14 replies to this topic

[GurpGork]

They have basically half'ish the range of the ERPPC as it is. Yes, less heat, but seriously that minimum range really screws you way too often. Especially when you have to rely on the PPC as main part of your firepower. Having a couple small lasers as backup is possible, but you become severely handicapped compared to any other weapon in the game under that 90m. It makes it so incredibly situational. It's a pain in the arse. I've been forced to use ERPPC's to make my PPC centric builds actually viable. Which also hugely reduces my damage output due to the crazy heat.

Sadly after many many matches, I've concluded that its almost necessary to deal with the extra heat vs. having little to no damage at close range. Theres simply no way to keep away from everyone to keep the weapon viable. For lights and mediums, where there is little choice, if any, for backup weapons, it's just not working well

Dumping that minimum range, makes it a fully functional weapon with more realistic trade-offs, that don't totally gimp it.

[Karl Streiger]

Rather then to remove it the minimum range on PPC i would like to have minimum range on ERPPCs as well. Not the zero damage stuff but the good old declining damage below 90m (shooting targets at 89m still almost the full damage not zero)

One of the features i like most - take the 6D for example that build wouldn't work without PPCs that doesn't have minimum ranges - when you realized that charging into 6 Small Lasers is a bad trade vs zero damage PPCs.

Edited by Karl Streiger, 11 May 2016 - 10:15 PM.

[VinJade]

@Karl
if you knew the reasons behind the ER PPCs and the tech then that request can be seen as foolish or stupid, please do your research on the weapon before wanting to do something like that.

one of the main things going for the ER PPC is its range and lack of Min range. as it is they are slow(which in of itself is stupid, slow travel time really?) and are even out performed by the over powered ER LL which is lighter and has longer range than the ER PPC.

When an ER PPC can be out ranged by a er ll there is some bull **** going on.
yeah, yeah, mods, quirks, whatever....

in the game the std PPC should only be out ranged by er lls by 1% at most if we are talking about IS er lls not as much as it is now.

anyways back to the topic at hand;
I think the damage should be halved at most up close with a chance of feedback damage(10% at most) to the mech using it.
I don't see why they wouldn't do that, I mean the removed the burnout rules for the UACs(which is stupid) so then they should remove the no damage at min range for PPCs.

Edited by VinJade, 12 May 2016 - 06:55 AM.

[Karl Streiger]

Stop right there.
I don't give a darn about half backed lore reasons. They were acceptable when i started to play Tt 20years ago.
But given the original balance of stuff the Erppc broke balance. And given the DHS stupid the additional heat of the ER isn't a drawback.

But when you want to discuss lore - why for god sake has the Gauss 1 heat superb damage and range - its conplete balance bs

[Elendil]

You're right that PPCs already have too many nerfs.

Gauss rifles have the charge time and ammo as restrictions, lasers have duration as a restriction, missiles spread your damage and require a lock, and PPCs have travel time, huge amounts of heat, large hitboxes that collide with random objects anywhere near their flight path (and spread your damage to weird parts of your target that you weren't aiming at), a surprisingly limited max range, and also a minimum range.
PPCs are nerfed to hell even without the minimum range.

I realize that the minimum range always been in the lore, but the lore can be reinterpreted (for example, the lore doesn't say that they have a long travel time, or huge hitboxes, or that gauss rifles can only hold a charge for 2 seconds, etc).

If the minimum range isn't going anywhere, maybe make it so that the feedback just generates extra heat when fired at targets within 90m? Or lighten the rest of the restrictions so that they're less useless?

[GLaDOSauR]

Argh. What no one ever seems to realize is that ppc's dealing zero damage at close range isn't lore either. Just like lrms. All the minimum range did in lore was make it harder to hit your target. If we were trying to be true to lore then IS lrms would deal full damage at close range, but be harder to aim because of the ballistic arc. I'm not sure how to make ppcs less accurate, but I'm sure there is still some solution beyond not dealing any damage at all.

[GurpGork]

I dont know why less accurate has anything to do with it. Right now IS lasers with the minor burn time are about as accurate as you can get in game. Why are we looking to replace a bad weapons nerf, with another nerf ? We shouldnt be.

[Omi_]

Personally, I would rather see the PPC inhibitors properly visualized in-game. It doesn't really narrate why the PPC does 0 damage up close when the projectile visual and sound doesn't change.

