146 replies to this topic

[Thomas Hogarth]

I see a lot of comparisons to modern day tank cannons. As tank cannons fire a single shell easily defeated by Battletech armor, this is problematic.

The 120mm gun on the Abrams has been compared to the Light Rifle in BT stats - it'll hurt stuff with commercial armor and infantry, but won't dent Battlemechs.

[Solis Obscuri]

Kartr, on 11 April 2012 - 05:16 PM, said:

Post temporarily removed so I can fix it, stupid browser ate the second half of my post

I think you can put in a maximum of 6 or 7 separate quotes in a single post before it goes ker-fluey.

[Kartr]

Ok been thinking about this and some of the assumptions that we're all making. In light of that I've decided it would be a good idea to list what we know so that we can make more reasoned arguments for what we don't know.

What we know:
1. DPS or damage per second is based on how much damage is done in a 10s window.
2. Autocannons are weapons that fire multiple shells per shot.
3. Autocannons fire shells ranging from 30mm to 203mm in diameter.
4. Autocannons have a time of flight for their shells.
5. Autocannons generate recoil which affects grouping.
6. Lasers are pinpoint weapons that have very small "diameters."
7. Lasers damage can be increased by increasing the frequency or the duration.
8. Lasers have an instantaneous "flight time."
9. Lasers generate no recoil.
10. All damage done by a laser or AC is done to one location, even when the 'Mech hit is traveling at right angles to the flight path of the weapon.
11. To place as many rounds as possible in the smallest possible grouping ballistic weapons are fired in bursts.
12. Damage rating is based on how much damage the weapon does per shot, not per second.
13. The 10s window includes movement and torso twisting as well as time to aim.

What we don't know:
1. The duration of a lasers beam.
2. The rate of fire in an AC burst.
3. Whether or not the damage is "front loaded" or spread out across the entire 10s window.

What we can infer:
1. Lasers are small enough and reach their targets quickly enough that pilots can adjust their aim "on the fly" to keep most or all of the damage located in one area.
2. AC/s have a much longer flight time and are much larger in diameter then lasers and they have to deal with recoil, windage and drop.
3. To keep all the damage an AC does in one area the bursts they fire must be extremely short in duration.

Reasoning: If an AC were to fire all its rounds in half a second the difference of where the first round strikes to where the last round strikes could be over 15 meters if the target is moving 120km/h. If the enemy 'Mech is moving at 60km/h and the time between the first and last shell being fired is 0.5 seconds then they will strike roughly 7.5 meters apart. If the duration of the burst is 0.1 second then the first and last rounds will strike up to 3.5 meters apart if the enemy 'Mech is moving 120km/h at right angles and 1.75 meters apart if the enemy 'Mech is moving 60km/h at right angles.

4. Lasers have a duration of several seconds to achieve their damage potential.
5. Neither AC/s nor Lasers have to be restricted to one shot every 10s because the abstraction for movement and aiming times does not have to be factored in.

Reasoning: The reticules increase in size and move around based on the movement of your 'Mech and the pilot is actually doing the moving and aiming so the time it takes will vary. Since these things are modeled in real time and vary based on the situation refire times can be established in such a way as benefits game balance and makes sense.

Conclusion: The only way for AC/s to deal damage the way they do is for all the rounds to be fired in a tenth of a second or less. Lasers can and should have a duration based on the window of time given and the actual nature of lasers. Lighter caliber AC/s can and should be able to be fired faster to reflect their smaller calibers and/or number of rounds per burst.

There's my reasoning.

On a side note if you watch the game play trailer the medium lasers on the Atlas have a duration of 1s and an apparent cycle time of 2s. The AC/20 appears to fire all its shots in a fraction of a second striking a single area and recycle in about 3s. Of course that could change easily enough, but I thought it was worth noting.

