517 replies to this topic

[DaZur]

Re: Burst Fire camp... Food for thought: Not too far off in the distant future we'll have rotatory cannons.

While burst and sustained fire are surely different animals, they do share the the similar lineage...

[DeskDroid]

My votes to start with are 2.5x range or less and bring down Ammo/ton. It's very rare that I see players being hesitant on their shot because they have to consider how long a match might go.

I figure it's a good place to start. My 2 cents.

[Trauglodyte]

Varent, on 21 March 2014 - 10:51 AM, said:

Jump sniping is still a fairly dominant meta.

Recoil does didly to jump sniping.

Recoil hurts brawlers.

Why do we need recoil? Out of all the other good options out there.

Flavor, buddy, flavor. Plus, if ACs are going to shake you when you get hit, they should damn well shake you when you fire. What it does is desync them from everything else. Light ACs (2s and 5s) were build for long range fire. 10s were build for mid-range and the 20 at short. You shouldn't be alpha striking ACs with other weapons. They already don't synergize with anything else when you're trying to lead a target, except for PPCs (mistake).

If I'm not making any sense, I'm sorry. Lack of sleep, lack of food (fasting atm), and I've got the caffeine shakes from the Excedrin that I took for my headache.

[Varent]

Trauglodyte, on 21 March 2014 - 11:04 AM, said:

Flavor, buddy, flavor. Plus, if ACs are going to shake you when you get hit, they should damn well shake you when you fire. What it does is desync them from everything else. Light ACs (2s and 5s) were build for long range fire. 10s were build for mid-range and the 20 at short. You shouldn't be alpha striking ACs with other weapons. They already don't synergize with anything else when you're trying to lead a target, except for PPCs (mistake).

If I'm not making any sense, I'm sorry. Lack of sleep, lack of food (fasting atm), and I've got the caffeine shakes from the Excedrin that I took for my headache.

I agree they dont with other weapons... except ppc... wich.. makes this not effect the dominant meta.. and not make the desired change.

I understand flavor.. but flavor that hurts brawlers who are already hurting is probly a bad idea no?

[Kaeb Odellas]

Trauglodyte, on 21 March 2014 - 11:04 AM, said:

Flavor, buddy, flavor. Plus, if ACs are going to shake you when you get hit, they should damn well shake you when you fire.

Well, not necessarily. An autocannon is going to have recoil dampening systems in place that can compensate for recoil, while it's going to be harder for your actuators and gyro to compensate for random impacts.

I'd really just prefer if convergence comes back. I know PGI says that it caused problems with HSR, but I'm sure it wouldn't be impossible to get right. Plus it fixes issues with pinpoint damage of all kinds, and not just autocannons.

[Eddrick]

The only thing I have against Recoil, is that the way the Barrel retracts reduses/if not eliminates Recoil. Like with real Cannons. Lose the Barrel retracting and I would understand Autocannons having Recoil.

[East Indy]

Varent, on 21 March 2014 - 10:59 AM, said:

if your firing all weapons at once this wouldnt make a difference and definetly not for jump snipers wich are the primary users of long range pin point style.

It can. I was deliberate with my language. Micro-event, as in the game gets a command from the player to fire four AC/5s as a group. From player perception, all fire essentially simultaneously, but in reality the game waits a few milliseconds, fires one AC, pitches/yaws a bit off-center, then fires the next, and so on.

Since human perception is so coarse, you could even have the game wait a short time for input of an AC fire command Y milliseconds after an initial PPC fire command, fire the AC first, and head off attempts to get around recoil by manually firing two groups.

[Varent]

Kaeb Odellas, on 21 March 2014 - 11:12 AM, said:

Well, not necessarily. An autocannon is going to have recoil dampening systems in place that can compensate for recoil, while it's going to be harder for your actuators and gyro to compensate for random impacts.

I'd really just prefer if convergence comes back. I know PGI says that it caused problems with HSR, but I'm sure it wouldn't be impossible to get right. Plus it fixes issues with pinpoint damage of all kinds, and not just autocannons.

If they could impliment it sure.
But until they can impliment it properly id rather not have more hit reg issues myself.

East Indy, on 21 March 2014 - 11:17 AM, said:

It can. I was deliberate with my language. Micro-event, as in the game gets a command from the player to fire four AC/5s as a group. From player perception, all fire essentially simultaneously, but in reality the game waits a few milliseconds, fires one AC, pitches/yaws a bit off-center, then fires the next, and so on.

