Posted 09 July 2014 - 12:55 PM
The Gauss exploding easily and for a lot of damage is both an effective balance mechanic and flavorful and true to both fiction and TT. Back when Double-Gauss was the meta, it was essentially balanced with nothing but the fragility and explosiveness to mitigate all its advantages.
The only reason for the charge-up mechanic was the synergy of Gauss/PPC, with several key builds (mostly poptarts) were abusing. PGI's solution only slightly increased the skill cap for using the Gauss/PPC combo (and it's been making a significant return lately with the advent of Clan cGauss/cERPPC poptart Mad Cats).
I have a series of suggestions. Any one might well be sufficient in itself to allow for the removal of the Gauss charge mechanic, among other things, but the more that PGI adopts the better.
1 - Dynamic Precision Reduction. Apply a dynamically-changing reduction in weapon precision (accuracy is still perfect; shots deviate around the aim point by a scaling amount). Have throttle %, heat %, and stability state (JJs on/off, on/off the ground, recently received impulse, etc.) all apply small, stacking modifiers to the real-time DPR rating of a mech.
2 - PPC damage arcing. The cERPPC mechanic is a good starting place, but I figure it's not quite enough, and in addition should be applied to the IS PPC/ERPPC as well. Leave it how it is until PGI gets the hit registration kinks worked out, then add it to the other PPC varieties and tweak the numbers. I favor 9/3/3 for the cERPPC and 6/2/2 for the PPC and ERPPC as starting values.
3 - Cooldown overhaul. To promote weapon specialization, I suggest that PGI give weapons designed for close quarters battle an edge in refire rate. However, given the already-short time to kill that MWO suffers from, rather than buffing Pulse Lasers and SRMs, I suggest PGI do a rework of cooldown timers overall. I favor leaving standard SRMs and all Pulse lasers where they are, while adding between 0.50 and 2.00s to all other weapons. The Gauss, for instance, could lose the charge time and get a flat +2.00s cooldown increase. It'd actually gain both sniper and snap-fire performance, while losing an element of CQB effectiveness (further allowing the AC20 to compete against it, for instance). PPCs might gain a 1.0s cooldown, while ERPPCs and cERPPCs might gain 1.25s. SSRMs would move to a full 1.00s increase over the equivalent standard SRM launcher (leaving standard SRMs a clear winner in raw damage output while keeping SSRMs as a more reliable way to hit difficult targets). Autocannons and both standard and ER lasers would need changes as part of this rework, as would LRMs.
4 - MG buff, LB AC buff, and Flamer rework. If PGI wants to keep the base damage of MGs at 0.80 per shot, then they should increase the critical multiplier to compensate. LB ACs have needed a bump in damage per pellet for a long time; I advocate trying 1.1 or 1.2 for a month or so and seeing what happens. Finally, the Flamer is terrible as-is, and is especially egregious right now since all the Puma drivers out there are forced to carry one. I say, take a lesson from MechCommander and rework Flamers entirely. Make them a short-range energy FLD weapon. Give them 5 damage for 5 heat, with 5 heat inflicted to the target. Set them at a 120m range with no bonus maximum or damage fall off. Give them a Cooldown that matches the cooldown plus burn time of the Medium Laser (4.00s unless PGI does #3 above). cFlamers should be the same only with just 4 heat inflicted (to help compensate for the half ton lower weight).
Do pretty much any one of the above and PGI can start reverting some of the more onerous mechanical changes they've made over the years, including the Gauss charge mechanic. Done more than one, or better yet all of them, would allow PGI potentially to roll back even the entire Ghost Heat system.
Finally, a bonus fifth change that would not directly impact the Gauss and so is less relevant to this thread, but still part of my overall suite of suggestions.
5 - Universal burst-fire ACs. Set IS ACs to 4-round bursts with 0.10s between shots in a burst. Set cACs to 6-round bursts with 0.12s between shots in a burst. This leaves IS ACs a sizeable advantage in burst time (0.30s instead of 0.60s), as well as damage per shot (Rating/4 instead of Rating/6). It also mitigates somewhat the overwhelming advantage of pure pinpoint FLD that IS ACs currently enjoy.
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