[Sassori]

I'm not really a fan of the way lasers are being done with the burn spreading all over the place into different hit zones but it is infinitely better than gatling gun AC/20's. MW3 is about the closest to the 'machine gun' analogy I'd like to see out of Autocannons, very fast heavy hitting bursts and a long recycle time to follow. This is BattleTech, standing in the open will get you killed no matter if you're an Atlas/Awesome or a Jenner/Locust. You have to move, you have to use terrain features, and you have to fight smart in order to stay alive or you will get chewed up and spit out of the grinder that is war.

An AC 20 lets you possibly get in a /massive/ hit in a single location. That's what makes it worth the weight/crits/ammo. Otherwise 4 medium lasers is hands down better every single time.

[LordDeathStrike]

Thomas Hogarth, on 11 April 2012 - 05:34 PM, said:

I see a lot of comparisons to modern day tank cannons. As tank cannons fire a single shell easily defeated by Battletech armor, this is problematic.

The 120mm gun on the Abrams has been compared to the Light Rifle in BT stats - it'll hurt stuff with commercial armor and infantry, but won't dent Battlemechs.

so wrong. light rifle was equivelent to 60s era tank rounds MAYBE. the abrams fires depleted uranium slugs at like mach 3, thats a small guass rifle except that it uses chemical propellent instead of a rail gun. btw the navy currently has rail guns, aka guass rifles. theirs fire 2-3 kilo slugs at over mach 20.

the issue with mechwarrior weapons, is they were imagined up by old farts in the 60s and 70s based on what we had at that time. we have some stuff thats ahead of BT weapons now already (obviously not the lasers and ppc, but our gauss cannons are already superior if we build them in large enough caliburs).

Christopher Dayson, on 11 April 2012 - 07:58 PM, said:

I'm not really a fan of the way lasers are being done with the burn spreading all over the place into different hit zones but it is infinitely better than gatling gun AC/20's. MW3 is about the closest to the 'machine gun' analogy I'd like to see out of Autocannons, very fast heavy hitting bursts and a long recycle time to follow. This is BattleTech, standing in the open will get you killed no matter if you're an Atlas/Awesome or a Jenner/Locust. You have to move, you have to use terrain features, and you have to fight smart in order to stay alive or you will get chewed up and spit out of the grinder that is war.

An AC 20 lets you possibly get in a /massive/ hit in a single location. That's what makes it worth the weight/crits/ammo. Otherwise 4 medium lasers is hands down better every single time.

the main issue with running an all laser mech, is fitting enough heat sinks into critical spaces to keep fireing yo lazas. gotta spread your weapon types out so you can do dmg, keep doing dmg, and have enough armor to take some dmg, to be successfull

[Sassori]

LordDeathStrike, on 11 April 2012 - 08:18 PM, said:

the main issue with running an all laser mech, is fitting enough heat sinks into critical spaces to keep fireing yo lazas. gotta spread your weapon types out so you can do dmg, keep doing dmg, and have enough armor to take some dmg, to be successfull

Are you kidding? With the decreased weight and crit spaces of lasers fitting heat sinks isn't hard at all. Especially when you're just trying to cover the heat of 4 medium lasers. That takes... 2 additional heat sinks on top of the 10 that come with the mech. It is very easy to make heat neutral laser boats especially once we get into double heat sinks. You also don't have to worry about heat causing ammo explosions if there's no ammo.

The primary advantage (Really the only advantage) the AC 20 has /at all/ is landing all that damage into a single location. That's it. Otherwise it pretty much sucks when compared to 4 tons of medium lasers and accompanying heat sinks.

[Kartr]

Christopher Dayson, on 11 April 2012 - 08:34 PM, said:

Are you kidding? With the decreased weight and crit spaces of lasers fitting heat sinks isn't hard at all. Especially when you're just trying to cover the heat of 4 medium lasers. That takes... 2 additional heat sinks on top of the 10 that come with the mech. It is very easy to make heat neutral laser boats especially once we get into double heat sinks. You also don't have to worry about heat causing ammo explosions if there's no ammo.

