10 replies to this topic

[Jackal Noble]

How about a total makeover to the whole system and make ballistics more fun and less chore, all the while appropriately balanced?

1. Wipe all of Clan UACs. get rid of the burst fire mechanic that is currently in place.
Replace it with a 2 shell per shot mechanic with a cycle rate.
Replace C-ACs with single shot mechanic.

.
2. IS UAC/and ACs are much (relatively) heavier than their Clan constituents. As compensation they should have higher velocity, higher damage per shell but slower cycle rate.

Vague Simpleton Balance example-

AC 10s

C- AC10 - single shot
weight - 10 tons , 5 slots
damage - 8.33 dmg per shell
velocity - 1100 m/s
cycle - 2.2 seconds

IS AC10 - single shot
weight - 12 tons, 7 slots
damage - 10 dmg per shell
velocity - 1250 m/s
cycle - 2.4 seconds

UAC10s

C-UAC10 - 2 shells at .5 second interval (no double-tap)
weight - 10 tons, 5 slots
damage - 7.7 dmg per shell
Velocity - 1100 m/s
cycle - 2.3 seconds

IS UAC10 - 2 shells at .5 second interval (no double tap)
weight - 13 tons, 7 slots
damage - 10 dmg per shell
velocity - 1250 m/s
cycle - 2.5 seconds

Jam mechanic for UACs- RAC bar but fills up twice as fast.

Idk just a thought. Please don't put any real thought on the numbers as they can be fudged around. It was more of push for a concept to change the overall base mechanics of each tech bases ballistic behavior, to be still different but equally effective but more importantly less effective feeling from a "this is a weapons platform in the far future" stand point.

Edited by Jackal Noble, 26 July 2018 - 03:04 PM.

[HammerMaster]

Here's the problem. Convergence
Acs should never have been single shot.
Now due to perfect convergence there is a PERCIEVED benefit to single shot.
It's improperly implemented to begin with.
Fix?
Remove convergence.
All IS AC is more shots.
End of story.
Clan regular ac is an aberration and abhorrent.

[Jackal Noble]

Agreed.
Convergence removal done right, would be so cool and funny at the same time; watching everyone relearn how to actually shoot stuff.

[FupDup]

HammerMaster, on 26 July 2018 - 03:07 PM, said:

Here's the problem. Convergence
Acs should never have been single shot.
Now due to perfect convergence there is a PERCIEVED benefit to single shot.
It's improperly implemented to begin with.
Fix?
Remove convergence.
All IS AC is more shots.
End of story.
Clan regular ac is an aberration and abhorrent.

Whatever system you use, whether it be all guns shooting parallel or delayed convergence or outright TT hit tables, shooting in a stream is less valuable than shooting in a single projectile. That's just life.

IS ACs being just one projectile helps make up for how damn heavy they are (their upfront damage on all but the AC/20 suck relative to their tonnage) and makes it much easier to differentiate Clan dakka from IS dakka.

There is also the TT precedent where all ACs concentrated their damage into a single hit location regardless of what the fluff novels said, which is likely the reason that PGI made IS ACs be PPFLD in the first place.

[HammerMaster]

I believe mw3 handled this by showing 3 shots rapid succession. One hit. It was more immersive.

[Shadowomega1]

HammerMaster, on 26 July 2018 - 03:16 PM, said:

I believe mw3 handled this by showing 3 shots rapid succession. One hit. It was more immersive.

I believe MW3 fired ACs in a 8 round burst, with Ultra's firing in 16 round bursts at 2x the damage of the caliber. So UAC 10 was 20 damage, as they didn't have the double tap option. This is what I remember of vanilla MW3.

[HammerMaster]

All acs looked and sounded so much better than mw4 and mwo in mw3.

[Khobai]

Quote

I believe MW3 fired ACs in a 8 round burst, with Ultra's firing in 16 round bursts at 2x the damage of the caliber. So UAC 10 was 20 damage, as they didn't have the double tap option. This is what I remember of vanilla MW3.

All autocannons in MW3 had the same exact rate of fire. 1 shot per 2 seconds. And ultra autocannons fired 1 shot per 1 second.

The dps difference between the AC2/5/10/20 came from how much damage the shells did. But they all had identical fire rates.

I think visually it looked like they were firing multiple shots but thats not how the damage was applied

Quote

There is also the TT precedent where all ACs concentrated their damage into a single hit location regardless of what the fluff novels said, which is likely the reason that PGI made IS ACs be PPFLD in the first place.

Standard autocannons were some of the worst weapons in tabletop. They made them PPFLD so they wouldnt be as bad. And later they added LBX and UACs to try and fix ballistics.

Unfortunately they ruined the clan autocannons in MWO by making them burst fire. Instead of just making them do less damage but with a faster cooldown. And the whole jam mechanic for ultra autocannons is terrible, it procs way too often.

Edited by Khobai, 26 July 2018 - 09:35 PM.

[LordNothing]

jam mechanic needs an overhaul. that might be the only thing i agree with here. for racs get rid of spinup delay, get rid of random jam, jam when bar is full. uacs would do less damage overall (like 1.5x peak) and have a much lower jam chance and jam time (like 5% and 0.5-2 seconds tops depending on size), and i agree no double tap, button mashing makes the game feel too arcadey. im willing to trade less peak damage for more reliability. its certainly better than using the rac mechanic and make the weapons the same.

not totally against rapid fire at lower damage for the same rating. but then again im not totally against burst fire either, it adds flavor. maybe we can have both. maybe acs going with short bursts and uacs doing continuous rapid fire with jam as above. clan acs would have larger bursts at lower calibers but higher velocity, is would have shorter bursts with bigger shells. uacs would follow suit but would be continuous at a higher rate of fire, no fixed burst lengths, but jams happen. lbs would be single shot but with much tighter spreads than current. ppfld is for ppcs and gausses.

Edited by LordNothing, 27 July 2018 - 01:54 AM.

[process]

What if we took jam in the opposite direction, but made it less consequential? From another thread:

process, on 29 June 2018 - 06:34 AM, said:

One solution is to exchange jam chance for jam duration: maybe like 75% chance to jam, but only like 25% additional cooldown penalty. The concept is to use the jam mechanic to limit overall DPS to only slightly higher than regular ACs, but offers the possibility of higher burst DPS. The substantially lower cooldown penalty gives them better sustain; it wouldn't jam so much as it would need slightly more time to recycle.

The proposed math, not including time between projectiles:

AC20: 20 damage, 4s cooldown = 5 DPS
UAC20, best case: 40 damage, 4s cooldown = 10 DPS
UAC20, worst case: 20 damage, 5s cooldown = 4 DPS

Net UAC20 performance = 0.25*best case + 0.75*worst case = 5.5 DPS


Compared with the current mechanics (15% jam chance, 7.5s penalty):

UAC20, best case: 40 damage, 4s cooldown = 10 DPS
UAC20, worst case: 20 damage, 11.5s cooldown = 1.74 DPS

Net UAC20 performance = 0.85*best case + 0.15*worst case = 8.75 DPS

[InspectorG]

Jackal Noble, on 26 July 2018 - 03:00 PM, said:

How about a total makeover to the whole system and make ballistics more fun and less chore, all the while appropriately balanced?

1. Wipe all of Clan UACs. get rid of the burst fire mechanic that is currently in place.
Replace it with a 2 shell per shot mechanic with a cycle rate.
Replace C-ACs with single shot mechanic.
...

...

Out of all this, if PGI reads this, this will get implemented:

[color=#959595]Wipe all of Clan UACs. get rid of the burst fire mechanic ...[/color]
[color=#959595]Replace it with 2 damage[/color]