop ONE heat sink or medium laser and swap it out for TWO AC 5"

and now thats where we live today.

soon double AC 5 will be nerfed and we will just fight each other with profanity and small lasers

And then Profanity will be banned cause it is more harmful than the small lasers.

[ColonelMetus]

they should replace all current weapons with 3 new weapons called rock paper and scissors, then nerf rock and scissors

[Willard Phule]

ColonelMetus, on 17 March 2014 - 06:53 AM, said:

they should replace all current weapons with 3 new weapons called rock paper and scissors, then nerf rock and scissors

I've been saying something similar for a while now

Make maximum damage for EVERY weapon 1 point. Then reduce the maximum range to 10 feet...not meters, feet.

Triple the internal structure, quadruple the armor for every mech.

Then...noone dies, noone gets hurt, everyone gets to go away happy and fuzzy like little bunnies.

[psihius]

Because people are not willing to skill up. And this makes them a juicy target for my Gaus jagger. I just sit outside their weapon effective range and hit them time after time. They never learn or understand how you can be so skilled at using gaus to the point that there is no difference between the old and new gaus...
The charge time actually helps not to shoot my foolish teammates in the backs when they suddenly appear in my advanced zoom scope...

[Joseph Mallan]

ColonelMetus, on 17 March 2014 - 06:53 AM, said:

they should replace all current weapons with 3 new weapons called rock paper and scissors, then nerf rock and scissors

Well if you don't bring Rock, Paper & Scissors, you will be letting your opponent have an advantage... but you don't wanna think about that.

[Eddrick]

All of this crying about people not being able to handle how to use the Gauss Rifle makes me wonder if they can walk and chew gum at the same time. Special Attacks and Combos in Fighting Games require more complicated things then what it takes to use the Gauss Rifle.

[Damocles69]

Ever played the 228th? Gauss is just fine

In fact, it is currently one of my favorite weapons to run. I give PGI a lot of crap about their bad ideas . This however was an elegant solution to bring the gauss more in line. Practice, get good, stop comaining

[PhoenixFire55]

The real effect is that you can't use gauss as a weapon effectively unless you have 2+ of them. It can be and still is sync-ed with PPCs using macro if needed. Casual players hardly ever use them.

If anything, its actually easier (for me) to aim with the new charge mechanics.

Its way to unbalanced now tho. Charge time should be part of that 4 seconds recycle time, not added to it, DPS is far less than its supposed to be. With charge mechanics in place it should NOT explode when not charged/charging.

[SirLANsalot]

Adapt, Adjust, Annihilate.

[Bobzilla]

What is the point of a weapon that can shoot past your targeting range, if you can't take a quick shot of opportunity? None unless your enemy likes to stroll out in the open all the time. I liked it because you had a chance to sit and wait, take a quick shot without being detected and move to a new local (i know sounds like a sniper right), or ridge hump till they found you then move. Without the fast shot, you have to position yourself much closer to get that long clear open shot.

[Trauglodyte]

ColonelMetus, on 16 March 2014 - 07:56 PM, said:

howdy , i was recently using science to study the effects of the gauss rifle nerfs on game play and i came to the following conclusion. the nerf to gaus rifle caused all the gauss rifle users to do this "i'll just drop ONE heat sink or medium laser and swap it out for TWO AC 5" and now thats where we live today. soon double AC 5 will be nerfed and we will just fight each other with profanity and small lasers

You're about 6 months too late to the party. For that matter, you (and the band wagoneers) are late to discovering what was a much better option. Everyone ran PPCs and GRs because it was "lol, look at the damage I can do at range!" What nobody factored in was that you've got much better closing power with double AC5s/UAC5s. A few of us were running double PPCs/UAC5s weeks after the Highlander was put up for cbills.

Wesxander, on 16 March 2014 - 11:40 PM, said:

Gauss rifle has been nerfed. The problem is people who are making decisions favor ac 20's so they keep finding way to bring weapons down to make the ac 20 more favored. This includes upping ac 20 range for full damage and more. They have completely ignored the literature in battle tech that while an ac 20 might have longer range it loses ability to penetrate diamond steel armor composite that mechs field as protection. Instead they focus on modern tanks think higher caliber should have mega ranges and mega armor pentration. This is not the case when armor protection is supposedly superior to anything previously discovered. If you would like a historically accurate comparison it would be a sailing vessel engaging an iron side. Both have the same cannons but only 1 side can actually do damage to the other. Again the designers of the game choose to ignore battletech literature and decide that an ac 20 should do more damage than feasible at longer ranges. The gauss rifle should have a long load time to equate the charging of the coils. Once the coils are charged it takes virtually very little electricity maintain a charged coil versus a discharged one. The effect is similar to a old style transformer coil. This would mean in game that a gauss rifle has a longer load time than any other weapon, but once ready is ready to fire regardless. In old style battle tech lights used to dread engaging a gauss rifle mech for fear of being cored in one shot. Now with the way it is once a light gets in moving fast and hard the gauss rifle mech is in serious trouble. He's got charge up fire , and hope for luck rather than skill in killing a light. The result is gauss rifles are extremely popular in 3050 and 3055 due to they are the one tech when the clans invade that helps the innersphere stop the clans. Again this is ignored by someone in charge. In fact tech comparsion wise the gauss rifle for the clans is only better by innersphere one by being more compact taking up slightly less space and weight. Same range same damage.Which Is why the innerspheree begins fielding mechs like the Gunslinger and the Comguards turn to King Crabs refitted with dual gauss instead of ac 20's.

Everything that you wrote is bad and it makes me sad that people like you carry these points of view and that you take the time to post them. Furthermore, it makes me sad that I took the time to read it and even more so now that I'm responding to it.

PhoenixFire55, on 17 March 2014 - 08:06 AM, said:

The real effect is that you can't use gauss as a weapon effectively unless you have 2+ of them. It can be and still is sync-ed with PPCs using macro if needed. Casual players hardly ever use them. If anything, its actually easier (for me) to aim with the new charge mechanics. Its way to unbalanced now tho. Charge time should be part of that 4 seconds recycle time, not added to it, DPS is far less than its supposed to be. With charge mechanics in place it should NOT explode when not charged/charging.

I'd argue that you can't use them in singles. But, the point remains that, like every weapon in this game, you get stronger the more of them that you carry. Sadly, macros are allowed in this game and the desired effect of desyncing can be gotten around and the skill that was intended for it's use has all but disappeared.

[Eddrick]

Bobzilla, on 17 March 2014 - 08:33 AM, said:

What is the point of a weapon that can shoot past your targeting range, if you can't take a quick shot of opportunity? None unless your enemy likes to stroll out in the open all the time. I liked it because you had a chance to sit and wait, take a quick shot without being detected and move to a new local (i know sounds like a sniper right), or ridge hump till they found you then move. Without the fast shot, you have to position yourself much closer to get that long clear open shot.

You can get the same effect with ERPPCs, without needing to worry about wasting Ammo, because you are firing outside of the optimum range. They also currently have the same travel speed as the Gauss Rifle did. Unless you are talking about using something else with it. ACs give better DPS and have simlar stats to the PPC now then the did before the change to the Gauss Rifle. There is little reason not to use a pair of AC5s, unless you are trying to play defencivly. Then you have all the time you need to charge the Gauss Rifle before you come out of cover.

[trollocaustic]

Gauss is still going to be OP as long as it has no heat requirement.

It's literally a unchallengable fact that gauss roughly translates to "Better than PPC"

Edited by trollocaustic, 17 March 2014 - 08:46 AM.