34 replies to this topic

[torsie]

I would just like to see, please?

Otherwise they are fun, like some kind of exploding laser.

[martian]

torsie, on 20 December 2023 - 02:20 PM, said:

I would just like to see, please?

Otherwise they are fun, like some kind of exploding laser.

If you have some suitable IS 'Mech, you can try RACs in the game.

[simon1812]

Puff RACs and LRMs are overrated, of course a good player with a decent team will make any mech or weapons look op....that being said , the last update did make RACs too powerful in my opinion, they were fine before, at least they should decrease the time they can fire before reaching the jamming point.

Edited by simon1812, 03 January 2024 - 02:42 PM.

[Aidan Crenshaw]

simon1812, on 03 January 2024 - 12:59 PM, said:

Puff RACs and LRMs are overrated, of course a good player with a decent team will make any mech or weapons look op....that being said , the last update did make RACs too powerful in my opinion, they were fine before, at least they should decrease the time they can fire before reaching the jamming point.

You did of course realize that while changed, the damage and heat profile of RACs remained unchanged by the latest patch, right?

InnerSphereNews said:

ROTARY AUTOCANNON 5

• Increased Rate of fire to 10 rounds per second (from 7.275)
  
• Reduced damage per round to 1.1 (from 1.5)
  
• Increased ammo per ton to 240 rounds (from 175)

* Note: Damage per second, Generated heat per second and total potential damage from a ton of ammo for both Rotary Autocannons remains unchanged.

[JumpingHunter]

Aidan Crenshaw, on 03 January 2024 - 09:50 PM, said:

You did of course realize that while changed, the damage and heat profile of RACs remained unchanged by the latest patch, right?

The biggest point of confilct about RACs are how they blind you every time you get shot at by RAC user. Since PGI buffed RAC RoF, now you get EVEN MORE blind whenever abusing RAC boat finds you. If previously you could AT LEAST switch to third person and enable heat vision, now even this wont help you, that's how bright and blinding constant explosions are. You can't really fight a RAC boat, because even if you know how to properly torso twist and shield off their damage, you won't be able to fire back until you can actually enable all image enhancments you have and actually locate the target, meanwhile RAC boat drills you with 30 DPS all this time. That's what changed, not their DIRECT damage, but ability of players to counteract RACs, it was severly reduced.

IMO RACs should have RoF of 3 or 4 shots per second at best, not a single shot more. And of course blinding could should be significantly reduced.

[Aidan Crenshaw]

no big issue. Just aim center of the red brackets, alpha, twist. You don't have to see your target to shoot it, your sensors do.

[JumpingHunter]

Aidan Crenshaw, on 04 January 2024 - 02:56 AM, said:

no big issue. Just aim center of the red brackets, alpha, twist. You don't have to see your target to shoot it, your sensors do.

First of all, that only work well if you have high enough alpha strike damage. If you dont, or if you are too hot - forget about that, you wont outdamage RAC boat.

Second of all, In vacuum, ideal situation, that is true, you could do that. But with how MWO gameplay is shaped and how players behave in match, RAC boats will most likely be surrounded by teammates, most likely by machinegun boats. So while you are twisting away, trying to "twist-alpha-twist", all these people are drilling through your armor.

You may probably underestimate DPS of RAC boat + few MG boats, but their DPS is enough to kill almost fresh Atlas in about 5 seconds - i unfortunately had experienced it multiple times, in different mechs, including brawlers like Atlas and Orion.

You may probably rely on your teammates to back you up, but most players that already got decimated by RAC boat once or twice (which is about 99% of MWO players) will bee far too afraid to engage a group of enemies with RAC boat in it and will leave you alone, they wont cover you or draw attention of hostiles - i unfortunately experienced it in every single team that i ended up being in for last month or so.

So realistically, even though you could "twist-alpha-twist" in 1v1 duel, in a normal match that just doesn't work. You either die because you have not enough DPS to outdamage RAC boat's DPS (only certain brawlers and laser vomits will have enough DPS), or you will die because you will be torn apart by satelite light mechs that circle around RAC
boats, knowing that they tend to leave very damaged targets once they manage to escape.

[Aidan Crenshaw]

Quote

Second of all, In vacuum, ideal situation, that is true, you could do that. But with how MWO gameplay is shaped and how players behave in match, RAC boats will most likely be surrounded by teammates, most likely by machinegun boats. So while you are twisting away, trying to "twist-alpha-twist", all these people are drilling through your armor.

This is not an issue of RACs, this is rather something natural within the context of this game. If you face superior numbers in an encounter, you're screwed.
I was merely talking about the blinding effect and that is not an issue if you don't rely on the pure visuals to shoot an enemy.

[JumpingHunter]

Aidan Crenshaw, on 05 January 2024 - 01:22 AM, said:

This is not an issue of RACs, this is rather something natural within the context of this game. If you face superior numbers in an encounter, you're screwed.
I was merely talking about the blinding effect and that is not an issue if you don't rely on the pure visuals to shoot an enemy.

The blinding effect itself is negatable, yes. But that doesn't make it any more justifiable in a dynamic environment of MWO matches.

Plus, if you say that when you face superior numbers you are screwed anyway, then you should realize that RAC blinding effect hids ALL hostile units from your vision except the one that you are locked on, which is most likely a RAC boat itself. And a lot of lighter satelite mechs have Stealth Armor or ECMs, so you can't really know where and when they will be before you engage them. And once you engage them, you are instantly blinded by RAC spam and only see one target. Even if you can negate the blinding effect for 1v1 duel, it's never a true 1v1 in QP, and you are left blind as a kitten against all other hostiles that can still clearly see you and fire at you.

