36 replies to this topic

[Cementi]

Sure lets make it 2.77% but when it jams it is jammed for the rest of the game like it is supposed to be.

Or you could appreciate that any kind of unjaming mechanic is them being nice and you could learn to simply not rapid fire the trigger every time.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Cementi, on 04 September 2016 - 10:25 AM, said:

Sure lets make it 2.77% but when it jams it is jammed for the rest of the game like it is supposed to be.

Or you could appreciate that any kind of unjaming mechanic is them being nice and you could learn to simply not rapid fire the trigger every time.

So we should feel blessed because PGI didn't make UACs suck horribly, sorry, no, just no.

[Cementi]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 04 September 2016 - 11:04 AM, said:

So we should feel blessed because PGI didn't make UACs suck horribly, sorry, no, just no.

So instead you think that uac's should be a clear replacement to ac's. I'm not saying that I think the t should be permanent jam (I forgot online you have to point out sarcasam) what I am saying is that an 8 second jam is still far more forgiving than it could be. Even with the 8 second jam you would never see someone choose a standard over a uac.

Edited by Cementi, 04 September 2016 - 12:06 PM.

[davoodoo]

Cementi, on 04 September 2016 - 12:05 PM, said:

So instead you think that uac's should be a clear replacement to ac's. I'm not saying that I think the t should be permanent jam (I forgot online you have to point out sarcasam) what I am saying is that an 8 second jam is still far more for a great value not than it could be. Even with the 8 second jam you would never see someone choose a standard over a uac.

Until pgi pulls their head out of their *** and introduces specialty ammo then yeah, i expect uac to be vastly superior to regular ac as it should be in anything with battletech license...

[Cementi]

The risk of a jam and the cost ( sadly a non issue in mwo) often makes players opt for standard ac's instead in tabletop. The only time I see players always opt for uac's every time is in skirmish games where there is nothing to loose.

Edited by Cementi, 04 September 2016 - 12:22 PM.

[FupDup]

Cementi, on 04 September 2016 - 12:05 PM, said:

So instead you think that uac's should be a clear replacement to ac's. I'm not saying that I think the t should be permanent jam (I forgot online you have to point out sarcasam) what I am saying is that an 8 second jam is still far more forgiving than it could be. Even with the 8 second jam you would never see someone choose a standard over a uac.

No, if you've followed Quickie's posts in the past you would know that he doesn't believe in "direct replacement" weapon balancing.

There are far, far better ways to create relative parity between UACs and ACs than nerfing jam time and jam RNG chance into the ground.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

FupDup, on 04 September 2016 - 12:28 PM, said:

No, if you've followed Quickie's posts in the past you would know that he doesn't believe in "direct replacement" weapon balancing.

There are far, far better ways to create relative parity between UACs and ACs than nerfing jam time and jam RNG chance into the ground.

This, you missed the point of my post.

[davoodoo]

Cementi, on 04 September 2016 - 12:21 PM, said:

The risk of a jam and the cost ( sadly a non issue in mwo) often makes players opt for standard ac's instead in tabletop. The only time I see players always opt for uac's every time is in skirmish games where there is nothing to loose.

Lets be honest here, with dhs you simply resulted half tonnage spent on cooling off energy weapons and that made low caliber regular ac advantage of low heat useless.

You could grab 8 dmg 8 heat + dhs llas for 9 tons total or ac5 for 8 tons + ammo + 1 shs/dhs for 10 tons minimum and deal less dmg.
Uac were designed to make more tonnage efficient ac which at 11 tons(9+ammo+dhs) will do 10 dmg(and possibly 2 crits) as regular acs became obsolete with dhs, ofc it had its own drawback of jam and high cost or you could also grab 11 tons+ ammo+ dhs lb10x which doesnt jam can crit nicely with clusters but is still expensive.

Normally i would call this new gear which obsoletes older a balance flaw but its tabletop rpg/wargame so i can understand if someone would want to run budget variant with old tech either because budget constraints or because points limit.

Edited by davoodoo, 05 September 2016 - 03:34 PM.

