40 replies to this topic

[PurpleNinja]

PGI choose to bury clan ballistic weapons very deep.

[Drunk Canuck]

PurpleNinja, on 13 December 2015 - 05:42 PM, said:

PGI choose to bury clan ballistic weapons very deep.

Like, balls deep even

[Clydewinder]

Mcgral18, on 13 December 2015 - 02:31 PM, said:

OR, if the other weapon systems didn't suck balls in comparison?

PPCs were nerfed too hard, to the point of uselessness, needing 30-50% Velocity quirks (funny...the old ~1500M/s) to be semi effective.
They do not, however, need the same cooldown as brawling weapons. Switch that up, make them useful at their optimal range.

Good point. The PPCs as equipped on a AWS-8Q feel like PPCs should feel. Fast, not superfast, but reasonably fast to hit a moving target. Mechs without PPC buffs are lost with PPC and ERPPC

[Metus regem]

Drunk Canuck, on 13 December 2015 - 05:53 PM, said:

Like, balls deep even

Still not deep enough.... Maybe if you go digging a pit for eight weeks, you might hit the level of crap that they are currently.... Still doesn't stop me from running my 8cERML dual cUAC/20 Dire Whale.... Yes it is a crap build, but man can it put the hurt on something

[JC Daxion]

I've always said, the longer ranged weapons should just have longer cool downs.. If you want to pack on Large lasers, large pulse, and ER-large should get increased cool downs... Add 1.5 secs, just like the gauss.

I don't have much of an issue with medium range lasers


I think doing so, would give players more reason to move into brawl verse playing the peek and poke crap.. and give players a reason to pack in Small lasers as well.

[BearFlag]

PGI chose not to seriously address the pin-point, long range, high damage aspect of banks of lasers in the recent balancing. They did cut the ranges on some but also quirked most IS mechs and reduced torso twist speed across the board.

The fact that lasers are so accurate, so damaging over such long ranges means they remain the general purpose weapon of choice. The long duration of ER's is a mixed bag. On the one hand you have to continuously correct if the target is moving. On the other hand you CAN correct. An initial miss becomes a partial hit easily. Of course, at close range and fast movement, hit scan is often a liability.

There have been suggestions to alter any or all of the three above - accuracy, damage, range. Other ideas center on using heat to effectively reduce ROF. All of these are viable to an extent, but I think the big problem is being overlooked.

The damage curve on lasers. The curve is unnatural if we assume there's some kind of attenuating medium. Damage is full to half range then suddenly and magically diminishes.

I think the first step in reducing laser dominance is straight, linear damage. Full damage close, half at half range, one quarter damage at three quarters range. In other words, get rid of "optimal range" and use only max range. This more realistically imitates light through a medium while providing a less complicated platform from which to make the other adjustments. (Smalls would prob need a buff.)

Lasers would be just as wicked up close but their sting reduced at ranges. Hopefully, this would open some niches up at longer ranges for ballistics, missiles and ERPPCs. Without the need for ammo, I suspect lasers would still be the go-to general purpose weapon. They'd still be able to dual at long range. But the one-shot-your-armor's-gone at 800 meters would be much less frequent. TTK would be raised significantly and frustration over those long range one-shots reduced.

[Ultimax]

If PPCs, Gauss and to a minor extent Ballistics hadn't been nerfed - we'd not actually be in this situation.

Edited by Ultimatum X, 13 December 2015 - 07:30 PM.

[El Bandito]

Buff back autocannons' velocity and go from there. Normalize their ammo to 200 damage per ton.

Edited by El Bandito, 13 December 2015 - 07:48 PM.

[William Pryde]

Solution to this may be to introduce reactive/reflective armor types. Less armor per ton but halves the damage from ballistic/energy weapons, respectively. Might be a lot less laser vomit if suddenly energy weapons had a good chance of doing half as much damage.

I personally don't mind, but I haven't been playing for too long.

[SaltBeef]

Ballistic slight buff to damage per shell or speed increase and a SRM speed increase would fix a lot of issues with balance weapon wise.

[Sader325]

LordNothing, on 13 December 2015 - 02:28 PM, said:

i want the four dhs on the nova to be unlocked so i can run a ballistics build with a sane quantity of ammo.

[MechaBattler]

They should redo the laser lock mechanic to cause scatter damage instead of no damage beyond optimal range. Otherwise they should tweak ballistic and SRM velocity up. Even give PPCs a small kick up. Perhaps increase laser cooldown or heat. There's only so much they can do.

[Jun Watarase]

SaltBeef, on 13 December 2015 - 08:23 PM, said:

Ballistic slight buff to damage per shell or speed increase and a SRM speed increase would fix a lot of issues with balance weapon wise.

Not really.

The underlying problem has always been pinpoint accuracy + stats from a game WITHOUT pinpoint accuracy.

PPCs/ballistics used to be king because there was basically nothing you could do to avoid eating a large alpha to one location, other than hoping that the guy shooting you has bad aim.

Lasers were balanced largely by the laser duration. This went out of the window when you could boat 3x LPL with a 0.6s burn time for a 33 alpha with good heat efficiency and range.

At that point, 20 heat for 20 damage from PPCs suddenly looked a lot less appealing, because torso twisting is now much less effective against lasers.

