114 replies to this topic

[El Bandito]

FupDup, on 02 September 2015 - 08:11 PM, said:

The difference is that the lasers HURT people much more than a class-2 Autocannon. Suppression is when people try to avoid you and duck down to get out of your way. People do this when they are afraid. Weapons that do significant damage have a higher likelihood of making somebody concerned about their well-being than weapons which don't have significant damage.

Then people are stupid for ignoring the AC2. Regular ERLL has lower DPS than AC2 so if they do not duck down, they will be getting hurt more than ERLLs. High heat is really keeping the AC2 down.

FupDup, on 02 September 2015 - 08:11 PM, said:

Reduced heat doesn't make an enemy mech want to stop what he's doing and move quickly to cover. Even with zero heat that wouldn't happen. Even with hilarious NEGATIVE heat that wouldn't happen.

With zero heat, I will be kicking ass and taking names.

Edited by El Bandito, 02 September 2015 - 08:30 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

FupDup, on 02 September 2015 - 08:11 PM, said:

The difference is that the lasers HURT people much more than a class-2 Autocannon. Suppression is when people try to avoid you and duck down to get out of your way. People do this when they are afraid. Weapons that do significant damage have a higher likelihood of making somebody concerned about their well-being than weapons which don't have significant damage.

For instance, a mech like that aforementioned dakka Daishi will make people crap their pants and GTFO out of your way, making it probably the best suppression mech we have right now.

Reduced heat doesn't make an enemy mech want to stop what he's doing and move quickly to cover. Even with zero heat that wouldn't happen. Even with hilarious NEGATIVE heat that wouldn't happen.

The enemy will also GTF out of the way if they are being rattled and can't aim straight because of it. In that instance, they are spending time losing armor with reduced effective damage output. The rattling may also disorient the target and slow its return to cover, allowing team mates to apply real damage with relative impunity.

But all this depends on having a decently quick rate of fire with decently powerful rattling effects and a decently huge ammo supply to keep firing even when a 'Mech isn't in the sights.

El Bandito, on 02 September 2015 - 08:26 PM, said:

Then people are stupid for ignoring the AC2. Regular ERLL has lower DPS than AC2 so if they do not duck down, they will be getting hurt more than ERLLs.

But that's not what's going to happen. What's going to happen is the ERLL users are going to peek and poke from cover, making most of your AC/2 rounds harmless by missing or sitting in your magazines while you are going to be exposed, taking 7-9-damage laser blasts to your face. Repeatedly.

Their on-target damage is greater than yours.

[El Bandito]

Yeonne Greene, on 02 September 2015 - 08:30 PM, said:

But that's not what's going to happen. What's going to happen is the ERLL users are going to peek and poke from cover, making most of your AC/2 rounds harmless by missing or sitting in your magazines while you are going to be exposed, taking 7-9-damage laser blasts to your face. Repeatedly.

Their on-target damage is greater than yours.

You need to have better reading comprehension. I am not talking about a duel between ERLL user and AC2. I am talking about AC2 dealing more DPS than ERLL when ignored. And ERLL is not that good of a suppressive weapon since players like me know that once fired, the ERLL will need 3 seconds to recharge. You can't suppress anyone in that 3 seconds.

Edited by El Bandito, 02 September 2015 - 08:36 PM.

[FupDup]

El Bandito, on 02 September 2015 - 08:26 PM, said:

Then people are stupid for ignoring the AC2. Regular ERLL has lower DPS than AC2 so if they do not duck down, they will be getting hurt more than ERLLs. High heat is really keeping the AC2 down.

The heat issue is seriously over-exaggerated. Use the Smurfys weaponlab feature to look at the time to overheat of an AC/2 build.

Single AC/2: Impossible to overheat

2 AC/2: 2 minutes and 5 seconds to overheat

3 AC/2: 32 seconds to overheat

Those values assume you only use the default 10 DHS that you get with a 250+ rated engine. More dubs lets you do it even longer.


The DPS doesn't mean much when it's only dealt in tiny chunks of 2 damage each. It's like when people try to say that MGs do so so much DPS, except they forget that it has no upfront damage and requires continuous facetime...

Unless the DPS is extremely overwhelming like a 6 UAC/5 Dire Wolf or Triple-UAC/5 IS heavy, or something of that sort, a high alpha strike value is usually more effective.

Edited by FupDup, 02 September 2015 - 08:39 PM.

[El Bandito]

FupDup, on 02 September 2015 - 08:36 PM, said:

The DPS doesn't mean much when it's only dealt in tiny chunks of 2 damage each. It's like when people try to say that MGs do so so much DPS, except they forget that it has no upfront damage and requires continuous facetime...

The face time is mitigated by its long range and shake. MGs have 120 meter range, AC2 has 720.

FupDup, on 02 September 2015 - 08:36 PM, said:

3 AC/2: 32 seconds to overheat

You will also need to take account of the Fast Fire and CD modules.

Edited by El Bandito, 02 September 2015 - 08:56 PM.

[Mazzyplz]

Carrie Harder, on 10 September 2014 - 03:13 PM, said:

There is hope for the dakka after all!

yikes the ac2 king crab might be a force to be reckoned with in the future

[Y E O N N E]

El Bandito, on 02 September 2015 - 08:35 PM, said:

You need to have better reading comprehension. I am not talking about a duel between ERLL user and AC2. I am talking about AC2 dealing more DPS than ERLL when ignored. And ERLL is not that good of a suppressive weapon since players like me know that once fired, the ERLL will need 3 seconds to recharge. You can't suppress anyone in that 3 seconds.

