99 replies to this topic

[cazidin]

FupDup, on 10 March 2016 - 10:06 AM, said:

15 damage to one hit location > 10 damage to one hit location and 2.5 x 2 damage to adjacent locations.

It's in some ways like a 6-ton Gauss Rifle. Yeah, heat and velocity are still iffy, but it's still half the damn weight.

That's true. So, for sake of argument let's assume that their velocity is synced at 1,800 M/S but heat is unchanged. You're gaining 14 heat for 6 less tons and 4 fewer critical slots. Also assuming 3-4 tons of ammo for the Gauss Rifle, how many tons and how many critical slots are taken to provide adequate cooling for the PPCs?

[FupDup]

cazidin, on 10 March 2016 - 10:10 AM, said:

That's true. So, for sake of argument let's assume that their velocity is synced at 1,800 M/S but heat is unchanged. You're gaining 14 heat for 6 less tons and 4 fewer critical slots. Also assuming 3-4 tons of ammo for the Gauss Rifle, how many tons and how many critical slots are taken to provide adequate cooling for the PPCs?

Heatsinks for cooling is relevant, but keep in mind that you can choose to accept the lower heat sustainability in exchange for more raw power because of so much damn weight being saved. Even with zero heatsinks, you can't fit dual Gauss Rifles on an Adder, but you can fit dual ERPPCs (even though it's rather hot).

Arseye posted 2000+ damage with a Summoner using just dual ERPPCs (with the current "splash" mechanic), and in that case he can pack quite a lot of DHS (50% heat efficiency or 24 seconds to overheat in terms of Smurfys math). Getting dual Gauss on a Thor can't be done without stripping your armor to nothingness.

The Gauss only catches up to that once we start getting into mechs with excessive tonnage but limited slots, like the Dire Whale or such.

TL;DR: 15-PPFLD ERPPC would compare favorably to the Goose Waffle on many mechs because the weight savings are so massive.

Edited by FupDup, 10 March 2016 - 10:18 AM.

[Sigilum Sanctum]

FupDup, on 10 March 2016 - 10:06 AM, said:

15 damage to one hit location > 10 damage to one hit location and 2.5 x 2 damage to adjacent locations.

It's in some ways like a 6-ton Gauss Rifle. Yeah, heat and velocity are still iffy, but it's still half the damn weight.

Ill take that cERPPC any day of the week. They could give it 25 heat and I wouldn't give a ****.

6 ton gauss rifle with unlimited ammo. Yes please.

[Grimlox]

FupDup, on 10 March 2016 - 10:06 AM, said:

15 damage to one hit location > 10 damage to one hit location and 2.5 x 2 damage to adjacent locations.

It's in some ways like a 6-ton Gauss Rifle. Yeah, heat and velocity are still iffy, but it's still half the damn weight.

I posted this earlier with no answer:

The tweet in the OP doesn't seem very clear to me that Russ intends to change C-ERPPC's to pinpoint all the damage.

The guy asks about full 15 damage up front in the future. The current iteration does 15 dmg up front it just has the "splash" mechanic. Nothing in that tweet seems to me like it remotely refers to changing the C-ERPPC to pinpoint all 15 dmg.

We just jumping to conclusions here?

*insert office space jumping to conclusions mat image here*

Edited by Grimlox, 10 March 2016 - 10:20 AM.

[cazidin]

FupDup, on 10 March 2016 - 10:16 AM, said:

Heatsinks for cooling is relevant, but keep in mind that you can choose to accept the lower heat sustainability in exchange for more raw power because of so much damn weight being saved. Even with zero heatsinks, you can't fit dual Gauss Rifles on an Adder, but you can fit dual ERPPCs (even though it's rather hot).

Arseye posted 2000+ damage with a Summoner using just dual ERPPCs, and in that case he can pack quite a lot of DHS (50% heat efficiency or 24 seconds to overheat in terms of Smurfys math). Getting dual Gauss on a Thor can't be done without stripping your armor to nothingness.

The Gauss only catches up to that once we start getting into mechs with excessive tonnage but limited slots, like the Dire Whale or such.

Again, true. But Arseye's video was an exception rather than the rule though he performed admirably against the enemy team. On average, how much damage could that Adder do with the severe heat capacity limit of C-DHS? It's very heat limited.

