98 replies to this topic

[Hawk819]

Steel Raven, on 06 August 2025 - 09:50 PM, said:

The MWO Plasma Cannon already work in a similar fashion, the damage/heat was lowered and no ammo is required. Why I still get it mixed up for a discount Plasma Rifle. I know PGI will never commit to a heat inducing weapon considering how many balancing changes have been made to the Flamer over the years but something based off that concept should be considered if we are now pulling ideas from MechCommander and MW4 fan Mods

Yea, but Clan RACs work the same as IS versions. Same Weight. Same mechanics. Guess what? They're not going to add them. The same could be said ER Pulse Laser. Same mechanic as the X-Pulse Lasers. Except the flavor would be the same as the MW4 versions: - - - -. But, will we get either one? No.

Edited by Hawk819, 07 August 2025 - 03:11 AM.

[Ttly]

cRACs would be nice just so I wouldn't have to double-tap all the time on the carpal tunnel machine like the MLX-D as long as it's as light as cUAC2 to fit on it at all.
2cRAC5 HBK-IIC would be pretty whatever compared to the Bushwacker too since it doesn't have anywhere the hitpoint count that matters on DPS/long exposure weapon like it even if better hardpoint location.

Also beam lasers and lxpls are pretty bad since you need to hit your target for more than 2 seconds for it to even start being better than large lasers/lpl that it shares similiar tonnage/slots with, really more of an punishing bad players that lets themselves get shot (and not shoot back) that long sort of weapon.

Edited by Ttly, 07 August 2025 - 06:47 AM.

[a 5 year old with an Uzi]

Void Angel, on 06 August 2025 - 10:24 PM, said:

OK, that's enough pearl-clutching. 40 points of pinpoint is a lot, but if it's one-shotting any but the most fragile Lights, much less "Mediums and some Heavies," that's only because you forgot to armor your Battlemech, or turned your back to the enemy. Even the very high alpha damage is already duplicable, or exceeded on chassis like the Stone Rhino 6. Might the 'mech need a nerf? Sure, but we'll have to play it live to find out for sure, just like always.

Keep in mind my Shadow Hawks have 50 on the right torso. 40 plus a partial laser burn depending on whether I react fast and roll the burn off well enough either comes dangerously close to stripping an XL side torso or exposing the structure outright.

Is this something particularly new? There are probably mechs that will already do similar. It's just... another. Doing it at very long range.

[Void Angel]

a 5 year old with an Uzi, on 07 August 2025 - 07:08 AM, said:

Keep in mind my Shadow Hawks have 50 on the right torso.

Well, actually they don't - not unless you're stripping armor. A skilled SH will have 105 total durability on the RT, with skills, and 61 points of that is armor. Unless you've been shifting way too much armor to your rear torso, the weapon isn't going to penetrate anything, much less one-shot the component (this has been claimed.) It's not even going to one-shot a Locust, from the front. Or a Javelin, or a Firemoth, or a Piranha... the list goes on.

Now, is anyone going to be shooting just the Railgun at you? Of course not! But those weapons are all going to be long-range lasers, or else require stagger fire to avoid melting your 'mech into slag from the Heat Scale penalties. This is a weapon that will punish staring and bad exposures; it will also be the second-highest Gauss-type DPS in the game. That might need adjustment - if the hard-locked space and tonnage costs aren't enough to offset the weapon's stats . And don't forget, it's also got the worst damage per heat of any ballistic, by a mile: the closest "competitors" are still 45% better in that regard. But none of this justifies the doom and gloom pronouncements I've been seeing in this thread. This weapon is not going to one-shot any Lights by itself, from the front at least. It's not going to one-shot any Mediums, and certainly not any Heavies; even in concert with its accompanying laser armaments, you'd have to be staring at an Assault.

So while this weapon/mech will require watching, it's way too soon to start running around predicting the apocalypse.

Edited by Void Angel, 07 August 2025 - 08:18 AM.

