71 replies to this topic

[Mercules]

FupDup, on 02 December 2014 - 08:38 AM, said:

With that being said, it's important for people arguing for the "lore" version of ACs to remember that damage, tonnage, and other game stats were not made for the lore description. For example, if the Tabletop AC/20 didn't do 20 damage to a single hit location, there is no way in hell it would weigh 14 tons and take up 10 critical slots, or else it would be underpowered as crap. It was made 14 whopping tons specifically because of TT's "one big shell" damage allocation, not for bursts.

Yes but in TT it was also one big shell doing 20 damage to a RANDOM location. So 2 AC/20s were not 40 damage to the each shot until the CT was no more. Making it burst like the Clan ACs means that if someone is standing still, not twisting, and you have decent aim it still does 20 damage to a single location but if not we still have damage not being all allocated right where we want it on a pinhead at one specific moment in time. Burst/Beam fire helps bring the spread of damage back that we lack from the TT rules.

TT damage stats, pinpoint accuracy, and non-random hit locations weights value heavily in favor of larger and larger weapons.

[lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol]

Don't forget, the Clan normal AC's are just placeholders for the "current inability" to introduce the promised slug/shot ammo for LBX's... because you know, balance.

Sorry but it makes no sense when they left IS Autocannons as "slug ammo". Fair is fair. Give IS mechs burst fire AC's. The people who purchased Clan mechs were able to get used to it... so why not make it so across the board? For balance?

[Mcgral18]

Hillslam, on 02 December 2014 - 07:33 AM, said:

So I laugh whenever I see clanners (or specifically Dire pilots) whinge about their ballistics. Just stop. If your gear sucked you wouldn't see dires and many other clan mechs absolutely boating ACs and melting face like they are doing every day.

And I laugh whenever someone calls cACs good.


You need 4-5 of them to be effective. 2 isACs are enough, and 4, as we'll see with the King Crab, will be devastating.
The 1-2 tons saved isn't nearly worth how much less effective the weapons are.


Also, most Whales do not boat ACs, since while it generates lots of damage, you'll notice it's not nearly as effective as laserVomit+dual Gauss. Pinpoint, with 30 frontloaded. Mostly hitscan. Considerably more effective.


Dakka is good at mid to short range, against slow targets. More sustainable than the laserVomit, but less than the dual gauss.

[Sprouticus]

Let's not diverge in clan/IS pissing atches guys. That road leads to nowhere.


As for clan AC's

There is a reason that clan Ac/UAc10/20's are rarely used, and never used in comp play. They are terrible. Laser vomit and SRM's and far better on a per ton and per second basis.

That's not to say that making clan AC's single shot would be a good idea. It would be a TERRIBLE idea.


my personal preference

1) make IS Ac's multi shot
2) Make IS Ac's fire less shots per burst (1/1/2/3 for IS 2/2/4/5 for clan)
#) Bump IS dmg (AC2-0.5, AC5, 0.75, AC10-1, Ac20 1.5)
3) Reduce the time between shots (currently @ 0.14/0.15/0.16/0.17, new: @ 0.11 for all weapons)

This does the following
makes IS slightly less FLD
makes IS AC's better than clan in pure damage
makes the AC10/20 easier to aim but still not FLD
makes all Ac's have the same delay so easier to aim across all types
makes AC's competative with SRM's


This still gives the IS some advantage in ballistics, but reduces FLD across the board unless you are skilled or they are stupid. Which is as it should be.




alternately, give the UAC5/10/20 REALLY long Jam times and a single shot. Like 20/25/30 seconds. And high ghost heat. Then the clan pilots will thnk twice before taking that extra shot or shooting 3 UAC20's.

[Sprouticus]

There is a reason dual AC20 is feared so much in this game. It is nasty.

And there is a reason so many bad players love it (and the dual gauss). it is 'BOOM! Headshot' mode for those folks who like that kind of thing.

[Joe Mallad]

FupDup, on 02 December 2014 - 08:38 AM, said:

Tabletop Autocannons are weird.

In the "lore" flavor text, ACs were mostly described as firing bursts that equaled a certain amount of damage (i.e. can have a 10 round burst or 100 round burst, for the same total end damage). The actual Tabletop game itself, however, used a simplified mechanic of simply firing "one big shell" that did its damage to one spot. It's one of many Battletech contradictions present between both the game itself and the flavor text.

