45 replies to this topic

[VaelophisNyx]

Now let me preface with: I understand RACs with no spinup sound Scary and probably would be if they remained unaltered other than that

what I am not proposing is RACs just getting a raw buff with no spinup. That'd be insane (though...I mean...C-Beams don't have a spinup, and are just Energy-RACs. )
That said my arguments are:

• Rotary weapons IRL do not spin up. If they are spinning, there are projectiles coming out OR they are 100% empty on ammo. The rotary mechanism and the belt feeder are intrinsically linked to save on complexity, size, and weight
  
• Spinup on a rotary weapon is a nonsense fabrication of video games, for seemingly no real reason other than "Cool" (Except in MWO we can't spin up and not shoot without causing the Jam bar to climb...for some reason. So not cool...)
  
• Spinup from a lore perspective makes no sense, as I'm pretty sure its never mentioned that they do, and wouldn't make sense if they did. See point 1

So, yeah, RACs. They shouldn't spin up at all. That doesn't mean they couldn't Ramp up to max RoF, though! And if this thing did happen (unlikely), RACs could probably be deserving of some sort of nerf. Be that spread, RoF, or raw damage per projectile. I'd be fine with any of those, even as someone who enjoys RACs (they're not remotely overpowered anyway, not in today's meta of slapping people for 50+ damage immediately. Face-time guns do not work well as-is)

The counter argument is that perhaps C-Beams need a faux-spin mechanic, for parity with RACs. Equally nonsense, but worth mentioning that they can start to do their damage immediately for the paltry drawback of overheating rather than jamming. (and at better ranges. With less weight/slots. And no ammo.)

[LordNothing]

as a fellow brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrtboy i agree. games never do gatling gun derived weapons correctly.

from a gameplay standpoint spinup still doesnt really make sense on a dps weapon. specifically a hot dps weapon that uses ammo and has spread. it has almost every op-weapon-gimping mechanic in the game, without ever having been op anywhere but perhaps lower tiers. id trade more spread for instant fire. there was a delay buff but it hasnt convinced me to even consider mounting the things (i use beam lasers and the jr7-a sometimes, but dont give them they same problem, they are hard enough to use effectively as is).

Edited by LordNothing, 15 August 2024 - 05:45 PM.

[VeeOt Dragon]

i completely agree. RACs should fire projectiles from the start then over the time it would normally take for the ramp up have them reach full fire rate. as far as things that would need programing go i would imagine this would be a simple change to implement. (i like pairing RACs with Light AC/5 if i have the tonnage as this at least gets a few rounds going downrange before the RACs start to fire.)

you are right as well it doesn't make any sense for them to have to ramp up before firing.

[LordNothing]

as i found out recently when i went to go work on my game engine, neglecting the code is a very good way to forget how everything works (even if you wrote it from scratch). add on top of that the stress of not breaking the infrastructure with your update.

however i think it would be as easy as changing a value in the xml. theyve done it before. just set the spin up delay real low.

Edited by LordNothing, 16 August 2024 - 07:24 AM.

[VaelophisNyx]

I'll be honest I wasn't expecting mostly just agreements, lol

Neat to see I'm not alone in thinking the spin-up isn't good though!

[kalashnikity]

VaelophisNyx, on 13 August 2024 - 04:36 PM, said:

Now let me preface with: I understand RACs with no spinup sound Scary and probably would be if they remained unaltered other than that

what I am not proposing is RACs just getting a raw buff with no spinup. That'd be insane (though...I mean...C-Beams don't have a spinup, and are just Energy-RACs. )
That said my arguments are:

• Rotary weapons IRL do not spin up. If they are spinning, there are projectiles coming out OR they are 100% empty on ammo. The rotary mechanism and the belt feeder are intrinsically linked to save on complexity, size, and weight
  
• Spinup on a rotary weapon is a nonsense fabrication of video games, for seemingly no real reason other than "Cool" (Except in MWO we can't spin up and not shoot without causing the Jam bar to climb...for some reason. So not cool...)
  