Since human perception is so coarse, you could even have the game wait a short time for input of an AC fire command Y milliseconds after an initial PPC fire command, fire the AC first, and head off attempts to get around recoil by manually firing two groups.

So what your really saying is you want non convergence with mini events. Wich they have already stated works against hit registration.

[Coralld]

I am against the ammo location restrictions. I know some people scratch their head at how one gets ammo from the leg to said weapon. To be honest I always looked at it as a belt fed system like this...

I know that most of the art work don't show a belt feeder system on but I think that's mainly because the ammo is normally located where the weapon is and such no need for a belt feeder.

[Kommisar]

I still say the best options include buffing lasers. No need to keep nerfing everything into the ground with a hammer. In table top, lasers were worth taking because they were lighter, had no-ammo, and you could manage the heat.

Here, they are still lighter and most chassis will have more energy hard points than anything else. But, the ammo is a non-factor for most builds and heat is crippling. I can't build a Battlemaster that can sustain 4 medium lasers in a brawl. But you can dump AC rounds all day and not worry about heat. And therein lays the real problem. Not only do they have superior range performance, they are flat out more effective in close as well. Higher DPS and far, far less heat and better range.

ACs need to be brought down. But I still say that they need to buff up lasers to meet them.

[East Indy]

Varent, on 21 March 2014 - 11:19 AM, said:

So what your really saying is you want non convergence with mini events. Wich they have already stated works against hit registration.

I don't think reticle orientation should have any impact on that. It's changing heading, not trajectory.

[Kaeb Odellas]

You could also transfer the Gauss Rifle's charge mechanic to the PPCs and switch Gauss back to the way they were, but with a 5 second cooldown. It would have made far more sense to desync PPCs with all ballistics, instead of just desyncing gauss rifles with everything else.

[Phashe]

Well I pretty much hate most of the AC nerf ideas, except potentially reduced accuracy at LONG range ideas: monkeygun effect, projectile height & velocity drop-offs, etc..

Leave ammo density, fire rates, crits, and all the other crap alone. Damn AC20 is just about a melee weapon already, gauss has the stupid charge time, and SRMs are still not quite right... Can we use anything but LRMs and ML's now?!!

Edited by Phashe, 21 March 2014 - 11:26 AM.

[Varent]

East Indy, on 21 March 2014 - 11:23 AM, said:

I don't think reticle orientation should have any impact on that. It's changing heading, not trajectory.

that would inheriently mess with there system of convergence. You would have shots simply not registering.

Kaeb Odellas, on 21 March 2014 - 11:24 AM, said:

You could also transfer the Gauss Rifle's charge mechanic to the PPCs and switch Gauss back to the way they were, but with a 5 second cooldown. It would have made far more sense to desync PPCs with all ballistics, instead of just desyncing gauss rifles with everything else.

I agree!

Actually id just like to see CD in general though. Give the PPC and gause a nice massive CD to make them true sniping weapons with super low DPS.

[Shlkt]

What I would change:
AC/20: Increase heat 6 => 7
AC/10: Leave it alone
AC/5: Increase cooldown 1.5 => 2.0, increase heat 1 => 1.5
AC/2: Increase cooldown 0.52 => 0.66, decrease heat 1 => 0.5 or lower
LB 10-X: Give it a quirk that makes it useful, like critting through armor

Justification:
AC/20 seems pretty good now as a weapon by itself. The heat increase (back to TT value) would make ghost heat penalty worse for double firing it.

AC/10 almost never gets used now. The other AC nerfs might make it more attractive without doing anything else.

AC/5 has too many benefits compared to the others: extremely high heat efficiency, long range, good projectile speed, and good DPS/ton.

AC/2 is already very hot compared to the other autocannons. If the heat remains high then this weapon cannot afford a DPS nerf. It needs a fairly high DPS to justify the need to constantly track a target.

Edited by Shlkt, 21 March 2014 - 11:34 AM.

[Mechteric]

I'd rather that all Autocannons be DPS weapons, by that I mean to look at the Mechwarrior Reboot trailer where the AC20 spit out a shell every half a second (which is currently what only the AC/2 does).

So why not just make all autocannon's shoot once every 0.5 seconds, adjust the damage/heat per shell to match the appropriate DPS/HPS for the weapon and adjust the ammo count to match the damage per ton of ammo it does now. This would be a huge win to making brawling good again, and taking these weapons away from being used in sniping. (BTW I'm ok with sniping in general, just think this regardless)

Their DPS will not be able to remain the same as they are now though, since the AC2 has higher DPS (3.85) than AC5 (3.33), which is weird... and the AC10 is only 0.15 DPS higher than AC2. Bizarro.