[Void Angel]

Rosarius, on 05 August 2025 - 03:27 PM, said:

Going past 50% heat when you alpha is scary though

What about 75%? =D Witness the awesome power of Clan Single Heat Sinks!

[a 5 year old with an Uzi]

Void Angel, on 07 August 2025 - 08:17 AM, said:

Well, actually they don't - not unless you're stripping armor. A skilled SH will have 105 total durability on the RT, with skills, and 61 points of that is armor. Unless you've been shifting way too much armor to your rear torso, the weapon isn't going to penetrate anything, much less one-shot the component (this has been claimed.) It's not even going to one-shot a Locust, from the front. Or a Javelin, or a Firemoth, or a Piranha... the list goes on.

Now, is anyone going to be shooting just the Railgun at you? Of course not! But those weapons are all going to be long-range lasers, or else require stagger fire to avoid melting your 'mech into slag from the Heat Scale penalties. This is a weapon that will punish staring and bad exposures; it will also be the second-highest Gauss-type DPS in the game. That might need adjustment - if the hard-locked space and tonnage costs aren't enough to offset the weapon's stats . And don't forget, it's also got the worst damage per heat of any ballistic, by a mile: the closest "competitors" are still 45% better in that regard. But none of this justifies the doom and gloom pronouncements I've been seeing in this thread. This weapon is not going to one-shot any Lights by itself, from the front at least. It's not going to one-shot any Mediums, and certainly not any Heavies; even in concert with its accompanying laser armaments, you'd have to be staring at an Assault.

So while this weapon/mech will require watching, it's way too soon to start running around predicting the apocalypse.

61 is LT where the BFG is. 62 technically since I follow Grimmechs recommendations for the SHD but w/e, I wouldn't expect someone going for an XL check to aim for that

Oh, SKILLED

I guess I'll see what the armor looks like when I finish the skill tree

I maintain that this is not a great idea

Edited by a 5 year old with an Uzi, 07 August 2025 - 11:34 PM.

[Void Angel]

The point is that there is no way in a Mahe hell that a railgun will merk a moving target in one shot - even with the alphas listed for those 'mechs, you're not going to be one-shotting any Heavies, which people are saying would happen. It's just a knee-jerk reaction without any analysis behind it.

[kalashnikity]

I don't see it stated clearly, this is a single rail gun on the mech?

Just checking because the graphic design looks like two "barrels", so this isn't a fully enclosed rail gun.

[Void Angel]

kalashnikity, on 07 August 2025 - 06:14 PM, said:

I don't see it stated clearly, this is a single rail gun on the mech?

Just checking because the graphic design looks like two "barrels", so this isn't a fully enclosed rail gun.

No, those aren't barrels - they're the magnetic "rails" that stick out and accelerate the slug. It's a common design in fictional railguns.

[Cerulean Knight]

I'm going to take a guess and assume the Railgun is based on the one seen in Mechcommander (https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Rail_Gun).

This'll be interesting to see on the field, to say the least.

[Ttly]

Void Angel, on 07 August 2025 - 04:44 PM, said:

The point is that there is no way in a Mahe hell that a railgun will merk a moving target in one shot - even with the alphas listed for those 'mechs, you're not going to be one-shotting any Heavies, which people are saying would happen. It's just a knee-jerk reaction without any analysis behind it.

No one really said one-shot through the whole thread, but it certainly is a brand of long range pinpoint damage that has its precedence in 2HGR Duelist, 3HPPC Thunderbolt, and 2HGR+ECM Fafnir, toss in Gausszilla in there too, stuff that has already been proven to do well already, except this time it gets to move faster/more armor/better hardpoint placement/use LE/XL/cXL, so on. And someone thought it's fine because it only gets to do its big damage every 10 seconds-ish.

Oh also slow lights exists and are definitely gonna get shut down hard by it.

Edited by Ttly, 08 August 2025 - 05:47 AM.

