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Propose Gauss Rifle Change


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#21 Khobai

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Posted 20 August 2018 - 11:21 AM

View PostFupDup, on 20 August 2018 - 10:49 AM, said:

There's this thing called heat, which is going to matter a lot more if the PTS low heat cap makes it to the live server.


its only going to matter if they nerf gauss

otherwise its just business as usual for gauss vomit. and all other builds, especially energy builds, will be impractical.

honestly these PTS changes are just taking options away from people. not giving them more options. its pretty awful.

im sure a bunch more people will quit outright if it goes live in its current state.

Edited by Khobai, 20 August 2018 - 11:23 AM.


#22 FupDup

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Posted 20 August 2018 - 11:23 AM

View PostKhobai, on 20 August 2018 - 11:21 AM, said:

its only going to matter if they nerf gauss

otherwise its just business as usual for gauss vomit. and all other energy builds will be impractical.

honestly these PTS changes are just taking options away from people. not giving them more options. its pretty awful.

im sure a bunch more people will quit outright if it goes live.

Bruh, when I said that heat is gonna matter a lot more I was referring to the advantage of generating only 1-2 heat for high damage. That advantage will become more pronounced if the changes make it to live since competing builds will reach their fixed heat cap way quicker.

#23 Mister Glitchdragon

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Posted 20 August 2018 - 11:25 AM

View PostFupDup, on 20 August 2018 - 10:49 AM, said:

There's this thing called heat, which is going to matter a lot more if the PTS low heat cap makes it to the live server.

There's this other thing called a hypothetical scenario being used as a strawman. Let's confine our discourse to the state of play as it stands, thanks.

View PostFupDup, on 20 August 2018 - 10:49 AM, said:

just two ERLL on the Clan side with the main exception of the Supernova being able to make more than two work).

Boy, it was a good thing I was only talking about just two CERLLs totally out-performing the CGR on every level except heat, and if the CERLL pilot disciplined themselves and fired at the same rate as the CGR, with its eternal cooldown and charge-up, I don't know that 2xCERLL wouldn't outperform CGR on that level as well. How are you disagreeing with me, exactly?

View PostFupDup, on 20 August 2018 - 10:49 AM, said:

Gauss comes in by letting you add considerably more damage to your alpha without perceptibly increasing your heat generation.

And here's the same fallacy we're always on PGI for committing. Nerfing a weapon-system that is fine (if not weak) in and of itself, because of a few builds that can abuse it, thereby punishing players who build around CGR, and aren't just slapping one on after their garden of lasers, just to take their alpha into the ludicrous zone.

Nerf those isolated builds and leave the poor CGR (and the few of us sad ******** left who prefer them) alone.

#24 Khobai

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Posted 20 August 2018 - 11:26 AM

View PostFupDup, on 20 August 2018 - 11:23 AM, said:

Bruh, when I said that heat is gonna matter a lot more I was referring to the advantage of generating only 1-2 heat for high damage. That advantage will become more pronounced if the changes make it to live since competing builds will reach their fixed heat cap way quicker.


when everyone responds to the lower heat cap by using gauss, heat will inherently NOT MATTER. because gauss/heavy gauss at 1-2 heat is a complete joke that entirely circumvents what heat cap is attempting to do.

heats only going to matter more for the players that dont switchover to gauss, and gauss builds will crush them

View PostMister Glitchdragon, on 20 August 2018 - 11:25 AM, said:

Nerf those isolated builds and leave the poor CGR (and the few of us sad ******** left who prefer them) alone.


They wont be isolated builds anymore if heat cap goes live. Gauss will become the dominant meta.

Because no other build is gonna give you that much PPFLD while staying under the 40 heat cap

And we know from past experience that the meta always gravitates towards long range PPFLD.

Gauss is highly likely to get hit with the nerf hammer if heat cap goes live. Maybe not immediately but inevitably.

Edited by Khobai, 20 August 2018 - 11:33 AM.


#25 FupDup

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Posted 20 August 2018 - 11:35 AM

View PostMister Glitchdragon, on 20 August 2018 - 11:25 AM, said:

There's this other thing called a hypothetical scenario being used as a strawman. Let's confine our discourse to the state of play as it stands, thanks.

Boy, it was a good thing I was only talking about just two CERLLs totally out-performing the CGR on every level except heat, and if the CERLL pilot disciplined themselves and fired at the same rate as the CGR, with its eternal cooldown and charge-up, I don't know that 2xCERLL wouldn't outperform CGR on that level as well. How are you disagreeing with me, exactly?

The reason I'm not sticking to the given example of just 2 ERLL versus just 1 GR is that everything above the light Class can and does pack more firepower than that.


View PostMister Glitchdragon, on 20 August 2018 - 11:25 AM, said:

And here's the same fallacy we're always on PGI for committing. Nerfing a weapon-system that is fine (if not weak) in and of itself, because of a few builds that can abuse it, thereby punishing players who build around CGR, and aren't just slapping one on after their garden of lasers, just to take their alpha into the ludicrous zone.

Nerf those isolated builds and leave the poor CGR (and the few of us sad ******** left who prefer them) alone.

The Gauss Rifle has, for a long time, been the common denominator in both Gauss Vomit (lasers/Gauss) and ERPPC/Gauss combos as a result of its damage-per-heat ratio (among other stats). The specific mechs using the combos have changed (i.e. Dire Whale and Mad Cat have long been replaced by others) but the fundamentals of the combos have remained in place to be used by future mechs.

It's something that keeps recurring time and time again when PGI releases a new mech that has the specifications to use these weapons (i.e. the KDK back in its heyday, Night Gyr for a while). Now it's the Mad Cat Mk. 2 as the primary offender. Someday it will become something else.

