534 replies to this topic

[Indoorsman]

Well I was running a 4PPC 1Gauss Atlas pretty well and thought I'd get some fraps to prove it. Fraps kinda gives me some responsiveness lag so it throws off my aiming sometimes. Maybe when they enable SLI I'll be able to provide a video showcasing PPC spammage even better :-p

Gauss is slightly OP.. but is balanced by only being able to use 1. PPC on the other hand right now you could boat, if you want to pay the penalty in heat. But that doesn't mean PPC suck when boated... Maybe they should make PPC take 2 energy slot if they consider reducing the heat, or reduce damage to reduce heat. But if they reduce heat of PPC and change nothing else, I think PPC would be OP.

[Diablobo]

I've been saying this for days now. THE HEAT SYSTEM IS BROKEN

They use TT weapon damage and heat values at triple the firing rates for the realtime video game adaptation, but they keep the heatsinks stuck in 10 second turn-based mode. WHAAAAT?

That's fine if you want to run around in an EZ Bake Oven, but isn't that throwing out the whole mech customization aspect of the game? If you want to stick too many weapons on your mech for what it has heatsinks, that's fine, but when you can't even design a mech that can fire 2 med lasers much less 2 PPCs, you have completely broken not only the whole point of customization, you have turned the video game into a "try and do as much damage between overheat shutdowns as possible" event. NO FUN and it's STUPID and BROKEN.

Edited by Diablobo, 10 November 2012 - 03:32 PM.

[Vapor Trail]

Indoorsman, on 10 November 2012 - 03:02 PM, said:

Gauss is slightly OP.. but is balanced by only being able to use 1.

Goodbye, Annihilator, you shall never be in MWO, for your ability to carry four, to say nothing of five Gauss rifles, is deemed game breaking.

Goodbye Stone Rhino. Goodbye Nightstar. Goodbye Mad Dog-D. Goodbye Night Gyr-B, Jagermech JM6-DG, and any other basic variant that uses dual Gauss Rifles in the design.

Goodbye Cataphract, Catapult CAT-K2, and any other mech design or variant that has two or more ballistic slots in different arm or torso locations.

Because the Gauss Rifle is "slightly OP" and balance must be reached by "only being able to use 1."

---

Or maybe we could fix the weapon balance? Maybe?

Edited by Vapor Trail, 11 November 2012 - 03:44 AM.

[Indoorsman]

Vapor Trail, on 11 November 2012 - 03:43 AM, said:

Goodbye, Annihilator, you shall never be in MWO, for your ability to carry four, to say nothing of five Gauss rifles, is deemed game breaking.

Goodbye Stone Rhino. Goodbye Nightstar. Goodbye Mad Dog-D. Goodbye Night Gyr-B, Jagermech JM6-DG, and any other basic variant that uses dual Gauss Rifles in the design.

Goodbye Cataphract, Catapult CAT-K2, and any other mech design or variant that has two or more ballistic slots in different arm or torso locations.

Because the Gauss Rifle is "slightly OP" and balance must be reached by "only being able to use 1."

---

Or maybe we could fix the weapon balance? Maybe?

Maybe I did say it was OP? The K2 isn't really a big deal but hopefully they fix gauss before those other mechs come... If they come. Also the point of my post was more about how if PPC had heat reduced right now they'd be OP, and already are pretty decent and will be even more so with added effects

[VoidConductor]

Each tweaking bolt require another ...

• DHS -> 2.0
  
• Gauss reload should be decreased ... to be similar in DPS with ER-PPC with some DHSs (>heat wise)
  
• ERPPC speed increase 10 - 50 km/s + EMP effect
  
• Min range PPC change to: damage to own mech section where PPC is mounted by chance (RNG) depending on range.
  
• LL and ER-LL lower duration
  
• DPS decrease of SLAS & MLAS ... or ... heat increase to lower dmg/hps ratios
  
• AC's speed increase (a bit), doubling ammunition (due to double armor).
  
• then LRM / SRM tweaking ...

