44 replies to this topic

[panzer1b]

The thing with facetime is that every second you spend looking at the enemy means that they or another mech you arent currently engaging has a good chance to isolate a component and dump a decent amount of damage into that component. Facetime weapons can work, but against a properly shielding enemy it is very hard to really win a fight using something like ac2, racs, ect unless ofc you have so much boated DPS behind that weaponry that anything exposing itself for more then 5 or so seconds is going to get wrecked in the process regardless of what they do. Given how few mechs can pull that off (you need 6-8 ac2, 4+ ac/uac5, 2 uac10 with a uac5+, ect), trying to use a low number of damage over time weapons simply does not work well when an enemy that has a highly alfa centric loadout can pop out of cover for 2-3 seconds, and hit you for 60+ damage. Nothing short of excessive autocannon fire is going to outtrade such a mech and this game, for better or worse, really comes down to who can get more damage onto target while taking the least potential return fire.

This is why so many competitive mechs use alfa strikes over facetime DPS. There is also but a handful of mechs that can even consider staring down an opponent for longer then a shot due to their physical hitbox shapes. The few decent ones that come to mind are the maraders, bushwaker, raven (although the armor is too low on this one to really take any hits despite the good hitboxes), stalker. Most of the other mechs are generally wider then they are longer and because of how volume works in this game, a short length mech has to be fat, and exposing a large cross section makes you both easier to hit and more importantly makes it easy to hit a particular section of the mech. If you want to make facetime weapons work, take one of those mechs and make sure your guns have solid range, the combination of a reasonably small frontal profile with range to minimize the enemys ability to focus down any one component makes it possible to do. Then ontop of that yoy need to find a location where you have clear LOS on an enemy that is far from cover and cannot just walk behind a rock to deny you your damage, and you need to get the vast majority of your fire onto the same component that could very well be moving around and or blocked partially when they shield, on paper, facetime might work, in practice, its about as easy to utilize effectively as LRMs unless the enemy is truly potatoing hard.

[LordNothing]

The6thMessenger, on 25 July 2017 - 03:50 PM, said:

True. I found that Facetime is actually a lot less dangerous with range, why C-ERLL works with sniping despite its abhorrently long duration -- at least was.

The problem with RAC is that the low velocity, and admittedly spread, shortens it's actual effective range when it could at least be useful out to 540m.

its rate of fire doesnt really need velocity, as you can see where your tracers are hitting and make adjustments. its a lot easier than leading a target with a ppfld weapon where the iteration time between shots is a lot longer. you miss you got a long time before you can try again, enough time for more sources of error to manifest. your first rac5 round misses you immediately know what you need to do to correct. and also you didnt loose a whole lot of ammo in the process. a ranged shot with something like an ac10 is often a wasted shot, 10 damage potential wasted, but your first rac5 shot is only what 1.5 damage, and you usually have bead figured by your second. so the amount of damage potential wasted by finding lead is much less with a rapid fire low damage weapon. then again some time your best guess shot is right on the money.

Edited by LordNothing, 25 July 2017 - 05:02 PM.

[Coolant]

if ur an assault with armor quirks and maybe invested in the survival tree you can stay out in the open long enough to make them work. otherwise it's hit or miss

[Snazzy Dragon]

Not all face time is equal

Heavy laser stare of burning despair hurts and not twisting that and choosing to shoot back through it will make a component disappear off your emch very fast

It's easy to ignore the tin can launchers (RACs) and out trade due to their spread past 300 or so meters, and twist while weapons are on cooldown to spread it even further. Plus those weapons jam and heat up very quickly, and don't put out a lot of sustained DPS like a UAC can

Edited by Snazzy Dragon, 25 July 2017 - 06:05 PM.

[davoodoo]

Snazzy Dragon, on 25 July 2017 - 06:04 PM, said:

It's easy to ignore the tin can launchers (RACs) and out trade due to their spread past 300 or so meters, and twist while weapons are on cooldown to spread it even further. Plus those weapons jam and heat up very quickly, and don't put out a lot of sustained DPS like a UAC can

Thing is their dmg is also pretty laughable with uac5 being able to match it despite having no ghost heat and being far lighter on heat.

Edited by davoodoo, 25 July 2017 - 06:14 PM.

[Aggravated Assault Mech]

Prosperity Park, on 25 July 2017 - 02:42 PM, said:

Nope, all FaceTime builds are trash and ineffective, like UAC/5 Jagers, pentAC/5 Maulers, ERLL Battlemasters, all RAC builds, and anything that requires you to fire 2 volleys before retreating. Hell, firing 2 volleys of ANYTHING requires more facetime than a HLL (except AC/2, which is already anytime weapon) therefore everything that has to be fired twice is trash.

lmao

[Mystere]

Khobai, on 25 July 2017 - 02:55 PM, said:

and get blowed up im sure lol

When we Urbie fans say "stare" we really mean "shoot the enemy in the arse".