[ScarecrowES]

Part of the issue with balancing UACs in MWO is that we don't have NORMAL ACs to balance against. UACs are supposed to be very risky weapons to take. In TT, those puppies, once they jam, STAY jammed. That's the risk you incur... it's what balances the potential to do double damage at the mere cost of 1 ton of weight at 1 critical slot. In TT you'd rarely ever double-tap... it was too risky for most scenarios. Thus, your practical effective output for a UAC was proportional to the 1-ton and 1-crit investment you made.

Unfortunately, Clans in MWO don't get real standard autocannons. Our choice is UACs or LBXs. If we were to have real ACs as an option, you could readily punish UAC jams more harshly and it would probably feel fair. Hell, a jam time of even 3-4 times the cycle rate would likely still feel pretty fair for a "double-damage at minimal investment" sorta weapon.

What we almost certainly need to do, then, to actually balance UACs properly is to introduce an alternative. Now, we're supposed to get an ammo-changing LBX, but PGI can't seem to make that work... so instead we get a standard AC that fires like UACs without a double-tap, but uses LBX stats.

For the sake of a place-holder, it would make more sense for standard Clan ACs - though obviously they DON'T exist in canon and thus we're making this up all for the sake of balance - to actually weight less and have fewer crit slots than a UAC of the same class, much like the AC5 vs UAC5 for the IS.

Having an alternative weapon that has reasonable balance stats for a placeholder weapon then let's you muzzle UACs appropriately without completely gimping the entire Clan ballistics pool.

Until we provide a reasonable alternative to Clan UACs, you can't ever hope to balance them.

[Livaria]

It just doesn't make sense to me for weapon DPS to be based on a percent chance. I believe DPS is far too important to leave to chance. So instead, I'm suggesting that the UAC jam to be based on how many shots have been fired and that the jam time length is based on the weapon.

Here is an example:

- A UAC 2 can fire 5 times before triggering a waiting period of 7 seconds
- A UAC 5 can fire 3 times before triggering a waiting period of 8 seconds
- A UAC 10 can fire 3 times before triggering a waiting period 9 seconds
- A UAC 20 can fire 2 times before triggering a waiting period 10 seconds

Edited by Livaria, 05 September 2016 - 10:06 PM.

[Kmieciu]

Right now on live server, AC5 has 3.01 DPS while UAC5 has an average 3,94 DPS.
UAC5 is, on average, 31% better. During short engagements (poking) it is 85% better than AC5 because that't the probability you will do double damage over AC5.
UAC5 is 12,5% heavier than AC5. Therefore UAC5 is a clearly superior weapon to AC5 and you should use it instead whenever possible.

C-UAC5 and UAC5 have roughly the same DPS (3,8 vs 3,94 DPS). C-UAC5 is 22% lighter, but IS UAC5 is 100% more pinpoint. It's hard to tell it those two weapons are balanced, because hardly anyone uses IS ballistics on an unquirked chassis.

I know that 3xUAC5 on a JM6-DD is a better build than 3xC-UAC5 on Ebon Jaguar. But that's because of the quirks that boost the IS UAC5 to 4,9DPS . This mech gets 29% more DPS than the clan counterpart, while the IS UAC5s weigh 22% more. No wonder it's a more deadly build. But when we think about speed and XL-durability the balance shifts back to Clantech.

Edited by Kmieciu, 05 September 2016 - 11:14 PM.

[Mystere]

davoodoo, on 04 September 2016 - 12:08 PM, said:

Until pgi pulls their head out of their *** and introduces specialty ammo then yeah, i expect uac to be vastly superior to regular ac as it should be in anything with battletech license...

Since you invoked "BattleTech", then when a UAC jams, it should stay jammed for the duration of the fight.

[L3mming2]

Mystere, on 06 September 2016 - 06:12 PM, said:

Since you invoked "BattleTech", then when a UAC jams, it should stay jammed for the duration of the fight.

They would be stupidly op at the start of the fight and with a jamm chance of 2% less than 45% would jam on average before firing 2 tons of ammo thru eatch (UAC5's)... so basicaly making it a fixed jamm chance would make them OP troll weapons (that can troll u as well as the opponents.. ) i kinda like how they are now, they are powerfull but you have to play them with one eye on a retreat option at all times, so you can try to get back in to cover (wile shielding (yes i like to have some armor on my UACdaka mauler just for that)) when everything is going horibly wrong... and (with the exeption of kodiak/dire wolf lvls of dakka) its posible to outplay them in a 1 vs 1 by shielding between your alphas...

