84 replies to this topic

[Brody319]

Alek Ituin, on 27 October 2014 - 10:34 PM, said:

The Rifle itself should generate heat through the massive charge required to activate the electromagnetic coils. Unless it's a filthy peasant railgun, in which case it can go melt itself with Ghost Heat for all I care(and it can also stop being called a Gauss Rifle).

The round generates heat, you're correct there, but it's all dependent on velocity. Spacecraft going through reentry hurtle towards the planet at Mach 25+, which is ~8.5km/s. Yes, 8.5 kilometers per second. Our Gauss Rifle only fires a 2km/s slug, it doesn't even manage hypervelocity (3km/s)... If it did however, it would be hitting for something like 50+ damage per slug.

Needless to say, if spacecraft can handle 8.5km/s without melting, I'm fairly confident that a simple superalloy barrel could easily handle a small 2km/s slug. And for the record, humans have been making superalloys since the 1940's, so they're nothing new.

Space craft are designed to deflect heat with special panels. A single panel malfunction and the whole ship can go up in flames. There is a difference between a gun, that has to store and focus the heat and force outward, and a ship that just deflects the heat away. Now because it doesn't generate propellent heat like a normal gun would, that keeps it cooler. but the equipment inside would heat up. lots of electrical flow to the gun when it charges, and when it releases its one giant burst of magnetic energy rushing down the barrel. That would generate quite a lot of heat, these slugs come in groups of 10 per ton, meaning that each slug is 1/10th of a ton, being flung by magnets in less than a second. The charge up would generate heat in the gun and the slug being flung would generate heat. Lasers generating heat in their own barrel makes no sense. Lasers are a focused beam of light on a single point, meaning that the lenses that allow the light to pass through with little to no reistance wouldn't generate heat at all, only what the laser actually hit would generate heat.

Really there is no reason they cannot put lots of heat on the gauss rifle, Its science fiction. if it was science fact, the heat of terra therma and the cold of frozen city would change how your gauss slug would fly, changing the damage entirely, and on a map like manifold with almost no atmosphere, every weapon wouldn't really have an optimal range. bullets from my machine guns would be flying just as fast when they left the barrel as when they hit the enemy 200m away.

[Kjudoon]

Ultimatum X, on 26 October 2014 - 10:03 AM, said:

AC 20 x 2 = No Charge Up, 40 point shot (33% more), 10 DPS
Gauss x 2 = Charge up, 30 point shot, 6.32 DPS - weapon explodes easy

Since we have slowed Artificial lightning down, we may as well slow this weapon down to LRM levels and call it 'magnetic resonance' keeping the round in the air. I'm sure it won't hurt weapon performance.

[Alek Ituin]

Brody319, on 27 October 2014 - 11:05 PM, said:

Space craft are designed to deflect heat with special panels. A single panel malfunction and the whole ship can go up in flames. There is a difference between a gun, that has to store and focus the heat and force outward, and a ship that just deflects the heat away. Now because it doesn't generate propellent heat like a normal gun would, that keeps it cooler. but the equipment inside would heat up. lots of electrical flow to the gun when it charges, and when it releases its one giant burst of magnetic energy rushing down the barrel. That would generate quite a lot of heat, these slugs come in groups of 10 per ton, meaning that each slug is 1/10th of a ton, being flung by magnets in less than a second. The charge up would generate heat in the gun and the slug being flung would generate heat. Lasers generating heat in their own barrel makes no sense. Lasers are a focused beam of light on a single point, meaning that the lenses that allow the light to pass through with little to no reistance wouldn't generate heat at all, only what the laser actually hit would generate heat.

Really there is no reason they cannot put lots of heat on the gauss rifle, Its science fiction. if it was science fact, the heat of terra therma and the cold of frozen city would change how your gauss slug would fly, changing the damage entirely, and on a map like manifold with almost no atmosphere, every weapon wouldn't really have an optimal range. bullets from my machine guns would be flying just as fast when they left the barrel as when they hit the enemy 200m away.

I don't think you understand how heat actually works. Heat shielding doesn't "deflect" heat, it acts as a thermal buffer to stop materials with lower heat resistance from instantly turning to hot orange pudding. In other words, it absorbs heat so other materials don't have to.

That said, my original point still stands: A superalloy barrel could easily withstand the heat of a 2km/s slug. Electromagnets generate a fair bit of heat when rapidly pulsed with a large amount of energy, and capacitors do get hot when storing a large amount of energy. But they're not as hot as you may think, which is part of the reason magnetic weaponry is more feasible than laser weaponry IRL.

