37 replies to this topic

[Jun Watarase]

We know why lasers have a burn time, because we dont want to see light mechs doing 30 pinpoint alphas and shredding mechs like paper. And thats perfectly fine.

But pulse lasers have always been the red headed step child since beta. Most pulse laser builds in the beta only existed because of the weird firing lag for non lasers that made it very hard to hit moving targets with. The moment that was removed, pulse lasers were forgotten. Except for newbies that try to use them and then wonder why they keep overheating.

Ive said this before but comparing the pulse to non pulse version, you get a 0.4 second longer burn time in exchange for huge tonnage, heat and range savings. 40% less burn time just isnt significant enough to compensate.

PGI has never known what to do with pulse lasers exactly. In the TT, they are super powerful, and the go to weapon for killing fast mechs. In MWO, they are the go to weapon if you want to overheat and die pointlessly. I think the fact that competitive players refuse to touch them except for joke builds says a lot.

Maths:

Med laser : 5 damage, 4 heat, 270 meters range, 1 sec burn time, 1 ton.

Med pulse : 6 damage, 5 heat, 200 meters range, 0.6 second burn time, 2 tons.

Everything looks ok until you get to the point where the pulse version costs double for what is obviously nowhere near double effectiveness. In exchange for 20% more damage and 40% less burn time, you pay 25% less range, 25% more heat and double the tonnage. Thats not even factoring in c-bill costs.

If they were equal tonnage, it would be a very tough call to say which is better. The pulse would be better for close range brawling, the normal laser for hotter builds that need a bit extra extra range. But at double the tonnage, its a no brainer.

The problem is touching tonnage for battle tech stuff is very complicated unless PGI is willing to rework all the stock configs to account for the tonnage change (which we all know they won't do).

The simplest solution i can think of is to see what happens when pulse lasers have no burn time. Given the short range, high heat and tonnage requirements, i'm pretty sure that boating them isnt going to be a problem...you are going to end up with a mech that struggles with heat.

Funfact : just 4 med pulse and 18 DHS will overheat extremely quickly, in roughly 20 seconds with all efficiencies. 4 med lasers on the other hand, take almost a full minute to overheat with 18 DHS. And the med lasers weigh HALF the tonnage. Boating 4 ACs will pretty much overheat you...never.

Also you dont have to worry about using them as uber PPCs, because they have very short ranges. If necessary, nerf ranges back to the TT values (180 meters for med pulse). At those ranges, ballistics and PPCs hit pretty much instantly anyway.

This change would make them excellent short range brawling weapons...which is what they are supposed to be. If you are willing to run hot and heavy. It would give them a speciality that is not covered by any other weapon currently (except the AC20, which will STILL be a superior weapon as it runs cool, unlike the pulse lasers).

Test it for a patch or two, and if it turns out to be super OP for some reason, return the burn time and think about what else to do with them. Simple as that. Change some XML values for once, its not hard...

[Durant Carlyle]

No. All lasers require beam duration. Pulse lasers could be further reduced to 0.5 seconds or even 0.4 seconds, but it still needs to exist. Lasers should never be FLD weapons.

For me, pulse lasers do more damage per hit than standard lasers do. The difference is about 6% in my case, but it is noticeable.

[Cart]

I often use Pulse-Laser, when I put lasers into my Torso, because of the lower beam-time.
In the arms,I mostly use normal Lasers, because if the Mech is leveled somewhat, I can easily track evenquite fast moving targets with them, but the Torso mostly doesn't moves that, so Pulsers have an advantage there.

Maybe it would be nice, if they'd reduce the beam-time a little more(especially the little difference of 0,1s between Small-Laser and Small-Pulser is quite pointless at the moment), but never to zero...relating to the count of "Pinpoint-Whining-Threads" in here, I would say, we have enough Pinpoint-Weapons.

Edited by Cart, 10 May 2014 - 06:20 AM.

[WonderSparks]

I, for one, think the pulse lasers are lacking somewhat. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in TT weren't they supposed to have some kind of accuracy boost? I'm not 100% sure how (and if) that translates to any of its behavior in MWO.
I'm not saying we should make them OP, just maybe a little tweak to help them fit in just a little better.
...Not that any meta or what have you is going to stop me from using them when I have the chance (like my 5xMPL AWS-8T)

[FupDup]

IMO, pulse lasers would probably be better off if we just gave them a whole new mechanic (such as being "laser machine guns" that fire fast (for less damage per shot but more damage over time) and tear people up in close quarters). Failing that, a simple small damage increase or whatever would be nice.

[Pjwned]

So you want smaller PPCs then?