[Void Angel]

Ttly, on 08 August 2025 - 05:22 AM, said:

No one really said one-shot through the whole thread,

KS Highlander, on 06 August 2025 - 05:31 AM, said:

Now add a weapon that can one shot Mediums and some Heavies.

D V Devnull, on 05 August 2025 - 08:14 PM, said:

Seems a tad much, since it could One-Shot too many of the Light Mechs without regard to angle

Yes they did.

These and other objections are so overblown because people are engaging in ideological reasoning. They don't like the long-range sniper portion of the meta (which can be overpowering,) and see this as another entry encouraging that style of play. So we see people insisting that the gun can do things it empirically cannot do - or cherry-picking examples while ignoring the drawbacks of the total platform. There is a reason these guns are hard-locked onto their chassis.

It's not like released 'mechs haven't been underpowered in the recent past; it's not like 'mechs that are overpowered haven't been nerfed, either. But these nonsense posts and cherry-picked facts are not true analysis: even if the 'mechs turn out to be OP, these claims will not be right - just correct by accident.

Edited by Void Angel, 08 August 2025 - 09:35 AM.

[a 5 year old with an Uzi]

I am confident the Cauldron will tune it as needed, I am just not thrilled about the addition of an even BIGGER frontloaded long range high velocity ballistic that will encourage "do NOT be the first one this guy sees", leading to potential herded-into-killboxes-for-their-buddies situations constantly. Multiple sitting in advantageous positions is going to be really unpleasant to deal with, and on release there will be a spate of them.

[Void Angel]

That cooldown, though... The per-weapon DPS of this system is only so high because the base cooldown is almost 8 seconds. That's going to make close-quarters combat really problematic, as far as that gun is concerned. Of course, players can just use some of the energy hardpoints to power close-range weapons, but that'll reduce the build's long-term firepower. Will people play super-cautious in response to this 'mech? Yeah, probably; at least until they figure out that they can shoot it three times for every Gauss Rifle charge-up. But I don't think that'll be the problem you're afraid it will, long-term. The exact same kinds of build already exist, just with less up-front damage and more mobility and effective DPS.

[1453 R]

People are seriously underestimating the 7.5s base cooldown and how much of a pain it'll be.

Like, brief story time: I play a lot of Armored Core 6. My primary AC at the moment is an assembly called Silence, which uses a pair of machine pistols, a slow-moving but high impact chase missile, and a weapon called the EARSHOT - a gigantic fuggoff grenade cannon that deals massive damage, inflicts enormous stability damage, has a frankly unfair blast radius...and takes 9.8s to reload between shots.

9.8s. Nine point eight seconds. This gun shoots its unholy boomball of death once every ten seconds.

In a typical Armored Core 6 Nest (PvP) round? I usually get three shots with that weapon. I start the round with one ready, but by the time I find a chance to fire that shot, cycle the gun, fire it again, cycle, and fire a third time? Either the other guy's won or I have. I get to miss with an EARSHOT blast once - if I miss a second time, it usually means I lose, because missing such a huge chunk of my damage more than once means my lightweight, nimbly-bimbly AC simply can't keep up. I count my EARSHOT attacks, and the AC's entire piloting style and combat technique is about setting up chances to land the EARSHOT.

The Railcannon immediately reminded me of the EARSHOT, and I suspect it will behave broadly similarly. A weapon like the Railcannon that has such a huge per-shot impact and such a punishing cooldown changes the way you play the game. Missing a Railcannon shot will be massively punitive, and because it's so massively punitive to miss with a shot, players will generally be more cautious about landing their shots...which decreases their firing rate further since they're taking extra care not to whoopsadoodle their railcannon shots.

Getting hit by the dang thing is absolutely gonna Frowny your Face, but the overall impact is not going to be remotely so apocalyptic as people keep tryin'a insist it is.

[Audacious Aubergine]

Will9761, on 05 August 2025 - 04:54 PM, said:

A Railgun compensating for the lack of a Thumper Cannon is a fair compromise.