Also, lasers will heat up the focusing optics, as well as everything inside and around their housings. This is because heat = energy, and a sufficiently powerful laser will produce a very high energy beam. That beam will bleed off energy in the form of heat, as will every component within the laser assembly, namely the pump itself.

As for your last bit... Wow. A 10kg slug going at 2km/s doesn't give a flying s**t if it's being fired on Mt. Doom or Hoth. Between the mass of the slug and its velocity, the effects that ambient temperature would have on it aren't even worth mentioning, they're that small. Moving on to your optimal range bit, all weapons would still have an optimal range. Gravity will still slow your ballistic rounds, missiles still only have enough fuel to travel 1km, and lasers don't stay coherent forever. You would still have optimal and maximum ranges on HPG, just not the same ones as on a map with an atmosphere.

Edited by Alek Ituin, 27 October 2014 - 11:44 PM.

[Brody319]

Alek Ituin, on 27 October 2014 - 11:38 PM, said:

I don't think you understand how heat actually works. Heat shielding doesn't "deflect" heat, it acts as a thermal buffer to stop materials with lower heat resistance from instantly turning to hot orange pudding. In other words, it absorbs heat so other materials don't have to.

Also, lasers will heat up the focusing optics, as well as everything inside and around their housings. This is because heat = energy, and a sufficiently powerful laser will produce a very high energy beam. That beam will bleed off energy in the form of heat, as will every component within the laser assembly, namely the pump itself.

As for your last bit... Wow. A 10kg slug going at 2km/s doesn't give a flying s**t if it's being fired on Mt. Doom or Hoth. Between the mass of the slug and its velocity, the effects that ambient temperature would have on it aren't even worth mentioning, they're that small. Moving on to your optimal range bit, all weapons would still have an optimal range. Gravity will still slow your ballistic rounds, missiles still only have enough fuel to travel 1km, and lasers don't stay coherent forever. You would still have optimal and maximum ranges on HPG, just not the same ones as on a map with an atmosphere.

Bullets fired from distances at an equal ratio in weight, distance, and speed still take into account heat, wind, and other factors outside of point blank shots everything can affect the path of a bullet.

In an airless environment with nothing but gravity, missiles would be pretty damn useless. they would have to be designed with directional nozzles no air, means no flaps to change the flow of air to turn, so missiles would be less accurate, but would fly faster. The missiles currently explode past 1000M. meaning its not the fuel's fault, its the warheads going off. If the warheads didn't go off, some missiles could actually hit the target since they keep going, even in places with atmospheres.

Bullets would be affected by gravity, but If I compensate for that, my machine guns would be doing the same damage as if I put the barrel right on the enemy mech vs firing from a distance.

Lasers would dissipate, but not at the distances depicted. you would see the lasers form outward into a cone, like a flashlight, and put much less heat on an enemy mech, probably not even doing damage. Instead they just...stop...mid air, like they hit a wall.

Its a science fiction game, its so removed from the damn board game already, so why not give gauss lots of heat? have them generate 10 heat, with ghost heat kicking in if a mech fires more than 1 at a time. Then they can remove the 2 gauss limit because firing 3 would generate +30 heat at once. Like the direstar, tons of damage at once, but you are running so damn hot you might as well be a one shot wonder.

[Telmasa]

It's not so far removed from the tabletop rules to excuse wildly turning Guass rifles around into clan ERPPCs minus the splash-effect.

Edited by Telmasa, 28 October 2014 - 12:01 AM.

[Brody319]

Telmasa, on 28 October 2014 - 12:00 AM, said:

It's not so far removed from the tabletop rules to excuse wildly turning Guass rifles around into clan ERPPCs minus the splash-effect.

yea but when in the table top you got weapon convergence to take into account, and in this game you get instant pin point 30 damage to any part of the mech you want, there should be some draw backs.

[Alek Ituin]

Brody319, on 27 October 2014 - 11:55 PM, said:

Bullets fired from distances at an equal ratio in weight, distance, and speed still take into account heat, wind, and other factors outside of point blank shots everything can affect the path of a bullet.

In an airless environment with nothing but gravity, missiles would be pretty damn useless. they would have to be designed with directional nozzles no air, means no flaps to change the flow of air to turn, so missiles would be less accurate, but would fly faster. The missiles currently explode past 1000M. meaning its not the fuel's fault, its the warheads going off. If the warheads didn't go off, some missiles could actually hit the target since they keep going, even in places with atmospheres.