I'm not making a reading comprehension error, you are making a conceptual error. They are ignoring the AC/2 because mitigating it takes almost no effort at all, not because they are potatoes. Firing from cover is something all players do, and that alone mitigates it. Moving also mitigates it. Twisting also mitigates it. Shooting back at him mitigates it since he's going to take more effective damage in the return fire window than he will dish out. You ignore the AC/2 user simply because doing what you do anyways renders him ineffective. Compare to almost any other weapon, which are significantly harder to mitigate because the damage done in a snapshot is much higher.

So, as I said before, your effective DPS over a given engagement window is not what your on-paper value says it is. Nobody cares if you are dealing 5.56 DPS at the muzzle with 2x AC/2 in the 4.5 second snapshot if only 3 are acting on a single target component and the enemy is managing to deal between 20 and 22 DPS to single components on you or your team mates over that same interval at the same range for roughly the same weight in weapons. It doesn't matter that the laser is only firing for between 1.25 and 1.5 seconds while you get to fire constantly; that's still 20-22 DPS into one of your components while all you get to do is put 3 or 4 damage into one of theirs before they spread it all around waiting for the guns to cool. Because you have no cool-down and because your damage is distributed evenly over short intervals, you don't get to dump damage and twist. If you fire off bursts and then twist, you lose your on-paper DPS advantage entirely.

[Wintersdark]

El Bandito, on 02 September 2015 - 08:43 PM, said:

The face time is mitigated by its long range and shake. MGs have 120 meter range, AC2 has 720.

You will also need to take account of the Fast Fire and CD modules.

Does anyone actually find screen shake impedes their aim at all? At WORST it makes it difficult for me to hit specific targets on a small mech. And then, I'll simply aim center mass most of the time anyways.

People always talk about AC2's as suppression weapons, but I have _never_ understood it. Maybe I'm somehow special in this regard, but I find the screen shake ignorable, the damage output laughable. High dps is meaningless when I'm in and out of cover - if you can only hit me when I'm out of cover, my weapons and yours both have near 100% effective uptime, and the big guns are pushing WAY more effective damage downrange in those windows.

And if I'm pushing? Whatever. Unless your running 6 of them, they're not doing enough damage fast enough/focused enough to matter, I'm way more concerned about ballistics slots filled with Gauss/ac20.

The AC2, with ammo, is WAY too heavy for its effectiveness. It should be cooler, but that wouldn't balance it. The problem with the heat is that the whole reason to run ballistics (and deal with limited ammo ànd the danger of carrying ammo) is because they're cool... The 2 isn't.

Even as a basically zero heat weapon, the AC2 would still be lackluster at best.

[Y E O N N E]

It doesn't really shake the target unless you aim for the cockpit area...which I do. Even then, it's more about the smoke and explosions than the impulse. I wouldn't be against them making all AC impacts a bit more jarring. Whiners be damned, you try standing up straight and rigid with a barrage of .410, 20, 16, or 12 ga. slugs hitting you. You don't want to be rattled? Get in cover or get superior numbers.

Ammo is too stingy per ton for the AC/2 to be good at suppression even with better impulse, lower heat, and a faster rate of fire.

[LordNothing]

dps needs to go up, hps needs to stay the same.

[Wildstreak]

Russ Bullock, on 10 September 2014 - 03:11 PM, said:

We are taking a tally of missing weapon modules now and will let you know when they will be added.

Also missing standard Clan AC modules, both Range and Cooldown.

[Monkey Lover]

Ha-ha back in 2014 when Russ would post on the forums

[FupDup]

It's a necro for a worthy cause, though, because the AC/2 is still poop and it's still unfairly missing its cooldown modules (which almost everything else has, excluding Flamers and MGs because those have 0.0 cooldown).

It's especially relevant because the gun will be "buffed" in December, but not by a meaningful margin.

Edited by FupDup, 29 November 2015 - 08:46 AM.

[Weeny Machine]

I wonder what their tally yields...

[MauttyKoray]

Carrie Harder, on 10 September 2014 - 03:18 PM, said:

To make things slightly fasterer, the ones I see missing so far are:

Range:
PPC
ERPPC
C-ERPPC
Gauss
C-Gauss
ERLL
LRM5
LRM10
LRM15
LRM20
C-LRM5
C-LRM10
C-LRM15
C-LRM20
UAC/5
C-SSRM2
C-SSRM4
C-LB 2-X
C-LB 5-X
C-LB 20-X

Cooldown:
AC/2
UAC/5
C-UAC/2
C-SSRM4
C-SSRM6
C-LB 2-X
C-LB 5-X
C-LB 20-X

I didn't list MGs or Flamers because they're continuous fire (can't benefit from cooldown buff?).

Please no LRM range modules...

[Y E O N N E]

That list is not up to date, most of those have been added in.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Would be pretty nice if we could get those AC2 modules, just saying.

[MauttyKoray]

Yeonne Greene, on 29 November 2015 - 02:39 PM, said:

That list is not up to date, most of those have been added in.

I stand by my statement, I haven't looked at modules in a while.

[Y E O N N E]

MauttyKoray, on 29 November 2015 - 06:34 PM, said:

I stand by my statement, I haven't looked at modules in a while.

The only things not in on that list are AC/2 cool-down and UAC/2 cool-down, IIRC. The extra 100 meters on LRMs doesn't really do them any favors, they still suck.

[mad kat]

Russ Bullock, on 10 September 2014 - 03:11 PM, said:

We are taking a tally of missing weapon modules now and will let you know when they will be added.

Resurecting this thread. Is there still a reason why no AC2 cooldown module? Its a bit unfair to not have one this late on?!