Weeny Machine, on 14 February 2022 - 01:57 PM, said:
I agree with the AC5s but I hope they do not buff all autocannons because this would be another indirect buff to heavies and assaults. After all they have mostly the space to carry these heavy weapons.
But I guess that's ok because lights op lololo!111!!11 /eyeroll
the problem with 2s and 5s is that you pretty much have to boat them. which means yes you are going to need to a mech with both the tonnage and hardpoints to do so. so a small buff on a single gun becomes a force multiplier on a 6 gun build. the gun still underperforms on light platforms and the boat still dominates the battlefield. then when you get to the 10 class you finally have a weapon that can stand on its own. the 20s have their own issues. balancing guns is deceptively complicated.
there is also the fact that no matter how you define the role of the smaller guns, they are always going to be dps weapons. "surge damage" doesn't mean much for the uac2, especially if you have 4 or more of them. you just spam the button in most cases. if you wanted to make it a true surge damage weapon, it would need to be able to drop a large salvo after a long cd, make it do a 4 round burst every 1.5 seconds (at 2 damage/round). but then again something like that would give an uac2 uv a 64 point alpha. the mechanics are all available for something like that. uac5 also becomes a dps weapon when boated. even in a dual configuration its just a dps weapon that sometimes has more dps than usual. once you commence firing you fire until something dies or something overheats.
i think the problems with the 20 class can be fixed with some max range changes. make it a more viable option in the 400-500m range so it doesnt lock you into an exclusive brawling role. then stick some velocity buffs on it. 10 class is fine.
that said i think the best way to approach to buffing autocannons, is so make small changes and then spam cd quirks on anything that cant boat the things. that along with the proposed max range buff to the 20 class.