85 replies to this topic

[Gas Guzzler]

Skanderborg, on 15 July 2017 - 05:14 AM, said:

Laser vomit has better numbers on paper but sometimes its hard to get a reliable full damage burn. I can almost ALWAYS get full damage on a single component with PPFLD. So lasers have more raw power , but are not as consistent.

Laser vomit has been great since the skill tree. As has dakka/ppc, both have consistently outperformed PPC/Gauss mechs lately. PPC/Gauss lacks the DPS and only puts out the damage if the match is very sloow.

[Luminis]

MustrumRidcully, on 15 July 2017 - 06:58 AM, said:

The main problem Ghost Heat and Energy Draw are trying to deal with is pinpoint damage. The only way to get pinpoint damage in the table top (before clan elite pilots and targeting computers at least) is to equip a big damage gun, basically. Everything else is RNG working with or against you.

What enables pinpoint precision?
- Mouse Aim
- Group Fire.

I think removing Mouse Aim is not really an option. (I suppose we could add a random component to the targeting, but do we really want that?)
So eliminate Group Fire. Every gun must be fired separately, with a set minimum amount of time between shots. We can make exceptions for weapons with ridiculously low cooldowns that don't have pinpoint damage in the first place, provided we cannot find a way to balance them with a longer cooldown and higher damage per shot.

Might as well make a first person mod for HBS' BattleTech at that point, in my opinion...

But for real, you want to replace Ghost Heat with a system that forcefully restricts player action way more than GH ever did? No thanks.

[Tarl Cabot]

Hmm, add heat to GR, heat would be generated during charging until it is fired, or not fired. So heat is generated whether or not it is fired......

[Bishop Steiner]

Kin3ticX, on 15 July 2017 - 12:13 AM, said:

Why not just give gauss rifles base heat instead of tip toeing around it with a bizarre linkage? Isn't just adding base heat the same thing except that it isn't invisible to the player?

Just because Sarna or some ancient TRO says 1 heat doesn't mean it works in a shooter.


The 1 heat is a big part of what makes the gauss rifle the usual problem weapon. PGI has changed everything about the Gauss Rifle but the heat and damage.

Velocity
Range
Cooldown
Health
Internal Damage
Crit chance
Charge up
Charge limit

Always laughed at the "gauss dont' generate heat" nonsense.

Oh...so that huge plasma cloud and the friction that currently warps the naval guns rails after one shot is not heat.....OK got it.......

Gauss should be 8 heat. Have been saying that since before this game ever was conceived.

[Y E O N N E]

Bishop Steiner, on 15 July 2017 - 09:50 AM, said:

Always laughed at the "gauss dont' generate heat" nonsense.

Oh...so that huge plasma cloud and the friction that currently warps the naval guns rails after one shot is not heat.....OK got it.......

Gauss should be 8 heat. Have been saying that since before this game ever was conceived.

To be fair, you won't get a plasma cloud from a Gauss rifle because the projectile isn't shearing away your barrel lining. The heat would come from the high current being passed through your coils to get that strong, instantaneous magnetic field.

[Bishop Steiner]

Yeonne Greene, on 15 July 2017 - 09:54 AM, said:

To be fair, you won't get a plasma cloud from a Gauss rifle because the projectile isn't shearing away your barrel lining. The heat would come from the high current being passed through your coils to get that strong, instantaneous magnetic field.

you do realize that most of the plasma is actually air friction, yes?

[Gas Guzzler]

Bishop Steiner, on 15 July 2017 - 09:50 AM, said:

Always laughed at the "gauss dont' generate heat" nonsense.

Oh...so that huge plasma cloud and the friction that currently warps the naval guns rails after one shot is not heat.....OK got it.......

Gauss should be 8 heat. Have been saying that since before this game ever was conceived.

See, now I could get on board with something like that. 8 might be a little much, thats almost as hot as a PPC. But a nontrivial amount of heat is a much more reasonable balancing method. Still arguably unnecessary given the effectiveness of other loadouts right now, but its at least reasonable unlike slapping ghost heat on.