Even if you will propose rapidly spamming R to see who is there to face you while you are blinded, all while either desperately twisting or rapidly retreating, even if you can actually bust through RAC boat's armor while all this happen, the amout of effort that you have to put into that compared to amout of effort RAC boat has to put into disabling 80% of your external information supply is like a skyscraper compared to a doghouse. RAC boat only need to fire at you for few seconds, just holding one button, maybe not even moving, while you need to twist your valuable components away, shoot back, retreat and desperately gather info about other targets all at once to just survive the encounter, not even win it. This is a big disbalance, and this should be changed.

Edited by JumpingHunter, 05 January 2024 - 01:36 AM.

[simon1812]

Aidan Crenshaw, on 03 January 2024 - 09:50 PM, said:

You did of course realize that while changed, the damage and heat profile of RACs remained unchanged by the latest patch, right?

RACs are more efficient after those changes, If weren't good before they certainly are now, that's much I've realized.

PS

Rolling A Mad-4L packing ERPPC x2 and RAC2 x4, I can outgun most assault mechs out there (had the chance to go 1vs1 against another Mad 4L packing RAC5 x2 and I outgunned him), I usually fire 2 at the time, only fire the 4 of them together if my mates are pushing, and usually on a priority target since Im likely to deal enough dmg , shut down , and let my mates finish it.

Edited by simon1812, 07 January 2024 - 05:06 PM.

[simon1812]

Aidan Crenshaw, on 05 January 2024 - 01:22 AM, said:

This is not an issue of RACs, this is rather something natural within the context of this game. If you face superior numbers in an encounter, you're screwed.
I was merely talking about the blinding effect and that is not an issue if you don't rely on the pure visuals to shoot an enemy.

That's true, after all RACs are only dangerous if one walks alone straight towards an enemy carrying a couple of them, one should avoid such situations. Rather, one is supposed to flank a target, ideally with the help of lance mates.

[JumpingHunter]

simon1812, on 07 January 2024 - 04:28 PM, said:

That's true, after all RACs are only dangerous if one walks alone straight towards an enemy carrying a couple of them, one should avoid such situations. Rather, one is supposed to flank a target, ideally with the help of lance mates.

Odd way of saying that they are dangerous only if the are boated and your team doesn't have perfect communication and teamwork. I understand that you may be from Tier 1 premade group that sit in discord calls all the time and run 4 light mechs in pack, but this is QP, and you can't just make a weapon that requires it's user to just hold one button to use but requires a whole enemy team to perorm perfect maneuvering to negate ONLY one enemy unit. That's just disbalance of effort put on both sides of match.

[Horseman]

krazzyknight, on 18 December 2023 - 12:00 AM, said:

The continues, endless, blinding, clanking of them and the absurd amount of damage they do

Tier 5 player rages at PGI to get rid of a weapon he can't figure out how to play against: a forum classic.
RACs don't do an "absurd amount of damage" compared to other weapons in the game, in fact they are rather worse at it than weapons that deal burst damage. In the simplest terms, don't stare at RACs when they're firing at you: roll your torso to the extreme left and right repeatedly to spread the incoming damage. You'll only get drilled if you stare at the RAC carrier (or you waddled out into an area where you're being fired on by multiple mechs at once, which is a tactical error).

[nvx 116]

JumpingHunter, on 04 January 2024 - 02:33 AM, said:

The biggest point of confilct about RACs are how they blind you every time you get shot at by RAC user. Since PGI buffed RAC RoF, now you get EVEN MORE blind whenever abusing RAC boat finds you. If previously you could AT LEAST switch to third person and enable heat vision, now even this wont help you, that's how bright and blinding constant explosions are. You can't really fight a RAC boat, because even if you know how to properly torso twist and shield off their damage, you won't be able to fire back until you can actually enable all image enhancments you have and actually locate the target, meanwhile RAC boat drills you with 30 DPS all this time. That's what changed, not their DIRECT damage, but ability of players to counteract RACs, it was severly reduced.

IMO RACs should have RoF of 3 or 4 shots per second at best, not a single shot more. And of course blinding could should be significantly reduced.

heat vision is your friend when geting shot by racs

Horseman, on 21 January 2024 - 01:20 AM, said:

Tier 5 player rages at PGI to get rid of a weapon he can't figure out how to play against: a forum classic.
RACs don't do an "absurd amount of damage" compared to other weapons in the game, in fact they are rather worse at it than weapons that deal burst damage. In the simplest terms, don't stare at RACs when they're firing at you: roll your torso to the extreme left and right repeatedly to spread the incoming damage. You'll only get drilled if you stare at the RAC carrier (or you waddled out into an area where you're being fired on by multiple mechs at once, which is a tactical error).

been there done that pleanty of times

[JumpingHunter]

nvx 116, on 24 January 2024 - 06:37 PM, said:

heat vision is your friend when geting shot by racs

It's not even close to be enough, the amount of effort that you have to put to even be able to fight back compared to amount of effort that RAC boat has to put to just deal constant damage to you is inappropriately high, and that's the problem. Sure, it's possible to fight back, but 9 or at least 8 times out of 10 you can just disconnect immediately - you're basically a walking corpse regardless of whether you managed to escape or it got killed before it killed you.

And regardless of the balance factor, it's by far the most unpleasant encounter in entire MWO because of IRL sensoric overload (constant flashbang and sounds of bullets hitting you that legitimately overlap EVERY OTHER sound in game, preventing you from even hearing the BB) that the victum of RAC boats experience, it's not fun to play against, and the only saving ground for RACs is that not a lot of people use them.

If RACs were more fun and honest to fight they could've had much better performance and not even remotely as much complains would be thrown around in community.

Edited by JumpingHunter, 31 January 2024 - 12:06 AM.