31 replies to this topic

[Dauntless Blint]

How long till we can get to test sustained UAC's? (UA5's)
They aren't very good these days with all the extra armor.


Bonus question: Is the Cauldron happy with the KGC's? I'm still disappointed by my favorite toy.

[Blood Rose]

They work okay, so long as you can get the exposure time to use them.
The problem is getting enough time to use them.

[LordNothing]

im more interested in the steps navid takes to test things like that in game and not get banned. i kind of wanted to screw around with rocket launchers to see if i can find a way to make them not suck.

Edited by LordNothing, 28 November 2021 - 04:36 PM.

[Vorpal Puppy]

If you got rid of UAC jams, there would be no purpose in regular ACs.
You can't make rockets any better cause that one Archer can pretty much one-shot anything that it can get square to that's not an assault mech.

[LordNothing]

Vorpal Puppy, on 30 November 2021 - 10:10 AM, said:

If you got rid of UAC jams, there would be no purpose in regular ACs.
You can't make rockets any better cause that one Archer can pretty much one-shot anything that it can get square to that's not an assault mech.

you just bake the jams into the weapon damage. because uacs jam they are not true 2x damage weapons. perhaps make them do 1.5x damage. or 2x damage with extended cooldowns. you can differentiate them from acs with less heat, dps, volly size, etc. if you are one of those players who always takes uacs over acs, you are probibly doing it wrong. sometimes the ac is the better option.

my idea for the rl is to make them very rapid fire single use rockets with more damage and a lot less spread. single use is simply applied per-rocket rather than per-launcher. after looking over the xml it looks like it would be possible to use the mechanics intended for mrms to fire the rockets one at a time, or in clusters (in groups of 2/3/4 depending on launcher size). if you try to group fire a lot of them, them then you get ghost heat and can overheat yourself pretty quickly. but because the rockets are rapid fire, you can dump them all within a second for an rl10. id like to get the damage potential of the launchers up a bit more and this way you can do that without ending up with a super trololol weapon.

[Curccu]

Vorpal Puppy, on 30 November 2021 - 10:10 AM, said:

If you got rid of UAC jams, there would be no purpose in regular ACs.
You can't make rockets any better cause that one Archer can pretty much one-shot anything that it can get square to that's not an assault mech.

So can direwolf with as many erppcs as it can fit, both are still not viable builds IMO.

[Dauntless Blint]

Vorpal Puppy, on 30 November 2021 - 10:10 AM, said:

If you got rid of UAC jams, there would be no purpose in regular ACs.
You can't make rockets any better cause that one Archer can pretty much one-shot anything that it can get square to that's not an assault mech.

The point would be more damage loaded on the pinpoint and running colder and being lighter as a regular AC.

Even if the fire rate was 25-30% faster but no double taps. Heat scale will still govern your sustained fire duration. Especially in the case of the IS UAC5 to keep it reined in.

I just want old KGC performance back, It's geometry weakness isn't worth it anymore. All stomach acid and no dopamine.

I feel like armor buffs pushed UAC5's off the map. You need so much face time you can't sustain the heat and personal armor loss while the target seems to just roll and laugh off the damage.

[1453 R]

LordNothing, on 28 November 2021 - 04:35 PM, said:

im more interested in the steps navid takes to test things like that in game and not get banned. i kind of wanted to screw around with rocket launchers to see if i can find a way to make them not suck.

I'm reasonably sure the Cauldron has access to a testbed build of MWO where they can play around with numbers and see what happens. If you want to dicker with rockets - which will never not be a terrible meme, by the way, there's no possible version of rocket launchers that isn't a sad joke in MWO - you'd have to be in the Cauldron to gain access to their test shard.

[Dauntless Blint]

LordNothing, on 28 November 2021 - 04:35 PM, said:

im more interested in the steps navid takes to test things like that in game and not get banned. i kind of wanted to screw around with rocket launchers to see if i can find a way to make them not suck.