With that being said, it's important for people arguing for the "lore" version of ACs to remember that damage, tonnage, and other game stats were not made for the lore description. For example, if the Tabletop AC/20 didn't do 20 damage to a single hit location, there is no way in hell it would weigh 14 tons and take up 10 critical slots, or else it would be underpowered as crap. It was made 14 whopping tons specifically because of TT's "one big shell" damage allocation, not for bursts.

this.

[Kain Demos]

What I don't get is why the **** does the C-UAC20 have ghost heat at 2 like the IS AC20?

They both have "20" in their name but are nothign alike.

[Joe Mallad]

Sprouticus, on 02 December 2014 - 09:09 AM, said:

There is a reason dual AC20 is feared so much in this game. It is nasty.

And there is a reason so many bad players love it (and the dual gauss). it is 'BOOM! Headshot' mode for those folks who like that kind of thing.

and they should be feared lol. No matter if it was TT or any form of video game, the Gauss and AC-20 were feared.

[Mister Blastman]

Ultimatum X, on 02 December 2014 - 07:28 AM, said:

Balance shouldn't mean "so bad almost no one will use it".

That's not balance.


Why do UAC 20 pellets not fire faster (velocity) than giant 20 point rounds?

Bad design is bad.

It would be nice if they fired significantly faster. They should. Perhaps then the UAC 20 would be even worth it.

[Sprouticus]

Yoseful Mallad, on 02 December 2014 - 09:12 AM, said:

and they should be feared lol. No matter if it was TT or any form of video game, the Gauss and AC-20 were feared.

Single AC20's are not feared because of the armor change. Dual are feared because they have the same impact (for IS) as a single in TT.

But the question is should they be feared because they are FLD. Gauss at least has a significant disadvantage. I wtill would have preferred minimum range fromt eh get go, but the charge mechanism works well enough IMO.

Another idea:

make all AC's multi shot, but give some mechs a quirk to lower the number of projectiles in the burst (example: hunchie/Summoner does a single shot AC20, King Crab gets 2, every other IS mech gets 4 in the burst, clan gets 5). This give PGI the ability to ensure larger mechs dont become OP and gives specialized mechs like the Jaeger and Hunchie huge value.

Edited by Sprouticus, 02 December 2014 - 09:42 AM.

[Ultimax]

Mister Blastman, on 02 December 2014 - 09:21 AM, said:

It would be nice if they fired significantly faster. They should. Perhaps then the UAC 20 would be even worth it.

They'd also need ghost heat turned down from 11, a little less face time and much less time beetween unjam+cooldown.

9s after jamming is ridiculous.

[Sprouticus]

Ultimatum X, on 02 December 2014 - 09:48 AM, said:

They'd also need ghost heat turned down from 11, a little less face time and much less time beetween unjam+cooldown.

9s after jamming is ridiculous.

If they were more viable due to lower TBS (time between shots) then the unjam might be fine. That 2nd shot should be an extreme option for UAC's, especially high caliber ones. Of coursse you have to balance that against the flow of the game, but I think 9s is fine.


The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of a quirk based upon chassis for variable # of shots.

Example:
(assume IS is 1/1/3/4 and clan is 2/2/4/5 by default)

Hunchie G- AC20 1 shot burst
Hunchie H- AC10 1 shot burst
Nova-B AC/UAC5 1 shot burst
Dragon 1N- 1 shot burst
Warhawk A - AC/UAC10 2 shot burst
Atlas D- AC20 1 or 2 shot burst

Edited by Sprouticus, 02 December 2014 - 10:11 AM.

[Kiryuin Ragyo]

[Joe Mallad]

Sprouticus, on 02 December 2014 - 09:41 AM, said:

Single AC20's are not feared because of the armor change. Dual are feared because they have the same impact (for IS) as a single in TT.

But the question is should they be feared because they are FLD. Gauss at least has a significant disadvantage. I wtill would have preferred minimum range fromt eh get go, but the charge mechanism works well enough IMO.

Another idea:

make all AC's multi shot, but give some mechs a quirk to lower the number of projectiles in the burst (example: hunchie/Summoner does a single shot AC20, King Crab gets 2, every other IS mech gets 4 in the burst, clan gets 5). This give PGI the ability to ensure larger mechs dont become OP and gives specialized mechs like the Jaeger and Hunchie huge value.

imo all ACs should fire shells that do the damage of the name of the weapon. IE an AC-10 should always fire 1 shell that does 10 damage. An AC-20 should fire 1 shell that does 20 damage. A UAC-10 or 20 for that matter should fire double burst shells. So a UAC-20 should fire 2 shells at 20 damage each.

