37 replies to this topic

[Black Ivan]

Short answer no. Long answer, no. It is still not viable for the weight to effect ratio

[ShiverMeRivets]

If they wanted to reduce its effective weight without changing its “lore” weight of 12 tons, they could have increased its ammo/ton significantly more - this way you can take it with say just 1 ton of ammo instead of 2, and make the total package lighter.

[Abaddun]

Whilst removing charge time would be a very good upgrade, I think it will harm the consistency between gauss weapons in the gauss family. That's not to say I won't support having LGR charge time, that I can get behind. I would also suggest lowering CD to 2.25 to make it a sidegrade to both the AC10 and dual AC2, whilst at the same time keeping extreme range damage sustained rather than bursty.

[Daurock]

Promessa, on 13 November 2018 - 01:55 PM, said:

I know they don't want to have the light gauss obsolete the ac10, but the ac10 barely gets any play anyway and isn't good right now. Feels like firing paintballs

That's more of an incentive to boost the AC10 as well. Dropping the IS LBX/AC10 (And notably NOT the UAC10, and/or Clan Variants) Reload time into the 1.75ish range would go a long way to making the thing a competent alternative to AC2/5 Spam. As is, the only niche it does well is to link with some PPC builds into some very high PPFLD territory.

That being said, LT-Gauss should feel more like a Gauss, and less like a Spam-Weapon. Upping the damage into the 13ish range, and using standard gauss reload times makes it a slightly smaller, but no less damage/tonnage gauss option. Sure, it's a bit Sam-ey, but that's kind of the point when it is still labeled "Gauss."

[Abaddun]

Daurock, on 13 November 2018 - 02:09 PM, said:

That's more of an incentive to boost the AC10 as well. Dropping the IS LBX/AC10 (And notably NOT the UAC10, and/or Clan Variants) Reload time into the 1.75ish range would go a long way to making the thing a competent alternative to AC2/5 Spam. As is, the only niche it does well is to link with some PPC builds into some very high PPFLD territory.

That being said, LT-Gauss should feel more like a Gauss, and less like a Spam-Weapon. Upping the damage into the 13ish range, and using standard gauss reload times makes it a slightly smaller, but no less damage/tonnage gauss option. Sure, it's a bit Sam-ey, but that's kind of the point when it is still labeled "Gauss."

I think it will be a bad idea to up the flat damage, considering that it has one of the highest optimal ranges, matched only by Clan AC2s and ER PPCs. Allowing for a LGR to plug you from a kilometre away for 26 damage with complete impunity is not going to go down well with the community, especially the brawlers. For comparison, think of an ER PPC that generated negligible heat and had slightly higher velocity at the cost of charge time, 5 extra tons and ammo.

Granted, not all maps have the ranges and sightlines to allow for extreme range sniping, but both alpine and polar are notorious already for punishing brawlers, do we really need to drive home that reputation.

[LT. HARDCASE]

Daurock, on 13 November 2018 - 02:09 PM, said:

That being said, LT-Gauss should feel more like a Gauss, and less like a Spam-Weapon. Upping the damage into the 13ish range, and using standard gauss reload times makes it a slightly smaller, but no less damage/tonnage gauss option. Sure, it's a bit Sam-ey, but that's kind of the point when it is still labeled "Gauss."

At 13 damage the LGR might be a bit too good, possibly superior to the GR. I mean you could give up 4 damage to save 6 tons and 4 slots with a pair.

Yeah that's way too strong. I'll make that trade all day.

To me 10 damage and no charge is the best PGI can do. The unavoidable truth is that, at 12 tons, its never going to be a good weapon without buffing it to the point where it's encroaching on the big Gauss's territory, or obsoleting the AC10. Pick one but not both.

Edited by LT. HARDCASE, 13 November 2018 - 06:19 PM.

[Monkey Lover]

Chris told me the lgr was fine in beta lol Its still not worth using

[Captain Caveman DE]

Monkey Lover, on 13 November 2018 - 10:11 PM, said:

Chris told me the lgr was fine in beta lol Its still not worth using

no offense to Chris -or anybody else personally-, as I / we don't know the 'inner workings' of their balancing acts, but..
there's so many things they just do -wrong-, that it's not even funny. and (almost) all of us can spot those mistakes even in concept; not because we're supersmart and whatnot, but because we actually play that game and see where thing's are going.
devs should either play A LOT more or just consider listening to the crowd at least from time to time.

their pts m.o. though really ticks me off; we test things like the heat- and laserchanges THREE times to get to a compromise point where most folks are some kind of satisfied
-and then they implement something vastly different to that.

again - I don't know the inner workings of PGI - but I don't like how they operate ("listen to what people want, doing the exact opposite then many times").
and in ANY business I know it's NOT healthy to NOT listen to your paying customers (speaking of all of us, not just me).