I think the only time they are valid is when you want to install them in a sacrificial dead side, their volume seems too much in most cases when an extra heatsink or ammo could take it's place.

I thought I'd get more flack for having a gripe about my concerns. Maybe I'm close to the truth.

[LordNothing]

Dauntless Blint, on 01 December 2021 - 11:26 PM, said:

I think the only time they are valid is when you want to install them in a sacrificial dead side, their volume seems too much in most cases when an extra heatsink or ammo could take it's place.

I thought I'd get more flack for having a gripe about my concerns. Maybe I'm close to the truth.

i think i have a hellspawn in that config. cant afford to put real weapons, so i strip the compontents, and now i have tonnage i cant use. rocket lauchers!

i think the biggest problem is they are only worth about 60% of their rated damage. if they were worth their rated damage that would be better, but you really cant buff them without feeding trolls. a half ton of ammo is usually worth 100 damage. rls are just tubes with rockets in them, no feed systems, so give a about one fifth of that to the tubes, the rl10 should them be worth 80 damage, not 20. but the only way to do that is if they dont all fire in one big volley. 8 damage per rocket sounds fun, but a little op if they fire all at once, and by the time gh kicks in the rockets are in flight.if instead gh kicks in if you fire a few at a time, you get locked out of firing the rest by shut down or explode.

Edited by LordNothing, 02 December 2021 - 12:40 AM.

[Dauntless Blint]

LordNothing, on 02 December 2021 - 12:37 AM, said:

i think i have a hellspawn in that config. cant afford to put real weapons, so i strip the compontents, and now i have tonnage i cant use. rocket lauchers!

i think the biggest problem is they are only worth about 60% of their rated damage. if they were worth their rated damage that would be better, but you really cant buff them without feeding trolls. a half ton of ammo is usually worth 100 damage. rls are just tubes with rockets in them, no feed systems, so give a about one fifth of that to the tubes, the rl10 should them be worth 80 damage, not 20. but the only way to do that is if they dont all fire in one big volley. 8 damage per rocket sounds fun, but a little op if they fire all at once, and by the time gh kicks in the rockets are in flight.if instead gh kicks in if you fire a few at a time, you get locked out of firing the rest by shut down or explode.

PGI got too hung up on time to kill and messed everything up IMO. I miss old mobility over armor buffs. Old twisting was superior to todays armor. I could care less for ghost heat and getting one shot from a Dire Star for instance RL aren't even a choice really. Interesting to find out what their damage really is supposed to be? makes sense. Maybe they'd be better if they had more damage but fired in a machinegun pattern volley like HVAP style missiles with very low spread more like a ballistic. Would be more brutal but able to twist at least slightly in response. (Chain firing instead of a claymore or shotgun palettes)

Edited by Dauntless Blint, 02 December 2021 - 09:52 AM.

[LordNothing]

i really dont like ghost heat, but it does diversify loadouts and make it pay to off do so. if not everyone would be boating their weapon of choice and mechs with mixed hardpoints would be considered bad. i think its better than the alternative.

[VeeOt Dragon]

i honestly almost never use UACs. mostly its because the RNjesus seems to hate me. half the time i get jammed up on the first trigger pull. thats the one change i would make to UACS is make it impossible to jam on the first trigger pull of a double tap. keep the jam chance for second shot as is. nothing worse than pulling the trigger once and getting nothing.

[pbiggz]

Similar to arguments for a dynamic convergence formula, random autocannon jams fall into the category of "your guns doing something you didn't tell them to do". Even though it makes perfect sense given the description of the weapon, and is not nearly as egregious as artificially forcing players to miss their shots, it still feels bad.

I don't know the details of navid's UAC proposal, but my hope would be that, whatever the jam mechanic is, its one that is more or less controllable by the player, rather than a completely random "you dont get to shoot".

Edited by pbiggz, 02 December 2021 - 11:41 AM.