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 21 March 2014 - 11:48 AM.

[Varent]

CapperDeluxe, on 21 March 2014 - 11:34 AM, said:

I'd rather that all Autocannons be DPS weapons, by that I mean to look at the Mechwarrior Reboot trailer where the AC20 spit out a shell every half a second (which is currently what only the AC/2 does).

So why not just make all autocannon's shoot once every 0.5 seconds, adjust the damage/heat per shell to match the appropriate DPS/HPS and adjust the ammo count to match the damage per ton of ammo it does now. This would be a huge win to making brawling good again, and taking these weapons away from snipers.

actually it really wouldnt, it would just make players use lasers non stop and make ac useless.

[DEMAX51]

I think there are a couple of options to bring ACs back in line with the other weapons Here are my thoughs:

Range (2x vs 3x): I feel like the 3x range is pretty good as is. It differentiates the AC weapons from lasers, and the bullet-drop from the 2x to 3x range adds an interesting dynamic to those long-range shots.

Cooldown: I wouldn't be opposed to a slightly longer cooldown for most of the AC weapons. Given their low heat, you can pretty much fire them non stop. Increasing cooldown would make you spread your damage over a longer period of time. In essence, ACs are already front loaded damage, and because you can fire them so quickly they're basically front-loaded damage throughout the course of an entire match as well, whereas lasers, due to their high heat, have to spread their damage over a longer period of time. If that makes sense.

Heat: Along the same lines as cooldown, higher heat for the ACs would force people to take more time between shots as well. Personally, I think higher heat for ACs is a better solution than longer cooldown, however.

Ammo: I can count on one hand the number of times I've run out of ammo for an AC boat. Lasers are supposed to have the advantage of not relying on ammo, but ammo is so abundant lasers don't really have much of an advantage at all. I think it should be lowered slightly for *most* of the AC weapons.

Critical slots: should be left as-is. So should weight. You can't really mess with these things without screwing up all of the stock builds.

Ammo explosions: a slightly-higher chance for ammo to explode wouldn't be a terrible thing, but it'd be nice if this also came with the ability to dump a weapon's ammo if you choose to mid-game.

Burst-fire: I think this could be an awesome addition to the game, and would solve pretty much all of the "pinpoint alpha" problems. Naturally, if they did this, people would probably revert to the PPC & Gauss combo, but I'm sure PGI could do something to make that a less viable option as well.

Recoil: Meh, kinda torn on this one. Wouldn't be terrible - it's in a lot of other games and people deal with it. I wouldn't hate it, but I don't think it would have a huge effect on anything other than, like, AC2 boats that fire really really quickly. I think other tweaks would be better.

[General Taskeen]

If people want weapons to remain "feeling different" then armor/internals have to be increased. A lot of this boils down to quick deaths and Mechs falling apart relatively fast. Armor after all, is only 2x, while internals are the same as TT.

What I mean by that is, people like the regular AC shooting "one shell" of one damage type, but in order for that to remain a lot has to change. However, this approach is also exactly why Ultra's are stupid and because they are stupid they had to add a rolling dice mechanic to the stupidity.

It all comes down to this game trying to shoehorn in direct TT damage values and trying to make it work in real time, its a failed approach any time its tried in MW. Its also directly ties into the failed heat system with the increased fire rates in this game specifically. With whacky things like an AC/2 requiring DHS to operate, when both AC/2 and AC/5 should be the most heat efficient AC's ever with SHS cooling them down easily.

A nerf isn't a required, an overhaul is required, not this balancing inside a vacuum merry-go-round.

They should increase armor/internals, then adjust ammo up to compensate, and fix the stupid heat system before going wild. I don't mind the idea of burst fire AC's, I have suggested it many times myself, but people also enjoy the 'unique' feel of weapons. So if TTK is increased by more health and a heat system that isn't stupid, then they can try different things like keeping current AC's, removing stupid rolling dice Jams on Ultra's, and introduce interesting things like "alternate" manufacturer AC's that fire in bursts with some sort of different benefit like fast CD's or whatever.

Edited by General Taskeen, 21 March 2014 - 11:54 AM.

[Mr Ezzquizo]

nerf ac and nerf lrm



the only way to stop lrm bots is with ac