The primary advantage (Really the only advantage) the AC 20 has /at all/ is landing all that damage into a single location. That's it. Otherwise it pretty much sucks when compared to 4 tons of medium lasers and accompanying heat sinks.

Exactly!
An AC/20 with 1 ton of ammo takes up 15 tons and 11 criticals, has 5 shots and generates 7 heat, worries about ammo explosions.
4 Medium Lasers and 5 HS takes up 9 tons and 9 criticals, has unlimited shots and generates 7 heat, doesn't have to worry about ammo explosions.
Also with 4 medium lasers if you get a critted and one of your lasers gets knocked out you still have three firing for 15 damage and you're generating 4 heat. If your AC/20 gets critted then you're doing 0 damage with it.

Hmm that's funny, you can like your own posts.

Edited by Kartr, 11 April 2012 - 08:51 PM.

[EDMW CSN]

I make it simple. Game balance.
For ease of comparison, i will just compare 4 medium lasers to 1 AC20 +1 ton of ammo.

Pros for 4 med lasers
=================
12 heat. 10 HS free from stock mechs, another 2 is simple enough
4 tons
6 tons if planning for no heat using regular HS.
0 Ammo consumption
Nearly Hit scan
Small weapon sizes, a hit to a right arm laser does not knock out the one on the left.

Disadvantage for med lasers
========================
PGI made them Damage over time.
Coupled with convergence it makes for harder precise shots.


Pros for AC-20
========================
7 heat. Mech has 10 HS free (runs chill)
PGI made them single shot direct hit.
Focused damage.


Disadvantage of AC-20
=========================
14 + 1 ton = 15 tons dedicated to 1 ton of ammo and weapon
Ammo explodes when hit or overheated.
5 shots per ton (!!!)
Convergence forces mechwarriors to pick their limited shots carefully.
Projectile travel time.
Stock configs often mount at most 5 to 10 reloads (King Crab, Hunchback, Atlas), quickly turning the AC to a dead weight if used poorly.
Weapon not usable once destroyed. A 4 med laser mech will need each laser destroyed individually.


So yeah...... wanna cripple ACs more ?

[Strum Wealh]

Actually, we do know (or, rather, have a reasonable estimate of) the duration of an Atlas' Medium Laser beam - it seems, from the GDC gameplay video, to be around 1 second in duration, with the damage being dealt across that duration.
Also, looking at the indicator bars in the lower-right corner and when the lasers fire (0:00-0:08), it seems they have a recycle rate (end of previous salvo to beginning of next salvo) of ~2-2.5 seconds.

In the same video (0:18-0:24), the Hunchback's AC-20 seems to fire a single shell and recycle every ~3 seconds.
The Atlas' LRM-20 in the same video (0:37-0:42) seems to show a recycle time on the order of ~2.5 seconds.

OTHO, the S7 dueling rules seem to dictate (for IS weapons):
Small Laser: 5 seconds (two cycles/turns)
Medium Laser: 5 seconds
Large Laser: 7.5 seconds (three cycles/turns)
ER Large Laser: 10 seconds (four cycles/turns)
Small Pulse Laser: 5 seconds
Medium Pulse Laser: 7.5 seconds
Large Pulse Laser: 10 seconds
PPC: 10 seconds
ER-PPC: 10 seconds
Fusion Flamer: 5 seconds
Vehicle Flamer: 5 seconds

SRMs (all): 5 seconds
LRMs (all): 7.5 seconds
Narc: 7.5 seconds

Machine Gun: 2.5 seconds (one cycle/turn)
AC-2: 2.5 seconds
AC-5: 5 seconds
AC-10: 5 seconds
AC-20: 7.5 seconds
LB-X AC-10: 5 seconds
Ultra AC-5: 5 seconds
Gauss Rifle: 7.5 seconds

All weapons deal full damage per cycle/turn (2.5-second interval).
Each weapon's heat generation is 4x the standard rate (full standard heat per cycle/turn).
Heat sinks take effect every cycle/turn.
A single jump could last four cycles/turns (10-second interval).