Edited by VoidConductor, 11 November 2012 - 12:05 PM.

[AkalaOubli]

From someone who rarely uses Gaus and PPC's perspective, the game is broken all around not just in these particular weapons. Take a look at this little tidbit of information.

I'm running
Dual large lasers
one medium laser
two SSRMS2's
and about a hundred ammo which is about 1 ton.

Even fully repaired a hunchback running medium lasers can out damage race me. A friend of mine and I did this where we stood perfectly still and started firing at the same time. (Thank you vent). Her Hunchback with the same armor configuration a gaus and four medium lasers totally demolished my hunchback despite us firing center torso.

This is odd, I have 3 lasers two larger then hers and yet she out DPS's me due to the gauss. We stripped her of the Gaus and tried again. Same result. Which I found odd, until I realized the reason I was losing was heat. I was overheating after two to three shots of sustained combat. (This is why I skirmish with it). My mech was overheating post firing due to two factors, large lasers generate a STUPID amount of heat, and they continue to do so moments after the beam is gone. That momentary shutdown was more then enough for the same number of heatsinks to soak the heat and finish me off.


I honestly am afraid of Gaus armed units, but PPCs and AC/5's don't scare me all that much. I'll knife fight a PPC armed unit but I will not mess with a gaus unit if I can avoid it.

[Lightfoot]

[POV] I don't use Energy weapons anymore if I can help it. MWO PPC is non-Battletech in damage type so ends up really nerfed. Lasers are for Mouse users and I use a Joystick, maybe when they get Analog Turning this will change.

I piloted an Awesome all of Closed Beta because it was so poorly aquitted in the game. I don't think it did any good. Still the fastest mech to die and now no DHS.

Ballistics and Missiles, even SRMs, beat Energy, with the right loadout.

[Stabbitha]

Indoorsman, on 07 November 2012 - 02:47 AM, said:

People are at this very moment playing a game and only shooting slower than once every 10 seconds. Are they the majority or the minority, even amongst WoT players? How many more people are playing a game besides WoT, where you can fire more often than 10 seconds? You think MWO would be successful if it had a 10 second RoF? This is just ONE of your examples, the other 5/6 are bad examples obviously not even worth your own time defending.

*ahem* WoT is far more popular than I suspect MWO will ever be...

On October 4th, 2012, the game reached 40 million registered users, with record-breaking 500,000 concurrent players online on one server based in Russia.

And RoF is typically proportional to damage/accuracy. eg. Russians favour high alpha, long reload times, not so accurate whereas German's are more accurate, less damage, higher RoF. French, for example, have very fast ROF (cartridges rather than individual shells) with very long (30-60 second) reloads between magazines.

Indoorsman, on 08 November 2012 - 01:38 PM, said:

I agree, that's how it should be. That's not how it is w/most of the people posting in these threads. How many posts do you see people saying to mirror TT balance?

Dunno, how many?

I've always said that loss of weighted randomisation forever changes the game, but that heat balance should be similar to TT (ie. a gauss or ppc is similar in performance with gauss being ahead because it's ammo limited). This is thematically similar to TT, not a carbon copy.

Indoorsman, on 10 November 2012 - 03:02 PM, said:

Well I was running a 4PPC 1Gauss Atlas pretty well and thought I'd get some fraps to prove it. Fraps kinda gives me some responsiveness lag so it throws off my aiming sometimes. Maybe when they enable SLI I'll be able to provide a video showcasing PPC spammage even better :-p

Gauss is slightly OP.. but is balanced by only being able to use 1. PPC on the other hand right now you could boat, if you want to pay the penalty in heat. But that doesn't mean PPC suck when boated... Maybe they should make PPC take 2 energy slot if they consider reducing the heat, or reduce damage to reduce heat. But if they reduce heat of PPC and change nothing else, I think PPC would be OP.

Lol, you're joking right?

1. Your opponents were terribad, stationary atlas constantly shutting down, you should have been mauled by their long range guys.

2. Constant shut downs which are a total loss of dps. Fine if you're parked in the rear and the enemy is kinda enough to ignore you.