Sigilum Sanctum, on 10 March 2016 - 10:17 AM, said:

Ill take that cERPPC any day of the week. They could give it 25 heat and I wouldn't give a ****.

6 ton gauss rifle with unlimited ammo. Yes please.

Take care not to overhype the power of a 15 PPFLD C-ER PPC. It may weigh less but the cost in heat is tremendous.

[Spr1ggan]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 09 March 2016 - 11:10 AM, said:

I still haven't had this happen, a lot of the time it will fly through an opening (like armpits area of the Cheetah or Nova), because the mechs have better hitboxes than terrain which catches half my PPC volleys.

I have hit a mech and no damage and had PPCs explode in thin air, but never ghosted through a mech.

You're pretty fortunate then. I've had PPC/ERPPC shots go through Dires and Atlases while doing no damage before.

[Felicitatem Parco]

Ultimax, on 10 March 2016 - 10:08 AM, said:

Oh this new system is bound to be hilarious.

All of the people cheering that ghost heat will be gone probably have no clue what kind of sloppy hot mess its going to be replaced with.

The BattleTech purists will be furious.

"TT said nothing about reactor draw limits! You just have to enforce Cone of Fire!" Because that is what every BT/TT purist wants: Cone of fire to simulate the innacuracy of 2D6 BattleTech, even if you and your target are holding still.

But, the bigger problem will be the "Assault Mechs are now useless" club who are certain that Assault Mechs exist only because of their ability to fire large Alpha Strikes.

I will expect a few inches of precipitation when the tears fall from the faces of Dual Gauss Dual PPC snipers who cannot 50 point it anymore, or the 6ML + 2/3 LL crowd who cannot LaserVomit all at once.

Beam duration quirks will become more valuable, and long-range fighting will likely result in components not spontaneously popping from a single-shot by a foe 600m away nearly as often.

However.. The success of this system will depend on the form of punishment. If the punishment is Heat, then Gauss Rifles will still be used to inflate Alphas as normal because you can use thebGRs as backup weapons as you cool down from the punishment heat. If Cooldown is the punishment, then long-range fighting will still be dominated by Large Alphas because you have time to reload your weapons when fighting at range - the Power Draw system in that respect would have more of an effect on brawling since cooldown determines who wins a prolonged brawl.

[Lugh]

process, on 09 March 2016 - 10:52 AM, said:

Sounds like they'll strongly encourage players to only fire a single ER PPC at a time.

Which really doesn't matter because you can fire them as they are projectiles within .1 ms of one another with mouse clicks.

Spr1ggan, on 10 March 2016 - 10:23 AM, said:

You're pretty fortunate then. I've had PPC/ERPPC shots go through Dires and Atlases while doing no damage before.

I've had it happen on every single mech in the game.

Maddening.

[FupDup]

cazidin, on 10 March 2016 - 10:20 AM, said:

Again, true. But Arseye's video was an exception rather than the rule though he performed admirably against the enemy team. On average, how much damage could that Adder do with the severe heat capacity limit of C-DHS? It's very heat limited.

Well, Papa Smurfys says 13 seconds to overheat assuming 4 extra DHS and a TC1 are added. However, this ignored the energy heat quirks that range from -15% to -20% if you use the weaponless side torsos.

Not exactly good for a sustained brawl or such, but again we're comparing the buffed ERPPC to the current Gauss Rifle on a one-to-one basis. This means that if we look at a 2 ERPPC build, that means we compare it to dual Gauss. Dual Gauss is physically impossible on an Adder, even with zero armor.

I'm not even sure if installing a really really tiny engine would make that possible, but I doubt it.

The Adder can only use 1 Gauss (same damage as only a single buffed ERPPC), and if you're using 3 tons of ammo (the gold standard) then you have 1.5 tons to use on backup lasers. Or, maybe do 2.5 tons of ammo and 2 ERML backup. The total alpha strike damage gets pretty close in the end, but there are range differences and projectile/beam syncing to worry about.

Funnily enough, you could possibly opt for just 1 ERPPC + the 2 ERML for equal damage, and use the spare weight on more heatsinks to bring up the sustainability. Not exactly meta-optimized, but neither is the Gauss Adder.

