64 replies to this topic

[JimSuperBleeder]

Stormur Herra, on 06 December 2012 - 02:53 PM, said:

Stunlock is not fun? Every PvP MMO that doesn't restrict it right off the bat manages to do it sooner or later.

Also, the AC/2 has/had a ridiculous DPS at .5 seconds (which I don't think was officially nerfed, are you just lagging more after patch?) A slower rate of fire also means not running quite so hot.

My ping has been running 45-50 like usual.

It's not like I have a terrible issue with it. I'm a little bummed out because it crippled one of my favorite owned mechs. I just would have liked there to be more information about the little tweaks being done given this is not latency or a bug.

[Stormur Herra]

JimSuperBleeder, on 06 December 2012 - 03:03 PM, said:

My ping has been running 45-50 like usual.

It's not like I have a terrible issue with it. I'm a little bummed out because it crippled one of my favorite owned mechs. I just would have liked there to be more information about the little tweaks being done given this is not latency or a bug.

Yeah, the other posts in this thread seem to point to stealth nerf.

[Kreisel]

Personally I kinda hope the AC2 had it's ROF decreased, I've been arguing for a while that it needed it. The Weapon felt more like a RAC-2 or at very least an Ultra Ac2 than an AC2...

The high speed made it have higher dps than balistics you had to devote more tonnage to, at longer ranges than they are effective at which isn't balanced. It also exasperated problem with the massive amount of shaking the weapon caused. Additionally the high speed removed it's usefulness in the niche of a long range weapon of moderate weight that you could continue to fire while running hot. Something is wrong when an AC causes you to heat up faster than lasers and has damage capabilities (atleast so far as dps is concerned) with ballistic weapons which are 2 to 4 times it's weight (and 8 times the crit space)

Edited by Kreisel, 06 December 2012 - 03:21 PM.

[Valder]

And here I thought they lowered the heat for triple ac2's all ninja like... But, no.. you're right, they shoot slower. Sad face. At least I can strap on 2 med lasers and shoot them now?

[BlackBeltJones]

AC/2 was my very good friend. Why must we hurt the ones that we love. BANJO!!!!!!!

[Justin Xang Allard]

JimSuperBleeder, on 06 December 2012 - 01:28 PM, said:

I haven't found anything on the topic of why the ac/2 had its cooldown adjusted to what feels like it double the time it was before, almost painful waiting for it to fire again.

As far as the extreme kick they delivered on impact I felt it was a pretty balanced weapon. It didn't do a whole lot of damage and if you wanted to stack them you were always running in the red because all the heat they generated.

If someone knows the reasoning behind the adjustment it may help me understand better, thanks.

the knock back was the only thing they needed to adjust. ac/2s are small weapons and shouldnt make a medium or greater reel back and look at the sky when the ac/20 shooting bmw's only seems to have the impact of a machine gun.

[JimSuperBleeder]

Justin Xang Allard, on 06 December 2012 - 05:40 PM, said:

the knock back was the only thing they needed to adjust. ac/2s are small weapons and shouldnt make a medium or greater reel back and look at the sky when the ac/20 shooting bmw's only seems to have the impact of a machine gun.

I worded my phrasing wrong. I should have said: "Other than the extreme..."

[Deadoon]

I knew I wasn't insane when I noticed my dual ac/2 atlas was heat neutral on caustic...

[SpiralRazor]

Kreisel, on 06 December 2012 - 03:21 PM, said:

Personally I kinda hope the AC2 had it's ROF decreased, I've been arguing for a while that it needed it. The Weapon felt more like a RAC-2 or at very least an Ultra Ac2 than an AC2...

The high speed made it have higher dps than balistics you had to devote more tonnage to, at longer ranges than they are effective at which isn't balanced. It also exasperated problem with the massive amount of shaking the weapon caused. Additionally the high speed removed it's usefulness in the niche of a long range weapon of moderate weight that you could continue to fire while running hot. Something is wrong when an AC causes you to heat up faster than lasers and has damage capabilities (atleast so far as dps is concerned) with ballistic weapons which are 2 to 4 times it's weight (and 8 times the crit space)

They mostly scatter damage all over the place.....