The burn time is fine as is really and 0 burn time lasers would be lame, if pulse lasers were to be buffed they just need to not weigh so much more, especially medium pulse lasers.

[Khobai]

Pulse Lasers should fire a rapid series of pulses. And they should have an energy bar that depletes while being fired and replenishes while not being fired or when out of energy.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

I dunno about having zero burn, it's an option though.


I was thinking changes like this could be explored:

• LPL
  
  • Break up 10.6 damage into two separate pulses of 5.3 damage
    
  • Pulses could be 0.30 duration or shorter
• MPL
  
  • Two Pulses of 3 damage each
    
  • Pulses could be 0.30 duration or shorter
    
  • Lower heat to 4
• SPL
  
  • One Pulse of 3.4 damage each
    
  • Pulse duration at 0.30 duration or shorter
    
  • Lower heat to 2

Then go from there if these changes help.

[fandre]

I would like to see them at 0,1s or 0,2s. It is a shame, that they are not very useful at their current state,

[Pariah Devalis]

Not entirely sure if I think zero burn time, rapid fire pulse lasers is a good idea, but burn time as a function to avoid hitscan FLD probably should be tweaked a bit.

Right now we have Ballistics being the weapons of choice because they are front-loaded and run relatively cool. Make all lasers, pulse, standard, and ER have a shorter burn duration, however, and you can close the gap somewhat. Zero burn time is bad, but what we have now is not damage for damage.

The classic pro vs con to energy vs ballistic was simple. Ballistics ran cold but were heavy, whereas Energy did a lot of damage for their tonnage but were hot. The introduction of burn time directly impacts the laser's capability to actually deal its appropriate damage, making laser damage less valuable than ballistics, compounded with the heat issues they can ocrue. On the other hand, hitscan, frontloaded damage energy weapons are broken beyond hell with little if any counterplay involved. Somewhere between 0 burn time and what we currently have is, therefore, the sweet spot, just as long as you are keeping in mind you have a heat penalty on top of burn time.

Once you find a sweet spot for normal/ER lasers, you can then chop that beam duration in half or in thirds or whatever denomination makes sense and make those frontloaded packets of damage that individually do less than the full beam but require no hold on time to do a significant percentage of the damage the weapon is capable of generating. That way you have a partial frontloaded damage laser.

So, say we reduce the burn time of a medium laser to 0.5 seconds. Medium pulse would fire, say, two blasts of 0.16 second intervals, with an equal 0.16 second pause in between the two bursts. Each burst would deal half the total beam damage.

Of course, these numbers are entirely pulled out of my ass as far as balance is concerned. Who knows, burn time might need to be more or less.

Edited by Pariah Devalis, 10 May 2014 - 08:42 AM.

[Tesunie]

I run my Cicada 3M with 4 med pulse lasers. Have from the moment I bought it over a year ago. Runs cool enough when you space your shots in sets of two, with the occasional burst of all weapons. If they had no beam duration time (though maybe shorter would be nice), not many targets could survive the ECMed, 150KPH fast mech getting into your rear quarters and alphaing your rear CT a time or two. How many 24 point alphas can a mech take with perfect convergence and no "splash duration"?

Zero duration I think would be bad. Half a normal laser duration might be worth looking into. (Otherwise, the LPL would become a short range PPC basically.) Also, consider not just the MPL, but what about the SPL as well? SPL hunchbacks running cooler than a med laser hunch (as far as I can recall) with pin point alphas? A hunchback with 8 SPL would have a 27.2 pin point alpha, that they could refire within 2.25 seconds... all for only 19.2 heat. (Compared to the normal 8 med laser hunch, which does 40 damage, suffers ghost heat, splash from beam duration, and produces at least 32 heat without ghost heat, shooting every 4 seconds (1 second beam, 3 second cooldown).) (Should be 6 med lasers, the ghost heat threshold, which would be 30 damage and 24 heat every 4 seconds.)

27.2 SPL every 2.25 seconds, vs 40 ML every 4 seconds.
That's:
54.4 damage for every 4.5 seconds SPL vs 40 damage for med lasers in 4 seconds.
38.4 heat for every 4.5 seconds (with no ghost heat) vs 32 heat (without ghost heat included into numbers) within 4 seconds.


I'm not even touching the LPL yet... I just don't think this would be a good idea...

[Voivode]

All lasers should have the burn time reduced. None should have them reduced to 0. Then the LPL becomes a PPC with ERLL heat and no minimum range, with 0.6 extra damage. Just, no.

[Wildstreak]

LPL is the close range PPC. For the same tonnage, you get no 90m minimum, better heat management and slightly more damage just to lose some range. On some builds, LPL is good.

