29 replies to this topic

[Bigbacon]

so when this garbage going to get nerfed?

[Krashbox]

With all the new high alpha assaults I hope never.

[Swamp Ass MkII]

Turn around and shoot it.

[Meep Meep]

Mag/ap have given many lights a new life. It's short range and typically mounted on a 20 tonner. If one rolls up on you then calmly turn and one shot it. It won't eat through your armor before you kill it.

[East Indy]

Lotta bad takes, but ironically pointing to what's wrong.

This is setting up to be assaults with 60+ alphas vs. ap/mag-Warthogs/Fleas, at huge expense to most everything in between.

Dumb, but fixable.

[GreyNovember]

Meep Meep, on 08 August 2024 - 08:20 PM, said:

Mag/ap have given many lights a new life. It's short range and typically mounted on a 20 tonner. If one rolls up on you then calmly turn and one shot it. It won't eat through your armor before you kill it.

Unless you are one such light, that doesn't mount immediate pinpoint damage.

Then you're kind of made obsolete, and it boils down to how much of a difference mech choice makes between the pilots.

Or how outnumbered the MagshotBoater is.

[Swamp Ass MkII]

GreyNovember, on 10 August 2024 - 08:46 AM, said:

Unless you are one such light, that doesn't mount immediate pinpoint damage.

Then you're kind of made obsolete, and it boils down to how much of a difference mech choice makes between the pilots.

Or how outnumbered the MagshotBoater is.

I can, and not afraid to admitt, I suck with the Warthog, but, it's still fun, sometimes!

[GreyNovember]

Swamp *** MkII, on 10 August 2024 - 08:48 AM, said:

I can, and not afraid to admitt, I suck with the Warthog, but, it's still fun, sometimes!

I'm certain being able to place 20~ damage on one component at what is effectively hitscan considering the range for minimal heat, then scurry away while having a smaller profile + Faster movement speed than a Hunchback can bring, is.

At least until everyone gets sick of it and starts prioritizing you when they see you in the open.

It does however make for very polarizing gameplay.

[Meep Meep]

Warthogs are slow and clumsy and don't do brawling or poking very well. They very much rely on distracted mechs to farm their damage. Of course you don't want to try to 1 vs 1 it in any light and many mediums inside their optimal but again they are slow and clumsy so easy to evade.

[Wraith 1]

The only build that's a problem at all is the Warthog, and even that one's only a problem because it singlehandedly ruins every light solaris event. Take off the armor quirks so that other 35T knife fighters can stand a snowball's chance in hell against it with comparable pilot skill and it's fine.

[GreyNovember]

Meep Meep, on 10 August 2024 - 10:38 AM, said:

Warthogs are slow and clumsy and don't do brawling or poking very well. They very much rely on distracted mechs to farm their damage. Of course you don't want to try to 1 vs 1 it in any light and many mediums inside their optimal but again they are slow and clumsy so easy to evade.

Running at about 90 is enough to harass 80-90% of mechs you'll actually see on the field such that they can't just get away from you once you're in range.

The only things that are a problem are faster mechs ( so Locusts, Fleas, Arctic Cheetahs, Vipers, etc) that DO see you, and have to respect your range, because you're going to put more damage where it matters faster than they can.

[Meep Meep]

True but those mechs tend to have a lot more armor and damage output. Maybe if the warthog catches one in isolation but those torso are super easy to lop off and once you get one side its more or less over.

[Drenzul]

GreyNovember, on 10 August 2024 - 04:16 PM, said:

Running at about 90 is enough to harass 80-90% of mechs you'll actually see on the field such that they can't just get away from you once you're in range.

The only things that are a problem are faster mechs ( so Locusts, Fleas, Arctic Cheetahs, Vipers, etc) that DO see you, and have to respect your range, because you're going to put more damage where it matters faster than they can.

Yeah but the issue is, most of the mechs you are significantly faster than, also out-gun you significantly.

Problem is if a team doesn't deal with enemy lights, they run rampant. In a decent team, they make it much harder
for lights to do that.

Also multiple non-gauss mechs that will quite happily do more to assault mechs when they get behind them. Many
light mechs can fit 4x hml for example, thats 40 alpha. Easy to apply that pin-point in that situation.

The higher level the team, the less useful the warthog is, cos it's relatively low speed means it can't get into harassment positions as easily, has no ecm and is pretty short ranged.

There are many mechs that are completely OP if you let them get sustained accurate fire on a target. Warthog just highlights
the issue more than anything. Only thing warthog really excels at is murdering other lights.

[1453 R]

Question.

How do y'all want the magshot/AP Gauss nerfed?

Are you talking about doubling its cycle time? Reducing the velocity to 150m/s? Implementing absurd levels of ghost heat such that firing three or more is prohibitively punitive?

A'ight.

