28 replies to this topic

[Rendall]

Those of us who have played the last few games (Mw3 and Mw4) I think can agree that Pulse lasers were mostly a large waste of time, except perhaps the X-pulse lasers. Any ideas how to help balance them to improve them without unbalancing them?

My 2 C-bills, the TT game doesnt have ER Pulse lasers, for either clan or IS (at least not that arent experimental). I liked how they looked in Mw4, but they so lacked power that it wasnt worth having them most of the time except as a tree clearer (came in handy in the jungle recon missions in MW4M). A lot of us agree that they were pretty powerful, even overpowered in old Mechwarrior 2. I'd say add 50% of thier base damage of the pulse lasers (not including the X-pulse, only 25% more powerful for those) and maybe a slight reduction to the heat production by them, and take out the ER versions (such as in MW4), to help balance them for range. in the TT, they are supposed to be more powerful, but my experience in MW4 was 4 ER medium lasers beats 4 ER Pulse lasers.

Please share your thoughts!

[UncleKulikov]

I would consider a laser that fires 3 bursts per cycle time, and if they all hit they do 1.5x the damage of their non-pulse counterparts.

[TheRulesLawyer]

First make it so if every pulse hits they do more than listed damage. Second, make it so other weapons spread their damage around more. The fact that pulses hit multiple areas while others didn't was really the biggest issue.

[Creel]

The biggest advantage of pulse lasers was that they were easier to hit with. Assigning them a lower base deviation value would reflect this.

[BAZZ BASHEM]

If MWO is to start in BT timeline 3049,then the XpsL and ERPsL laser haven't been invented.
*Pulse Laser: Large,Medium,Small:Production information Type Energy (Pulse) Tech Base Clan / Inner Sphere (IS) Year Availability Clan = 2609 IS = 3037
*X-Pulse Laser: Large ,Medium ,Small: Production information Type Energy (Direct Fire) Tech Base Inner Sphere Year Availability 3057.
*The Extended Range Large Pulse Laser is the largest ER Pulse Laser created by the scientists of Clan Wolf. Inflicting as much damage as a standard PPC, the pulse laser offers the warrior using it a better chance of hitting the target. Unfortunately, the longer range of the weapon slightly reduces its accuracy when compared to traditional pulse laser.Though ER Pulse lasers reached the advanced prototype stage in 3057, the events of the Refusal War and formation of Clan Wolf-in-Exile prevented them from reaching production. Clan Wolf lost many of the developers to Clan Wolf-in-Exile, and the Exiled Wolves were too busy trying to survive to begin production of these weapons.
ER Large,ER Medium,ER Small Pulse Laser: Production information Type Energy Weapon Tech Base Clan Year Availability 3057.

[Seth]

Well, I think it would be a bad idea to try to reflect the -2 to hit modifier of the TT pulse weapons. You'll probably end up with the same loadouts you do in a TT game where a mech with jump jets and pulse lasers are ideal. But they have other attributes that could make them balanced in game. They hit harder than their normal laser counterparts, but they weigh more, have a shorter range and are hotter. If that's too many sticks for just the one carrot, well adjust the sticks accordingly, but I think it would be a mistake to make pulse lasers the most accurate weapons in the game.

[theginganinja]

Canon says that pulse lasers fire a brief burst of lasers instead of one continuous beam. This lets the vaporized armor dissipate a bit between hits, increasing the damage output at the cost of greater heat. It also says that, due to some inherent targeting correction during the burst, they concentrate the damage in one area, rather than the possible spread of a normal laser. So, my solution is as follows: Make normal lasers consist of a beam that lasts ~half a second, with the possibility of that beam traveling over multiple hit locations on the target. Of course, this also gives you the possibility of getting the laser onto the enemy 'Mech and dealing at least some damage if you miss at first. Pulse lasers, meanwhile should consist of a burst of ~4-5 laser blasts that lasts ~three quarters of a second, and auto-follows the original hit location, focusing the damage on one spot but also ensuring that if you miss, you deal no damage whatsoever on target.. Finally, pulse lasers deal ~25% more damage overall, and generate ~25% more heat.

Edited by irishwarrior, 11 November 2011 - 02:25 PM.

[Stormwolf]

I'd personally prefer MW3 style pulse lasers.

The effect should be noticably different from normal and ER lasers.

[CaveMan]

I posted in another thread on this subject that I want to see Pulse Lasers work sort of like a "laser shotgun". The laser fires a series of randomly distributed beams over a predefined cone over the course of a second, each of which does a small fraction of the total damage.

[Creel]

Stormwolf, on 11 November 2011 - 02:25 PM, said:

I'd personally prefer MW3 style pulse lasers.

The effect should be noticably different from normal and ER lasers.

I liked that. I thought that the ability to correct your aim with realtime visual feedback nicely emulated the 'easier to hit' aspect. I know that it's contrary to the canon descriptions, but short of making them literally more accurate (which was impossible in that game, and every weapon was pinpoint) I thought it was a good solution.

[Zakatak]

MW3 and MW4 had it wrong. It is neither a continuous stream nor "laser bullets".

I like how MWLL had it. Basically a 5-round burst of beam lasers in quick succession.

