48 replies to this topic

[De La Fresniere]

Half Fast, on 23 December 2012 - 05:53 AM, said:

Yeah, well....you come in late, search for information...and feel a need to weigh in

I realize the 6PPCs are crazy, that was the point of the experiment . What I was trying to say is that the proposed changes to PPCs make it a little less crazy.

True. PPCs are good in large numbers because if fired at the same time they'll deliver a high amount of damage to a single section of an opponent's mech; it's already viable as a super-specialized slow mech killer, so depending on what they do with them they might become quite impressive.

That's the problem. PPC boating. Because two or three Assault mech configurations with 6 PPCs lets you one-shot people, they'll want to limit the PPC's power (right now it's limited via heat and weight) and all the people that would only have used one or two are stuck with a weapon that's too heavy or hot to be a worthwhile investment. Basically you've got a weapon that works quite nicely if you boat it but is otherwise terrible on its own.

2xPPC: 20 damage, 18 heat, 6 slots, 14 tons
4xML: 20 damage, 16 heat, 4 slots, 4 tons

The weight alone is just plain idiotic. The weapon is already geared toward big mechs because of boating synergy, the weight additionally makes it unusable by smaller mechs.

I have a Dragon, which is a fairly heavy mech (60 tons) and it would be ridiculous to attempt to use PPCs on it. If I equipped four it would be unusable (36 heat per alpha strike, few heat sinks because of all the weight), and if I equipped two it would do a pathetic 20 damage per alpha strike.

I'm afraid the PPC is either going to stay a high-tonnage mech only weapon, or it's going to become viable for smaller mechs and become overpowered for boaters.

Edited by De La Fresniere, 23 December 2012 - 06:23 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Sandpit, on 15 November 2012 - 12:31 PM, said:

• MG's will be getting a damage boost.
  
• Flamers will be getting the heat generation on enemy scaled in a way that makes more sense. You're not going to overheat a Mech but you should be raising their temps to the point that if they fire anything they will shut down/overheat.

http://mwomercs.com/...apon-balancing/


Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whoop tee do!

Quote

wait, no LBX love?!

Give LB-X their slug rounds back!!!!!

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 23 December 2012 - 06:23 AM.

[Mahws]

Sug, on 21 December 2012 - 04:29 PM, said:

Over the 10 sec TT window that is 4 damage (0.04 x 10 x 10) So they're already doubled over TT values.

Right, compared to the AC2, which does 4 damage a second. 40 Damage over ten seconds, or twenty times the TT values. Which is pretty impressive seeing as in TT it had the same damage output per ten second turn as a machine gun. I think it's safe to say that TT stats are largely irrelevant to balancing MWO.

It doesn't take a genius to balance the machine gun. Give it the same DPS as a small laser. Pros, no heat (compared to very little heat). Cons the need to keep on target for a longer period to deliver full damage, extra tonne of weight for ammo, extra slot for ammo, chance of ammo explosion. There, now it's an effective backup weapon for high heat builds whilst not being better than the SL or being vulnerable to boating exploitation (even if we did get a mech with more than four ballistic slots).

Badda bing, badda bang, badda boom. Balanced and useful for all of two seconds of work changing a number. I understand Flamers taking time to balance, they have tricky effects on gameplay, but machine guns are straight forward and the fact that they've been sitting there useless every since early closed beta is a pretty poor effort. The focus on making them a "Crit seeker" is silly, you don't need to build a crane to move a chair.

And heck, whilst I'm solving all the games problems, Flamers work exactly like they do now, but have a high chance of detonating ammo when you hit internals. Problem solved, there's no point in boating, they can't be used to stick an enemy in permanent shutdown or overheat them to death and now actually have a useful function that makes them worth taking.

Edited by Mahws, 23 December 2012 - 06:35 AM.

[Agent 0range]

Hmm machine gun ammo seems to be out in terms of damage potential. One ton of machine gun ammo should be a potential of 400 damage if they all hit. but currently we have 2000 x 0.04 = 80.

This makes it even more tricky to balance them as they have really reduce the total damage you can do with machine guns.

Maybe they could put ammo up to 20,000; halve the damage and quadruple the rate of fire.

Ammo would be 20,000 x 0.02 = 400 damage potential

DPS would be 0.02 x 40 = 0.8

This would fix them and they could just vary the rate of fire until they were balanced

[De La Fresniere]

Agent 0range, on 23 December 2012 - 06:39 AM, said:

Hmm machine gun ammo seems to be out in terms of damage potential. One ton of machine gun ammo should be a potential of 400 damage if they all hit. but currently we have 2000 x 0.04 = 80.

This makes it even more tricky to balance them as they have really reduce the total damage you can do with machine guns.

Maybe they could put ammo up to 20,000; halve the damage and quadruple the rate of fire.

Ammo would be 20,000 x 0.02 = 400 damage potential

DPS would be 0.02 x 40 = 0.8

This would fix them and they could just vary the rate of fire until they were balanced

Ideally the rate of fire should be as low as possible. The faster the rate of fire, the worse it becomes at crits, and MGs are already beyond terrible for dealing crits.

Though I suppose they could just add an arbitrary crit damage multiplier, for example making MGs deal quadruple crit damage...

[shintakie]

De La Fresniere, on 23 December 2012 - 07:04 AM, said:

Ideally the rate of fire should be as low as possible. The faster the rate of fire, the worse it becomes at crits, and MGs are already beyond terrible for dealing crits.

Though I suppose they could just add an arbitrary crit damage multiplier, for example making MGs deal quadruple crit damage...

The other issue is netcode and possibly lag actually. The more times a weapon fires in a second, the more pings the server has to take. Its already a little crazy at 10 a second, some people are askin for it to be upwards of 40 a second. I'd be worried the servers would implode if they pulled that off.

Much easier to just increase the dps to that of the small laser. Also much more effective.

[General Taskeen]

Agent 0range, on 23 December 2012 - 06:39 AM, said:

Hmm machine gun ammo seems to be out in terms of damage potential. One ton of machine gun ammo should be a potential of 400 damage if they all hit. but currently we have 2000 x 0.04 = 80.

This makes it even more tricky to balance them as they have really reduce the total damage you can do with machine guns.

Maybe they could put ammo up to 20,000; halve the damage and quadruple the rate of fire.

Ammo would be 20,000 x 0.02 = 400 damage potential

DPS would be 0.02 x 40 = 0.8

This would fix them and they could just vary the rate of fire until they were balanced

They could just model the MG after MW3, it worked perfectly fine vs. Mechs:

Ammo Per Ton 200
Damage Per Bullet 0.2 (each shot consumes 4 bullets for a total of .8 damage)
Range 120m

[Half Fast]

De La Fresniere, on 23 December 2012 - 06:20 AM, said:

2xPPC: 20 damage, 18 heat, 6 slots, 14 tons
4xML: 20 damage, 16 heat, 4 slots, 4 tons

The weight alone is just plain idiotic. The weapon is already geared toward big mechs because of boating synergy, the weight additionally makes it unusable by smaller mechs.

You forgot range in your comparisons....I believe PPCs have twice the range of a ML.
I guess I always considered the PPC a weapon for big mechs, and a curiosity when placed in smaller mechs (kinda like my AC20 Cicada <g>). And you do see it on occasion in smaller mechs. I tried two on my Cicada...but I couldn't hit anything with them, not at those speeds .

[superteds]

You know what? I'm happy with MG's doing more damage than SL's. not much, maybe 30% more. unlike SL's, you can't focus them on anything unless you're literally hugging, and you have to lead.