Personally, I feel that the S7 times could work, but that the damage should be changed to reflect the CBT per-turn/per-second values; going by the S7 rules, IMO, would lead to several weapons (particularly Small and Medium Lasers (and their ilk) and SRMs, both alone and in clusters) having dramatically higher damage-over-time capability than they should (and subsequently skewing the armor/durability-versus-firepower/damage balance a bit too heavily in favor of the latter).

Your thoughts?

Edited by Strum Wealh, 11 April 2012 - 09:03 PM.

[Sassori]

My thoughts? Get rid of that whole Solaris dueling thing altogether as it vastly skews the damage/ton/heat ratio's in an entirely wrong direction. Just stop using it for comparison. It was an optional ruleset for a reason.

[Thomas Hogarth]

LordDeathStrike, on 11 April 2012 - 08:18 PM, said:

so wrong. light rifle was equivelent to 60s era tank rounds MAYBE. the abrams fires depleted uranium slugs at like mach 3, thats a small guass rifle except that it uses chemical propellent instead of a rail gun.

I guess it's okay to be wrong, but I'd rather be right and cite sources that back me up.

http://bg.battletech....html#msg398122
http://bg.battletech...32.html#msg3832

I also decided to do your research for you in terms of the penetrator the Abrams fires. The very latest version fires a 22lb shell at 3,748 MPH. Since you likely won't bother doing the Mach at sea level conversion, that would be Mach 4.9. This delivers 12,053,854 Joules of energy to the target.

Meanwhile, a Gauss rifle fires a slug that weighs 275lb, and travels at Mach 7.87. This delivers 2,250,000,000 Joules of energy to the target.

Oh yeah, the 120mm Rheinmetall smoothbore and a BT Gauss rifle have a whole bunch in common.

And that doesn't even tell the whole story. BT armor is remarkably resistant to KE penetrators, but has issues with KE delivered with larger surface area. If I need to explain how I know this, I'll be SORELY disappointed in education systems as a whole.

Also I'll note that the 120mm being a heavy rifle makes zero sense whatsoever from a fluff viewpoint, as the last of the traditional MBTs(such as the Estevez) carried heavy rifles.

LordDeathStrike, on 11 April 2012 - 08:18 PM, said:

[color=#959595]the issue with mechwarrior weapons, is they were imagined up by old farts in the 60s and 70s based on what we had at that time. we have some stuff thats ahead of BT weapons now already (obviously not the lasers and ppc, but our gauss cannons are already superior if we build them in large enough caliburs).[/color]

If you did any research at all, you'd discover that the Light Rifle was introduced to canon in 2008.

[Steamroller Stig]

I prefer High alpha weapons over volume of fire weapons, but honestly I will make good use of them no matter their configuration. Really the ACs should be single shot whereas the ultra and rotary ACs should be burst and automatic fire.

Pvt Dancer, on 11 April 2012 - 12:53 AM, said:

Your assuming you can see 700m out to 'snipe'. Remember, this isn't the same as those old steaming pile of crap MW games.

what make's you think we wont be able to see 10 meter tall battlemech 700 meters off with a better graphics engine than those previous MW titles? seriously I can personally see a man sized target at that range with the naked eye and hit it with any decent rifle.

[Ivan Whackinov]

Kartr, on 10 April 2012 - 10:08 PM, said:

Actually the barrel length is extremely important. The longer the barrel the greater the accuracy, the longer the barrel the more time the gases from the propellent have to expand increasing the velocity of the round, etc.