Let's talk about reducing the weight on AC/2s and AC/5s to three or four tons, and the Light models to even less. because for the absolute longest time the only viable "ballistic" weapon on light 'Mechs was the machine gun, and everybody hates machine gunner lights, too. Or red laser spam lights. Or...well, let's be real. Any light 'Mech that isn't utterly ineffectual and completely ignorable - looking at you, Light PPC 'Sniper/Harassers' - is Simply Not Okay. Great robit heavens forbid the fatbro jocks actually have to keep a gimlet eye out for smaller, faster machines that can leverage their speed to dance around the crosshairs of yon sixty-plus tons of autocannon or 200+ missile tubes. Naw - anything light and nimble enough to stand a reasonable chance of evading Clumsy Assault Pilot fire should be forced to carry armaments so anemic that the Clumsy Assault Pilots can safely ignore those lights entirely and focus on their Iceberg vs. Iceberg robot sumo match in the middle of the map.

Get real. There's, like...three, maybe four Magshot/APG 'Mechs that are actually a credible threat. Warthog through sheer spam - andlet's all remember everybody hated the HMG Warthogs before APG ever became a thing, and HMG Warthogs still deal notably higher DPS - the Flea through judicious use of exceptional mobility, maybe the one eight-APG Viper, and honestly not much else. The new Cicada sure isn't a threat - it's too outsized and bulky to fight the way the Flea does, and it doesn't have enough weight of gun to fight the way the Warthog does.

If you get smacked down by a Warthog, it's more your fault than not. That 'Mech is the definition of Ambush predator - it cannot handle an open, stand-up fight. The Flea is quick and nimble when it needs to be, but it's still sixteen whole damage per shot. You'll survive.

Can we not invalidate light 'Mechs? Again?

[Saved By The Bell]

It should be gauss shooting mechanic, thats all

now its like ac without weight and heat

Edited by Saved By The Bell, 11 August 2024 - 09:29 PM.

[1453 R]

A'ight. Charge-to-fire.

Silver Bullet style, i.e. a mostly negligible blip before KSHOOM?

Normal Gauss style, charge a full second or more before KSHOOM and end up relegated to nothing but a sidecar on laser builds?

More? Shall we crank it to three seconds? Five? Ten? One second per charging MagPG? Shall we hard-limit Magshot/APG to two weapons at a time like standard gauss weapons?

* * *

Raise your hand if you've played Armored Core 6 - or any of the older Armored Core games, for that matter.

What's the firepower difference between a light, fast AC and a massive, heavily armored AC bristling with weapons? Gnerally, a factor of roughly 2x. Maybe 3x at the outside, and in 6 at least that's almost never really the case. Heavier ACs can carry heavier weaponry more easily, but that usually amounts to having burstier damage rather than MOAR damage. An Earshot grenade cannon deals enormous damage and stagger in a single huge explosion, but its nine freaking second reload time means it actually has significantly lower DPS than the lightweight, rapid-firing weapons more prevalent on smaller machines. Heavy ACs - especially in 6 - win by being dramatically tougher to take down rather than by having manyfold more the firepower of smaller machines.

In MWO? A single Koloss carries more weight of weaponry, more raw firepower, than eight or nine typical light 'Mechs. An entire twelve-'Mech company of Magshot Fleas has less killing power than one single freaking Koloss. A single assault 'Mech has three or four times the durability of a typical light 'Mech and generally well more than five times the firepower. Koloss, Mako, and the other recent Giga Alpha assaults can instagib a Flea with a single salvo no matter what the Flea's condition is. The balance of power and combat effectiveness in this game is skewed so heavily towards Fatbroism that comp rules have to explicitly forbid teams from bringing nothing but fatties or they would never bring anything lighter than seventy tons to a match - and the seventy-tonners are the ones tasked with running cap and interference.

Again - if you truly think these things are Ohh Pee, buy one and play it. Costs, what? Eight million C-Bills tops to acquire and outfit an FLE-19? Buy one. Put eight Magshots on it. Burn some GSP from your dragon's hoard of thousands of GSP to give it the basics. Take it out, and see how well you do as this unstoppable avatar of murder that's so terrible it needs to be nerfed into uselessness.

I guarantee you'll be surprised by the results.

[Besh]

Drenzul, on 11 August 2024 - 02:38 PM, said:

Yeah but the issue is, most of the mechs you are significantly faster than, also out-gun you significantly.

Problem is if a team doesn't deal with enemy lights, they run rampant. In a decent team, they make it much harder
for lights to do that.

Also multiple non-gauss mechs that will quite happily do more to assault mechs when they get behind them. Many
light mechs can fit 4x hml for example, thats 40 alpha. Easy to apply that pin-point in that situation.

The higher level the team, the less useful the warthog is, cos it's relatively low speed means it can't get into harassment positions as easily, has no ecm and is pretty short ranged.

There are many mechs that are completely OP if you let them get sustained accurate fire on a target. Warthog just highlights
the issue more than anything. Only thing warthog really excels at is murdering other lights.

A competent Team, almost nothing comes close w/out everyone knowing about it, and counter already in place .

Ofc, loads of Games, you will have half or more of your Teammates bumbling around lowground/chilling in cover not seeing anything...and consequently getting picked off by stuff like the Warthog .

And then those people start blaming the 'Mech .

[torsie]

I like there are new small weapons, especially ballistic, there are many fun mechs that you can play only with machine guns and that is little boring, so it is more fun to play them with lasers or missiles.
So having more guns is good.