Grimlox, on 10 March 2016 - 10:20 AM, said:

I posted this earlier with no answer:

The tweet in the OP doesn't seem very clear to me that Russ intends to change C-ERPPC's to pinpoint all the damage.

The guy asks about full 15 damage up front in the future. The current iteration does 15 dmg up front it just has the "splash" mechanic. Nothing in that tweet seems to me like it remotely refers to changing the C-ERPPC to pinpoint all 15 dmg.

We just jumping to conclusions here?

*insert office space jumping to conclusions mat image here*

The "splash" mechanic isn't really "upfront" in the way the guy was referring to.

If Russ wanted to mean that the current "splash" thing already is upfront, it wouldn't have made sense for him to speak in terms of uncertainty ("idk" and "seems likely"). He just could have said something like "it already is."

[Lugh]

Sigilum Sanctum, on 10 March 2016 - 10:17 AM, said:

Ill take that cERPPC any day of the week. They could give it 25 heat and I wouldn't give a ****.

6 ton gauss rifle with unlimited ammo. Yes please.

They already give it too much heat. At 15 heat it's the hottest thing in game.

PS, upping velocity does nothing to change Time To Kill. It only changes the PPC from ineffective at 1200meters to effective at 1200+ meters as if can finally hit something in under a second and a half.

[FupDup]

Okay, I used SSW and figured out that a 35-ton Clan light with dual Gauss is in fact possible to build. I had to use an XL70 engine (top speed of 34.8 kph) with SHS, Endo, and 2 tons of FF armor. It has 2 Gauss and 2 tons of ammo.

Now compare that weird modded Adder above to a current Adder with the 2 ERPPC build. For comparison, it has a base speed of 97.2 and about 6 or 6.5 tons of FF armor.

Both have 30 PPFLD alpha strikes.


Which would you feel is the more effective of the two?

Option A:
-Dual Gauss
-34 kph
-64 armor points

Option B:
-Dual ERPPC
-97 kph
-230 or 211 armor points (depending on preferences)

Edited by FupDup, 10 March 2016 - 10:44 AM.

[Lugh]

FupDup, on 10 March 2016 - 10:37 AM, said:

Okay, I used SSW and figured out that a 35-ton Clan light with dual Gauss is in fact possible to build. I had to use an XL70 engine (top speed of 34.8 kph) with SHS, Endo, and 2 tons of FF armor. It has 2 Gauss and 2 tons of ammo.

Now compare that weird modded Adder above to a current Adder with the 2 ERPPC build. For comparison, it has a base speed of 97.2 and about 6 or 6.5 tons of FF armor.

Both have 30 PPFLD alpha strikes.


Which would you feel is the more effective of the two?

Option A:
-Dual Gauss
-34 kph
-64 armor points

Option B:
-Dual ERPPC
-97 kph
-230 or 211 armor points (depending on preferences)

Unrelated to this part but where on smurphy's are you seeing the time to overheat? I can't figure out where that is....

[FupDup]

Lugh, on 10 March 2016 - 10:47 AM, said:

Unrelated to this part but where on smurphy's are you seeing the time to overheat? I can't figure out where that is....

Weapon Lab Tab.

[Mcgral18]

FupDup, on 10 March 2016 - 10:48 AM, said:

Weapon Lab Tab.

There's also the 25% bonus from Alpine to heat cap and dissipation.
I think that's the number.

[Pjwned]

cazidin, on 10 March 2016 - 10:04 AM, said:

Why? Clan ER PPC already does 15 points of damage it's just that 1/3rd of it is spread out or lost depending on where you hit.

And that was done to not make clan weapons too good compared to IS weapons, but if we're tossing that out the door then IS needs buffs to compensate as well or else it's a load of crap.

Quote

Just a reminder, IS mechs already have cooldown quirks for Energy or Ballistic weapons of 10% on average to compensate for the increased tonnage or critical slots used.

Quirks on various mechs (which are on clan mechs as well) are not good enough to make up for the disparity in this case.

Quote

(And yes, I agree that PGI should just change base stats so quirks aren't as necessary or abundant but... well, we're still waiting for that, are we not?)

Correct, but this is a separate issue of buffing C-ER PPCs inappropriately and then consequently leaving Inner Sphere out in the cold.