This is off-topic, but I thought I'd dispel this myth, just since it's a pet peeve of mine. Longer barrels are actually LESS accurate than shorter ones, all other things being equal. When you fire a gun, the barrel flexes in a "whipping" motion, and the shorter the barrel is, the more stiff and resistant to whip it is for a given barrel diameter. The main advantage of a longer barrel is the other reason you stated, allowing higher projectile velocity for a given barrel pressure, allowing the gun to shoot further and hit harder. Long range rifles have longer barrels because they need to shoot further, not because it makes them more accurate, quite the opposite.

---

Now, here is my take on ACs - in order for them to be balanced in game they need to hit one location exclusively, with a single lump of damage. This could be either a single shell or a small burst in very quick succession. It doesn't really matter from a gameplay perspective; you can pretend it's a single shot or a very rapid burst, as long as all the damage is applied to the same spot on the enemy.

I tried to apply basic common sense and a moderate understanding of guns to the problem to sort it out myself:

As Johannes Falkner so rightly pointed out, the barrels on all the AC/20s in the TRO drawings are very short, and the range is also very short. These two facts point to very low muzzle velocities - higher muzzle velocities would give them much longer range, more akin to a Long Tom. AC/20s in Battletech are then really more related to grenade launchers or even a breech-loaded mortar than to cannons, which would explain why they are so hard to aim at longer ranges. This makes a certain amount of sense though, because the recoil of a 120mm gun like you see on a modern day battle tank is huge, but a low velocity gun would be more controllable.

Since muzzle velocities are low, any sort of KE round would perform very poorly, so chances are the standard round would be some kind of HE round, like a HEAT or maybe something like an EFP round that doesn't rely on high muzzle velocity to do damage.

So, using the HEAT round from modern battle tanks as an example, the M830A1 120mm HEAT round is ~50 pounds. This would probably be roughly equivalent to an AC/10 round, so you would get 40 rounds per ton of ammo, not 10 - leading you to believe an AC/10 burst would be about 4 rounds. Unless you assume that 3/4ths of the weight of the ammo is for the magazine itself, feed mechanism, and reloading equipment, etc. Which isn't really totally unrealistic, especially if the ammo is in a different location than the weapon itself (feeding 50lb rounds at high speed from a torso to an arm weapon would be a nightmare).

If you scale that up to a 200mm round you'd get something on the order of 140lbs/round (I only scaled up the diameter, not the length, since I assumed the larger round would have proportionally less propellant for the shorter range). This would give about 14 rounds per ton, or about 3 rounds per burst to give 5 bursts/ton.

In any case, the number of rounds per ton in the TT rules would seem to suggest that a short burst would make more sense than a single shot, with shorter bursts for larger ACs. The argument could be made, as I mentioned above, that the ammo handling mechanisms are a large part of the weight/ton for ammo, in which case maybe a burst isn't required, but combine that with all the fluff and it seems the burst is more likely.

If you used a gas operated revolver cannon type of firing mechanism, you could assume that the rapid burst is executed as the chambers of the cannon are spun at about 2000 rounds per minute, then a long reload time as the chambers cool down and are slowly fed new rounds before another burst can be performed. This would allow even very large rounds to be fired very rapidly for a short time, fitting the TT game mechanics somewhat closely.

This is my vote for how to design an AC/20 that approximately obeys the TT game rules - a short barreled revolver cannon firing EFP rounds at low velocity (~1000fps) in very fast (~.03 second) bursts, after which a long period of time is taken to reload the individual chambers of the revolver cannon. At that rate of fire the recoil from the first round would barely have time to shift the point of aim before the last round was fired, and even with a 200kph lateral speed differential between shooter and target, the spread from first shot to last would only cover about 1.5 meters - small enough spread that we could conceivably assume all shots would hit the same area on a 'mech.

---

Steamroller Stig, on 11 April 2012 - 09:55 PM, said:

what make's you think we wont be able to see 10 meter tall battlemech 700 meters off with a better graphics engine than those previous MW titles? seriously I can personally see a man sized target at that range with the naked eye and hit it with any decent rifle.

