108 replies to this topic

[Random Carnage]

People quoting dps averages are conveniently missing the point. If I'm trading against a mech with a single UAC 20 or 10 and their gun suddenly goes dead, I'm going to aggressively face time them to take advantage of my relative dps gain over them, irrespective of any secondary weapons they may have. Against a UAC boat however, even if one or two guns happen to jam, I'm less likely to notice amongst the continued rain of AC hits coming in, and I'm more likely to play the twist game to spread the damage - losing some (not all) of the potential advantage that i might have gained had I suspended some defence to press offence.

Essentially, at stand-off ranges, and across perhaps an entire match, dps per gun might very well be similar between the single UAC build (secondary weapons aside) and the boat. The in game reality however is survivability. If the single UAC build, particularly if a 20, and to some extent a 10, jams when in close brawling, you're very suddenly in a lot of trouble, and in all likelihood will not survive the encounter to get your match wide dps average. Even if you do survive the encounter, you've had to soak up more damage in the process due to your longer ttk, making you less likely to be able to survive further encounters.

If fighting a similar UAC mech, RNG becomes a bigger determining factor in a fight than skill - and that's just wrong. I a UAC 20 build faces an energy based build, and the UAC 20 jams, you're pretty much fu*ked given the opportunity cost invested in carrying the UAC and how much of your total potential damage it represented before it stopped working. A brawl will be over before it unjams.

This is a very blunt, and blatantly artificial game mechanic. UAC double tap should have been removed altogether and dps tuned around sustained press and hold fire with rate of fire and damage per round differentiating the various sizes. Make the UAC 2 and 5 do 1 damage per projectile, the 10 do 2 dam per projectile, and the 20 4 damage per while the normal AC fire a single round for full damage. UAC would have rof tuned to deliver higher dps but prone to spreading damage while AC has lower dps potential but hits a single location hard.

Heat build-up, sustained fire dps tuning, and possibly some jamming chance linked to say 0.5% per projectile fired per burst or similar might be control tools on the UAC, but the current system is just broken. RNG should not have such a major impact on play as it does now.

[FupDup]

Duke Nedo, on 16 November 2016 - 01:02 AM, said:

• This is not a ghost-mechanic, and it never was. It's a pure weapon performance normalization. It does not punish single UACs more than boated UACs. It may be perceived that way depending on how you build your mech and by how you play it (i.e. do you always double-tap, totally ignoring the situation on the battlefield?).

--->

Duke Nedo, on 16 November 2016 - 01:02 AM, said:

• What boating does is spread the jam probabilities between several weapons, meaning that you will experience closer to the average result, on average. That is, you less often gain a 100% DPS boost, and you less often get hit by all weapons being jammed, giving you a 100% DPS nerf. Both become less likely and you operate around the ~20% DPS increase. This makes it so that UAC boats can continue to mindlessly always double-tap in all situations more or less.
  
• What single-UAC use experiences is less reliability. That makes it more of a feast-or-famine weapon. You will experience full weapon lock-out more often, sure, but you also will be rewarded with a 100% DPS increase more often because your single UAC didn't jam. On average, you will still be at ~20% gain when double-tapping. This demands a little thought from the pilot. You can actually mitigate some of this and play the odds there and then on the battlefield by situational awareness. Double-tapping the first shot when committing to a brawl comes with a risk, though that risk is negligible if you have the option to recover in case of a jam.

You literally just explained why the boats are still better off after the changes.

Edited by FupDup, 16 November 2016 - 12:05 PM.

[Dee Eight]

It was badly timed with the hero clan mech release. The Summoner Pride as it ships, suckage. Not that 1 ton each of ammo for the UAC/5 and 10 are usable at all in a game with vastly increased armor/structure levels, However sacrifice the set-of-8 bonuses and swap some pods and with 1 c-ER-PPC and 1 UAC/10, 4 tons of ammo, TC1 and an extra DHS and it works quite nicely. ER-PPC in the LT and the UAC in the RT, and empty arms for their quirks/shielding. First match out with it, 600+ damage.

Edited by Dee Eight, 16 November 2016 - 12:38 PM.

[Ghogiel]

You are at risk of getting RNG'd on making hard pushes or countering pushes with UACs. The best way to offset being out of the fight in the situations where dakka is most relevent is boating the ever loving **** out them and playing as much peeking game to minimise the jam length ggclosing you.