SPL can be considered an alternate to MLs. You lose range but get better heat management.

Only MPL could have a problem.

Next we come to boating. Pretty much, most of the time, I would advise not to boat anything except maybe SPL on Lights.

Really, LPL boating will just not work, you may as well boat PPCs. Only big Mechs could even consider LPL boating and there is the GH factor limiting you to 2 before penalties. Despite that, only something like the Awesome-8Q or bigger could consider boating LPLs.

MPL, I have recently tried boating them. 4MPLs is too much, 3 do just fine. I also found MPLs are great in pairs combined with Streaks, a Mech like my Griffin-3M using MPLs and Streaks makes a great Hunter and I have done some of my memorable games with it. So MPLs are best in pairs, maybe triples, with other weapons being low heat options (small Missile and some Ballistic).

SPLs are usually seen on things from the Hunchback-4P and smaller. Good for fast Mechs that zip in, hit then zip out. Due to the fast speed of the shooter, SPLs will deliver more damage on target than standard lasers that splash and are less heat than their weight equivalent the ML.

So in summary:
LPLs are the short range PPC good for fast builds or big Mechs that prefer fighting at close range.

MPLs are best in 2 or 3 and combined with other low heat weapons.

SPLs, niche on smaller, faster Mechs.

I should also note Chain fire seems to work better than trying to get a Pulse Alpha.

A couple of examples:

The Griffin-3M I have been doing well with. Here, I use the MPL on Chain fire.

My recent creation, the Pulseback. Given near 100kph, it needs Pulse to hit damage more accurately. I currently have removed the SPLs for 1DHS in each side torso, the AMS ammo is elsewhere. Fast, accurate and no Hunch weakness. The LPL cools off by the time it is ready to fire again, just the MPL Alpha that needs watching.

[OznerpaG]

no burn time - no way

maybe:
1 second cooldown for SPLas
2 second cooldown for MPLas
3 second cooldown for LPLas

[Chihuahuablend]

Not ******* happening. But, could have much faster recharge or something to compensate, they do tend to suck from what i've experienced.

[Biaxialrain]

Absolutely agree with the gist of this thread.

Ballistics are fired with impunity while lasers need to be held on target for the duration, recharge and then on top of that you have to manage heat.

Slight reductions in heat, recharge time or burn time would greatly enhance gameplay.

[Wraith 1]

Zero burn time would be so stupidly fun - Until I got tired of Jenners/Firestarters/HBK-4Ps destroying absolutely everything.
that'd actually be a pretty long time.

I think zero recharge time would be closer to the mark. Just reduce the heat and beam DPS so you don't have 7.4DPS/5.2HPS for a single SPL.

Or maybe not. Long-range weapons are already dominant anyways, right?

[Grimmrog]

I don't like them either, LPL for 2 tons more? and at this range? Not even worth it at all. Too situational. I would at least say Pulselasers should have the same range and same damage, but for this they still have the extra load of tonnage needed and extra heat. This alone is enough downside.

or increase the effective distance from 50% to like 80%, so thet their damage drop is not 200 400 instead its 320 400 for medium pulse laser s example.

there are many things to balance them, but right now the most drawback is the reduced range, whcih alone is not worth the extra tonnage they need.

Edited by Grimmrog, 17 May 2014 - 03:20 AM.

[Jun Watarase]

Like i explained in the OP, their short range would prevent them from being uber PPCs.

Why are PPCs OPed? Because they are 540 meters of near instant 10 pt damage and the 90 meter range is largely irrelevant in realtime when you can keep moving to keep enemies at a distance.

A large pulse laser has a range of 300 meters by default. That is in no way good for a 7 ton weapon that is barely better than 2 medium lasers. So what if they can do instant damage at short range....they are in brawling range, just shoot back! They cant pop in and out of cover to do long range alphas like PPCs can.

And like i said, if it turns out to be OP (highly unlikely as they wouldnt hold a candle to PPC/AC boats anyway), tweak the values. Its not hard.

No mech can mount more than 4 MPL or 2 LPL without running into massive overheating problems so you cant boat them (this is with 22 DHS), and their short range means you cant just hide behind cover to cool down since the enemy is going to be in your face.

Really do not know why people are so scared about pulse lasers being useful. They need a niche, and unfortunately "makes you overheat" doesnt qualify.

[Naduk]

i agree with the make them like machine guns concept
making them short range ppc's is no good
snub nose ppc and its other flavors will have no use if pulse become what they are supposed to be
not that we have that tech yet, but if pulse lasers are mini ppc then we will never see new ppc tech

a pulse laser should be a laser machine gun
at the moment they are close enough, a reduction to their heat is all they really need to be amazing as is