63 replies to this topic

[Elizander]

I can live with 1) Light Gauss not exploding when hit and 2) Make it hitscan.

[Lightfoot]

You realize the Clans have a Light Gauss, they call it a Gauss Rifle.

So I am not sure why folks think the Light Gauss with the apocryphal charge-up inherited from standard Gauss is balanced now and would be OP if it did 10 damage. The Clan Gauss weighs the same and does 15 damage. Or why it needs the charge-up if it does only 8 damage. It is a 3056 weapon after all, designed to in some way deal with Clan Tech.

Beyond the charge-up negatives MWO's Gauss Rifle lacks many ballistic defensive qualities. It has no flash, no knock (really weird), no disruption of aiming ability of the target mech. Things that every other weapon except MG's, PPC's, and Lasers have in abundance. But oh, that little AC2 rocks mechs off target and blinds the pilot. Balance, no. Sim, only when allowed.

[Shadowomega1]

Lightfoot, on 10 April 2018 - 07:08 AM, said:

You realize the Clans have a Light Gauss, they call it a Gauss Rifle.

So I am not sure why folks think the Light Gauss with the apocryphal charge-up inherited from standard Gauss is balanced now and would be OP if it did 10 damage. The Clan Gauss weighs the same and does 15 damage. Or why it needs the charge-up if it does only 8 damage. It is a 3056 weapon after all, designed to in some way deal with Clan Tech.

Beyond the charge-up negatives MWO's Gauss Rifle lacks many ballistic defensive qualities. It has no flash, no knock (really weird), no disruption of aiming ability of the target mech. Things that every other weapon except MG's, PPC's, and Lasers have in abundance. But oh, that little AC2 rocks mechs off target and blinds the pilot. Balance, no. Sim, only when allowed.

LGauss has greater range and reload/refire rate then the clan Gauss Rifle.

As for impacting the target it does shake the pilot but not to the degree as the UACs and RACs, and on par with the IS AC10.

[ShiverMeRivets]

Lightfoot, on 10 April 2018 - 02:16 AM, said:

No, I have played both Light Gauss and standard Gauss extensively. Light Gauss is too weak for a charge-up cycle. The Charge-up is an invention of PGI, not from BattleTech. It was needed for the standard Gauss Rifle to curb 2x Gauss snap-shooting and poptarting in PGI's opinion. (Such a loss to many gameplay elements though.)

However, there is absolutely no reason on earth for a weapon that does only 8 damage to have a charge-up cycle. That is just weird, not canon, not lore, not from any part of BattleTech specs for the Light Gauss. The Light Gauss only received the charge-up as a misplaced inheritance of an apocryphal nerf. It serves no balancing purpose, it's not from BattleTech, so that is why the Light Gauss does not work.

But if PGI must keep the Light Gauss charge-up, for 'X' non-lore reason, the Light Gauss has to do more damage since it has been pushed out of lore-based balance where 8 damage would have been correct.

As far as recycles go, most Gauss Rifle mechs have cooldown skills which are about twice as effective on standard Gauss's 5 second cooldown. More cooldown time = higher cooldown increase effects. You end up with a skilled mech using a 3.5 to 4 second cooldown on standard Gauss. Weight-wise standard Gauss is only 3 tons more. 2x Light Gauss is not a solution, it just multiplies the weaknesses.

If you like it, that is up to you, but I don't think anyone will be taking them to a Solaris 7 match with Light Gauss as they are. But you can bring them vs me, that would be OK.

OK, I can agree with most of this, but I am not familiar with battletech rules so I do not care about them. For me there is only MWO and here Gauss charge up became lore. It separates them from ACs and is good to keep IMO.

LGR problem as I see it is that it is NOT LIGHT, which makes it a bad decision to take them on most mechs that can really benefit from it (mediums, the larger lights, and heavy IS mechs with multiple ballistic hardpoints in the same mech component). If PGI are religious about the weapon weight and would not lower it, the other avenue of lowering its effective weight is to significantly increase the ammo/ton. So the gun itself is still 12 tons, but you can go with just 1 ton of ammo per LGR for the game.

After all, LGR ammo is just small projectile slugs of metal, with no powder or shell.