34 replies to this topic

[krazzyknight]

They are the absolute worst, most unpleasant weapon that I have ever seen in a mechwarrior game. Never have I hated, absolutely loathed a weapon as I do those damn racs. They make this game so unpleasant and I think they just absolutely ruin this game. Can you please get rid of racs. I don't even hate lrms as much as I do racs, and I hate lrmtards. But they have always been a part of mw. These ******* racs though.

[martian]

krazzyknight, on 15 December 2023 - 10:49 PM, said:

Please. Remove. Racs.

They are the absolute worst, most unpleasant weapon that I have ever seen in a mechwarrior game. Never have I hated, absolutely loathed a weapon as I do those damn racs. They make this game so unpleasant and I think they just absolutely ruin this game. Can you please get rid of racs. I don't even hate lrms as much as I do racs, and I hate lrmtards. But they have always been a part of mw. These ******* racs though.

Why?

[Nevermore223]

krazzyknight, on 15 December 2023 - 10:49 PM, said:

They are the absolute worst, most unpleasant weapon that I have ever seen in a mechwarrior game. Never have I hated, absolutely loathed a weapon as I do those damn racs. They make this game so unpleasant and I think they just absolutely ruin this game. Can you please get rid of racs. I don't even hate lrms as much as I do racs, and I hate lrmtards. But they have always been a part of mw. These ******* racs though.

figure out a counter...build a mech suitable to the task, and go hunt RAC boats...keep in mind, changing your build, usually makes you more susceptible to other forms of attack, but we will save that for another "KILL IT WITH FIRE" post.

[KursedVixen]

https://youtu.be/E2t4MBhGAg8?t=3

YES!

Edited by KursedVixen, 16 December 2023 - 10:26 AM.

[martian]

KursedVixen, on 16 December 2023 - 08:49 AM, said:

https://youtu.be/E2t4MBhGAg8?t=3

YES!

PGI keeps working on RACs, so obviously they plan to keep them in the game.

[krazzyknight]

martian, on 15 December 2023 - 11:13 PM, said:

Why?

Because they're obnoxious and ridiculous

[martian]

krazzyknight, on 17 December 2023 - 09:58 PM, said:

Because they're obnoxious and ridiculous

Why?

[krazzyknight]

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

[KursedVixen]

I would at least remove the blinding effect they have when their shot in your face... people whined about the flamer doing that but the RACS can???

[ScrapIron Prime]

Well... if you stand still in front of the enemy and don't have any friends nearby to help you, then yes, the RAC is a good weapon. If you don't stand still, or use cover, or fight as a team, then RACs are a terrible weapon, as they rely on the other guy just staring you down and not ducking into cover or torso twisting. That's the weakness of a RAC build... exploit it.

Otherwise, yeah, tone down the muzzle flash, its a bit much.

EDIT... btw, I had to laugh so hard yesterday, I faced off a Centurion Onyx that was using a RAC and medium x-pulse lasers. Think about that... you paid real money for a mech with a giant shield on its left side, and then you mount up weapons that require you to stare at your target the entire time and not use that shield.

Edited by ScrapIron Prime, 18 December 2023 - 07:45 AM.

[martian]

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

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

RACs are not especially great weapons. They do "the absurd amount of damage" only if the targeted 'Mech stands still as a fool.

And of course, they will autojam anyway eventually.

KursedVixen, on 18 December 2023 - 02:10 AM, said:

I would at least remove the blinding effect they have when their shot in your face... people whined about the flamer doing that but the RACS can???

They do not have too many advantages and that visual effect is one of them. Without it, they would be probably used even less.

[KursedVixen]

ScrapIron Prime, on 18 December 2023 - 07:37 AM, said:

Well... if you stand still in front of the enemy and don't have any friends nearby to help you, then yes, the RAC is a good weapon. If you don't stand still, or use cover, or fight as a team, then RACs are a terrible weapon, as they rely on the other guy just staring you down and not ducking into cover or torso twisting. That's the weakness of a RAC build... exploit it.

Otherwise, yeah, tone down the muzzle flash, its a bit much.