Bullets would be affected by gravity, but If I compensate for that, my machine guns would be doing the same damage as if I put the barrel right on the enemy mech vs firing from a distance.

Lasers would dissipate, but not at the distances depicted. you would see the lasers form outward into a cone, like a flashlight, and put much less heat on an enemy mech, probably not even doing damage. Instead they just...stop...mid air, like they hit a wall.

Its a science fiction game, its so removed from the damn board game already, so why not give gauss lots of heat? have them generate 10 heat, with ghost heat kicking in if a mech fires more than 1 at a time. Then they can remove the 2 gauss limit because firing 3 would generate +30 heat at once. Like the direstar, tons of damage at once, but you are running so damn hot you might as well be a one shot wonder.

A 10kg slug is not a .308 round fired from a sniper rifle. Have you ever heard of "inertia" or "momentum"? Quite simply: the higher the mass and velocity of an object, the greater the energy required to change its velocity. So again - Regardless if it's fired on Mt. Doom or Hoth, that round will not be effected in any way that matters by environmental factors.

Moving on to missiles, it's not that hard to envision space-future missiles using vectored thrust nozzles, especially when Mechs have the option of operation in space. As for the warhead going off after 1km, the only logical reason is that the fuel ran out. You don't put artificial limits on the range of your missiles, if they can go 1.2km or 120.7km with their fuel load, you're not going to say "ROUND THAT RANGE DOWN DAMN IT!". Detonating after running out of fuel operates along the same lines as self-destroying shells do, they prevent collateral damage and unnecessary casualties.

I'm not 100% on this, but I'm fairly certain that your initial and impact velocities would not match in that MG scenario, assuming you're on HPG.

As for lasers, you still need a focal point, and unless you have a flexible focusing lens with an unlimited focal length, you will have a maximum range. You've demonstrated some knowledge of how lasers would become useless over range, so I'll just leave it at that.

Sci-Fi or not, handwavium can only go so far before it reaches unbelievably stupid proportions. And being so far removed from TT is not an excuse to further remove it from TT. That's the exact opposite of what needs to happen, actually.

Edited by Alek Ituin, 28 October 2014 - 12:32 AM.

[Brody319]

Alek Ituin, on 28 October 2014 - 12:30 AM, said:

A 10kg slug is not a .308 round fired from a sniper rifle. Have you ever heard of "inertia" or "momentum"? Quite simply: the higher the mass and velocity of an object, the greater the energy required to change its velocity. So again - Regardless if it's fired on Mt. Doom or Hoth, that round will not be effected in any way that matters by environmental factors.

Moving on to missiles, it's not that hard to envision space-future missiles using vectored thrust nozzles, especially when Mechs have the option of operation in space. As for the warhead going off after 1km, the only logical reason is that the fuel ran out. You don't put artificial limits on the range of your missiles, if they can go 1.2km or 120.7km with their fuel load, you're not going to say "ROUND THAT RANGE DOWN DAMN IT!". Detonating after running out of fuel operates along the same lines as self-destroying shells do, they prevent collateral damage and unnecessary casualties.

I'm not 100% on this, but I'm fairly certain that your initial and impact velocities would not match in that MG scenario, assuming you're on HPG.

As for lasers, you still need a focal point, and unless you have a flexible focusing lens with an unlimited focal length, you will have a maximum range. You've demonstrated some knowledge of how lasers would become useless over range, so I'll just leave it at that.

Sci-Fi or not, handwavium can only go so far before it reaches unbelievably stupid proportions. And being so far removed from TT is not an excuse to further remove it from TT. That's the exact opposite of what needs to happen, actually.

Yes intertia and momenum do have their effects, but the gun isnt sealed, the barrel is open to the atmosphere. So hot maps or cold maps change the slug before its even fired. plus they aren't being affected by an outside force, its a relative inside force that is changing. metal is slightly less or more dense, air flows differently, density of the air would all have an effect no matter how fast it was going. Super dense air would require more force from the rifle to deal the same damage, because the slug has to pass through the dense air, if the gun didn't compensate by throwing the slug faster it would fly much shorter and deal less damage because its speed gets cut down. The longer the range, the more likely it is the slug will be affected by outside forces as it loses energy to air resistance.

