4 replies to this topic

[Josef Nader]

I'm genuinely curious about this, as with the announced "fixes" to double heat sinks, I can not for the life of me think of any reason to ever use either a PPC or an ERPPC, an ER laser of any kind, or a pulse laser. Given the heat scale of your game, you get much more mileage out of smaller, lower heat weapons that you can fire much more often.

I'm not trying to be sarcastic or unpleasant here. It's a legit question of mine. With DHS being pretty much useless as anything other than a weight-saving mechanism now, can the devs give me a build where using any of the above weapons would be preferable to their smaller, more heat-efficient cousins?

Another question; I'm a devoted user of the AC20. I was committed to learning it, as I knew that once DHS dropped, it was going to be much scarier than the gauss in a close brawl and that's what I love doing the most. As it stands, in the current heat system (and with the proposed changes), the gauss will simply be better than the AC20 in all respects, as the AC20 generates too much heat to be used in conjunction with other weapons (like larger SRMs, or energy weapons at all). As it stands, I currently cycle between my AC20 and my 2 SRM6s in my Atlas, leaving lasers out of the question entirely in a close brawl just to keep myself from overheating. I'd really like to be able to use those lasers too, and right now the only thing that would make that even remotely viable is dropping the AC20 for a gauss.

So yeah, the question stands; why take large energy weapons over something else? Why take an AC20 over a gauss?

[Vassago Rain]

They want you to not use them, because energy weapons don't have a huge ammo maintenance cost.

That's really it. I'm dead serious.

Remember when they said they were thinking of making repairing and upping the cost of lasers, too? Well, they partially got there with the open beta increases in cost of all energy weapons.

[Josef Nader]

So make them expensive to repair. As it stands right now, I can't think of any reason at all to ever equip one of those onto a mech, which sucks because I'm a huge fan of the PPC. I really -want- to like and use this weapon. I just can't.

[HC Harlequin]

I actually prefer lasers. Lasers, streaks and LRM's.

[Josef Nader]

It's not lasers I'm concerned about, as most everyone agrees that small, medium, and large lasers are decent weapons. It's the "trade heat for more x" versions that I'm curious about. ER Larges that trade for more range, ERPPCs that trade for more range and no minimum range, and pulse lasers that trade heat for more damage and shorter burn time. Why would anyone use those with the current heat scale, as heat is currently the biggest limiter on mechs bar none.