[azov]

I think they should work by doing one short "pulse" that take half a second to do full damage. to balance this, it creates the full heat and has a equally long recycle time to its ER cousin. This quick burst would give it the +2 modifiers that are represented in the table top. For example:

ER Large Laser / 10 Damage / 12 Heat / 4 second recycle time / 1.5 second duration for 100% damage

Large Pulse Laser / 10 Damage / 10 heat / 4 second recycle time / 0.5 second duration for 100% damage

[Amechwarrior]

I think irishwarrior is on the right track, here is my post from an older thread:

Amechwarrior, on 08 November 2011 - 02:50 AM, said:

Thank goodness for someone finally posting the TechManual pulse laser fluff. However I think that definition leaves out the reason why they get the -2 accuracy bonus. What someone posted earlier about how the 'mechs computer re-aims the laser between pulses which results in the increased accuracy. This may have been explained in BoK Trilogy, but looking for direct sources now.

By that fluff description all lasers in MW4 worked like pulse lasers, they continued to track the target over the course of firing. Whatever exact point you happened to pull the trigger down on, the lasers would adjust to keep focus on that one spot. That was a change from lasers in MW3 that you could "sweep" across an enemy over the time the laser was firing. If I remember the big reason for the change of style from the long sweeping "cutting laser beam" to the "self tracking" type was the same reason they chose to make LRMs fly in 5 missile packs, internet lag. Imagine 12 mechs like Novas or Catapults running around back when 56k was the norm. All those individual missiles and constantly streaming lasers beams was just too much. I remember MW3 as a laggy mess in general.

The standard and ER lasers did not have this self correcting ability and thus did not get any accuracy bonus. To translate that into MW terms, normal and ER lasers should have been like it was in MW3, a single continuous beam that just pointed strait and did not track the point of impact like all lasers in MW4. The Pulse lasers did have that ability and that is what made them so sought after. They should not be "rapid fire, low damage, higher DPS" weapons they should be able to put the damage on target and stay on target easier then a normal laser for the cost of shorter range.

[Halfinax]

Pulse lasers should be lasers that pulse.

To be less literal and less derpy: They should be about a 1 second or so long laser beam that spreads damage across it's target.

[Rhinehart]

I actually really liked the MW 3 pulse laser visual effect. Also it seemed like they generated less heat than ER lasers (which may not be canon) which made them more useful. They could be used like targeting beams for single shot weapons. Drag the beams over the enemy until hitting the right spot and then trigger the next weapon group. Liked them against elementals too. It was easy to miss those suckers with pinpoint beams, the longer timing of the pulse lasers let you track with the battlesuits to land damage enough to kill them. Alose loved the fact that you could manually Stutter them. I. E. trigger them in longer or short bursts depending on how long you held down the firing button. Finally in PVP LAN play it became apparent pulse lasers could be used to blind you opponent when repeatedly flashed on to the canopy, especially at close range, giving you a critical advantage for a moment, which is all it took in MW3.

MW4 pulse lasers may have been graphically more correct, but looked kinda of StarWars and rather boring to me.

ROFL I had an Annihilator variant in MW 3 I called "Christmas Tree" which essentially had as many different color pulse lasers as I could fit on it. When firing it appeared like a rather festive laser blow torch hehe.

[wolf74]

Until we know what Weapon Convergence system there using, (Pin Point, Cone of Fire, Manual Range Convergence, some other system), it Hard to say how the Pulse Laser should work at all.

[Yeach]

Going to this in a different way.

Pulse lasers should appear and function like the lasers from MW3 and MW4. The near instantaneous nature would gives them the vaunted -2 to hit modifier.

Lasers would then function like pulse lasers from MW4 or lasers from MW2.
http://mwomercs.com/...rs/page__st__40

[Hodo]

If you were to take the TT rules and do a direct translation here they would be weapons that have a burst element to them. They fire a series of short blasts of Lasers, then they would cycle for a short bit, (SPL was 2.5sec or 1 turn, MPL was 5sec, LPL was 5sec.)

They did max damage if they all hit the target, but if half hit the target then they did about half damage.

Regular lasers fired a single short beam. About 0.1 second in burst length, it did FULL damage on hit, but had no room to miss.

Think of the pulse lasers like Machine Guns..

In the TT they did 2 damage per hit. But if you use the Max Tech rules they did a 1D6 damage per hit, and burned twice that in ammo per shot. Pulse lasers would be about the same, just no variation.

[Brakkyn]

Like a laser machine gun. You hold down the trigger to fire rapid shots, exchanging greater chance to hit with greater heat generation. Rate of fire depends on the type of laser used (smaller is faster, larger is slower).

I like MechWarrior 3's pulse lasers, but would prefer something closer to MechWarrior 2's.

[Zyllos]

I am not really sure about how to do this. There is so many different ways to do it. A laser could just do a beam of damage for 1.0s while the pulse laser would shoot like a machine gun beam which you can constantly fire (think like a regular laser with a beam but use a camera shutter which will shut rapidly to create a pulsing beam).

Or you could do a more structured "unit of fire" action where in that unit, the regular laser will fire for 1.0s and deal damage over that time period. The pulse laser will fire multiple beams in the unit, each dealing their own damage.