If people want a C-ER PPC buff then they (as well as IS ER PPCs) should get significantly increased velocity (instead of this crap proposal) so that their optimal range can actually be reached effectively.

[Pariah Devalis]

cazidin, on 10 March 2016 - 10:10 AM, said:

That's true. So, for sake of argument let's assume that their velocity is synced at 1,800 M/S but heat is unchanged. You're gaining 14 heat for 6 less tons and 4 fewer critical slots. Also assuming 3-4 tons of ammo for the Gauss Rifle, how many tons and how many critical slots are taken to provide adequate cooling for the PPCs?

Just to pipe in here because it is rather worth mentioning. To use a single ERPPC and no backup weapons, you really don't need more than the 10 integrated DHS in the mech to cool it enough to fire it often enough to be a primary weapon system. For 2 ERPPC, you require about 20 total DHS (for a total of 24 slots) to do the same on any mech that cannot poptart, so as soon as you double the guns you lose out on a lot of tonnage, there.

However, it is more a matter of cooling rate than heat cap that the DHS becomes necessary at that point. As such, you could run 3 or 4 ERPPC with 25 DHS just fine, if you're careful with your volley or chainfire. Even then, you might want to bump it to 27 or 28 DHS just to help out. This is, of course, taking into account you have no other weapon systems that generate heat that you plan on using.

A comparison at 2 ERPPC +20 DHS puts it at around 22 tons of pod space and 24 slots required to fire 2x ERPPC basically as many times as you want. This is contrasted with the 24+4=28 tons of guns and ammo for two Gauss Rifles, but they only use 18 slots. Two ERPPC with sufficient heat sinks puts you at a 6 ton advantage against the Gauss mech, but the Gauss mech actually saves 6 slots to supply it with backup weapon systems that are not already taxed by the heat of the main guns.

It's why the C-ERPPC is an ideal weapon for SMALLER mechs whereas the Gauss should be better for larger mechs with more tonnage to throw around.

Edit: Didn't need 5 tons of ammo. Adjusted maths.

Edited by Pariah Devalis, 10 March 2016 - 01:15 PM.

[Graugger]

Nooooooooo not nerf clan PPC (BUFF IT)!

[Aiden Skye]

CER- PPC should at least do as much PP damage as the large pulse. To make it do less then even the CERLL considering the heat and slow projectile speed is too much.

[cazidin]

Pjwned, on 10 March 2016 - 12:59 PM, said:

And that was done to not make clan weapons too good compared to IS weapons, but if we're tossing that out the door then IS needs buffs to compensate as well or else it's a load of crap.



Quirks on various mechs (which are on clan mechs as well) are not good enough to make up for the disparity in this case.



Correct, but this is a separate issue of buffing C-ER PPCs inappropriately and then consequently leaving Inner Sphere out in the cold.

If people want a C-ER PPC buff then they (as well as IS ER PPCs) should get significantly increased velocity (instead of this crap proposal) so that their optimal range can actually be reached effectively.

I don't see any problem with buffing IS ER PPCs or IS PPCs. They would benefit greatly from an increase in velocity, a decrease in heat and for the ER PPC an increase in damage. PPCs shouldn't need outrageous 30-50% quirks to be considered "decent" weapons.

[Pjwned]

W A R K H A N, on 10 March 2016 - 01:38 PM, said:

CER- PPC should at least do as much PP damage as the large pulse. To make it do less then even the CERLL considering the heat and slow projectile speed is too much.

Then buff the velocity so that people don't still complain about the slow velocity. Don't buff the pinpoint damage instead so that people continue bitching about velocity and the pinpoint damage being too high (because it would be too high), just fix it properly by making the ER PPCs fast enough for their high optimal range to matter.

Also, as far as C-LPL it should have its range reduced to 545m.

cazidin, on 10 March 2016 - 01:58 PM, said:

I don't see any problem with buffing IS ER PPCs or IS PPCs. They would benefit greatly from an increase in velocity, a decrease in heat and for the ER PPC an increase in damage. PPCs shouldn't need outrageous 30-50% quirks to be considered "decent" weapons.

All that needs to be done is to buff ER PPC & C-ER PPC velocity significantly and to revert PPC minimum range back to the way it was originally so that it doesn't do 0 damage at 89m.

PPCs don't need superbuffs, they just need improvements.