[Vellron2005]

If you wanna avoid facetime... do the unthinkable.. become radical.. become hated, unwanted, extreme, eccentric... use a LRM boat

#Greetings from the LRM Aficionados Association. (LRMA)

Edited by Vellron2005, 25 July 2017 - 11:43 PM.

[Valhallan]

rac's on their own are bad due to the spin-up and dps nature, even when i used them for funsies on my mauler i had to supplement it with 2 mrm 20's to provide that first punch and killing strike (-15% spread quark helps a lot) when the opp twists back to try another alpha, it's also useless as feth above 350 or so with way too much spreadage.

[Lily from animove]

The only good facetime weapons are those that can blind an opponennt by shake and explosions as it makes aiming for him impossible. But this then is also a 1on1 situational thing.

thats why heavy lasers are kinda meh, long face time no significant distrubrance even if that beam is as wide as your opps cockpit. In the end what he sees is still a slim beam.

[NeoCodex]

W A R K H A N, on 25 July 2017 - 02:23 PM, said:

Long facetime isn't ideal but not impossible to work around. Slap on some ECM and go for legs or backs. There's no twisting off leg damage. Lots of people are also quite happy to eat 2 seconds worth of lasers before getting out of the way. Especially those RAC boats.

That's why I mostly play hillpoke high mount style builds and mechs. It has just become my favorite and main way to play MWO over the years. They can't shoot your legs if they're behind cover, and as long as you have a good coverpoke position the RAC will hardly get to you.

It is another thing, when you get caught, however... Then, you're done. But that's one of the main parts of the game, battlefield awareness. If you want to win against them with a coverpoker you have to be better at the positioning and predicting game.

Edited by NeoCodex, 26 July 2017 - 01:25 AM.

[Curccu]

W A R K H A N, on 25 July 2017 - 02:23 PM, said:

Long facetime isn't ideal but not impossible to work around. Slap on some ECM and go for legs or backs. There's no twisting off leg damage. Lots of people are also quite happy to eat 2 seconds worth of lasers before getting out of the way. Especially those RAC boats.

Of course you can "twist" leg damage, the leg that you still have left can be hidden (mostly) behind that destroyed leg.

[Reno Blade]

I have always pushed for more facetime on all other weapons that are currently front loaded.

If all the IS ACs would fire in bursts and even LRM and SRM had some stream fire duration, the whole twist and shoot stuff would be much less brutal and we had more spread dmg by twisting - even if you use face time weapons too.

Edited by Reno Blade, 26 July 2017 - 03:04 AM.

[davoodoo]

Reno Blade, on 26 July 2017 - 03:04 AM, said:

I have always pushed for more facetime on all other weapons that are currently front loaded.

If all the IS ACs would fire in bursts and even LRM and SRM had some stream fire duration, the whole twist and shoot stuff would be much less brutal and we had more spread dmg by twisting - even if you use face time weapons too.

What would that help?? everyone will fire their weapons and then twist.
You slowed up combat and further damaged tankiness of individual mechs when facing multiple opponents.

Also how much facetime are we talking with burst fire acs, lets take clan uac20, it fires entire burst before it can doubletap and doubletap from single uac20 doesnt trigger ghost heat, so burst needs to be shorter than 0.5s and everyone complains that is lpl is only 0.67s and its "near ppfld"...

[Widowmaker1981]

Facetime weapons are fine, if their other stats make them worth the drawback - i.e low heat and high DPS.

RACs are all drawbacks and their only redeeming quality being high upfront DPS is ruined by the ghost heat limit making their use on assaults impossible. Mediums dont especially want to stand around staring at people for 5+ seconds, because they will find their (likely XL) side torsos exploding rather horribly fast - it being 12v12, probably NOT from the guy they are shooting at, who will be twisting/retreating and making the damage useless.

a 2 second burn on the C-ERLL was unusably bad, and that is hitscan, pinpoint and has huge range. Why do people think 5+ seconds on a spreading, low / mid range, poor velocity ballistic with a spin up time is more functional?

Edited by Widowmaker1981, 26 July 2017 - 03:57 AM.

[Toothless]

That damn face time.

[LowSubmarino]

Importance or risk of facetime cannot be mentioned enough.

Factime comes at too much of a risk.

For factime weapons to work you have to hold back in many scenarios where you could otherwise support your team without cmpletly exposing yourself.

If you want to survive vs good players and you use factime weapons youll have to stay in cover for the majority of the game. Cause they will not randomly wander around or split or be completly unaware of approach vectors or some flankers they spotted a minute earlier on their sides or in their back.

Pug teams mostly ignore that intel. They split, they get separated, they stay too long in one place and then struggle to catch up with group. All of that allows you to hammer them with basically any kind of weapon. No matter how bad or risky the weapon system is.