[Dee Eight]

VinJade, on 12 May 2016 - 06:54 AM, said:

one of the main things going for the ER PPC is its range and lack of Min range. as it is they are slow(which in of itself is stupid, slow travel time really?) and are even out performed by the over powered ER LL which is lighter and has longer range than the ER PPC.

When an ER PPC can be out ranged by a er ll there is some bull **** going on.
yeah, yeah, mods, quirks, whatever....

For someone complaining someone else doesn't know the rules/technology behind ER PPCs, you apparently aren't up to snuff on the info behind the clan ER-LL either...official battletech rules...clan ER Larges are two hexes (so 60 meters) longer range than the ER PPCs. If anything, PGI should increase it further than the 740 meters they are now.

[DrRedCoat]

GLaDOSauR, on 12 May 2016 - 10:49 AM, said:

Argh. What no one ever seems to realize is that ppc's dealing zero damage at close range isn't lore either. Just like lrms. All the minimum range did in lore was make it harder to hit your target. If we were trying to be true to lore then IS lrms would deal full damage at close range, but be harder to aim because of the ballistic arc. I'm not sure how to make ppcs less accurate, but I'm sure there is still some solution beyond not dealing any damage at all.

Yeah, not to mention that AC2s, AC5s, and gauss rifles also have minimum ranges that are completely ignored in MWO. I'm not super familiar with the advanced tabletop rules and reasoning but I think the excuse for the PPC minimum range had something to do with a capacitor or limiter or whatever but you could still fire below that range and risk blowing the capacitor.

[Dee Eight]

The 'random' locations for missile hits IS supported in the lore, as well as locking the missiles, because there was no automatic weapon convergence and a random dice determined hit-locations table. The PPCs and LRMs minimum range is also right there in battletech rules, For that matter, that was the advantage to streak missiles, as instead of committing to firing a launcher and hoping you hit on the dice roll, you instead rolled to lock, and if you didn't, no missiles fired and no heat was generated, and if you locked, you shot, and they all hit.

As to PPCs, the 90 meter minimum was also in the lore, as a safety feature to prevent the charged particles from interfering with the electronics and fusion reaction of the mech using it. For that matter, be THANKFUL they didn't impose the minimum range for the AC/5s and AC/2s, LBX-2s & 5s, Ultra-2s, gauss rifles and all the other weapons in the tabletop rules that had them.

[VinJade]

@Dee
do you see anywhere I was talking about Clan tech?
I was talking about IS tech the entire time or did ya miss that?

Here Dee a little reminder of range(talking Max only)
IS:
Lg Pls: 10
LL: 15
PPC: 18
ER LL: 19
ER PPC: 23

Clan:
Lg Pls: 20
ER PPC: 23
ER LL: 25

the bold numbers are what I was talking about, I didn't think I would have had to make that crystal clear for you Dee as I thought someone like you would have already known I was talking about IS & Not Clan as you are a smart person.

anyways back on topic;
in Lore the PPC does have a reason for it's min range which was fixed by the creation of the ER PPC.

Edited by VinJade, 12 May 2016 - 10:59 PM.

[Kishida Sato]

if you want to get rid of the ppc minimum range, turn off the Inhibitor and risk the explosion. nuff said. do your lore research or go play panda-warfare vs zombies.

"because it is in the compendium."

[VinJade]

mwo isn't exactly playing by the rules themselves for different weapons, such as the UACs, their version doesn't short out like the BT counter parts do if they push them too hard.

or

The Gauss Rifle needing to be charged or explodes when hit even if it isn't charged(the whole reason it explodes is because it is always charged in BT).

those are just two, but none the less if they can change how two weapons work then they should be able to allow PPCs to deal damage well within the min range with no feed back damage at all.

after all if they add feed back damage they better put burn outs back on UACs, after all that is canon.

Edited by VinJade, 14 May 2016 - 05:32 AM.

[GLaDOSauR]

DrRedCoat, on 12 May 2016 - 07:34 PM, said:

Yeah, not to mention that AC2s, AC5s, and gauss rifles also have minimum ranges that are completely ignored in MWO. I'm not super familiar with the advanced tabletop rules and reasoning but I think the excuse for the PPC minimum range had something to do with a capacitor or limiter or whatever but you could still fire below that range and risk blowing the capacitor.

The capacitor was there to prevent your ppc from damaging yourself at close range so it created a field to reduce the power of a ppc charge within the minimum range(not sure how it reduced accuracy but...whatever). You could in the advanced rules turn of the capacitor to remove the minimum range modifier to your to-hit roll, at the cost of a high chance of blowing up the ppc and whatever location it was contained in.