99 replies to this topic

[Caleb Lee]

Varaxus, on 30 November 2012 - 02:59 PM, said:

K2 Gauss boating should be put to death! Your putting a damn Gauss Rifle in an MG slot for .... sake!

I agree to a point, but then that was a design flaw on how they code in hard points and limitations on their end. They also sure are slow at cranking out other options aren't they for those of us that like ammo based weapons. Up until recently there wasn't another dual Gauss build available. All other MW games I played had a lot more options for mechs available and variety. Things are getting better but most of Closed/Open Beta has been monotonous.

As a very good Jenner pilot and a great K2 pilot I can tell you that until the lag/netcode is fixed convergence issues really suck when a 139 kph mech is circling around you and can't be knocked down by either weapon fire or running them over.

Also K2's are easily dealt with, all variants unless the pilot has good aim and then lookout in any mech you put them in. I've unlocked every Founder's mech in this game to Master level and am starting on Cataphracts. My K/D and W/L would be much higher than a paltry 4.8 - 5 that it's dropped to and 3/1 W/L except for so many window licking PUGs and at least a CTD or two and death as a result per night.

No, I didn't get those stats playing in full pre-made either. I'm lucky right now in our unit to have a wing mate let alone lance. When I was with the Templars for a good chunk of Closed Beta before moving on I had a K/D over 30 where most of those 8 mans were against PUG teams. We also rolled almost every pre-made we came across to.

So does the K2 need to exist as a Gauss and AC20 variant for a while longer... yeah, until they get some more heavies that can mount the weapons.

[Orzorn]

You know, if we really did want the K2 to suffer from getting its sides hit more often, and for whatever reason we didn't want to increase the side torso hitbox straight up, what if putting a Gauss or an AC/20 caused the machine gun model (clearly seen on the left side of the forum) to turn into a much larger and longer barrel that stuck out. If their game engine allowed for it, this larger model would thus cause the hit box to be larger.

Basically, the side torso hit box gets larger if, and only if, you put large bore ballistics on the mech.

Ideally, this wouldn't apply only to the K2, it should apply to every mech to some degree.

[John Norad]

Jason1138, on 30 November 2012 - 08:04 AM, said:

making gauss explode is the TT solution to it. gauss has a minimum range in TT as well

No, the gun explosion is not the TT balance solution. It's not different to other ammo-dependent weapons. It's just the weapon that explodes, instead of the ammo, as it doesn't make sense for solid metal slugs to explode.
The TT balances most weapons around (effective) weight, just like you stated a bit later.
And even then, the Gauss is still one of the best weapons in the TT, due to extreme range and damage. Spreadsheets don't tell the whole truth. There are some factors that just weigh heavier than others. The ability to behead your target with one hit, for example.

In MWO, the TT balance doesn't work, because heat sinks are less than half as efficient and the difference in tonnage is therefore effectively (more than) double that of the TT.

Caleb Lee, on 30 November 2012 - 03:18 PM, said:

I agree to a point, but then that was a design flaw on how they code in hard points and limitations on their end.

Yep, like not giving hardpoints and weapons a size.
This doesn't even have to be overly restrictive, as arm hardpoints should generally be flexible, thus mostly large. It could also be used to balance overly huge center or side torsi (hi Awesome..), by making all hardpoints on such locations bigger, due to the available space.

Edited by John Norad, 30 November 2012 - 04:00 PM.

[Tennex]

agreed.

[De La Fresniere]

To be frank, while the Gauss has good damage, range and heat... it's exceedingly heavy, requires a high amount of critical slots (which makes it very vulnerable to critical slot hits), requires tons of ammo, and has all the regular ballistic drawbacks (most notably convergence issues and a firing delay), and yeah, it can *explode*, which combined with its vulnerability to crits is pretty damn bad. I think it's already balanced.

What's not balanced is the combination of the Gauss and the K2. I see a YLW, I immediately go for the arm and it's disabled in no time, but the K2... having the Gauss in its hard-to-hit side torsoes, the Gauss' fragility, vulnerability to crits and special drawback of being explosive are all rendered practically null. You can't disable a Gaussapult so your only option is to go for the CT, giving the 'pult free shots at you until you take it down. There's not a lot of mechs that can do that.

I wouldn't touch the Gauss. I'd instead consider possible unbalanced builds when choosing which variants I put into the game.

[Salient]

I agree, It should be even MORE fragile, and have a 25% chance of exploding with each shot.

[Kobold]

De La Fresniere, on 30 November 2012 - 04:09 PM, said:

What's not balanced is the combination of the Gauss and the K2. I see a YLW, I immediately go for the arm and it's disabled in no time, but the K2... having the Gauss in its hard-to-hit side torsoes, the Gauss' fragility, vulnerability to crits and special drawback of being explosive are all rendered practically null. You can't disable a Gaussapult so your only option is to go for the CT, giving the 'pult free shots at you until you take it down. There's not a lot of mechs that can do that.

Speaking from experience, this entire paragraph is wrong.

I drive a Gaussaphract (CTF-4X with 2xGR in the arms) since they've come out. I've lost my arms zero times in all of the many times I've died. Try driving it yourself and see.

[anonymous175]

They should look at how gauss rifles are balanced in LoL.

[sarkun]

One of the chief complaints against gauss rifles was that they're an awesome all-round weapon - great at range, good up close. I personally believe that making them less usefull in a brawl is actually a cool idea to balance it - instead of nerfing damage/fire rate that would affect it at all ranges.

Right now, every ballistic slot I have on my mechs is either empty or filled with a gauss - I'm really looking forward to seeing how this change will affect my gameplay.