Edited by Captain Caveman DE, 14 November 2018 - 06:21 AM.

[Tom Sawyer]

Tried running 2 on a gridiron. Its quick firing but its like shooting bb's at a steel plate. Fun to watch them go plink but useless for actual combat.

[Y E O N N E]

LT. HARDCASE, on 13 November 2018 - 06:18 PM, said:

To me 10 damage and no charge is the best PGI can do. The unavoidable truth is that, at 12 tons, its never going to be a good weapon without buffing it to the point where it's encroaching on the big Gauss's territory, or obsoleting the AC10. Pick one but not both.

TBQH, 10 damage with charge and with the current cool-down would be fine, and it would still have less output than the AC/10 in exchange for its range, velocity, and lack of heat; it would be 3.22 DPS for the LGR vs. 4.44 for the AC/10. With the charge making it impossible to snap-fire, they are not at cross purposes.

Personally, I am not at all interested in tuning this weapon to be an extreme-range scalpel with instant-firing and such, that's basically creating a ballistic ERPPC. I would much rather structure the Gauss family in a similar vein to the ACs: bigger gets you more damage for less range, and DPS is on a curve because at some point you need DPS to justify the weight and lack of alpha. That's where the AC/10 has sat for the longest time and that's where the LGR sits.

[ShiverMeRivets]

At 10 damage it will be a very good weapon since the AC10 takes 2 more crit-slots and often cannot be fitted in a side torso together with other large weapons. You can’t fit 2 AC10 in a ST, but you CAN fit 2 LGRs even with a LFE engine - and many IS mechs have two ballistic hard points in one ST.

Perhaps it is possible to increase its damage via crit damage bonuses, much like the MGs? It already has the typical gauss crit damage bonus (I think...), so what if this gets boosted? Being a “precision” weapon, this will be a significant boost if the player is able to target open components on the target.

[Alexandra Hekmatyar]

I mostly compare the Light Gauss with the normal Gauss instead of the UAC or AC's.
If comparing with the normal Gauss if you can actually aim you be winning the majority of fights against normal gauss users both IS and clan and even against the bigger fellas.
This from a perspective of a Catapult K2 dual light gauss and 4 ER med lasers.
Sure if others gank up on you that might be more difficult though.

[InvictusLee]

Nightbird, on 12 November 2018 - 08:42 AM, said:

allow charging 4

id probably only use them if they allowed for 4 charging and dropped the weight a couple of tons per unit to bring them in line with uac10s or lbx10s.
If im going to make a meta build, im going to run normal gauss + laser vomit or gauss ppc meta. I really really like the normal gauss+4ml warhammer. Its super effective, which is kinda sad because you can run a similar build with Lgauss on the rifleman but at a slower speed and not nearly as heat effecient even though it fires slightly faster. I stole the build from commander lemming a while back.

[Y E O N N E]

November11th, on 15 November 2018 - 07:12 PM, said:

id probably only use them if they allowed for 4 charging and dropped the weight a couple of tons per unit to bring them in line with uac10s or lbx10s.
If im going to make a meta build, im going to run normal gauss + laser vomit or gauss ppc meta. I really really like the normal gauss+4ml warhammer. Its super effective, which is kinda sad because you can run a similar build with Lgauss on the rifleman but at a slower speed and not nearly as heat effecient even though it fires slightly faster. I stole the build from commander lemming a while back.

You can run 2LGauss and 6ERML on the JM6-FB and it will even run slightly faster than the typical Gauss-Hammer. Good fit if you want to save tonnage.

[Elizander]

The main issue is that most long-range builds will trade for at least 50-100% more damage than what 2x LGR will do and after you get hit your target will most likely get back to cover to render your superior CD ineffective.

The second is that if you are 1500m away from your team you are pretty much going to be unable to share armor or assist them within a reasonable amount of time.

The damage-to-tonnage ratio is really hard to overcome on the LGR. PGI can't budge on tonnage and have gone ham on CD, but it's not enough. 16 damage vs 30 incoming is just a hard sell in most cases for long-range trades.

[The pessimistic optimist]

HA HA HA HA you will feel the wrath of my double light gauss Protector.

[Y E O N N E]

At long range, the LGauss is competing against the ERLL and ERPPC for alpha and the AC/2 and UAC/2 for DPS, though even on "alpha" the 2s will do more damage in the same exposure time for a similar tonnage investment.

There is truly no real niche to be carved for the LGauss at long range. Rather, it is simply a better option to pair with lasers than the AC/10 on account of its low heat, small size, and high velocity. I haven't done the math to see if it works out, but theoretically a pair of LGauss with six or so ERMeds will give you better sustained DPS than three Large Lasers and four ER Meds at the cost of 1 point off the alpha. It's not terrible, but it could be better for the weight.