InnerSphereNews, on 05 August 2025 - 12:01 PM, said:

The Railgun will be a locked weapon unique to the two Bullsharks carrying it in their artillery mounts,

Artillery mounts might suggest that the Thumper could be a thing?

[Lepestok]

Voice of Kerensky, on 05 August 2025 - 07:20 PM, said:

PGI, if any of you decide to find out the reason for the steadily decreasing number of active players, here is some food for thought.
I went to play MBO on a day off. I played for three hours. I played 14 matches. Only in two of them did I end up on the winning team. My gaming experience: for 12 losses, there were only two wins, that is, the loss/win ratio is 6:1. Considering that on weekdays I can devote no more than an hour to the game (and that is a maximum of 5 battles), do you think I would want to spend this hour on a game that with a high probability can only give me a loss?
With all my sincere respect to you, PGI. Perhaps in one of the next patches you will remember about team balance?

Hmm, you enter the game and your team is losing. What could be the problem? Maybe the problem is not with the team, but with you? Maybe you are the one dragging the team down? No, that's nonsense...

[rascje]

LavaDa1shi, on 06 August 2025 - 06:47 AM, said:

I should have been more specific, I was referring to the fact about losing 12 out of 14 games one night, which sounds far fetched to me, off the top of my head I don't think I have had anything close to that before, I have definitely had losing streaks but again nothing close to that. And I'm not calling you a liar, more just saying that it sounds like a once in a blue moon type of thing, losing anywhere near that much.

Happened many times.

LavaDa1shi, on 06 August 2025 - 06:47 AM, said:

The problem of the match maker is a tricky one, right now the main thing it does is keep t5 away from t1, which it does a decent job of, but because of the low pop I believe it's very difficult to balance teams farther then that without making wait times 5 years.

100% agree.

Yes, I'm not a pro-player at all, I know that very well, but as Voice of Kerensky said, the MM should make sure the games are balanced. Then the problem is just like LavaDa1shi said: if we had to wait to have a balanced game, we'd probably play two a day... But I'm not a programmer, I'm a player, and I have no idea how to solve this problem, but seeing all those "gg" at the end of the game on stomp results, written in "all chat," to me is a joke and quite frustrating.
As I've said many times, instead of filling the game with new mechs or new maps and endlessly trying to balance quirks or whatever, let's first fix the BASE elements of the game and then probably with all the players, old and new, satisfied, things will become easier. For everyone.

[Void Angel]

Audacious Aubergine, on 08 August 2025 - 08:19 PM, said:

Artillery mounts might suggest that the Thumper could be a thing?

The weapon mechanics don't support the Thumper - apparently they've tried.

[Void Angel]

rascje, on 08 August 2025 - 11:43 PM, said:

as Voice of Kerensky said,

Ok, I have to stop you there. =D That guy's not someone you want to listen to; he's one of those that claims the matchmaker is punishing him by not feeding him what he feels are his due in easy matches - like this little gem of a post, where he uses a gambler's fallacy to claim that "team balance" is off because he lost games. If I found myself agreeing with him that water was wet, I'd go re-check my sources.

The discussion about the matchmaker has been had several times in the last few months - and the upshot of it all is that the matchmaker is doing the best it can with the player population it has. Consider the numbers (per Cauldron, who has access to that data:) Tier 1 is about 12% of players; and within that Tier, we have world championship compies and... people like me. Now, I do ok (especially now that I have a real-sized monitor again,) but I'm not amazing - so why am I in with premade lances from the Championship Series teams?

Because I have to be.

With only 11.7% of players being in the top tier (and ~8% in Tier 2,) there is simply not enough room to expand the tiers to give the World Championship contenders their own matches. There are simply not enough players to expand the Tiers - or even to enforce matching between the Tiers! That's the sad fact for a game this old, with a dwindling player base. Is it still fun? I think so; and we do get new players into the mix - but unfortunately there's not enough of us left for Enad-whatever to fund major development of this game instead of making MechWarrior5 expansions.

So the financial realities as things stand preclude solutions other than changing weapon balance, which we're already doing.