3. All it would take is one MLas jenner to reduce you to slag (another huge problem with the game) as your convergence at short range would be tragic.

You ended the game with close to zero damage inflicted to you (silhouette looks clean to me), stupid opponents does not make your bad build good...

[Bubba Wilkins]

Diablobo, on 10 November 2012 - 03:32 PM, said:

I've been saying this for days now. THE HEAT SYSTEM IS BROKEN

They use TT weapon damage and heat values at triple the firing rates for the realtime video game adaptation, but they keep the heatsinks stuck in 10 second turn-based mode. WHAAAAT?

That's fine if you want to run around in an EZ Bake Oven, but isn't that throwing out the whole mech customization aspect of the game? If you want to stick too many weapons on your mech for what it has heatsinks, that's fine, but when you can't even design a mech that can fire 2 med lasers much less 2 PPCs, you have completely broken not only the whole point of customization, you have turned the video game into a "try and do as much damage between overheat shutdowns as possible" event. NO FUN and it's STUPID and BROKEN.

My build runs just fine, thanks.

[Vapor Trail]

Bubba Wilkins, on 11 November 2012 - 06:49 PM, said:

My build runs just fine, thanks.

Lets see... You're generating what,37.56 heat every 3.25 seconds... and dissipating 9.685 (assuming those are double heat sinks, with 10 (.2 HdR) and 7 (.14HdR) sinks). So, if you're firing everything at max RoF, you get about two salvoes of SSRMs out, and then you're really worried about heat.

But I'm pretty certain you rely on the AC/5s and SSRMs as your main damage output, and fire the ERPPCs only when targets are outside the range of the other weapons, or if you figure you can kill the mech you've targeted with them.

Sound about right?

The PPCs on a Warhammer or a Marauder are supposed to be the primary source of damage output. Not tacked on weapons that get used only to coup de gras the target.

[Indoorsman]

Stabbitha, on 11 November 2012 - 06:04 PM, said:

*ahem* WoT is far more popular than I suspect MWO will ever be...

On October 4th, 2012, the game reached 40 million registered users, with record-breaking 500,000 concurrent players online on one server based in Russia.

And RoF is typically proportional to damage/accuracy. eg. Russians favour high alpha, long reload times, not so accurate whereas German's are more accurate, less damage, higher RoF. French, for example, have very fast ROF (cartridges rather than individual shells) with very long (30-60 second) reloads between magazines.



Dunno, how many?

I've always said that loss of weighted randomisation forever changes the game, but that heat balance should be similar to TT (ie. a gauss or ppc is similar in performance with gauss being ahead because it's ammo limited). This is thematically similar to TT, not a carbon copy.




Lol, you're joking right?

1. Your opponents were terribad, stationary atlas constantly shutting down, you should have been mauled by their long range guys.

2. Constant shut downs which are a total loss of dps. Fine if you're parked in the rear and the enemy is kinda enough to ignore you.

3. All it would take is one MLas jenner to reduce you to slag (another huge problem with the game) as your convergence at short range would be tragic.

You ended the game with close to zero damage inflicted to you (silhouette looks clean to me), stupid opponents does not make your bad build good...

Just cause it took you 4 days to reply doesn't mean I forgot about your 5 bad examples.

The point of the video was to show that PPC are in fact broken, but maybe not only in the way everyone thought.

[Stabbitha]

Indoorsman, on 11 November 2012 - 11:52 AM, said:

Maybe I did say it was OP? The K2 isn't really a big deal but hopefully they fix gauss before those other mechs come... If they come. Also the point of my post was more about how if PPC had heat reduced right now they'd be OP, and already are pretty decent and will be even more so with added effects

So the solution is ignore the imbalance by refusing to add certain mechs (including classic designs) because stacking two or more gauss rifles is OP?

eg. from the MWO wiki (may be out of date)

Forget TT, if you're going to triple, quadruple, quintuple ROF without adequate compensation to heat, the hot weapons will get exponentially worse. Eventually at some point, one shot will overheat the mech, if the number of heatsinks don't change. That number will come far sooner with hot weapons than cool ones. DHS don't change this significantly, they merely delay the inevitable (and perhaps allow a few of the mid range weapons to slip in to the same privleged space as the gauss, ie. truly heat neutral).