I'd argue that the warheads exploding mid air is much much more dangerous than if they were allowed to hit the ground and explode. Anti-armor missiles don't actually explode outward, that doesn't do a lot of damage, its actually a shaped charge that forces almost all of the force into a direct stream to punch and melt through armor. So if it explodes mid air, the force is gone, but you get shrapnel flying all over the damn place. Any civies nearby would get ripped apart by bits of metal from those warheads exploding overhead. Flak cannons are a good example. If they hit the ground, the shrapnel wouldn't fly as far since its already near or on the ground.

If they wanna put in weapon convergence I will say the Gauss doesn't need heat, but currently its way to accurate and high damage. other FPSes get away with super high damage weapons because of respawns, this game doesn't have that, and won't even be close to other fps even with the dropship mechanic. 4 respawns sounds good, but compared to tf2 where you can respawn an infinite amount of times in a time period, thats pathetic, and when you give people a perfect weapon to kill the enemy why wouldn't they run it?

Clan warfare will be filled with gauss rifles just because you gotta put the enemy down fast to stop respawns.

[Jaeger Gonzo]

Elizander, on 26 October 2014 - 09:54 AM, said:

AC/20 x2 = Ghost Heat.
Gauss Rifle x2 = No Ghost Heat?

yup GH is a crappy designed mechanics dont solve nothing..

[MeiSooHaityu]

Aresye, on 26 October 2014 - 11:30 AM, said:

The heat in battlemechs is coming from the power draw of the fusion reactor, not the heat from the weapons themselves.

That makes more sense with energy weapons, but why does a ballistic weapon (an oversized gun) make the engine generate so much heat? Shells are fired by chemical reactions (igniting powder), not through massive amounts of electricity.

If anything, those capacitors for a Gauss need to get charged by the engine. The gauss should generate some of the most heat .

I know...fantasy so deal with it. Same magic that allows ammo from legs to magically get to a mech's guns.

Anyway. If a Gauss couldn't be fired 2 at a time, then remove the charge mechanic and make it more durable of a cannon. If that doesn't sound good, then leave the gun alone.

Edited by MeiSooHaityu, 28 October 2014 - 02:35 AM.

[Lily from animove]

Brody319, on 26 October 2014 - 12:00 PM, said:

My point is, if the gun is fired in an incorrect environment, the air resistance would melt the gun and probably the armor around it. The projectile itself heats up because of the air resistance. Even if they had some magical technobabbly that kept the air out of the rifle when it fired, as soon as it got out, there would be a super hot sonic boom when it hit the air and the mech that fired it would receive damage because of the heat.

They just need to give it some heat because now it really has no disadvantages. AC20s generate heat and can run out of ammo, Lasers generate lots of heat, Gauss has no heat, and does a ton of damage on a single point.

and then we start to complain about HPG where no athmosphere is giving it heat without having air ressistance. But yes taking into account that a Gauss is gameplaywise an AC 15 with ac 2 range, it is kinda too cool and epic for what it is.

[Mcgral18]

Johnny Z, on 27 October 2014 - 10:04 PM, said:

If macros are officially considered cheating or not, a 3rd party program firing the players weapons for them sounds like cheating to me.

Direct from PGI; you can believe it or not.

Edited by Mcgral18, 28 October 2014 - 02:38 AM.

[theta123]

Eddrick, on 26 October 2014 - 10:00 AM, said:

Can't really use Ghost Heat to penalize a weapon that only generates 1 Heat each.

All the more reason to just remove Ghost Heat from the game.

6 PPC stalker
4 PPC stalker

NO

[Tahribator]

Screw ghost heat, they shouldn't allow charging more than one Gauss rifle at the same time. Gauss is a great sniping weapon, but when you're able to do dual Gauss, it becomes an all-round great killer. The non-existant travel time makes aiming a breeze and not many 'Mechs can handle repeated 30 alphas for more than two or three times.

Charging time is pretty much irrelevant once you get used to it and its fragility is offset by 'Mechs being able to mount dual Gauss in their arms(Dire Wolf, Jagermech). Exploding Gauss rifles are only a disadvantage when you have them in your torsos.

It's the only "problematic" high-alpha weapon left and this property is indeed (ab)used heavily in pug matches with the sheer amount of dual Gauss Dires, Jagermechs, Ilyas, 3Ds, K2s.

Edited by Tahribator, 28 October 2014 - 03:00 AM.

[Kjudoon]

Mcgral18, on 28 October 2014 - 02:37 AM, said:

Direct from PGI; you can believe it or not.

THen maybe they should just incorporate it into their game and let everyone have it since it's 'not cheating'. I wonder how many on the leaderboards use these 'not cheats'. More than a handful is my bet.