[Y E O N N E]

Bishop Steiner, on 15 July 2017 - 10:44 AM, said:

you do realize that most of the plasma is actually air friction, yes?

It's not caused where it is simply by the projectile going fast. If it were mostly air friction, you would still have the fireball behind the projectile quite a ways out from the muzzle, which you don't. It's the electric arcing and friction with the rails generating the heat and particulates necessary for that fireball to happen so spectacularly.

[LordNothing]

give that hgauss recoil effect to all gauss rifles with varying levels of severity based on gauss size and make it stack with multiple rifles. dual gauss should rattle you something fierce and make aiming subsequent shots problematic. make firing a ppc lock you out of a gauss charge for about 1 second, this would make it so you cant alpha strike with the duo and have to fire it as a one two punch.

Edited by LordNothing, 15 July 2017 - 11:07 AM.

[Y E O N N E]

LordNothing, on 15 July 2017 - 11:05 AM, said:

give that hgauss recoil effect to all gauss rifles with varying levels of severity based on gauss size and make it stack. dual gauss should rattle you something fierce and make aiming subsequent shots problematic. make firing a ppc lock you out of a gauss charge for about 1 second, this would make it so you cant alpha strike with the duo and have to fire it as a one two punch.

Why curb firing one PPC and one Gauss together? Firing 2 + 1 already has a mandatory 0.5 second wait due to how ghost heat works, that should be sufficient.

[LordNothing]

Yeonne Greene, on 15 July 2017 - 11:07 AM, said:

Why curb firing one PPC and one Gauss together? Firing 2 + 1 already has a mandatory 0.5 second wait due to how ghost heat works, that should be sufficient.

it could use a stacking metric. the first one is free. still i love that hgauss recoil effect and would like to see more of it. any 2 light or std gauss causes the same recoil as an hgauss, and 2 hgauss would cause more. charge disruption lockout might be zero for the first ppc and half a second for each subsequent ppc.

[ScrapIron Prime]

My PPC-AC/5 mechs revel in your pain. =P

[Y E O N N E]

LordNothing, on 15 July 2017 - 11:11 AM, said:

it could use a stacking metric. the first one is free. still i love that hgauss recoil effect and would like to see more of it. any 2 light or std gauss causes the same recoil as an hgauss, and 2 hgauss would cause more. charge disruption lockout might be zero for the first ppc and half a second for each subsequent ppc.

I mean, cool, but that doesn't answer...why? Just for the cool-factor?

[Revis Volek]

Gas Guzzler, on 15 July 2017 - 12:59 AM, said:

Uhhh so when Gauss Peep isn't an option you think people aren't just gonna bring mass ER LLs or quad ER PPCs and do the same sniper thing?

Besides that point, that is rarely my experience in this game as of late...

or dual gauss dual erll

[FupDup]

PGI regards Gauss Rifles that don't generate base heat as a "sacred cow" that is not allowed to be changed ever. As a fun fact, this is the exact reason they added the charge-up in the first place. After GH killed off PPC boats, PGI said that they didn't want to give the Gauss any Ghost Heat, so they gave it the charge-up instead.

With that being said, I'm completely fine with the charge-up mechanic because it makes the weapon actually a little bit DIFFERENT from everything else in terms of how you mechanically interact with it, rather than just a reskin with altered stats. I just wanted to point out PGI's strange logic.

Edited by FupDup, 15 July 2017 - 12:01 PM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Luminis, on 15 July 2017 - 09:17 AM, said:

Might as well make a first person mod for HBS' BattleTech at that point, in my opinion...

But for real, you want to replace Ghost Heat with a system that forcefully restricts player action way more than GH ever did? No thanks.

• It has the advantage of being completely transparent, instead of some magic penalty out of nowhere.
  
• It's easily understood, and it rewards player skill in being able to aim repeatedly in the duress of a (simulated) combat.
  
• No random number generation, so players are constantly in control of what his happening on the battlefield.
  
• Pinpoint Weapons like AC/20 or Gauss can have the pinpoint advantage priced into their basic stat package

The amount of problems it would bring in turn however seems minimal.