• Spinup from a lore perspective makes no sense, as I'm pretty sure its never mentioned that they do, and wouldn't make sense if they did. See point 1

So, yeah, RACs. They shouldn't spin up at all. That doesn't mean they couldn't Ramp up to max RoF, though! And if this thing did happen (unlikely), RACs could probably be deserving of some sort of nerf. Be that spread, RoF, or raw damage per projectile. I'd be fine with any of those, even as someone who enjoys RACs (they're not remotely overpowered anyway, not in today's meta of slapping people for 50+ damage immediately. Face-time guns do not work well as-is)


The counter argument is that perhaps C-Beams need a faux-spin mechanic, for parity with RACs. Equally nonsense, but worth mentioning that they can start to do their damage immediately for the paltry drawback of overheating rather than jamming. (and at better ranges. With less weight/slots. And no ammo.)

While we are at it, Gauss should not explode when destroyed, unless it is charged up.

[VaelophisNyx]

kalashnikity, on 18 August 2024 - 07:54 AM, said:

While we are at it, Gauss should not explode when destroyed, unless it is charged up.

sadly that may be a bit of a tall order. You could make them never explode, but that'd be cracked. But only when charged, would require code. Code PGI can't do anymore

Grospoliner, on 18 August 2024 - 05:34 AM, said:

I would say that RACs should be changed to remove spin up, but make them burst fire like they are in table top. This should be simple, and effectively would turn them in to the IS equivalent of a HAG. I also think that all standard AC should be made single shot to make the RAC burst more pronounced. The changes also would not impact ROF quirks since those would be incredibly beneficial still to get shots out faster. With them being burst fire, they would also need to loose Jam or have it tweaked. Say that you generate a bar of ramp up and the weapon instead is over heating and siezes up (naturally real rotary guns dont do this) or causes a massive heat penalty since you are spamming bursts.

RACs could also benefit from cooldown if they were burst weapons instead.

This is an interesting idea, though I'm not sure it'd fit with the current idea of what a RAC should be/do
Tabletop and MWO aren't perfect fits for each other, one assumes a single burst is a solid 10s long. The other has entire mechs explode in under 1s
Burst RACs would make them significantly less distinct I'd think, vs UACs and HAGs

[Samara 6J]

Honestly, I think you could cut the spinup and leave RACs the same otherwise and it wouldn't make them too strong. They'd still have all the same weaknesses that make them suboptimal right now, you'd just punish people more heavily when they misplayed.

Grospoliner, on 18 August 2024 - 05:34 AM, said:

I would say that RACs should be changed to remove spin up, but make them burst fire like they are in table top. This should be simple, and effectively would turn them in to the IS equivalent of a HAG. I also think that all standard AC should be made single shot to make the RAC burst more pronounced. The changes also would not impact ROF quirks since those would be incredibly beneficial still to get shots out faster. With them being burst fire, they would also need to loose Jam or have it tweaked. Say that you generate a bar of ramp up and the weapon instead is over heating and siezes up (naturally real rotary guns dont do this) or causes a massive heat penalty since you are spamming bursts.

RACs could also benefit from cooldown if they were burst weapons instead.

I'd rather have two unique weapon systems that expand the builds and playstyles available to use than two versions of HAGs.

Cooldown perk disparity could be solved in other ways, as by simply having cooldown quirks directly increase ROF for weapons that don't use a cooldown system, or by giving it a large impact on jam/heat bar reduction.

[simon1812]

immediate response fire would make it too powerful. you can get a similar effect by putting together 3 UAC2 on certain mechs and fire using the mouse's wheel, and thats not op because the trade off is the extra weigh and extra ammo involved.

if PGI for some reason decided to go for it, some adjustments would have to be made, reduce the number of ammo per ton, and the fire rate, the damage, and heat build up, jam chance, like PGI is not gonna give you the do all be all weapon...not on purpose at least.

[VeritasSuperOmnia]

Bind RACs to own weapon group. Constantly be pre-spinning them. Profit.

Hate to sound like a ****, but this is a skill issue. Is it a clunky mechanic? Yes. Can it be played around. Also yes.

[LordNothing]

if its too powerful just up the spread. make it a spray and pray weapon, sort of like the scattershot when it was new.

[LordNothing]

VeritasSuperOmnia, on 19 August 2024 - 06:32 AM, said:

Bind RACs to own weapon group. Constantly be pre-spinning them. Profit.

Hate to sound like a ****, but this is a skill issue. Is it a clunky mechanic? Yes. Can it be played around. Also yes.

uhm, no, that builds heat without damage output. it was specifically designed that way, probibly because of automatic gauss cyclers.

and people with skill just use a weapon that is more up front about damage. like uac5 or 10. there is a reason i dont use racs.