I'd bet a week's pay you couldn't hit a man-sized target on the first shot with any current military assault rifle @ 700 meters using iron sights. I'd bet a year's pay you couldn't do it while you and your target are both running

-E

Edited by Ivan Whackinov, 12 April 2012 - 04:04 AM.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

@ Ivan - the weight of the AC's is usually assumed to consist of the feed mechanism, anti recoil etc rather than that of the ammo. The AC10 & 20 are always depicted as short barreled and assumed to be low velocity. The AC2 & 5 are usually shown with much longer barrels and wouls appear to have higher velocities along with a longer range. The weight of each "shell" (or burst) has been taken by dividing the number of shots per ton.
I agree with your commnts otherwise.

I would imagine Stig was referring to civilian rifles, which are perfectly suitable for 700m with iron sights. Hitting anything at any range while running is exceedingly difficult - unless you happen to be in a mech

[WithSilentWings]

Kartr, on 11 April 2012 - 05:14 PM, said:

Because disregarding fluff we know that in the ten second window all the damage is done in a single location. Consider that if you have 2 'Mechs both moving at 60kph then each one is moving at 1,000m/minute or 166.7m every 10 seconds. Their combined movement will be over 330m in that 10s window. If they're moving on the same exact axis ie, directly towards/away from each other that isn't such a big deal. If they're moving along different axis the point of aim is going to shift by collosal amounts in 10s. None of this is even accounting for the recoil of a 150+mm shell, the rising and falling or the swaying of a 'Mech in motion.

These factors are why an AC has to fire all its rounds in a burst that lasts only a fraction of a second long. That minimizes the amount of movement between the 'Mechs between shots, minimizes the impact of recoil and the motion of the firing 'Mech. You still have to account for deflection, but at least you've minimized as many of the variables as possible. If AC/s fired bursts twice a round you would see them strike different areas on the enemy 'Mech, which is what happens with Ultra AC/s meaning they do fire bursts twice a round.

Kartr, I don't have the time to continue this argument but there are two major problems I have. First, you still appear to believe that having a small set of extremely different options makes for a more difficult decision... Let me try one more analogy here. When you're choosing weapons or any other aspect of your mech, you are making specific choices because of the niche (or lack thereof) that you want to fill. If I want to make a long-range artillery mech, why would I ever consider taking pulse lasers as primary weapons when I have access to LRM launchers? It's pretty black and white and so the decision is easy--there's no thought and no tinkering. LRM's are a clear choice for that niche. Now, what if there are 3 different brands of LRM launchers? One maybe locks quicker and holds the lock better but does less damage. Another may have a shorter flight time. Perhaps one is more agile and so can track faster targets easier... Suddenly there is REAL choice and some actual thought needs to go into the loadout. Essentially what you seem to continue arguing is that if you were to take a scout role in a lance, you'd have a tough time deciding on whether you'd want to use the Jenner or the Atlas, because by your logic they are very different and that should make the decision difficult...

My other issue... You are trying to push the AC's so they are more like the fluff, but then completely disregard some VERY important details. First--like many have stated, and I can attest to this--the fiction VERY FREQUENTLY mentions autocannons "stitching" across mechs and vehicles, picking them apart. This gives me a picture similar to the GAU-8 in the A10 Thunderbolt II, which we can all agree has at least what you can consider a noteworthy spread. Thus, the ONLY hint we have that these guns should fire in a laser-like instant with laser-like accuracy, is the fact that in a simplified and generalized tabletop game (they are ALL like this. If you spend ANY time with ANY tabletop game you will find things that don't make sense because they are easier and take less time) the AC does damage to only one location.

Consider the autocannon's size, the rounds it's firing, and the horribly unstable platform it's being fired from. Seriously, if a 50 ton mech like the Hunchback fired a 150mm cannon 10 times in less than half a second, it would be laying on it's back afterward.