That's the core of the TT heat system, benefits and consequences. The heat table + less than perfect accuracy probably would have fixed the issues with lasers etc being OP @ 3xROF+3xheat dissipation + higher armour.

http://www.bbbstuff....tech_Tables.pdf

Bottom left of the page. You move slower, are easier to hit and risk shutdown or ammo explosion at various stages. You can choose to blaze away (and risk consequences) or take a more measured approach for sustainable DPS.

Your "build" is only "OP" (and I use the term loosely) because you were not engaged and had nothing to risk by pushing the limit with your alpha strikes. Even considering caustic has a higher heat floor than most maps, your PPC's would be almost non functional (even if you waive the close range restriction similar to an ERPPC) against any sort of mech at close range, particularly once you compound the heat with poor convergence. Your build is not dissimilar to Vlad's awesome laser boat in it's theme, dump a bunch of alpha, take a time out, bunch of alpha, time out. Both are inferior, considering the length of the rounds in MWO, to a mech that can continuously fire without need for downtime.

[Stabbitha]

Indoorsman, on 11 November 2012 - 07:36 PM, said:

Just cause it took you 4 days to reply

Yeah, imagine that, you're not important enough for me to check up on the meantime...

Quote

doesn't mean I forgot about your 5 bad examples.

You'll have to refresh my memory, which 5 bad examples? The most I recall making in one post was three, but I'm sure you'll be able to correct me...

Quote

The point of the video was to show that PPC are in fact broken, but maybe not only in the way everyone thought.

ie. they run too hot? Oh great, so you agree with us. And your solution? "Tweak the heat down" right?

Except now you have to fix ERPPC's as well, because if the PPC is broken where it is, the ERPPC will still be broken.. That old 'exponential' heat increase thing rearing it's ugly head again. The 4 points in heat difference to the ERPPC is why it is,one of the worst weapons in the game. If you make the ERPPC heat = PPC heat, what's the point of PPC's?

I'm just going to say it outright, multiplying the ROF without multiplying heat dissipation has created a never ending issue that cannot be fixed by "tweaking". Every time you tweak one weapon, you'll make another one redundant. PGI will need to come up with ever more convoluted methods of trying to balance things but it will never work because the hotter the weapon, exponentially more heat generated...

What they could have done was tripled ROF and heat (ie. make the game more exciting, MOAR PEW PEW), and tweaked damage output. Or tweaked ROF up for certain lighter weapons while dialing damage down (so overall DPS = the same but there are more bright lights) whereas heavier weapons fire closer to the original 10 second cycle. ie. Make the game feel like you're doing more but the sum total per 10 second period of continual action = roughly the same...

[BoomDog]

I don't know why there's even a debate here. It's obvious that high heat weapons are broke, nobody uses them.

If you get destroyed in a battle, just cycle through all of your teammates, you'll see what I mean. I've seen a couple people trying to use PPCs, but they're usually shutdown.

The game is completely dominated by small/medium laser builds, gauss builds, LRM builds, and SSRM/SRM builds. Saw a guy in a hunchback today running around with 9 small pulse lasers. It's just getting silly.

[Terror Teddy]

Vapor Trail, on 11 November 2012 - 03:43 AM, said:

Or maybe we could fix the weapon balance? Maybe?

Hopefully this.

I would be all for one of the following
-Increase heat to 2 (still damn good)
-Fire delay of 0,5 seconds (harder to use in close combat)
-Cycle time increase to 6 seconds
-Overpenetration at close range (lower damage within 100 meters)

[Vapor Trail]

I'm not in favor of increasing the heat on the Gauss except as a measure of last resort. The whole raison d'etre for the Gauss is to be a "one heat wonder weapon." The trick is, I think it has to pay for its Damage/heat ratio per shot in cycle time.