I expect less double UAC5 and 10 builds in favor of other weapons that are more optimal for peek style. CERPPC and gauss will be better because dakka pushing is going to be that much more riskier.

[Duke Nedo]

FupDup, on 16 November 2016 - 12:05 PM, said:

--->
You literally just explained why the boats are still better off after the changes.

Definitely better the more you have when continuously double-tapping, aye. I just tried to say that there's nothing in the mechanic directly punishing use of few UACs, but if you have few UACs the punishment becomes situation-dependent. You can get screwed over big time if you charge in alone and double-tap a single cUAC20 and jam, but you can also be more or less immune if you peak from 500m with dual cUAC10. So yeah, kind of broken mechanic to start with, though the nerf didn't really create that problem, just reinforced it by 3 secs.

Ghogiel, on 16 November 2016 - 01:03 PM, said:

You are at risk of getting RNG'd on making hard pushes or countering pushes with UACs. The best way to offset being out of the fight in the situations where dakka is most relevent is boating the ever loving **** out them and playing as much peeking game to minimise the jam length ggclosing you.

I expect less double UAC5 and 10 builds in favor of other weapons that are more optimal for peek style. CERPPC and gauss will be better because dakka pushing is going to be that much more riskier.

Aye, in whatever way you look at it, it's a nerf to dakka sustained dps so peeking should be favored. If you're thinking organized push as a strategy though, even with only a few dakka per mech, the total number of UACs participating in the push will be high enough offset some of the randomness. Then it averages out at a 10-15% output nerf I guess. I mean, it doesn't become more random in its nature than it was recently, just worse in performance really.

RNG is a horrible mechanic to control dps and to balance... amen.

What I tired to say it the OP was just that normalizing the double-tap gain between the different flavors of UACs was a good change. It may be that dakka did not need an over all nerf at all, but I'd rather see that compensated for by reducing the cooldowns instead for all UACs and all ACs, and keep the double-tap gains reasonable (~20%).

Edited by Duke Nedo, 16 November 2016 - 02:24 PM.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Why can't people understand it is the reliability of the UAC that is the issue for those builds that mount single UACs. The UAC may not be the only weapon it is mounting but in alot of cases, it makes up 20-50% or more of the total firepower of the mech. When you are in those clenched up brawls where every little bit of DPS counts, you can't have 20-50% firepower suddenly going on vacation for 8-10 seconds. It doesn't matter if the DPS nerf is 1% or 90% because when the UAC is jammed the DPS is ZERO and that is the issue, not the DPS nerf. Honestly I could care less about a 10% nerf to DPS, hell I am fine with UAC/10s doing 9 points of damage. What I am not fine with is my UAC/10 being jammed up and unusable half the time that I want or need to fire it.

[Duke Nedo]

Well, the cases when you can't get in cover and wait it out are the cases when you fire more or less continuously for quite some time, that's why I talk about dps. But I agree, the increased times are harsh, it would have been better to increase the chance instead. Though I am not sure I see the big difference between boating and having backup lasers. Both give redundancy, but whatever.

Perhaps this sudden interest in uac jams is just leading up to the introduction of jam chance modules....

[Graugger]

I am beginning to suspect the main line units are dropping in the PTS system and intentionally altering their performance to get the results they want and thus manipulating the information being generated by the PTS.

[Cy Mitchell]

Pulled the 2xUAC2/cLPL/cERML off of the Stromcrow hero and replaced with 2 x UAC5s/2cERML. Then I went to Terra Therma again to test. I double tapped 240 rounds of ammo. The result was 12 jam notifications with all but two of them being both autocannons at the same time. So that is 22 weapon jams out of 4 tons of UAC5 ammo and the longer jam duration is agonizing. I will not be double tapping UAC5s unless it is a killing blow and no one else is close by to jump me.

For the Hero, I may just go back to the stock load-out with the LBX5s.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Duke Nedo, on 16 November 2016 - 02:41 PM, said:

Well, the cases when you can't get in cover and wait it out are the cases when you fire more or less continuously for quite some time, that's why I talk about dps. But I agree, the increased times are harsh, it would have been better to increase the chance instead. Though I am not sure I see the big difference between boating and having backup lasers. Both give redundancy, but whatever.

Perhaps this sudden interest in uac jams is just leading up to the introduction of jam chance modules....