Edited by Yoseful Mallad, 02 December 2014 - 10:04 AM.

[Sprouticus]

Yoseful Mallad, on 02 December 2014 - 10:02 AM, said:

imo all ACs should fire shells that do the damage of the name of the weapon. IE an AC-10 should always fire 1 shell that does 10 damage. An AC-20 should fire 1 shell that does 20 damage. A UAC-10 or 20 for that matter should fire double burst shells. So a UAC-20 should fire 2 shells at 20 damage each.

I respect your opinion, but IMO FLD is still a major issue in the game and changing the clans to match the IS for balistics would skew balance BADLY (as wellas lowering TTK a lot).

The only way that would work IMO would be if you made jams for UAC's last a really long time 45s to a minute. Even then it would hurt TTK and you would see 3xUAC20 DW's running around even with ghost heat one shotting people.

Burst is the way to go in my mind. You can lower the burst for specific mechs to encourage play via quirks, but the bursts should be there by default.

[Mystere]

FupDup, on 02 December 2014 - 08:29 AM, said:

Want a fun fact?

PGI's implementation of "burst" fire isn't actually new code at all. If you peek into Weapons.XML, you don't see any code that hasn't been used by other weapons. In fact, I actually hypothesize that they're literally just stolen missile code copy and pasted over to cannons.

What makes you so sure they used the "copy and paste" method instead of "inheritance"?

If the latter, then it is actually a "very good idea".

FupDup, on 02 December 2014 - 08:29 AM, said:

The code line that gives me this impression is the "VolleyDelay" tag, which is used for normal missiles (normally set to 0.25 seconds, excluding Clan LRMs) to dictate the amount of time between each volley if you mech lacks enough missile tubes to fire everything in one glob. I haven't looked at Clan mech hardpoint XMLs, but if I had to guess I would strongly suspect that Clan mechs have "Ballistic Tubes" assigned to them and set to "1" to give the same effect as firing a missile weapon from a single-tube hardpoint (like a Narc hardpoint prior to dynamic geometry). This also means that one could increase the number of "Ballistic Tubes" to make the full volley come out in a shorter time or even all at once.

The Clan UAC "VolleyDelay" numbers are as follows:
UAC/2: 0.14
UAC/5: 0.15
UAC/10: 0.16
UAC/20: 0.17

For reference, most missiles are set to 0.25 delay and Clan LRMs are all set to 0.05.

If PGI actually used honest-to-goodness OOP principles, then they're probably not as incompetent as people here portray them to be.

[xXDivoXx]

Just Remove Dire Wolf From the Game... in Fact let this game be only Lights And Medium Mechs and no one will Whine)

[Kdogg788]

Hillslam, on 02 December 2014 - 07:33 AM, said:

the clan version is the better method of delivering damage. spew FLD blather all you want, the clan mode is better because:

1 - It suppresses the target pilot (that shake and clatter in the receiving cockpit is incredibly distracting for most if not all players)
2 - It allows for aim adjustment. Missed when you pulled the trigger? Adjust your aim and you can still deliver 75%+ of your damage (its the same advantage lasers have)
3 - the velocities are WAAAY higher (less lead, less drop, less misses)

This is not to mention the clan weapons weigh alot less and take up fewer crits, allowing you to take more on a single chassis. Clan mechs can boat a sheer volume of weapons IS mechs cannot even remotely touch. This last point should never be forgotten or swept under the rug, and it keeps trying to be. Its a huge point.

So I laugh whenever I see clanners (or specifically Dire pilots) whinge about their ballistics. Just stop. If your gear sucked you wouldn't see dires and many other clan mechs absolutely boating ACs and melting face like they are doing every day.

Amen brother. Thread won right here. All other replies are extraneous.

-k

[Brody319]

Lets make each pellet fired by the UAC do the damage listed. IE, UAC 20 launched 5 pellets, each one should do 20 damage. Then UAC will have a place.

[Joe Mallad]

Sprouticus, on 02 December 2014 - 10:20 AM, said:

I respect your opinion, but IMO FLD is still a major issue in the game and changing the clans to match the IS for balistics would skew balance BADLY (as wellas lowering TTK a lot).

The only way that would work IMO would be if you made jams for UAC's last a really long time 45s to a minute. Even then it would hurt TTK and you would see 3xUAC20 DW's running around even with ghost heat one shotting people.

Burst is the way to go in my mind. You can lower the burst for specific mechs to encourage play via quirks, but the bursts should be there by default.

oh i respect that too. Not arguing with you bud. Just a friendly debate