I do not know about events, but in quickplay these tiny gauss guns are strong or useful, or some similar positive word, I do not want call them super strong or over powered, people often react to things that way, but in both T1 and T4/5 they work very well.

I think Ghost Heat would be best solution, make it start somewhere around 5 or 6, this would still allow mechs to use them without problems, it is mostly the big ones like Warthog or Piranha that use 10+.

If you look at MechDB, on light mechs with ballistic hardpoints, there is 2 IS and 6 Clan mechs with 5+ Ballistic hardpoints, at 6 it is 7 mechs, at 7 it is 4, 8 hardpoints is 1 IS and 3 Clan mechs and 9+ it is only 2 Clan mechs.
There are 6 light ballistic mechs who would not even be affected by this change.

Or make them charge up like normal gauss, but allow people to charge 4-5-6 mini gauss at once, and I do not know if that is possible, or if you can not change it from 2 at once.

I have my tiny machine gun flea and I like it, but when I tried 8 magshot flea instead, it feels so much better to play. Even when you compare the numbers (Firepower/dps/max) my machine gun flea "should be better" 8,3/10,2/10,9 compared to magshot 16/7,2/9,4. But being able to just run in, click and disappear is so much stronger.

I am bad, I can not aim, when I run around at 140+- speed I can not aim whole time at single place, but with magshot I can hit same place more often more easily and for more damage.

I think that is big thing on these weapons, lasers are hot, that Piranha with 10+ lasers can not shoot very often even if you put only micro lasers on it, and you still have to aim on same spot for full damage.
Rockets spread their damage all over and for machine guns you have to sit there for long time to do same damage.

Warthog is not good or bad, it is only result of this game making everyone put as many weapons on mech as they can. It can still go around 100 speed, it is still quite small and it has 2-3 times more armour and structure than my Flea. Without any skills or moving, just putting all Ap gauss on it on mechDB, it can shoot 11 times that is 300 damage within 22 seconds, if you can actually sit there for so long, that is enough to destroy assault mech by shooting it into CT from the front. If you could actually stand there for so long, usually when I play light mech, I run in shoot, run away, even if I do not have hot mech, I usually can not stay around, especially not with IS XL engine.

That is before skills or putting in more heat sinks, and you can still put something like ER large laser on it and at any moment you can not go in, you can poke people from 1000 meter range.

If you put single AC20, you will still not have some numbers for damage, you will not be able to carry same amount of ammunition on it and because it is clan you shoot multiple projectiles, making it more difficult than just clicking with gauss guns. And you can forget that large laser without stripping half of your mech.

Warthog is not the problem, it is only very popular, because it is good at this one specific thing.
It will get worse when people realize that you can replace machine guns on any mech with tiny gauss guns and it will work better.

I have experimented with Arctic Cheetah, tiny, fast 120+, jump jets and ECM and 6+ gauss.
Osiris with SRM and Magshots, tiny, fast, jump jets.
Piranha again, I actually like that smaller one more, I think it is Piranha B, it has 40% ballistic range, so your gauss gun has almost 400 meters range without skills and it has ammo quirk, but you can run that horror with 12 weapons and still keep it around 140 speed.

I have seen several times someone play Mist Lynx, 8 gauss, 100+ speed and jumps and when it was in T4 it killed half of the team, absolutely terrifying.
Someone said, I think in discussion about LRM that you can not make weapon strong for T1 players because it would be super strong in T5, and these new tiny gauss guns are exactly that.

Outside of light mechs, Viper is something like warthog, but better, tiny, fast, jumps, lot of guns and lot of armour.
And that new Cicada is larger, but it still has lot of weapons, 100+ speed and jump jets and you do not even need XL engine.

I even put them on my King Crab.

Edited by torsie, 12 August 2024 - 10:45 AM.

[LordNothing]

i like to run assaults and squirrels, and the squirrels are clearly harder to run hands down. when something <40 tons gets a back shot on you that may seem like a cheap kill, but to the light, everything is a cheap kill. especially when faced with the human aimbots in the higher tiers. whatever situational awareness the assault pilot needs to counter enemy lights, the light needs all the time just to survive. the assault might be able to take 2 or 3 hits but the light barely takes one, usually losing something in the process, and if that thing was a leg or the one half of your cxl/lfe, you just lost your only defense, your speed.

so anyone who calls out for lights or their weapons to be nerfed needs to run squirrels for a week.

Edited by LordNothing, 12 August 2024 - 05:02 PM.

[VaelophisNyx]

I'm split on APG/MagShot
On one hand, it is NASTY when you can boat a ton of them, and get a sneaky flank in
on the other, there's not many things that can boat them efficiently, and they suffer from extreme ammo starvation without sacrificing a lot of tonnage and slots to ammo bins

I think if they cooled down less quickly or had a tiny bit of spread, it'd be fine. Maybe potentially nerf the boat-ability of them by the real sore-thumbs like the Warthog and Flea, but honestly I more often see those builds getting dumpstered before they can do too much damage


I definitely do not want to see anything get quirks to improve the performance of them though. Even ammo. Let them remain a niche pick