In most cases UACs aren't used for DPS, but for burst damage. The only mechs that use them for DPS are the boats that actually have enough of them firing at once that the withering barrage of shells has enough DPS to break mechs down quickly. With a single UAC20 or dual UAC10s even you are trying to push out 40 points of damage quickly but afterwards you already have a wait of 2.5-4 seconds after firing before going again. That's not a DPS mech, that gives ample time for the enemy to recover, take a shot on you, or react in some way.

Even before the nerfs a single UAC20 tacked onto my brawlers or my striker Adder wasn't something I would use for reliable DPS, it was something that I hoped would give me a nice 40 points of damage for the 12 ton cost and 4-5 tons of ammo it can eat up. Even then it'd still jam up on me from time to time and leave me relying heavily on the backup weapons and taking a good bit more damage than I had hoped.

With the increase to both jam chance and jam duration, especially to such a high degree, the risk that was already extremely high has boiled over past any chances of the reward. Its further amplified by these mainly being brawlers that were heavily effected, already the riskiest builds to use.

Edited by Dakota1000, 16 November 2016 - 10:47 PM.

[STEF_]

Duke Nedo, on 16 November 2016 - 09:08 AM, said:

Not sure how it encourages boating.

Sure, if you have 4x cUAC5's you will most of the time get an average dps increase from doubletapping which is 10% less than before the nerf. But, you will also hardly ever experience the full 100% dps increase because 1 or 2 of these cUACs will be jammed. If you only roll with a single cUAC10 for example, then you are either enjoying full 100% dps increase, or you jam and suffer 100% weapon lockout. So it becomes either or, but on average neither better nor worse. As a brawler that would be a problem, but honestly, do you brawl with a single UAC?

Mixed loadouts give you the same kind of redundancy DPS from your support weapons that you would get from additonal UACs so I can't see why this would encourage boating. Almost the opposite, if you rely only on doubletapping UACs you take a risk, but the mixed loadout will never suffer complete weapons lockout...

Take a look at these 2 builds, having both of them around 40 dmg alpha, and both of them similar effective range.

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...06f077fd227564e

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...c038648e9e158ab

Thanks to nerf, when the brawl starts, or the hard push starts, or the enemy pushes hard (<---- things that happen in ANY match), it is faaaaaaaaaaaar better the boat.
More dps, having 2 uac10, one can jam but you can rely on the other having still 10 dmg or 20 if double tapping.

Thanks to nerf, the single uac10+laser, when the uac10 jams, you can do 28 dmg BUT you have 3.44 dps and overheat in 25-30 seconds; while previously you could rely in your uac10 while mech was cooling down (and not now 'cause crazy waiting time)

At the end, this nerf hit RANGE, because now you must stay at range if you want to be sure to have time to unjam and recharge.
BUT, at mid-long or long range uac10 sucks and it is far better the gauss.

So this patch really sucks for 2 reasons I've already written in previous thread:

1) favor boating
2) limit loadout diversity: all ppc and gauss now.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

I have a feeling the medium laser builds will take over the mid range burst damage fields. You just get 6 CERML for 42 damage or get the 6 CMPL builds setup and you have a constantly reliable form of damage with low weight, no ammo limits, and many mechs that would have been taking a UAC20 or two UAC10s normally can easily fit the cooling for the laser builds instead.

My 6 ERML Hellbringer was already a much better performer than my 2 UAC10+1ERML Hellbringer.

[Duke Nedo]

Dakota1000, on 16 November 2016 - 10:32 PM, said:

In most cases UACs aren't used for DPS, but for burst damage. The only mechs that use them for DPS are the boats that actually have enough of them firing at once that the withering barrage of shells has enough DPS to break mechs down quickly. With a single UAC20 or dual UAC10s even you are trying to push out 40 points of damage quickly but afterwards you already have a wait of 2.5-4 seconds after firing before going again. That's not a DPS mech, that gives ample time for the enemy to recover, take a shot on you, or react in some way.

In general I'd call UAC a DPS weapon since the alpha is not big enough, and they are cool enough to sustain continuous fire for a long time, and I'd call laservomit burst-DPS since it can't sustain damage output for as long. But, that's just words so no need to argue that. In any case it's practical to look at the DPS for UACs because that way you can describe the average effect of jam% and jam-duration with a single number for comparison. It's not a perfect description of behavior, I agree, but it's useful to see the net gain over time.

Quote

Even before the nerfs a single UAC20 tacked onto my brawlers or my striker Adder wasn't something I would use for reliable DPS, it was something that I hoped would give me a nice 40 points of damage for the 12 ton cost and 4-5 tons of ammo it can eat up. Even then it'd still jam up on me from time to time and leave me relying heavily on the backup weapons and taking a good bit more damage than I had hoped.