I will say in PGI's defence, that this is the first game online game ive played that has a role for the AC/2, but it took a long time to buff it to the point it was useful.

I agree, shaking needed to be reduced, but the ROF didnt need a nerf. Its little more then a big machine gun after all.

[Coolant]

it may be a stealth nerf...the uac5's jam for about 6.8 seconds now rather than around 3.5 before...it's just on-going balancing that is needed

[River Walker]

I do agree that the rock of a AC2 was to much but its sad that the ROF was slow down.

[Kreisel]

SpiralRazor, on 06 December 2012 - 06:38 PM, said:

They mostly scatter damage all over the place.....

I will say in PGI's defence, that this is the first game online game ive played that has a role for the AC/2, but it took a long time to buff it to the point it was useful.

I agree, shaking needed to be reduced, but the ROF didn't need a nerf. Its little more then a big machine gun after all.

Yeah the scattering of damage hurts how effective they are. Personally I always thought of AC2 as more of a light rifle than a big machine gun. It's advantage was long range and low heat, and I have used them in other Mechwarrior games, to let me keep peppering targets with damage without fear of overheating.

It needed to be played around with, and back when the AC got the speed increase, they all kinda needed a buff across the board. I just think it was a bit overdone. The Ac2 should be useful, but... I don't feel like it was ever meant to be a big Machine gun, that's what RAC and Machine guns are for. Also, while it should be useful it shouldn't be outclassing AC5 and AC10 for damage output the way it does. every .75 second is still respectively fast, it's a LOT less heat per second, and STILL would be well within middle of the pack for DPS instead of near the top.

EDIT: Also they have an incoming buff to their velocity I'm looking forward to. It should help all AC'***** more consistently and need less lead time, But AC 2 in particular is going to deliver it's round to the target a LOT faster than it does now.

Edited by Kreisel, 06 December 2012 - 07:46 PM.

[xxx WreckinBallRaj xxx]

Alfred VonGunn, on 06 December 2012 - 01:42 PM, said:

No idea about the cool down time.. But the Rocking from the AC2 was stupid... You are basically firing a long range 20mm cannon and were making 100 ton mechs shake like that had Parkinson .. It was broke..

Streaks and Ultra 5 also do this. But they should have just fixed the rocking itself. Piranha doesn't seem to know how to directly fix a problem anymore. Instead they introduce a buff/nerf elsewhere that affects the target weapon in a backwards fashion to somehow balance the game.(Which doesn't work)

[JimSuperBleeder]

Honestly I just want a weapon in the game that just unloads shells all over the place at a high rate of fire. If the RAC came into play or they made the MG do a little more than nothing that would be fine too.

Until then put it back!

Edited by JimSuperBleeder, 06 December 2012 - 08:47 PM.

[Umbra8]

Kreisel, on 06 December 2012 - 07:42 PM, said:

EDIT: Also they have an incoming buff to their velocity I'm looking forward to. It should help all AC'***** more consistently and need less lead time, But AC 2 in particular is going to deliver it's round to the target a LOT faster than it does now.

Actually, the AC2 is the only one that wont have it's projectile speed changed. From the Command Chair forum section:

"Projectile speeds on AC rounds can use a buff.

AC/2 is fine where it's at.
AC/5 is pretty close to where it should be.
AC/10 needs a boost.
AC/20 needs a fairly big boost.
UAC/5 will be the same as AC/5"

So the AC/2 will be largely unchanged. Some things to remember, with its old ROF the AC2 was the least heat efficient of the AC's, dropping one heat every 0.5 seconds it would outstrip the heat generation of an AC20 by two. Combine that with spreading damage all over the target, no burst damage and the necessity of staying exposed to apply continuous DPS the AC2 had enough drawbacks inherent in its use to mitigate its excellent DPS, weight and range. The rocking had to be reduced, I assume its original value was an oversight, but I don't think it needed a ROF decrease, it had drawbacks enough.

[Kreisel]

Umbra8, on 06 December 2012 - 07:57 PM, said:

Actually, the AC2 is the only one that wont have it's projectile speed changed. From the Command Chair forum section:

"Projectile speeds on AC rounds can use a buff.