[VeeOt Dragon]

if you just keep the same ramp up time but have the weapon start fiing from the start its not really going to effect damage output all that much. remember that the damage indicator (on the weapon stat) is per second of fire not per round. so yeah you can get some damage out faster but not overall as you will not be doing much for that first instant. the damage per heat will still be about the same over the entire fire time of the weapon. hell that early damage from the ramp up wouldn't even be that much, you would still have to face time the enemy to get any real damage out. spool ups for Gatling guns of any sort have always been stupid and anyone that knows anything about firearms knows thats not how they work.

[LordNothing]

variable dps would do. dps starts slow and ramps up until jam/overheat or button release, then the cd would be based on how long the weapon was firing. but it would be a new mechanic. would require code == never going to happen.

Edited by LordNothing, 19 August 2024 - 07:30 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

VeeOt Dragon, on 19 August 2024 - 06:55 AM, said:

spool ups for Gatling guns of any sort have always been stupid and anyone that knows anything about firearms knows thats not how they work.

Most game developers don't actually care about how firearms actually work when they implement spool up, it's about interesting firing mechanics and rule of cool, which is why using realism when talking about a stompy robot game as reasoning for making a change is and always will be, goofy.

RACs are honestly in a weird space, much like dakka they suffer from not being as easy to use. X-Pulse is hitscan and has no wind-up time which makes it super flexible against fast or slow targets, and easy to use at range.

Honestly a slightly shorter wind up time (currently it's the same as Gauss) and potentially ramping up the DPS/HPS a little bit but make it much easier to jam/unjam might help it out a little bit without making it oppressive. It shortens the window it needs to do a good bit of damage but put caps in place so that it can't do near as much damage before jamming/overheating so you can't melt people as easily (or repeatedly). Shortening the window it can even do damage ideally also gives time for a follow-up response from the target as well if they don't have config to reduce the blinding or have trouble with cockpit shake.

That and potentially better velocity and reduced spread.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 19 August 2024 - 07:40 AM.

[LordNothing]

i dont see how a weapon that fires later without the benefit of tacking or homing is considered cool.

also ignore the fact that no gatling gun spins up that slowly. except maybe the civil war variety with a drunk gunner. the fact that it spins down the long axis means that its moment of inertia is easier to overcome with the really powerful electric/hydraulic motor. russian guns are gas powered which gives them insane spinup (and a requirement for breaks to keep the gun from flying apart).

knocking the cd down i think is the best fix. and that might come with a nerf elsewhere (even though i really dont think it will make it that much more powerful, it will just mean a lot more people use it).

Edited by LordNothing, 19 August 2024 - 08:17 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

LordNothing, on 19 August 2024 - 08:08 AM, said:

i dont see how a weapon that fires later without the benefit of tacking or homing is considered cool.

I mean spin up is similar to Gauss charge but for rapid fire weapons. It limits how you use it a bit, but the trade-off is that it is meant to offer better damage (or in the case of Gauss, heat efficient damage). There's plenty of ways to make weapons behave more uniquely without just making all weapons about breakpoints like typical shooters because this game really doesn't have breakpoints in the first place.

[LordNothing]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 19 August 2024 - 08:42 AM, said:

I mean spin up is similar to Gauss charge but for rapid fire weapons. It limits how you use it a bit, but the trade-off is that it is meant to offer better damage (or in the case of Gauss, heat efficient damage). There's plenty of ways to make weapons behave more uniquely without just making all weapons about breakpoints like typical shooters because this game really doesn't have breakpoints in the first place.

yea but thats a ppfld and we all know that ppfld > dps. especially when the goose is cold and the rac is hot.

Edited by LordNothing, 19 August 2024 - 03:14 PM.

[Xetelian]

Make it significantly shorter if people want to keep it

As it is it is a high risk, mid reward weapon

[Quicksilver Aberration]

LordNothing, on 19 August 2024 - 03:02 PM, said:

yea but thats a ppfld and we all know that ppfld > dps. especially when the goose is cold and the rac is hot.

Ehhhh, I wouldn't say that, there's a reason the meta lights are pretty heavily focused around LMGs outside the few special mechs like the FLE-19 and Warthog. Even the beam Shadow Cat can be useful (though that is significantly diminished with the Plasma buffs ). Goose is nice, but only when it's combined with some hot lasers, otherwise by itself it's pretty meh.