43 replies to this topic

[TELEFORCE]

I don't understand why mounting more than two Gauss rifles on a 'mech is not being allowed. All it does it limit the way we can build some assault 'mechs with Gauss rifles. I feel like there's a better way to address more than two Gauss rifles on a 'mech.

When was having more than three Gauss rifles on a 'mech ever a problem? When the Dire Wolf was introduced, Gauss rifles were deliberately made to fire in pairs at the most to prevent this problem from occurring. I can see power draw adding further penalty to stagger-firing the rifles quickly.

Additionally, the Gauss rifle limit eliminates the chance of PGI selling a Thunder Hawk pack, a Star League-era 'mech famous for mounting three Gauss rifles. Along those lines, if the Annihilator is introduced, there is a variant that also mounts three Gauss rifles, which is also popular. The upcoming Night Gyr is capable of mounting three of the weapons.

I feel like forcing the Gauss rifles to fire at no more than two at a time as they do now would be sufficient, if the goal is to limit instant, low-heat alphas. Perhaps add a delay between firing pairs of Gauss rifles, like a 3.35s delay (half of the current PTS Gauss recycle time).

If more creativity was desired as well as being able to fire all Gauss rifles at once, cap the damage at 40 points (two AC/20s) and fluff it as an extreme power requirement, and apply extra heat like the total alpha was 60 points.

I really don't want to see build options with weapons limited more than they already are, plus, I'd really like to see the Thunder Hawk in-game. Please consider this carefully.

[Hit the Deck]

Night Gyr can't mount more than 2 Gauss aside, I agree with your post that they shouldn't use a hard cap on GRs because it's just a bad game mechanics.

I proposed that you get an increasing charge up time above 1 GR (when fired at a time) but there's no response so far and 1 person dislike it.

[Moonlight Grimoire]

the issue with more than 2xGR is the fact that it allows people to do a 45-60 pin point alpha derp into someones CT, ST, Arm or Leg. If Power Draw was set up right it would make it so doing that sort of alpha would knock your mech out for a bit by doing each point over 30 you draw you suffer 1 heat, maybe 2 after the first 5-10 heat, throw in penalties for also movement for getting too hot or drawing too much power. Whichever, don't care, just mobility for those who who bring massive damage derp builds would spell their doom since they couldn't cower as fast to hide and reload.

[Darksoul719]

I too would like this to not be a limitation of only being able to mount 2 gauss rifles because as mentioned there are mechs that have fielded 3 gauss rifles. The only way i can see this happening is that if there is a penalty it would be a full on energy drain because think about you are hurling a large projectile at high velocities that requires a lot of energy to do so the more gauss you have the higher the amount of energy spent to fire it so the charge time(reload) should be longer since all of them need time to recharge to fire again that i feel would be an ok penalty, just my opinion feel free think of any other penalties.

[Moonlight Grimoire]

Another option is that the game could flat prevent you from firing more than two GR's at once which with instant fire that is fixed, and you would need .75 seconds to elapse after firing the first two to fire a third anyways as it is. That is still significant tightly clustered damage. The solution to this is bringing back convergence, which is why GR's got that charge up in the first place was people used it with PPC's (hence why PPC's got nerfed) and Jump Jets (hence why JJ's are terrible for the most part) to pop up fire all their weapons at once and then fall out of sight before return fire could get to them and all their shots would hit the same spot on a mech.

[TELEFORCE]

Moonlight Grimoire, on 19 August 2016 - 06:42 PM, said:

Another option is that the game could flat prevent you from firing more than two GR's at once which with instant fire that is fixed, and you would need .75 seconds to elapse after firing the first two to fire a third anyways as it is. That is still significant tightly clustered damage. The solution to this is bringing back convergence, which is why GR's got that charge up in the first place was people used it with PPC's (hence why PPC's got nerfed) and Jump Jets (hence why JJ's are terrible for the most part) to pop up fire all their weapons at once and then fall out of sight before return fire could get to them and all their shots would hit the same spot on a mech.

MWO does this now, making the player not fire more than two Gauss rifles at once. It seems to work fine, so I don't get why they felt they had to change it.

[Znail]

The reason for the limit on GR is due to the new energy draw system only gives a minor heat penalty for for going over the limit and GR generate so little heat that a minor heat penalty wont be even noticed. They could make GR draw more energy to counter the GR boats, but that would also remove GR use in combination with other weapons and essentially limit it to use in dual GR builds.

The current build works fine with GR as you can use either one or two and also combine it with other weapons. There is no reason to break that just to alow GR boats.

[DraconX3]

If we had knockdown, it would be balanced right there automatically.
In lore, firing more than a single Gauss rifle at a time will more than likely leave you flat on your butt, even for an assault.
The recoil is just way to much.
So if we had knockdown in MWO, it would balance itself out. The only reason to carry more than 1 even, is for quick fire in succession while the others reload.
Things like this are what MWO needs, it increases TTK, makes the game just that tad bit slower that makes everything fun.
MWO and Battletech in general are NOT SUPPOSED to be fast twitch shooters. Thats just not how it should be.

[Tiantara]

- Hmm like mechanic with chance of 50% to one of gauss explodes if you shoot 3 of them at once?

[Farlayeigh Maerka]

If the issue of insta-shooting of 3+ gauss at a single point could be addressed, 3+ gauss can be balanced.

Perhaps PGI could allow for mounting more than three gauss

and then introduce additional penalties like...



1. More than two simultaneous shots results in 'spread' rounds

: could justify this as adjacent rounds interfering with each other aerodynamically and magnetically, resulting in a spread.