With the increase to both jam chance and jam duration, especially to such a high degree, the risk that was already extremely high has boiled over past any chances of the reward. Its further amplified by these mainly being brawlers that were heavily effected, already the riskiest builds to use.

Sorry for picking on a detail but cUAC20 didn't get increased jam-chance, it was 17% also before the patch according to the reddit post at least that says the patch-notes are wrong. The 60% increase in jam duration though... very harsh. Personally I didn't use cUAC20 for brawling though, I used SRMs + LBX20 to be able to avoid face time. I never found a good use for it other than to get an unnatural alpha on a light or hard point starved mech for fun. So, for me the cUAC20 is not a really good example for how game play will be affected but that's personal. I am much more concerned how the performance of dual cUAC10 (+ backup lasers) is affected, that's a build I used quite a lot, and with great success I'd say.

Edit: One thing about single cUAC20 double-tap though is that something that is easy to forget in all this is that every time you don't jam, you get near 100% DPS increase for free. Since that is what happens most of the time (83%), it's easy to consider that to be the normal case and the jam to be abnormal. So, I think one should also remember that every successful double-tap does put one ahead of what one is "entitled to by RNG" in terms of damage output. When that 100% weapon lockout hits, you may very well "deserve" it. Problem is when it hits at the wrong moment and last for that long. That's the backside of the double-dps-coin and a risk one need to be aware of every time one double-taps.

Stefka had some examples there so I'll probably respond to that too after I get myself a nice cup of morning coffee.

Edited by Duke Nedo, 16 November 2016 - 11:56 PM.

[Kmieciu]

UACs were never an optimal brawling weapon, because of SRMs. C-UAC10 weghs the same as 4xC-SRM6+A. (48 damage apha, 12 DPS). C-SRM6 has comparable damage per heat (3) vs 3.33 on C-UAC 5 & 10. C-UAC2 and C-UAC20 are even hotter than SRMs (2.50 and 2.86 Damage per heat). And the best brawling laser, the C-SPL is even hotter at 2 Damage per heat.

That means SRM6 gives you the best bang for your buck (that is heat).
In a 1v1 brawl, SRM6s win the day (on paper). In practice, C-SPL are able to leg the target more reliably IMHO.

As for the C-UAC20, don't forget that it weighs the same as IS AC10. I would not want to brawl with the IS AC10 against a mech with C-UAC20, despite IS quirks. UAC20 mech will eat the AC10 one even without double-taping.

You simply don't engage an enemy with multiple SRMs in a close range brawl with your single AC10 and expect to win. Same goes for C-UAC20. But the C-UAC20 has the option to poke and deal 40 damage (with 83% chance), while with the AC10 you need to poke 4 times.


PS: If someone expects C-UAC20 (12 tonnes) to have the performance of 2x IS AC20 (28 tonnes), then any further conversation is pointless.

Edited by Kmieciu, 17 November 2016 - 01:03 AM.

[Duke Nedo]

Stefka Kerensky, on 16 November 2016 - 10:42 PM, said:

Take a look at these 2 builds, having both of them around 40 dmg alpha, and both of them similar effective range.

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...06f077fd227564e

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...c038648e9e158ab

Thanks to nerf, when the brawl starts, or the hard push starts, or the enemy pushes hard (<---- things that happen in ANY match), it is faaaaaaaaaaaar better the boat.
More dps, having 2 uac10, one can jam but you can rely on the other having still 10 dmg or 20 if double tapping.

Thanks to nerf, the single uac10+laser, when the uac10 jams, you can do 28 dmg BUT you have 3.44 dps and overheat in 25-30 seconds; while previously you could rely in your uac10 while mech was cooling down (and not now 'cause crazy waiting time)

At the end, this nerf hit RANGE, because now you must stay at range if you want to be sure to have time to unjam and recharge.
BUT, at mid-long or long range uac10 sucks and it is far better the gauss.

So this patch really sucks for 2 reasons I've already written in previous thread:

1) favor boating
2) limit loadout diversity: all ppc and gauss now.

I think you nail it when you discuss cUAC10's, that's the relevant weapon for me as well since cUAC10's were very good weapons (probably over-performing) and were affected the most by the change. 1% higher jam chance and more importantly +60% jam duration (from 5 -> 8 secs). Average double-tap gain went from +46.4% to +23.3%, corresponding to a over all 15.8% dps nerf.