EDIT... btw, I had to laugh so hard yesterday, I faced off a Centurion Onyx that was using a RAC and medium x-pulse lasers. Think about that... you paid real money for a mech with a giant shield on its left side, and then you mount up weapons that require you to stare at your target the entire time and not use that shield.

sounds like a flamer magnet too

[martian]

KursedVixen, on 18 December 2023 - 05:54 PM, said:

sounds like a flamer magnet too

There are more suitable 'Mechs for running Rotary ACs than "Onyx".

[ScrapIron Prime]

martian, on 18 December 2023 - 09:53 PM, said:

There are more suitable 'Mechs for running Rotary ACs than "Onyx".

Hence the laugh.

Saw another doozy last night during Phil's NGNG twitch stream. Longbow hero with 12 small lasers.

[martian]

ScrapIron Prime, on 19 December 2023 - 07:24 AM, said:

Hence the laugh.

Saw another doozy last night during Phil's NGNG twitch stream. Longbow hero with 12 small lasers.

What a powerful 'Mech ... if you are fighting in the phone booth.

I guess that I would rather pilot that RAC-turion.

[JumpingHunter]

I both do and do not disagree with you in your hatred to RACs.

I did dislike RACs too, for a very long time, until i tried to learn how to play with them. Then i realised that it's not the weapon itself what causes the problem, but the boating of this weapon. I really do think that boating one weapon type in general is one of THE largest MWO problems, but in case of RACs it really does show it's teeths far too much. One RAC5 is a fine powerful weapon, even if a bit too unreliable to use, as it should be, because that is what it is in tabletop BT. When you have Nightstar with 2xRAC5 + 2xRAC2 - this is where the problems start.

RACs are supposed to be very powerful in terms of damage output but VERY hot, there is a reason why Atlas III only used RAC2 as a replacer for AC20. But as an actual weapon it is supposed to give it's user power that will outperform weapon's weaknesses. Therefore, RAC users are able to generally deal more damage with RACs than they would be able to do with other ballistics of similar weight, at the cost of rapidly heating up (not leaving enough heat dissipation to fire other weaponst even few times sometimes) and chewing through ammo like crazy. It's also prone to having a not really good accuracy, as most of ammo will fly around the moving target or will spread across all of it, unless you have a perfect steady tracking or use unfair third-party advantages. So if you want to make a good RAC build, you have to be ready to negate it's bad accuracy (or be ready to use A LOT of ammo to get "accuracy though the volume of fire", but that requires you to stay alive AND stay firing much longer, and also takes up a lot of tonnage for ammo), be ready to tank the raising heat to be able to at least fire the RAC without rapidly overheating, let alone shooting something with it and be ready to "stare down" enemies, not being able to really torso twist or efficiently run away while shooting back from time to time.

But when you boat them, even if there are two of them, the problems really do go away. Heat? Well, you only need to worry about heating up while firind ALL your firepower, so you can fire for some time, then go away to cool down, then go back to firing, as opposed to having to actually chose betwen firing your whole arsenal or not if you have other weapons that have a "burst" heat generation. Tonnage? You really only do boat RACs on heavier mechs, which can have enough armor and free tonnage to take RACs and to stare enemy down without getting instantly wiped out, so you don't really have to bother about space, if you are going with heavier mechs to boat the RACs. Accuracy and inconsistent damage output? Well, this time "accuracy though the volume of fire" is actually a complete truth, because with 4 RACs, 2xRAC5 and 2xRAC2, you can deal so much damage per second of firing that even a fraction of bullets will deal actually strong damage, and if you manage to bring enough ammo - you can fire while you still cold, and even small fraction of bullets will deal enough damage to cause significant shift in enemy lines and enemy players behavior, how they cover and how eager they are to engage you, and then go back to cover and cool down. Staring time? Well, you have about 30 DPS, not damage per alpha strike, but DPS, which means you have to stare an atlas for about 6-8 seconds to drill though it's armor. Of all things, it's your enemies now who have to be bothered by how long you "stare" at them, while you really do not need to worry about that - your DPS is more than enough to deal with anything before any return fire can be seen. AND, not top of all that, there's still a blidning cloud that you produce in face of enemy pilot whenever you shoot him. And if with one RAC it's not THAT bad, with 4 of them the time to react to this cloud, to switch the view to third person and to engage heat vision to negate parts of the shiny fireballs is enough for RAC boat to just drill though you completely.

