6 replies to this topic

[Prezimonto]

I put this together for another thread and it was enough work, and cogent enough that I felt it deserved it's own suggestion thread.

Say the UAC weapons function like a mini-gun. Give it a 2 second spin up time, and a barrel cool down time of 5 total seconds for full cooldown. This is completely divorced from heat sinks as it's to balance the engagement windows of UAC's against AC's and it can be tracked with an indicator bar on or above the weapon groupings area.

I would set it up so an UAC in a weapon group starts spinning with the first click, starts firing with the second click and shuts off with a third click and then starts cooling off. This works with the weapon grouping system in the game and doesn't involve multiple buttons to control the weapon, just it's own weapon group.

So an AC5 can fire every 1.5 seconds for 5 damage. A UAC5 spins up, and then fires a 3 damage shot every 0.5 seconds that you hold the button down after the 2 second spin up time. Having the barrel spin doesn't build barrel heat, but also doesn't let the barrel cool off. So you can prep-spin, but you have to wind down to ready the next burst.

https://docs.google....VkE&usp=sharing
https://docs.google....zx=icucqfn30q5t


https://docs.google....zx=7eux8cxd3cdk

Note that the two stay in fairly tight lockstep for overall dps over time, but are used in very different ways, and would have a very different feel in game play each with their own pros and cons.

Also note at the 4.5 to 6 second mark (4 to 5 AC5 shots) the weapons are doing about equal damage. So for short firing engagements they have rough parity. The UAC5 user gets a heavy benefit for staying engaged for the additional 4 to 5 seconds, but then would want to be looking for cover at the end of it with a 7 second break (5 seconds of cooldown and 2 seconds of spin up) about to happen.

The barrel heat mechanic linked to the barrel spin up ensures that a player isn't going to pull more dps out the weapon over time than is intended, so macros won't benefit anyone.

Thoughts?

Edited by Prezimonto, 27 March 2014 - 02:13 PM.

[Spleenslitta]

My first thoughts was about poptarts spinning up the barrels, then jumping and unleashing a hail of shells.
But for me personaly who has only pulled of a single jumpshot this year i think it is a really good idea.

It still needs a jam in my opinion. Spin it up once/twice and spindown without firing fixes it sounds about right.

Edited by Spleenslitta, 27 March 2014 - 02:26 PM.

[Prezimonto]

Well, I was honestly trying to get rid of random elements, by normalizing the dps over a long time frame you can maintain the short term "burst" effect of the UAC, but not have it be wildly out of balance from the classic version.

I realize the jam chance is the TT explaination, but in this mechanic the enforced spinup/cooldown replaces the jam chance. The cooldown scales with the time it was fired, so if you fire a long burst you longer cool down before you can spin up again. If you spin up and only fire for a few seconds the cooldown is small, but you've sill got the spin up.

It provides an AC weapon that has a short run high burst dps, but long run is fairly even dps with it's counter part.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

I like the idea, but it seems better to save your idea for implementing Rotary AC's that should appear later on, and those can be unjammed during a match from my understanding they way current MWO UACs shouldn't be able to.

But I do like the idea of removing the randomness of jamming though.

I have a pdf copy of the revised Master Rules and believe that UAC's should function more like their description states.
From page 133:

Spoiler

I think that they should have two toggle-able modes, one where they fire normally as ACs do.

The second "Ultra" mode with the increased Rate of Fire could have a setup where the player cannot simply jam the fire button down, ideally an intuitive built-in system (visually similar to how the Gauss has the charge-up/cooldown cycles) in the boxes around the reticle/crosshair and the bar in the weapon group box and with added sound prompts could be utilized to inform the player of pushing the weapon to the jam point if fire is being sustained for too long.

The normal cooldown should activate after releasing the trigger while the secondary "jam" system lowers over time to prevent the permanent jam for the match, and each individual shot fired within a burst would raise heat (so each burst should be a higher heat spike as a result then the normal fire mode).

I figure that the rate the "jam" system increases to jam permanently, to the rate it decreases to prevent jamming should be tied to the amount of additional ammo expended in the burst up to a certain burst cap to help control the overall DPS of the secondary mode, and to prevent abuse.

Say for example the Ultra mode could allow for a single burst of up to 5 shots that fire, say, 0.5 to 0.75 seconds apart. That long of a burst would fully charge up the "jam" system however, locking the weapon up for the rest of the match.

So it would be up to the player to fire two to three shot bursts at a time to prevent permanently jamming or risk the jam if milking the weapon with larger bursts.

So with regular use, if the player can control their fire, the "jam" system will go up and down when the weapon is used in the Ultra mode.

I guess macros could possibly exploit it but if there can be a DPS cap or heat penalty that works to keep DPS at whatever acceptable level such as 3.85 DPS (for the sake of argument), then I wouldn't mind at least exploring such an idea for Ultra ACs.

[Alex Warden]

i´d just make it simple.... make it doubleshot (with heat applied for every single shot) , then followed by a cooldown,
1.3 - 1.5X longer than it´s "normal" AC variant...

(add a moderate chance to jam on heat levels of 80%+ maybe)

Edited by Alex Warden, 27 March 2014 - 09:52 PM.

[Prezimonto]

Alex Warden, on 27 March 2014 - 09:32 PM, said:

i´d just make it simple.... make it doubleshot (with heat applied for every single shot) , then followed by a cooldown,
1.3 - 1.5X longer than it´s "normal" AC variant...

(add a moderate chance to jam on heat levels of 80%+ maybe)

That's really easy to follow, and I like it. My issue is that it makes the weapon feel fairly similar to AC's already.

That being said, I didn't even know rotary AC's were a thing in the later timelines as I've only really played battletech pre-clan through clan invasion. How far out in the timeline do rotary AC's start appearing?

[Prezimonto]

Praetor Shepard, on 27 March 2014 - 06:09 PM, said:

I guess macros could possibly exploit it but if there can be a DPS cap or heat penalty that works to keep DPS at whatever acceptable level such as 3.85 DPS (for the sake of argument), then I wouldn't mind at least exploring such an idea for Ultra ACs.

I have 2 issues with the TT version. First it's not fun for new players who jam a weapon and then can't use it again and don't understand why, that's a really steep learning curve and this game (at this point) isn't a sim. Second, that system is heavily macroable to avoid all penalty, which I hate as a mechanic because it gives a big advantage for someone in the game who's using third party software. They'll get 1.5x the damage for the cost of essentially nothing.

Really, I don't mind the random jam chance on UAC's, but I hate that it can happen on the first double click. I'd like a system that averages the UAC5 damage(while giving it a short term higher burst) to be that of an AC5 over a longer window of time.. . which is what the above model does.