2. Gauss recharge delays energy bar cooldown time when recharging.

: for 2+ gauss simply introduce stackable delays in cooldown time of energy bar when they are recharging.

: so for a 3+gauss mech firing at same time faces a 'much longer' cooldown time for depleted energy bar to recover, effectively 'neutralizing' the firepower potential of the mech for a few more seconds.




With these, in long range, 3 gauss mech could never insta kill lights or componets due to spread rounds.

In mid to short ranges, 3 gauss mech could never fire gauss alpha without

risking a depletion of energy bar for a few more seconds.

Edited by Farlayeigh Maerka, 20 August 2016 - 08:25 AM.

[Spleenslitta]

I got a way to balance Gauss while removing the charge up mechanic. It was kind of a side product of my ideas but it's in the first spoiler button.
Unfortunatly it's necessary to read the entire textwall inside the first spoilerbutton to understand what is going on inside my head.
Spleen's Energy Draw Feedback.

Edited by Spleenslitta, 20 August 2016 - 08:30 AM.

[TELEFORCE]

Znail, on 20 August 2016 - 06:20 AM, said:

The current build works fine with GR as you can use either one or two and also combine it with other weapons. There is no reason to break that just to alow GR boats.

Why shouldn't we have Gauss rifle boats? We can boat any other weapon, and that's currently being balanced by ghost heat, and now the upcoming energy draw. There has to be a better, more creative way to balance Gauss boating than just putting a hard cap of two Gauss rifles to a chassis.

[kapusta11]

There's already a mech in BT lore that carries 3 GR, it's called Thunder Hawk.

Edited by kapusta11, 20 August 2016 - 01:56 PM.

[Moonlight Grimoire]

kapusta11, on 20 August 2016 - 01:54 PM, said:

There's already a mech in BT lore that carries 3 GR, it's called Thunder Hawk.

Yes the thunderhawk exists, and in order to make it work we need to make it so you can volley fire GR's just fine but not alpha strike with them and expect more than one to hit the target (but likely not the component you aimed for) so that way we don't have 45 pin point front loaded damage slamming into a mech. TT it was balanced due to you could fall on your *** and where shots landed was determined by the roll of dice as well as if the shot hit at all. MWO has no dice outside of crit hits. So GR's need some trade off (say 20 power draw to make up for near 0 heat) and for that trade off to be noticeable (say firing past power draw your accuracy starts going like you are running masc or jj's but to a lower extent but increases the more you go past power draw). Otherwise Gauss is a very powerful weapon that people will build walking turrets around.

[TKSax]

My guess is when the removed the charge up there was not way for them to limit people from firing 3+ at the same time.

[TELEFORCE]

I'm fine with volley-firing Gauss rifles. It works well now. And since they removed the charge mechanic in this iteration of the PTS, perhaps they could use it on the next one or two Gauss rifles to be fired after the first pair.

And Moonlight, you're thinking of the heavy Gauss rifle. Normal Gauss rifles actually didn't force a piloting skill roll to avoid a fall, but the heavy versions did. But I wouldn't mind that being a MWO game mechanic for firing more than two Gauss rifles at once. I feel that volley-firing would be the easiest solution for this since it's already implemented, but other things can work too.

Edited by TELEFORCE, 20 August 2016 - 03:40 PM.

[kapusta11]

Moonlight Grimoire, on 20 August 2016 - 03:32 PM, said:

Yes the thunderhawk exists, and in order to make it work we need to make it so you can volley fire GR's just fine but not alpha strike with them and expect more than one to hit the target (but likely not the component you aimed for) so that way we don't have 45 pin point front loaded damage slamming into a mech. TT it was balanced due to you could fall on your *** and where shots landed was determined by the roll of dice as well as if the shot hit at all. MWO has no dice outside of crit hits. So GR's need some trade off (say 20 power draw to make up for near 0 heat) and for that trade off to be noticeable (say firing past power draw your accuracy starts going like you are running masc or jj's but to a lower extent but increases the more you go past power draw). Otherwise Gauss is a very powerful weapon that people will build walking turrets around.

You can't fire more than 3 GR in the main game build already. What's the goddamn problem?

[Moonlight Grimoire]

kapusta11, on 20 August 2016 - 03:39 PM, said:

You can't fire more than 3 GR in the main game build already. What's the goddamn problem?

There are mechs that can take up to 4, Dire Wolf and Kodiak, the only reason I am saying this is that having 30 damage land on the exact same component at near heat scan velocity is not healthy for the game, hence forcing volley fire. And people did find a way to get around the 2 Gauss charge up rule. More or less, 15 points of damage going exactly where you want going at 2,000m/s makes easy to really hurt someone, if you allow 30 (firing two at once) to do the same you can easily head shot a lot of players. Adjusting power draw to force volley fire of GR's and have backups would help the game, which is why I am happy charge is gone and instead we have a long reload. But, at this time there is no real reason not to run twin gauss rifles outside of tonnage requirements, it is a strong build that can and will significantly hurt or cripple mechs with little to no effort. Make it volley fire and it takes much longer to have the same effect since both shots are far less likely to hit the same spot which helps improve TTK and lets people learn not to stare at mechs with gauss rifles.

[kapusta11]

Moonlight Grimoire, on 20 August 2016 - 03:50 PM, said:

And people did find a way to get around the 2 Gauss charge up rule.

What? When? What is this "way" of getting around it?

[Uncle Totty]

Gauss Rifles can be made to consume 30 points of energy each and require a full bar in order to fire.