Haakon Magnusson, on 29 April 2014 - 07:04 AM, said:
I agree, GC is not optimal, just trying to figure out ways to desync it from weapons it is normally combined with, tweaking speeds only can gimp the weapon so far.
Supposedly they have the same firing rate. Just like IS AC/10 and LB/10. Cluster ammo is cheaper and some its mostly about what is best for the situation at the time.
Their UAC DPS is identically twice our AC DPS at last mention. So as UACs supposedly churn out x damage twice as fast, it's pretty much true here. The UAC/20 completes 40 damage in 4 seconds but it's pumping out 5 shots per '20', so its churning 5 shots per 2 seconds with a 2 second cooldown. That's a shot every 0.4 seconds. But the second burst has a jam chance. Ghost heat's supposed to still apply.
PPC and splash damage was something they worked on but required them to fix splash mechanics of "grenade" i.e. the missiles. Since they muted the splash as they discovered if they turned it off or if they changed the base code it screwed up everything (evidently "LRMs" and "SRMs" fired in a straight line and didn't react to anything), its safe to say they gave up on it. After all they worked on splash damage back in early 2013 and simply stopped with only mention of the problems with tinkering it.
PPCs would be perfectly fine if the threshold was 30 and we had heat penalties. Example: PPC is 10 heat. Fire 10 heat, you get 33.33333(repeating)% heat. Fire 2 at once and it's 66.666667% heat. Fire 3 and it's instant 100% heat shutdown, no matter what map, no matter what conditions. 2 ER PPCs = 30 heat = shutdown. No matter what. The problem is MWO has a rising threshold, and that just screwed everything up. Right now the max under normal circumstances is 88.56 and still carry an ER PPC in a Victor. On Frozen City you can get up to 103-ish.
Clans at current stock designs if untampered with, can fit enough heatsinks to reach 120 to 130 if the pilot skill tree does not change soon. Can you imagine a mech that could potentially fire 130 heat in ER PPCs at 15 damage each? That's 8 ER PPCs for 120, while walking on forest colony and NOT overheating while dealing 120 damage pinpoint. It's not even possible in tabletop, but you could do it in MWO if not for ghost heat. That's...pretty sick...and a huge failure.
Gauss Rifles with a charge up are fine. If anything they're now nerfed into oblivion compared to ACs.
- But if ACs had that burst, their heat would be divided over several shots making them thermally cooler to operate (no more overheating from firing AC/2s).
- If we had the 30 threshold, that'd really matter because without ghost heat, if AC/20s were proper heat (7 instead of 6) and single shot, we'd still overheat in 3 shots with the typical 12 DHs AC/40 Jager build.
- With heat penalties as originally in MWO during closed beta we'd have 80% heat causing damage to our weapons, heatsinks and ammunition. 24 heat is 80%. And 101% heat would instantly destroy ammunition containers.
- So burst or automatic fire would be meaningful (say chemjet gun style 4 shots for an AC/20 at 5 damage each, one per second gives you a nice automatic rate at 1.75 heat per shot and 7 heat per 20 damage. Or it could be burst fire with 1 shot per half second, churning out 4 shots in 2 seconds and having a 2 second magazine change time.
- Their range could be recoil related instead of 'bullet suddenly becomes useless'. This would give crouching -- a function PGI is considering but thinks would be useless -- an actual use. Crouch to decrease your recoil and increase your pinpoint. It'd also make ACs as a poptarting weapon less useful.
- Yet PPCs would be under control. Sure, big pinpoint, but you'd never be able to safely fire 2 standard (and even then you'd have to wait several 6 seconds with 15 true DHS to safely fire again without hitting 100% heat, more like 10 seconds to safely fire again without hitting the penalties and at some point longer than that to cool down as eventually you'd overheat. That or now and then fire them one at a time). An ER PPC could never be fired two at once.
- And the Gauss Rifle even with its charge up time would become much more appealing to players.
Though if you want to Desync a PPC, a delay fire is the best solution.
The Gauss Rifle charge up came weeks after I suggested a push button 'charge up and fire' for PPCs. Where you hit the button, the PPC takes half a second or so to charge up where it visually forms up at the tip of the barrel and then WHOOSH! flies through the air.
Paul threw it on the Gauss rifle.
I'm just sad that it'd never be done that way. Though sooner or later I'll have my own way to test my own ideas in a tangible environment; or at the very least use it in animated cinematics based on some tabletop campaigns.
Cimarb, on 29 April 2014 - 07:57 AM, said:
Regarding the PPC fixes, see the second post in the link in my signature - there are lots of ways to adjust it while keeping its "flare".
Splash damage isn't necessarily an issue, as you could have it function (deal damage) like a very close spread LBX
You've got an interesting solution to that problem. But then you just created the
Snub-nosed PPC, and defeated the purpose of having one. If that didn't exist, I'd be all giggity and onboard with it.
I've done something similar with my own ideas on laser variants. For example, using Halo's Spartan laser as a base, I thought of a variant of regular lasers with a charge up (that gave a warning through vibration, a loud noise and the build up of smoke) that after the charge up would produce an instant upfront burst of damage, and then cool down. Then it turns out I made a
bombast laser unintentionally!
Though truth be told, PGI did that with SRMs when they made 'em dumbfire.
SRMs are guided.
Guided and locked according to TRO (but lock is not required to fire).
According to the story books (that I read so far), they are soft-locked (just hit R and fire) but are easily distracted by larger heat sources. i.e. if you target Player A but player B has a larger heat source and is closer the missile goes after the wrong target. Or they go after pits of lava instead but in the books I've read they haven't ever been dumb-fired' just easily distracted. (Mind you I've read 7 of them so far out of more than 50 so yeah).
This is why the Raven 3-L and Kintaros carry SRMs and NARCs. SRMs chase NARCs in a way described in some Battletech books as rabid piranhas (oh the irony) that bump and grind as they fight each other to hit the NARC'd target while ignoring heat sources (thus the increased accuracy). Meanwhile Artemis also overrides their heat-seeking nature by pointing a beam at something and keeping their interest. (Quite literally the SRMs I read about seem to have Attention Deficit Disorder as they otherwise rapidly lose interest in their intended targets.)
MRMs are supposed to fire as the SRMs do now. Le sigh. So PGI has done that kind of mistake before.
Edit: Made it easier to read.
Edited by Koniving, 29 April 2014 - 11:40 AM.
7
? Cause that is how they shot me for over 25 years. 
I hope he will also reduce clanner ranges to about the same as IS.