ALl of that completly changes, when you dont play vs the mostly bad and weak players in mwo.

So, yeah....facetime is one of the most important variables when it comes to how effective a weapon is.

If you have an organized team that can and will easily and frequently push together, then your eg. rac 5 boat or single rac 2 or 5 can be really good. It confuses the target, partially blocks vision, completly occupies that target even if its much bigger than you. Itll be blinded so to speak. They also dish out decent dmg.

Its a very situational weapon but thats the case with most weapons. Some more some less.

All in all the risks outweigh the benefits though. And not by a small or moderate margin.

There are so many instances when a weapon with less or no face time will more reliably hit and dmg the target while simulatenously by default be much less of a risk to your mech and thus being by far the better option.

Either use them from second line once engagments have started and you support another mech if you are boating them.

Or just use one rac 2 or 5 to blind/distract the target but also rely on other weapons that wont force you to expose your mech as much.

The only reason why certain mechs are so powerful (eg Night Gyr with Gauss builds) is because they are faceless builds that allow a mech to survive much, much longer than other builds.

Even for the biggest and toughest mechs upgraded fully with survival and + quirks even maybe, staring down other mechs simply isnt a great strat whatsoever. It gets you killed.

One of the first things that should be duscussed when it comes to weapons systems is their versatility and risk level.

Naturally, one of the first things you closely look at is facetime.

Sure....even the C ER LL can work because of range involved.

And it might even work a alot of times but again.....pug games in QP, no matter if tier 5 or 1 are almost always played at a low level in terms of average skill level of players involved. Theres always a few good players in a match but theres also a ton of matches where 95 % of the players are very new or weak.

The facetime of the CERLL will get you killed or will force you to hold back and stay in cover if there are some real snipers out there. Staring will murder you.

I can understand that some ppl done really care about that. As long as it somehow works and is fun its okay for them that the weapon system isnt really good.

For me its completly the complete opposite.

Playing patheticallly weak weapons or mechs is insulting and completly unfun for me.

It has to be badass top of the line, effective stuff im running and using on the battlefield.

I cant be bothered with bad stuff thatll get me killed.

And I always in each and every game anticipate that there could be absoltely strong players that also use good loadouts. And I hate to loose not because im too bad of a player but because I take stupid weak **** and then melt because of ridiculous face time.

You can use weapons with mediorce facetime (eg. IS and Clan Streaks) if the mech is mobile enough to compensate for the increased risk.

Running streaks in a shadowcat that has ecm, is a fast sprinter that can jump very far and high, than the risk is significantly reduced whereas a stormcrow or timberwolf would be exposed much more using such loadouts.

The more variables stack against you, the riskier and more suicidal it gets.

Use modearte facetime weapons with semi-mobile mechs (eg. timberwolf) and your risk is moderate to high.

Use moderate face time weapons such as streaks in very immobile mechs such assault mechs and your risk is very high.

Use very immobile mechs with ultra face time weapons (assault + eg racs) and you are constantly exposing yourself all the time and you will die a lot as soon as you dont face the average pug team anymore.

Look at ppcs. They are insanely hot, specially (c) erppcs.

Long cooldown.

But if you drop on a sniper map or maps with at least in part good terrain for sniping and some knowledge and experience as to how to play those builds and you can survive forever and dish out dmg forever.

If I had to fight in a real mech war id give facetime weapons such a monstrously wide berth, that the soldiers and technicians in the barracks and in the mech bays would be wondering why I left the barracks, the country and even the planet only to emerge a few weeks later from the other side of the building to enter where they have the real badass weapons that will decimate and annihilate weak facetime weapons.

Thats where Id be standing with grinning eyes. Thats the weapons id equip. Thats what id be running on my mech. Cause I know what it will do to all those foolish enough to dismiss this one life or death issue.

But in mwos QP games?

I agree. Doesnt matter what you take. The skill level is so low that you can run a mech withotu any weapon and still dominate with a single machine gun, 2 arty strikes and the dmg you pile up by repeatedly ramming ppl. Actually, you dont really need anything else to be among the top three dmg dealers in 99 % of the matches haha

[Toothless]

Good lord. If your post was a weapon, it would have dangerously long face time and wouldnt be allowed in the game.

[Aiden Skye]

Curccu, on 26 July 2017 - 02:34 AM, said:

Of course you can "twist" leg damage, the leg that you still have left can be hidden (mostly) behind that destroyed leg.

Of course you could dead leg. What I mean is if a mech is legged in the open or way out from the main fight, match it's pretty much over for that mech and the job of the harasser is done.. Something legged 500m out usually isn't a threat anyway. Gottta break everything down on these forums.

[Wyald Katt]

The first rule of facetime is you do not talk about facetime?