[Bud Crue]

Revis Volek, on 15 July 2017 - 11:49 AM, said:

or dual gauss dual erll

So the 2Gauss/2ERLL build that PGI forced me into when they nerffed the agility for my MAD-IIc-D brawler is now the gold standard!? Well yay for being forced to build effective mechs the way PGI dictates via nerfs.

Is that how you define "improved diversity" and "increased player choice" PGI...ya know those design goals that you claim are your guiding light atm?

[Kin3ticX]

FupDup, on 15 July 2017 - 11:55 AM, said:

PGI regards Gauss Rifles that don't generate base heat as a "sacred cow" that is not allowed to be changed ever. As a fun fact, this is the exact reason they added the charge-up in the first place. After GH killed off PPC boats, PGI said that they didn't want to give the Gauss any Ghost Heat, so they gave it the charge-up instead.

With that being said, I'm completely fine with the charge-up mechanic because it makes the weapon actually a little bit DIFFERENT from everything else in terms of how you mechanically interact with it, rather than just a reskin with altered stats. I just wanted to point out PGI's strange logic.

There is also the vocal minority of Lore Purists that probably would send a mean tweet over the 1 heat thing. Bless their hearts.

[MustrumRidcully]

FupDup, on 15 July 2017 - 11:55 AM, said:

PGI regards Gauss Rifles that don't generate base heat as a "sacred cow" that is not allowed to be changed ever. As a fun fact, this is the exact reason they added the charge-up in the first place. After GH killed off PPC boats, PGI said that they didn't want to give the Gauss any Ghost Heat, so they gave it the charge-up instead.

Pretty much

Quote

With that being said, I'm completely fine with the charge-up mechanic because it makes the weapon actually a little bit DIFFERENT from everything else in terms of how you mechanically interact with it, rather than just a reskin with altered stats. I just wanted to point out PGI's strange logic.

I don't like the mechanic. Having many different weapon mechanics is great for a game where you mostly fire one weapon at a time, but in MW:O you are expected to equip many weapons. The more different mechanics you have for weapons, the less attractive mixing weapons becomes and the more necessary it becomes to make "boats":


I think there are other design options that could be explored that would have less of the drawbacks I see.

The idea behind the Gauss Rifle apparently is that holds a charge, which is why it explodes. Shooting the gun itself produces not much heat, since the fusion reactor doesn't need to provide a lot of energy at once for the gun.

Let's combine these concepts in a new way:

Unlike a Laser or PPC, a Gauss Rifle must be slowly charged up by the fusion reactor. While the Gauss Rifle is charging, it consumes energy from the reactor, therefore it produces heat. When fired, only a comparably minimum amount of energy is needed to release the charge and propell the projectile. The charge is then gone and must be recharged.

The resulting mechanic would be: The Gauss produces its heat during its cooldown, not when it's firing.
A very naive approach to the final statistics of the Gauss could be that it produces, say 6 heat (or whatever would seem fair), but it does so during the 5 second cooldown. This wouldn't be felt as strongly as the instantaneous heat of other weapons, but it would still add up (6 heat per 5 seconds is 1.2 heat per seconds, same as the AC/10). You don't spike as strongly, so you could fire the Gauss even when very hot - you just cannot keep firing other weapons afterwards.

One could even adjust the Gauss Explosion damage based on how strongly it's charged up. And you could consciously decide whether you want to charge up the Gauss and become explody and warmer.
If we would want to get fancy, one could even say you could fire a GAuss at reduced charge, but get only a percentage of the range, speed and damage then. (so maybe a 50 % charged Gauss deals 7.5 damage at 330m with a projectile speed of 1,000?)

You could still do snapshots with the Gauss,and it would still feel very cool. You don't spike your heat, so you basically never overheat by shooting a Gauss Rifle - but you might if you keep charging it and keep firing other guns.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 15 July 2017 - 01:11 PM.

[Jay Leon Hart]

MustrumRidcully, on 15 July 2017 - 01:07 PM, said:

---good suggestion---

I like it