[Widowmaker1981]

ScarecrowES, on 05 September 2016 - 04:30 PM, said:

In TT you'd rarely ever double-tap... it was too risky for most scenarios. Thus, your practical effective output for a UAC was proportional to the 1-ton and 1-crit investment you made.

Really? I call crap on that.. UACs only jam on a double one, a 1 in 36 chance. You'd be stupid NOT to risk that, since the risk would pay off over 95% of the time.. yeah an unlucky jam would suck, but in the vast majority of cases youd just get double dps, so it would be totally worth it (slightly depending on hit roll required, obviously if you needed 12 to hit it would be even odds and therefore not worth it)

[Widowmaker1981]

Kmieciu, on 05 September 2016 - 11:11 PM, said:

Right now on live server, AC5 has 3.01 DPS while UAC5 has an average 3,94 DPS.
UAC5 is, on average, 31% better. During short engagements (poking) it is 85% better than AC5 because that't the probability you will do double damage over AC5.
UAC5 is 12,5% heavier than AC5. Therefore UAC5 is a clearly superior weapon to AC5 and you should use it instead whenever possible.

C-UAC5 and UAC5 have roughly the same DPS (3,8 vs 3,94 DPS). C-UAC5 is 22% lighter, but IS UAC5 is 100% more pinpoint. It's hard to tell it those two weapons are balanced, because hardly anyone uses IS ballistics on an unquirked chassis.

I know that 3xUAC5 on a JM6-DD is a better build than 3xC-UAC5 on Ebon Jaguar. But that's because of the quirks that boost the IS UAC5 to 4,9DPS . This mech gets 29% more DPS than the clan counterpart, while the IS UAC5s weigh 22% more. No wonder it's a more deadly build. But when we think about speed and XL-durability the balance shifts back to Clantech.

For IS (and Clans really shouldn't matter to the AC vs UAC discussion, because they shouldn't have regular ACs at all), you do also need to look at the slot usage. It may be only 1 slot, but going from 4 to 5 is the difference between being able to fit two in one arm (for mechs with LAAs), or being able to fit 2 in a side torso with an XL engine - it makes more difference than the 1 extra slot implies.

[ScarecrowES]

Widowmaker1981, on 07 September 2016 - 03:34 AM, said:

Really? I call crap on that.. UACs only jam on a double one, a 1 in 36 chance. You'd be stupid NOT to risk that, since the risk would pay off over 95% of the time.. yeah an unlucky jam would suck, but in the vast majority of cases youd just get double dps, so it would be totally worth it (slightly depending on hit roll required, obviously if you needed 12 to hit it would be even odds and therefore not worth it)

A perfectly reasonable risk for a mech that mounted a UAC amongst other weapons, as you would in TT.

A pretty terrible risk on a mech that only mounted UACs, like folks do with the Kodiak.

[Sereglach]

Personally, I'm all for dumping the UAC Jam Mechanic in it entirety. There is a reasonably simple solution to fix it, especially with ED coming down the line (whether people like it or not).

1. Set standard Autocannons to fire half as many projectiles as their Ultra counterparts. Yes, this means the IS/UAC-5 would now fire 2 projectiles per shot. They could easily set the clan counterpart to fire more projectiles, again, like it did when it was first released, if it proves necessary for balance.

2. Set the standard Autocannons to have a default 25% faster base cooldown than the Ultra counterparts. That closes the DPS gap by a notable margin and mitigates the "absolute superiority" of the UAC.

3. Allow the ED mechanic to swiftly penalize people who double-tap too much.

4. In a slight deviation from lore, give standard Autocannons a slightly superior Optimum range in comparison to the Ultra Autocannon's superior maximum range.

Now you have two weapon systems that are stark contrasts from each other. One provides consistent pinpoint damage out to respectable ranges to fill a precision role, while the other provides superior close-in DPS at brawling ranges or "spray-and-pray" suppression fire out at longer ranges.

Just my two cents, since others are throwing in theirs.