[Caleb Lee]

sarkun, on 30 November 2012 - 04:23 PM, said:

One of the chief complaints against gauss rifles was that they're an awesome all-round weapon - great at range, good up close. I personally believe that making them less usefull in a brawl is actually a cool idea to balance it - instead of nerfing damage/fire rate that would affect it at all ranges.

Right now, every ballistic slot I have on my mechs is either empty or filled with a gauss - I'm really looking forward to seeing how this change will affect my gameplay.

I agree, most of my ballistic slots are Gauss Rifles. I also use AC5/UAC5 and am looking forward to their speed boost. The reason the Gauss Rifle was so superior to the AC20 was speed, heat and frankly ammo/ton. You missed more, heat was a little high and the king of ACs just didn't add up. I will probably try it again once the changes go in.

I don't think nerfing the Gauss Rifle this badly was the way to go, but then that's PGI for you and instead of fixing their hardpoint system they nerf a weapon that right now, although fragile since Open Beta, I feel is balanced.

[TigrisMorte]

Yes, Gauss should explode when after all armor is gone and internal damage causes a critical and that critical hits the Gauss.
"Very Fragile" is what worries me.

[Joseph Mallan]

Prosperity Park, on 30 November 2012 - 02:06 PM, said:

I personally don't think that Gauss Explosions is a "balancing factor," but not for any reasons discussed in the Opening Post.

Gauss Rifles are dangerous at all ranges with zero applicable heat and the same recycle rate as a heavy, hot autocannon. Gauss Explosions only create a nerf-effect after you have already caused heavy damage to a Gauss-Wielding Mech... so Gauss Explosions only apply a nerf to extremely-damaged Mechs; it doesn't nerf anyone who's healthy. Gauss Snipers, then, are not experiencing any form of nerf while they are shooting at you.

What Gauss Explosions do is to "nerf" Gauss Cats by forcing them to add 1 ton of CASE to their Mech, thereby bypassing the Nerf; this nerf mostly affects people who can't put CASE on their Arm-mounted Gauss. It basically just encourages people to use the K2 Chassis more for Gauss Sniping in stead of using other chassis.

This is true due to there being no through armor crits Pros. In TT if the players agreed, a snake eyes roll generated a random crit roll in a re rolled location. SO you could roll snake eyes and the boxcars to get a possible crit in the head! So a perfectly healthy Mech could be killed with... say a single AC2 round!

[Vlad Ward]

TigridMorte, on 30 November 2012 - 04:54 PM, said:

Yes, Gauss should explode when after all armor is gone and internal damage causes a critical and that critical hits the Gauss.
"Very Fragile" is what worries me.

They just mean it will have 3 HP instead of the standard 10 HP that most other equipment/weapons have.

[wanderer]

Honestly, they didn't need to make it more fragile. They needed to make sure it exploded, 100% when criticaled to 0 HP. Add in a slightly lower ROF and with the AC projectile velocity tweaks, you're looking at the AC/20 in a whole new light.

[Stone Wall]

Undead Bane, on 30 November 2012 - 08:01 AM, said:

It is one of the ways. We will try it, they will see the statistics.
Oh, and if you think about UAC5s as shelf weapons - try to play more. Lots of UAC5 carriers in each match.

I just started using dual UAC5s and I love them.

[Corvus Antaka]

once this is done the only thing left to do is to nurf the K2. this does nothing for nurfing the K2, because it still has tiny/no sidetorsos, and the problem with the gauss is not how it performs under fire, but how it performs over a long period of sniping needing no heatsinks to counterbalance it so it can maintain an endless DPS stream.

ammo is no limit either, and with xl engine etc speed isnt either.

Most likely gauss rifle will still need a recycle nurf added to this to compensate for it's lack of heat and incredible range. given that we can now mount 2 gauss rifles, and soon 3 possibly on mechs like an annihalator, even an 8 second recycle timer would not be ridiculous since with chain fire you could pump out a shot every 2.5-3 seconds with link fire while never generating any heat.

The only way I could see this fragility nurf working is if there is a chance for the rifle to explode everytime the mech is hit at a location, not until it's armour is gone, and this would suck so much that then no one would probabably bother taking a gauss rifle.

[Stone Wall]

Xeven, on 30 November 2012 - 10:24 AM, said:

The brawler argument makes no sense in this game with postage stamp sized maps. Nearly ever battle becomes a forced brawl due to the very tiny size of the maps. There is no escape route for Snipers nor enough terrain to get lost in. Which gets backs to my previous issue with making it to FRAGILE. No one will equip it if it is unreliable in MWO postage stamp maps. You going to tell me "TT" had such small battle areas and no where to escape or evade for snipers? The nature of the maps force every mech to become a brawler at some point when all other things are equal.

yep the map size needs to be increased. pretty much everyone is brawling or using one main hill to snipe behind, but that cover only lasts for so long.

[MustrumRidcully]

one thing that occured to me: Do we really have any idea if the hit points the items have actually matter in practice?

10 Hit Points can be taken way by 2 Medium Lasers, even if you don't roll double or triple damage.

I also wonder if this may be a reason why many people think their mechs are dying too fast - Center Torso often only contains the engine, that means every crit will go to the engine - and 15 hit points aren't that much more than 10 hit points.

Maybe that would actually explain the 3-second Jenner Strike to core an Atlas in the back?

[QuantumButler]

the gauss nerf won't even effect the only mech it's actually OP on, the K2 Paulapult, because of how tiny the side torsos are, you'll never lose 'em until you're mostly dead anyway.

All making them fragile is doing is making gauss rifles completely useless on mechs that aren't the Paulapult, you know, where they weren't ******* OP anyway.

[Volume]

Gauss really just needs minimum range and we need BV-based (or at the very least, tonnage-based) matchmaking for a variety of reasons, and this is just one more.