People have been advocating that PPC/ERPPC users duck when having to cool off. How about we put that shoe on a different foot, and spread the "gotta keep your head down" love?

And a longer firing cycle means that the weapon is more difficult to use at close range... because if you MISS...

you...

have...

to...

wait...

on...

the...

reload...

Edited by Vapor Trail, 12 November 2012 - 01:00 AM.

[Terror Teddy]

Vapor Trail, on 12 November 2012 - 12:58 AM, said:

I'm not in favor of increasing the heat on the Gauss except as a measure of last resort.

And a longer firing cycle means that the weapon is more difficult to use at close range... because if you MISS...

I agree. it seems to be the best solution atm.

At longer range it wont really matter but when a Hunchback is throwing AC20 rounds in your face it will be a problem.

[Indoorsman]

Stabbitha, on 11 November 2012 - 08:23 PM, said:

things to do w/this thread

I've agreed for a long time PPC are too hot. I think if ER PPC was slightly higher heat than PPC is right now, it would be fine. I think PPC should probably do slightly less damage in exchange for a little less heat. Maybe 8 or 9 damage for 6-8 heat instead of 10 dmg 9 heat. That seems like a good solution for PPCs w/o changing anything else. But it's really pointless to balance/work on PPCs right now anyways w/o them being fully funcional yet.

I think you musta missed me, you posted 2 times in a row @ me, <3

EDIT:

Also, decrease gauss ammo per ton to 8 rounds. I've suggested that back during closed beta. That would increase tonnage and make em less boatable if we get mechs w/many ballistic pts. And that wouldn't change heat or RoF since a few posters now say that would change the feel of em.

Edited by Indoorsman, 12 November 2012 - 01:59 AM.

[Fate 6]

valrond, on 03 November 2012 - 10:34 AM, said:

Thanks for the post again, Abrahams. It looks like PGI don't even play the game, because the consecuences of their actions are pretty clear: In most custom mechs, certainly all of the mechs that try to be competitive and not try some things, there are just 4 weapons that are being used: Gauss, LRM, SSRM and SL. The rest are either worse, much worse, or simply unusable (like the ER PPC).

And now, they show us again that they don't even know basic maths. They double (2x) de armor, but just 1.2x (now 1.4x) the ammo. No sense, of course. And they do the same to double heatsinks (2x) and make them 1.4x heatsinks, so we make sure the game stays with just those 4 weapons.

You also have to take into account the fact that heat sinks appear to have diminishing returns (people have done math to confirm this) meaning having anything more that 20 heat sinks is basically useless. It's too bad we can't have weapon diversity because of this. I just took my AC/20 off my Atlas for a Gauss because Gauss is superior in every single way.

[Bubba Wilkins]

Vapor Trail, on 11 November 2012 - 07:19 PM, said:

Lets see... You're generating what,37.56 heat every 3.25 seconds... and dissipating 9.685 (assuming those are double heat sinks, with 10 (.2 HdR) and 7 (.14HdR) sinks). So, if you're firing everything at max RoF, you get about two salvoes of SSRMs out, and then you're really worried about heat.

But I'm pretty certain you rely on the AC/5s and SSRMs as your main damage output, and fire the ERPPCs only when targets are outside the range of the other weapons, or if you figure you can kill the mech you've targeted with them.

Sound about right?

The PPCs on a Warhammer or a Marauder are supposed to be the primary source of damage output. Not tacked on weapons that get used only to coup de gras the target.

Actually no, you have that backwards.

Effective Cooling Rate is 34.27H/10s before map ambient is applied. It's over 40 on Frozen City.

Generally it's:

AC/5's at Long Range.
PPC's + AC/5's at Midrange.
AC/5's, Streaks, and ERPPC's up close.

At mid range, I can fire 3-4 ERPPC salvos with the AC's before I need to hold off and let things cool. At close range I'm usually already warm and can only fire the PPC's twice while still using the AC's and missiles. Occasionally, I'll have to back off both the Missiles and PPC's, but the AC's still pack enough punch.