The old AC40 jagermech is still one of the most brutal brawlers in the game because there is nothing you can do to avoid eating 40 damage to one location which will quickly cripple or kill most mechs, and it runs very cool to boot. Its just that lasers are longer ranged, hence, more versatile.

A ballistic boat can just keep firing pretty much forever which is a huge advantage on hot maps and in extended fights where players do not have the luxury of reversing behind a rock to cool down. But when its a 12vs12 peekabo fight, sustained DPS becomes less important.

You can give lasers longer cool down times, longer burn durations, etc....its just going to make people swap back to ballistic/PPC boating. Then you have to buff lasers again to make people use them and we are back to square one.

Edited by Jun Watarase, 13 December 2015 - 08:39 PM.

[Pjwned]

Knighthawk26, on 13 December 2015 - 02:26 PM, said:

The real solution would be a system where energy weapons in general were a little less effective, or heavier, or something to provide just enough balance in favor of ballistic or missle weapons to equal things out overall.

Ugh.

The problem here is that weapons like AC2, LB-X cannons, ER PPCs, machine guns, flamers, LRMs, SRMs (to a lesser extent after some buffs), and SSRMs are all considered at best bad and at worst absolute trash because they all have major drawbacks, or quite simply don't do enough to be worth bringing over other weapons in the same hardpoint; I might be forgetting another bad weapon or 2 as well.

What the hell do people expect when we have at least several weapon systems that are rarely (and in some cases, never) used and then we have mechs with absolutely insane quirks like the BJ-1X which are entirely energy boat mechs? Hell, even after some minor nerfs on the TDR-5SS its quirks still make it the most popular mech by far, as shown by recent event statistics.

The problem isn't lasers being too good, the problem is other weapon systems being bad.

Jun Watarase, on 13 December 2015 - 08:38 PM, said:

Not really.

The underlying problem has always been pinpoint accuracy + stats from a game WITHOUT pinpoint accuracy.

Yeah, pinpoint accuracy is also a problem, and that needs to be fixed by changing how convergence works as well; preferably convergence would rely on having a target lock while properly nerfing ECM and that would fix a bunch of problems at once.

Edited by Pjwned, 13 December 2015 - 08:49 PM.

[AEgg]

Pjwned, on 13 December 2015 - 08:46 PM, said:

The problem isn't lasers being too good, the problem is other weapon systems being bad.

Pretty much the same thing, though. While it's true that lasers don't have any particularly large drawbacks, it's easy to change that by reducing their damage in one way or another (range, burn time, heat output, what have you). After that, lasers have a disadvantage of lower damage and other weapons become more viable.

The problem is of course that at least with lasers being the best overall, there's still some variety since you can generally fit other weapons with lasers.

You can't fit nearly as many other weapons with a Gauss, LRM, or AC20 build. So with lasers being the most general purpose you see a lot more variety in the other weapons taken. Whereas if anything else was the best, everyone would take that plus lasers, or just that (Gausscats, SSRM ravens, PPC stalkers, etc.)

Honestly I'd rather have the workhorse weapon that everyone is going to carry some of anyway be better than have either a specailized weapon like SSRMs or something insanely heavy like the Gauss be dominant, because the more situational the weapon, the fewer mechs that can effectively mount it.

[Deathz Jester]

It's an unfortunate byproduct of letting people have too much customization. I wish they had a stock mechs only ladder for community warfare.

Maybe even have it be a little more like Mechwarrior living legends was. Multiple objectives/cappoints. Infinite respawn, stock mechs that you had to earn like anew in match calldown, repair bays that fixed and rearmed anything that wasn't blown off or structurally compromised, and each team had respawn tickets.


I know alot of people will say "oh well this isn't battlefield or mechwarrior living legends"

Well maybe they could implement something that's actually fun other than 3 different types of deathmatch, and community whorefare.

[Pjwned]

kirby3021, on 13 December 2015 - 08:22 PM, said:

Solution to this may be to introduce reactive/reflective armor types. Less armor per ton but halves the damage from ballistic/energy weapons, respectively. Might be a lot less laser vomit if suddenly energy weapons had a good chance of doing half as much damage.

I personally don't mind, but I haven't been playing for too long.

Not a fan of that idea because energy boats exist and they have a place in the game and reflective armor would likely ruin it. If we were to get different armor types like that, it would need to be a damn sight short of reducing energy damage by half.

Edited by Pjwned, 14 December 2015 - 09:34 PM.

[Chuck Jager]

I have found that with the speed/agility nerf I have only X number of pokes during a match. The heat scale is not an issue if I just add a couple of seconds between pokes. I can just use the time to make sure I do not get left by the nascar and always have a wing mate.

In upper tier matches I can add 1 more energy weapon and set my mech to over ride and I still will not have time to over heat when the enemy gets in brawl range (solo Q not group).

[Jacobei]

Jun Watarase, on 13 December 2015 - 03:21 PM, said:

When i see an entire team comprised almost entirely of LL/LPL/MPL boats i get so naseous that i have to throw up.

So every Claner in CW then... and all IS comparable meta builds... Ummm

[627]

They could start with velocity buffs for PPCs. The Mad-3R with its 50% extra speed feels about right, this should be the default setting for all PPCs. Cooldown could be even longer for such a big hitter but one step at a time please.