The nice thing about going with the heat route is that somebody using Gauss standalone is barely going to feel it compared to people combining it with PPCs or lasers. Your base heatsinks will be more than enough to handle a Gauss Rifle that generates maybe like 5 or so heat per shot (specific values pending, IS Gauss will of course have better heat than Clans).

And by the way I'd also like to increase the HP values for both IS and Clan Gauss if the heat ever got increased, so that people wouldn't have to only use Gauss on specific mechs that have hitboxes to protect the weapon from going instaboom. The current fragility makes the weapon pretty risky on many chassis, particular IS chassis who have crappy XL engines and no free CASE.

Edited by FupDup, 20 August 2018 - 11:37 AM.


#26 WrathOfDeadguy

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Posted 20 August 2018 - 04:30 PM

View PostrazenWing, on 20 August 2018 - 11:06 AM, said:

Maybe it's too harsh of a punishment to go from 80 to 0 armor as soon as a button is pressed, so perhaps a curved decrease like someone else suggested.


Any armor reduction at all will kill the weapon dead, period. Nobody will want to use a weapon that does the enemy's work for them- even if it's only -5pts of armor, that's still a whole free weapon hit you're giving anyone who sees you before you let your own shot off. As someone else already pointed out, that would effectively limit the viable Gauss builds to ECM 'Mechs, preferably with stealth armor... and even then it would be so niche that it wouldn't be worth considering most of the time. Why would you take Gauss, which strips you of your most important defense, when you could carry an AC10, UAC10, or AC20 and not have to worry about exposing your structure every time you want to fire the weapon? Gauss would be relegated to trolling within one match of the update.

It's a bad idea. It also doesn't make a single lick of sense (Armor being a physical covering not linked to the weapon systems of the 'Mech), but that's a separate issue.

Why would Gauss cause armor to not be armor when it charges? What possible physical property explains that mechanic?

Now, MW4 had a "gunport" mechanic, where every weapon on a 'Mech could be destroyed through the armor if it suffered a direct hit on the physical gunport it fired from on the model in-game (IIRC, the incoming hit needed to also be more or less aligned with the firing axis of the gunport, but I could be mis-remembering that). That would be a reasonable comprehensible way to make a weapon vulnerable while lining up a shot, and since Gauss is inherently volatile when charged it would of course be more vulnerable to that kind of counter-fire. However, that mechanic would leave the armor of the 'Mech unaffected.

#27 LordNothing

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Posted 20 August 2018 - 06:24 PM

id like to see charge time stack with multiple gausses with some ghost charge thrown on for stupid builds. this would also come with the abolition of charge limits. you could stack up to a 65 point gauss alpha provided you charge your gauss for several seconds first.

#28 BigBenn

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Posted 20 August 2018 - 08:46 PM

Gauss rifles need to lose the charge up. Period. It is ***'inine. Secondly, put the ammo values more in line with historical battletech/TT numbers and FORCE ammo to be an issue. Thirdly, increase the charge up time to address the concern that the gauss rifles will impose on the AC family of weapons (5 seconds for Light, 7 seconds for gauss, and 9 seconds for heavy. See that was easy).

PGI done really FUBAR'd the gauss for MWO. Bigly.

#29 Grus

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Posted 20 August 2018 - 09:37 PM

View PostrazenWing, on 19 August 2018 - 03:31 PM, said:

In this proposal, I will attempt to address 2 things at once:
1: IS Gauss Rifle weighing more
2: Perceived Clan Rifle + Laser Alpha Damage

Proposed Change:
While charging up, Gauss Rifle gets a glowing charged up effect.
While charging, armor of the gauss rifle carrying component is reduced to zero (if armor still exists)
Gauss rifle weapon explosion effect removed.

Concept:
Basically, it never made any sense to me that gauss rifle would explode like ammo when crit-ed. When a hunk of metal has no energy flowing through it, it's just a hunk of metal.

My change will address that. Your rifle won't just randomly explode along with half of your mech anymore. Will you still lose your weapon if it's hit? Yes, but you will just lose your weapon as any other weapon systems.

Glow effect, basically, your rifle can only be crit and explode IF it was hit during charge-up. This effect may happen REGARDLESS of armor status. Even with full armor status, being hit while charge up will assign a crit chance as if the component is unarmored. Thus, you may still lose half your mech with full armor if your rifle exploded while charging up.

However, as soon as the charge up and projectile fire are over, armor is restored and explosion damage no longer exists.

This will force more de-sync fire from Clan Alpha damage because if you charge up while receiving return fire, you will end up with a lot more damage than currently. Basically, a gauss rifle mech can be suppressed (with rapid fire weapons especially), and would require way more strategic positioning and timing to use.

(the graphical effect is basically a huge "hit me" sign, so proceed with caution)

Now, IS gauss have the added effect of being always having 5 armor during charge up (unless armor is less than 5, in which case, it will just use whatever available) so that they can take more beatings while charge up. The added safety net will justify the heavier weight and goes in line with the philosophy of robust Inner Sphere mechs.

--------

Discussion:

I like people to stay on topic regarding THIS idea alone pros/cons. Comments such as "no IS charge up time!" or your own idea of how this should be done is NOT interested at all, and frankly, explored over 9000 times already. If you want to insist on your not very original idea, use another thread, start another thread, don't really care... just not here.

I just want to here pros/cons/comments/discussions on my idea alone. Nothing else. If you can't think of anything before adding your reply, don't reply at all. I will report and downvote all irrelevant replies.

Have fun!


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