[Bamboozle Gold]

VeeOt Dragon, on 02 December 2021 - 10:28 AM, said:

i honestly almost never use UACs. mostly its because the RNjesus seems to hate me. half the time i get jammed up on the first trigger pull. thats the one change i would make to UACS is make it impossible to jam on the first trigger pull of a double tap. keep the jam chance for second shot as is. nothing worse than pulling the trigger once and getting nothing.

If I'm not mistaken you can never jam if you never double tap. You can think of the weapon as having two cooldowns. One is for your primary fire and the second is for the double tap. If you're in the cool down of either and you try to fire you have a chance to jam. So if you've double tapped, you can wait extra half a second to clear the second cool down to fire once without a chance of jamming.

[Fragga ONE]

VeeOt Dragon, on 02 December 2021 - 10:28 AM, said:

i honestly almost never use UACs. mostly its because the RNjesus seems to hate me. half the time i get jammed up on the first trigger pull. thats the one change i would make to UACS is make it impossible to jam on the first trigger pull of a double tap. keep the jam chance for second shot as is. nothing worse than pulling the trigger once and getting nothing.

How about linking jam chance to heat at time of firing, cold guns = no jam, higher the heat higher the jam chance.

[LordNothing]

Bamboozle Gold, on 03 December 2021 - 01:34 AM, said:

If I'm not mistaken you can never jam if you never double tap. You can think of the weapon as having two cooldowns. One is for your primary fire and the second is for the double tap. If you're in the cool down of either and you try to fire you have a chance to jam. So if you've double tapped, you can wait extra half a second to clear the second cool down to fire once without a chance of jamming.

i always figured jam chance should be a function of the current cooldown state so that the longer you hold out, the lower your jam chance is. of course there is still a dice roll in there and everything should be more deterministic. but i think i like your way better. on one hand it becomes a skill to get the most out of your second tap, on the other hand, people will just macro it so it always gives you a perfect firing cycle. perhaps a good balance is 90% skill and 10% luck, just enough to monkey wrench to make macros difficult. its sort of the situation for multi-gauss macros, that keep your guns cycling until you want to fire, such that at least some of your gauss rifles have an instant shoot capability. it works but turns out to be really impractical, as well as very annoying.

another idea is to use a clip, with a damage potential 2x the weapon rating. where you can fire until the clip is empty, or until you let go, whichever happens first. when you let go you get a cool down that is proportional to the number of rounds you fired, plus a penalty that is proportional to the percentage of the clip discharged. it might take 2 seconds to load 2 rounds and 5 seconds to load 4. this gets interesting for burst sizes from 4-8 rounds. and the skill tree nodes can become -1 burst size, so you can go from 4-8 to 2-6, and the clan weapons get +1 for being lighter.

Edited by LordNothing, 03 December 2021 - 02:49 PM.

[LordNothing]

Fragga ONE, on 03 December 2021 - 05:22 AM, said:

How about linking jam chance to heat at time of firing, cold guns = no jam, higher the heat higher the jam chance.

cold guns should never jam. a weapon that often jams on the first (or even second) shot is no weapon any sane military would use.

Edited by LordNothing, 03 December 2021 - 02:52 PM.

[Sawk]

HMM
i bet i can help, you must understand RANDOM numbers and how to test, i use UACs every night, to test--- platform is a TIMBERWOLF with 2 UAC 5 and 1 UAC 2, on frozen city map, you--- its the 2ND one in test grounds, and run shoot 4 mechs, but it also test the RANDOM number, for down range missles second dairy damage, and how many componets you get.
i can tell you it will jam less if single fire, but if you got good number, you can group fire and worry so much, learn to test the random number, YOUR SMART.

SAWK Clanner

[Goedmaker]

There are a lot of ways UACs could be balanced against ACs without RNG jamming. You could increase the heat gen, decrease the damage, decrease the fire rate, implement an overheat mechanic similar to flamers, increase their tonnage, reduce their range, etc...

Random jamming can be a fun mechanic in certain games like turn based ones or singleplayer games like Fallout/STALKER where they are at most a minor time inconvenience, but in PVP multiplayer games and arena shooters especially it can be very annoying.