The jam chance will hardly be noticable, if you double-tap 5 times in a row, the chance of jamming once went from 58.2 to 60.6%. Duration however.... 8 seconds lockout.

In your examples I am not as sure as you what I would prefer. You say that if one UAC jams you can rely on the other... though you really can't. It also has the same chance of jamming, so if you double-tap enough to get warrant a 50% chance to jam your first UAC, then you also have a 25% chance in total that both jammed during the same time. You can however always rely on your backup lasers. In any case, both builds give some redundancy to damage output.

All in all I am not convinced that boating is favored statistically or mechanistically, but definitely psychologically... boating is more reliable while single/dual UAC becomes more feast-or-famine. It's easy to forget the feast-part when you jam in a tight spot..

One should also remember that we always have the option not to double-tap. Not double-tapping is in practice trading ~20% extra DPS for 100% reliability. So, if the new 8 secs duration is so crippling that it now forces you to single-tap instead of double-tapping like before, then dakka-pushing with cUAC10s has been nerfed by ~30% instead of 16%. That's mostly psychological I think though, since if you just keep at it and double-tap anyways you will when all is averaged and done gain more by double-tapping than single-tapping. On a few occasions you will die like an idiot though, but more often than not you will enjoy the ~100% extra dps....

At the end of the day I like that you now make that choice on the battlefield to a larger degree than before. I also like that UAC double-tap is normalized so that UAC2 are no longer broken and the gain from cUAC10 and cUAC20 is on average now closer to the double-tap gain on UAC5 and cUAC5 (and not larger for larger guns like before). What I don't like is that the duration was used to such a large degree instead of using the chance to reduce average DPS, and I don't like what it may have done to dakka vs. PPFLD balance, but I'd rather see that addressed by changing weapon base stats now that the double-tap feature is more or less normalized between the UAC flavors.

Thinking about it, we may very well see UAC jam chance and UAC jam duration bonuses in the new skill-tree and perhaps also new modules, so these nerfs may very well be recovered sooner than we expect...

Edited by Duke Nedo, 17 November 2016 - 01:02 AM.

[El Bandito]

[Kmieciu]

IMO an even bigger change was the 50% increase to (C)UAC5 heat.

We used to have an option of a "cooler" UAC5 (5 damage per heat) or a hotter UAC10 (3,33 damage per heat). UAC5 was better for slow mechs, that cannot disengage to cool off. I always preferred 5xUAC5s on a DireWolf with a couple of lasers for extra punch. You had enough heat capacity to 1v1 anyone.

Now with (C)UAC5 "normalized" to 3,33 damage per heat, the C-UAC10s suddenly became the only reasonable choice. Since all UACs became more unreliable in a brawl, you'll be better of poking from cover. And UAC10 have the best poke.

In other news: I managed to overheat my CTF-4X (2UAC5 2AC5).

[Mcgral18]

M T, on 16 November 2016 - 10:23 AM, said:

Id say get rid of chance based weapons as a whole. Just make difference between (U)AC's how much the DPS is is spread around amount of bullets, more bullets more cockpit shake, less bullets higher pinpoint.

And keep DPS the same.

There, balanced.

Nobody cares about a jam chance mechanic when they are in a fight.

I'd say take it straight from MWLL

Jam bar, firing adds to it (not only double tapping, all firing, period)
That way, you remove RNGeesus, and provide a SET limit to how much damage can be output in X time

Ultras are for burst damage, while ACs are for prolonged.
Maybe add an additional shell to Ultras...or remove from from cACs, or just fix their damned cooldowns(!)


Bar drains when not fired for X period.
If the bar does reach the top end, add 3-5-12-, whatever, penalty to resetting.
5s, plus drain time, should be fine as a penalty.



It would need to be tested. How much damage is acceptable? Shorter cooldown than normal ACs? Or, half damage-half cooldown?
Double damage, at more spread, for a limited period of time. Eh, maybe.

[Jun Watarase]

Im curious how PGI concluded that UACs were too good compared to the alternative (LBXs mainly) when most people would agree that it's the LBXs that are underwhelming...

[FupDup]

Jun Watarase, on 17 November 2016 - 04:16 AM, said:

Im curious how PGI concluded that UACs were too good compared to the alternative (LBXs mainly) when most people would agree that it's the LBXs that are underwhelming...