You need to consider that especially at range, the angle at which each round is fired will have a huge effect on it's point of impact. An AC20 at it's max range of roughly 300m even if it fires at an absurd rate (let's say nearly 20 rounds per quarter-second like the GAU-8) any movement, turning, aiming, etc will lead to the rounds walking even at this crazy rate of fire. You would need to stand still, have some sort of weapon-specific stability system in place, have the weapon near or below your center of gravity, and have an immobile target to expect to hit in even the same vicinity considering the barrel lenght, round size and velocities we're talking about.

[WithSilentWings]

Christopher Dayson, on 11 April 2012 - 08:34 PM, said:

Are you kidding? With the decreased weight and crit spaces of lasers fitting heat sinks isn't hard at all. Especially when you're just trying to cover the heat of 4 medium lasers. That takes... 2 additional heat sinks on top of the 10 that come with the mech. It is very easy to make heat neutral laser boats especially once we get into double heat sinks. You also don't have to worry about heat causing ammo explosions if there's no ammo.

The primary advantage (Really the only advantage) the AC 20 has /at all/ is landing all that damage into a single location. That's it. Otherwise it pretty much sucks when compared to 4 tons of medium lasers and accompanying heat sinks.

I would very much like to see lasers doing less damage but I'd prefer to see them create more heat to balance.

[Hao Yu]

My take on ACs has always been that they should be treated like assault rifles in traditional FPS games. There should be advantages to them so that people won't always consider them weak compared to energy weapons. Fully automatic fire should be walkable, sustainable, and produce greater aggregate damage if you're accurate enough to make all the bullets in a burst hit.

If you want tabletop results, stop calling them "auto" cannons and just call them cannons. Make them big tank guns in big walking tanks and give them the proper range and damage commensurate for exploding tank shells. 120mm shell? That's over a 3000yd range if the M1A1/A2 is anything to go by. And it ain't that heavy either. 3-4 metric tons from what I can remember.

Edited by Hao Yu, 12 April 2012 - 07:51 AM.

[Johannes Falkner]

I will release the horde...
http://tennisnoise.f...e-squirrels.jpg

And then I will returnto argue RACs...

[Siilk]

@WithSilentWings: A lot of wisdom in your post. I thing I agree with all of it but I want to address one point specifically:

WithSilentWings, on 12 April 2012 - 06:53 AM, said:

Now, what if there are 3 different brands of LRM launchers? One maybe locks quicker and holds the lock better but does less damage. Another may have a shorter flight time. Perhaps one is more agile and so can track faster targets easier... Suddenly there is REAL choice and some actual thought needs to go into the loadout.

I cannot stress enough how important is to have choice like that. BT lore states that any particular type of weapon system(ACs, LRMs or lasers of the same kind) could vary in it's parameters from manufacturer to manufacturer. Even different models of the same manufacturer could be different. Things that are constant are damage per 10 seconds(that is a TT round), range, heat, weapon size and weight. DpS, RoF, lock-on time and many other parameters, that are irrelevant in TT but can be crucial in a sim could vary dramatically from one manufacturer to another. So, if such diversity is implemented, we could have a really great choice of different LRMs, ACs and other weapons to suit our needs. They could even have different pricing, reflecting their effectiveness and ease to use

[Wyzak]

I know it's already been implemented in a few iterations of Mechwarrior, but this is what I would like to see:

Autocannons fire single-shot, with individual damage adjusted down to compensate for the individual firing ability.
Holding down the trigger causes the autocannon to fire, well, automatically, but the cycle time is much slower for AC5,10,20 than for AC2
That way you can't dump 8 tons of uAC20 ammo in 10 seconds like in MW2 Mercenaries.

AC2 - quarter second recycle time
AC5 1 second recycle time
AC10 two second recycle time
AC20 4 second recycle time

I won't even bother calculating the damage, don't want to touch off a firestorm of denouncements.