[Karl Streiger]

Face it - all the Star League and Clan Weapons was poor game design right from 1989 and we still feel the consequences

If you really ask you self - what a AC 15 would have looked like in IS-Tech 1 (you would realize it would have more heat - maybe 5 - and ranges of 4-8-12 (right between the AC 10 and the AC 20)

Well the AC15/Gauss weight more as AC 20 - so maybe range would have been increased towards 5-10-15 or even 3/6/12/18 with heat of 5.

So if the Gauss/AC 15 made right - we would have to talk about a gun: with 4/7/14/21 - weighting 15tons and generating 7-8 heat per round.

[Artillery Witch Viridia]

Felio, on 26 October 2014 - 09:47 PM, said:

In line with other weapons dealing 30 damage at much shorter ranges and trying to stay steady on the target for the full duration, you mean.

Gauss gets to be exempt from the guidelines of the heat penalty system, for some reason. Like it's Paul's pet build, or something.

Actually I have good word that Paul actually wanted to add a boatload of ghost heat to guass for firing 2 at once. Something like 20x ghostheat and people told him it was stupid. I tend to agree with that sentiment. I am sorry if you can't handle dual gauss and feel like they need further nerfs. Any dual guass build except for perhaps the Direwolf is extremely commited to just using those two weapons and have loads of weaknesses. If you fight an enemy on their terms and get wrecked you are doing it wrong. A 30 hit for the tonnage invested really isn't that devastating. If you are repeatedly getting smacked you are either not fast enough to dodge it and have armor to compensate for your error, or you are not aware of yourself being targeted and getting punished for that as any sniper should do, that is hit hard.

[Artillery Witch Viridia]

Tahribator, on 28 October 2014 - 02:52 AM, said:

Screw ghost heat, they shouldn't allow charging more than one Gauss rifle at the same time. Gauss is a great sniping weapon, but when you're able to do dual Gauss, it becomes an all-round great killer. The non-existant travel time makes aiming a breeze and not many 'Mechs can handle repeated 30 alphas for more than two or three times.

Charging time is pretty much irrelevant once you get used to it and its fragility is offset by 'Mechs being able to mount dual Gauss in their arms(Dire Wolf, Jagermech). Exploding Gauss rifles are only a disadvantage when you have them in your torsos.

It's the only "problematic" high-alpha weapon left and this property is indeed (ab)used heavily in pug matches with the sheer amount of dual Gauss Dires, Jagermechs, Ilyas, 3Ds, K2s.

Gauss rifle damage explosion will transfer to the next internal over in the Jager when the arm is destroyed. Being a Jager that means your xl engine required to mount that weaponry will be damaged. If you run a standard you are going far too slow or have practically no ammo and damage potential. It's like you haven't personally piloted those mechs and consider them easy mode. If people could only fire 1 for 15 points the damage would be trivial and laughed at like a guass Cicada. These sniper weapons are meant to be powerful a dedicated sniper build should hurt. a 15 dmg hit from within optimal range doesn't hurt. It would be like asking for the bolt action sniper rifle in fps games to be nerfed because you got shot in the body and it did a considerable amount of damage. Comparing using them in a pair to being abuseful and problematic just feels out of touch to me. Going through My all laser stormcrow is a far more desiring mech to pilot than squishy Jagers and nerfed to near extinction ballistic mech variants. Hopefully we see more 100 ton monsters that can keep up with the direwolf in firepower brought to the I.S side. Going through my last scoreboard screenshots you hardly see CTF and Jagers like you used to. Just a few actually compared to times when entire teams were filled with Ctf and Vtr. No k2s either which are inferior to Jagers hardpoint placement wise when it comes to Gauss.

[Y E O N N E]

Tezcatli, on 26 October 2014 - 09:55 AM, said:

Probably because they don't generate heat?

Which is funny, because a Gauss generating heat would solve so many problems...

[Revis Volek]

Brody319, on 26 October 2014 - 12:00 PM, said:

My point is, if the gun is fired in an incorrect environment, the air resistance would melt the gun and probably the armor around it. The projectile itself heats up because of the air resistance. Even if they had some magical technobabbly that kept the air out of the rifle when it fired, as soon as it got out, there would be a super hot sonic boom when it hit the air and the mech that fired it would receive damage because of the heat.

They just need to give it some heat because now it really has no disadvantages. AC20s generate heat and can run out of ammo, Lasers generate lots of heat, Gauss has no heat, and does a ton of damage on a single point.

What? How fast do you think the Gauss round is moving? Also how hot do you think you need to be to melt steel?