So, summing it up: if you boat RACs - all problems of RAC-based build either go away, turn into opposite direction and become your enemies' problems, or at the very least become much more managable, due to the ease of controll over a monotone set of weapons of only one type. Wile singular RAC in builds is actually a really fun weapon, because unlike most of other weapons in MWO it doesn't rely on high alpha strike damage, which is unpopular design in our modern days MWO. Though blinding fire and smoke will never be justifiable, they are FAR too oppressive, to the point where it's an issue for some people who are prone to seizures.

Solution to ALL these problems - give RAC weapon type as a whole an HSL of 1. This will make boating them impossible, while will retain one of the very few weapons that actually not rely on high alpha meta. No need to delete anything, it just have to be not boatable. And also the fire and smoke on-hit effects should go too, they have to be reworked.

You really don't hate RACs as weapons in general, you hate it when they are boated. You should try using a build with just one RAC and some other weapons, and you'll see that this is true. When they boated though - you are absolutely correct in your holy hatred, and i second it.

Edited by JumpingHunter, 19 December 2023 - 12:31 PM.

[ScrapIron Prime]

No, the solution to a mech boating RACs is teamwork. A mech with multiple RACs will make a mess of a single target. But to do so, it has to focus on that target, not dodge, not duck, and not torso twist. That turns it into a glass cannon. Which means the team mates of his target can just drill out one of his side torsos very quickly.

And if you're alone and taking RAC fire... reposition.

[martian]

ScrapIron Prime, on 19 December 2023 - 03:23 PM, said:

No, the solution to a mech boating RACs is teamwork. A mech with multiple RACs will make a mess of a single target. But to do so, it has to focus on that target, not dodge, not duck, and not torso twist. That turns it into a glass cannon. Which means the team mates of his target can just drill out one of his side torsos very quickly.

And if you're alone and taking RAC fire... reposition.

RACs just have their pros and cons.

Edited by martian, 20 December 2023 - 06:26 AM.

[JumpingHunter]

ScrapIron Prime, on 19 December 2023 - 03:23 PM, said:

No, the solution to a mech boating RACs is teamwork. A mech with multiple RACs will make a mess of a single target. But to do so, it has to focus on that target, not dodge, not duck, and not torso twist. That turns it into a glass cannon. Which means the team mates of his target can just drill out one of his side torsos very quickly.

And if you're alone and taking RAC fire... reposition.

That is true, but in a game like MWO, where which build you take to battle matters so much, making teamwork a legitimate balancing factor just doesn't work. Sure, in Faction Play or in Comp it will work, most of the time, but in Quick Play - very rarely. If you are not in tier 1 you won't have even half of your teammates at least remotely trying to help the team and actually looking on the map and on the enemy mech info. Most of the time they just will either run away or try to flank the RAC boat, because they have the experience of fighting it, and almost immenently losing, so they don't want to engage that, almost how a lot of assault mechs instinctively run from light mechs if they have an option to disengage, because of how inconvenient and rigged this matchup is.

That being said, if you see someone else being drilled through by RAC boat, this is your time to shine and to land a helpful hand to your ally - start engaging RAC boat, and maybe you will win that fight together. But when you are fighting it yourself - you can't expect other people to help you, as they are not predetermined game mechanic, you can't control whatever the sh!it they will do in any given scenario.

[JumpingHunter]

martian, on 19 December 2023 - 09:22 PM, said:

RACs just have their pros and cons.

Singular RAC - yes. 3 or 4 RAC boat - not so much. That's the biggest problem in MWO overall - most of weapons become something entirely different from what they actually suppose to be if they are being boated. And most experienced players tend to abuse this fact and come up with more and more annoyingly stupid designs, like plain MRM70, or HAG70, or 8xML, though medium lasers are pretty much made to be boated. This is a big problem, as it renders nearly all balanced "grunt mech" builds, like Enforcer with AC10 + 5xML, Vindicator with single PPC + 4xML + LRM5, and etc almost entirely useless in combat with these boats. Sure, you can be jack of all trades and engage on any range you want with balanced loadout, but a one-trick-pony will obliterate you in one or two shots, and then die to anothe one-trick-pony that had different effective range of engagement. And RACs are not exception here, they also become much stronger than they should be if they are boated.