AC/2 is fine where it's at.
AC/5 is pretty close to where it should be.
AC/10 needs a boost.
AC/20 needs a fairly big boost.
UAC/5 will be the same as AC/5"

So the AC/2 will be largely unchanged. Some things to remember, with its old ROF the AC2 was the least heat efficient of the AC's, dropping one heat every 0.5 seconds it would outstrip the heat generation of an AC20 by two. Combine that with spreading damage all over the target, no burst damage and the necessity of staying exposed to apply continuous DPS the AC2 had enough drawbacks inherent in its use to mitigate its excellent DPS, weight and range. The rocking had to be reduced, I assume its original value was an oversight, but I don't think it needed a ROF decrease, it had drawbacks enough.

That wording hasn't been updated through the entire time the Rocking was out of hand, even while posts later in the same thread were saying AC2 knock effect needed a nerf. The Devs were saying at one point that the AC2 was going to receive a speed buff, perhaps it already went in since if you scroll down in the same thread it says "2) PPC and ERPPC projectile speeds increasing to 2000m/s (AC/2 speed)." and I seem to recall reading that as the speed they were going to buff it.

My question still stands: If the AC 2 fires at .5, how does one handle the Ultra AC 2, which fires twice as fast, or the RAC which fires 6 times as fast...? The RAC might be a while off, but the Clans should have Ultra AC2 this year. How do you deal with stock mechs like the Jaggermech which are built with a certain number of heatshinks that are supposed to keep them heat nuetral... with the assumption 2 Ac2 are firing 20 times slower...

as for the heat generation... I was saying that was one of the problems with having it fire so fast, it made the weapon the hottest of the AC's to use... there was NO item for under 8 tons you could throw on your mech and use safely when running hot. It was too hot to maintain it's fire rate without a LOT of heatsinks... which will drew away from the weapons usefulness, and thus what I'm saying is... because of the heat build up, slowing down the weapon actually isn't that big of a nerf, because you needed to let up on it anyway.

Edit: Also the damage will get spread around less if you aim shots rather than just hold it down and spray it like a machine gun.

Edited by Kreisel, 06 December 2012 - 08:55 PM.

[Umbra8]

Yes, the posting on that page is a bit unclear. From my reading of it, it appears that the PPC is getting a speed boost to current (word not actually in post) AC/2 speeds of 2000 m/s. It may be that currently AC/2 rounds do not travel this fast, but in my experience of all the issues the AC/2 may have projectile speed is not one of them. As for the UAC/2, I imagine it's limit would be the same as the AC, heat. I do feel this ROF change is a nerf however, despite the savings in heat. The advantage of this high DPS weapon comes from staying on target for the duration of your self-imposed heat limit (heat cap modified by heat dissipation) and then fading back to cool down. Higher DPS means faster heat but you end up exposing yourself to enemy fire for less time. Only the AC20 has a better damage to time ratio and it's range limit presumes a high exposure to enemy fire anyway. The lower ROF (0.75 or so?) puts the AC2 more in line with the DPS and heat generation of heavy lasers, with better range and worse accuracy.

[JimSuperBleeder]

While heat management was mentioned...

I had 4 AC/2's on my 4X (and a ML but that was for emergency's)

Chain firing them all at once spiked the heat drastically.(reserved for medium to close combat)
I generally just chain fired two of them and that didn't gain much heat at all if any.
Auto firing one the heat would go down.

I build this thing to shoot nonstop all game.

[Star Colonel Mustard Kerensky]

SteelPaladin, on 06 December 2012 - 02:52 PM, said:

Has anybody mined the XML to see if was an actual change or if there're more bugs in the AC code they didn't catch w/this last fix?

The cooldown time in the XML hasn't changed.

[ollo]

SteelPaladin, on 06 December 2012 - 02:52 PM, said:

Has anybody mined the XML to see if was an actual change or if there're more bugs in the AC code they didn't catch w/this last fix?

XML says no.
ID Name Type Slots Tons Damage Heat Impulse Cooldown Duration Speed minRange longRange maxRange Ammotype Ammo/Shot Shots/Ton 1018 AutoCannon2 Ballistic 1 6 2 1.0 1.0 0.5 0.0 2000 0 720 2160 AC2Ammo 1 75