116 replies to this topic

[RagingOyster]

Vaneshi SnowCrash, on 11 January 2013 - 06:34 PM, said:

[/size]


He said PPC not ER-PPC.

Why would you ever not use an ER? Nothing but benefits for little extra weight + heat. When someone complains about the PPC, all I can say is "Have you heard about the ERPPC?"

[Noth]

RagingOyster, on 11 January 2013 - 06:39 PM, said:

Why would you ever not use an ER? Nothing but benefits for little extra weight + heat. When someone complains about the PPC, all I can say is "Have you heard about the ERPPC?"

Yes I hear about complaints about the ERPPC all the time. I never use them. I use the normal ones because they are soo much more heat efficient I can outload more damage at range due to increased heat efficiency.

[PANZERBUNNY]

Pretty sure ER and normal PPC weigh the same. Just heat and range differ.

[Bagheera]

Don't agree with your subjective assessment* of ballistics, but if the people want to buff the class of weapons I seem to enjoy the most who am I to argue?



* - can't really argue the math per se, but I don't think, subjectively speaking, that ballistics are as bad as some people claim.

PANZERBUNNY, on 11 January 2013 - 06:42 PM, said:

Pretty sure ER and normal PPC weigh the same. Just heat and range differ.

Correct, weapon weight and crits are identical. Of course you need more sinks with the ER version, so effective weight goes up. Or composite weight, or whatever word should go there.

Edited by Bagheera, 11 January 2013 - 11:48 PM.

[hashinshin]

Things I learned today:

Anybody can have $120.

PANZERBUNNY, on 11 January 2013 - 06:37 PM, said:

BAHAH!

You sound so sure of yourself.

Some people have no vision.

How to win any argument:
Start with the end result, find an argument that supports it.

I'm willing to bet the stats show that ballistics mechs have lower win rates than energy/missile mechs and apparently the developers have those stats and they agree with me based on their response.

Since I'm right and the people that matter know I'm right I won't waste time argument with the crazies. I'm tired of wasting time on the crazies.

[Sanreal]

I like using a variety of weapons, but have had pretty good success with the A/C 10. All the same, it is tremendously harder to hit than any other weapon I've tried. I've become a pretty good shot, but that still only puts me at about 70% hit rate vs. lag shields. Energy weapons likely won't do their full damage against a moving target, but I find them so much easier to aim, as I can fire directly and simply hold my cursor on the target, rather than have to try and lead it, and predict it, with a bullet. It's very, very hard to do pinpoint damage with a ballistic weapon. And without a UI indicator of weapon convergence range, shots tend wide as weapons refocus.

The main problem with ballistics is their extreme weight. I can do 10 damage with my A/C 10 at a cost of 15 tons (includes 3 tons of ammo). Or I can use two medium lasers and about 4 double heatsinks and do similar damage for only 6 tons. The damage won't be instant or concise, but an auto-cannon isn't consistent either, since it's so much harder to aim. Heat matters, of course, but even with more heatsinks, energy weapons are still far more efficient than ballistics.

[Xmith]

RagingOyster, on 11 January 2013 - 06:29 PM, said:

PPC and LBX are bad? What game are you playing? My ERPPC Awesome (you heard me, i play an Awesome!) is the shiznit and the Cent with an LBX is pure hilarity. I am not a number cruncher, so I am sure that you will throw some maths at me to prove me wrong but hey, I do well with both. Besides, i signed up for MechWarrior not MathWarrior lolol

lolololololololol

[Orzorn]

Love the ideas, although I'm not sure I agree with the thread title!

[BerryChunks]

AC/2 and 5 qualitatively become worse and worse due to the doubling of armor.

It's hard enough to hit the same spot over and over from the "proper" distance to use them from.

With poor netcode, with double armor, you're going to spread that damage out and be even more at odds with their inherently lower damage.

Consider:

Suppose you're a really good aimer and can get 60% of shots on the same spot at the "most effective" long range possible.

60% of the time you're doing 2 or 5 damage to 1+1 armor instead of just 1 armor. That's going to slow down how fast you can cause complete armor removal, It's going to affect how much ammo you need (oh look, more tonnage to support the weapon), and so on.

They weren't the best even in Battletech: MEchwarrior 3 or Battletech: Mechwarrior 4, or even Battletech: Tabletop, but use their advantages properly and keep away from the short range brawlers, and they were very useful.

In contrast, we have the smaller damage guns going faster speed to compensate for having their damage/armor ratio made even more terrible, which really means "PUT ON MORE AMMO", which makes them even worse weapons, even if we disregard how double armor is going to cause your damage spread to be laughable.

I still like using Real Military Tank Destroyer Doctrine with my gauss support mechs though: Get into a flanking position to hit the weaker armor, the lack of noise from gauss usually means those long range stand and deliver types are cored before they even decide to move.

[BerryChunks]

hashinshin, on 11 January 2013 - 04:06 PM, said:

I don't really care to argue about whether or not Ballistics are in fact the worst. There are only two Ballistic weapons reasonably worth using in competitive mech, and those are the AC20 and Gauss. The Gauss is fine, the AC20 eeks by with usefulness.

Now you might be wondering: "What makes ballistics worse?" Well let me tell you: The MASSIVE weight combined with difficulty in use and ammo consumption.

1. Ballistics are heavy. Like, really ****** heavy. The offsets their "DPS" and and makes them difficult to use. 4 AC/2s will cost 24 tons, and likely 6 tons in ammo. The DPS per ton of many ballistics is pathetic. DPS of a medium laser is 1.67. Add in a heat sink to offset their heat and it's still 0.83 Damage per second per ton. (DPS/T) The DPS/T of an AC2 assuming only a SINGLE ton for ammo (~2 tons of ammo per AC2 is good) is... 0.28. Yeah. Medium laser + heat sink is 3x as much DPS/T as a AC2 + 1 ton ammo.

2. The lower level ballistics require 100% aim uptime. Instead of the "fire then forget" nature of Lasers you have to have your cursor over the opponent at 100% of the time. What's worse, the AC2 and AC5 still have travel time which means you have to aim in front of your opponent. What does this mean? Using lasers with AC2/AC5 is practically impossible. Where as SRMs and LRMs have lock on and therefore work fantastically with lasers the AC2 and AC5 basically can't use them.

2b. The counterplay that comes from 100% aim uptime is obvious. AC2 spammer on you? Swivel around. He's going to hit arms with many of his shots, and any shot on an arm is basically a shot deflected. People that know what they're doing can easily make the impressive 4 DPS of an AC2 a 2 or lower DPS on the area they're trying to hit just with swiveling. "Damage done" is not a very impressive stat when a good 50% of your shots went to areas you had no intention of ever finishing off.

3. The massive skill cap. Any person can hold the cursor slightly in front of an enemy (to compensate for lag) and get full hits with lasers. Very few people can use ballistics alone, and ballistics + lasers is a whole other thing. Even the best players will miss ballistic shots and make that ever so awesome looking DPS stat drop noticeably so. Even a 33% miss rate (hitting 2/3 of shots) will drop your DPS... by 33% (dur.) What's more is the stress of using ballistics + extra will cause you to miss even more shots.

4... Ammo. Explosions from ammo. Dying from ammo exploding. Running out of ammo. Ammo.

Due to these and more issues (but these being the most important) I suggest the following things. Assuming that Crit space, Damage, Range, and Weight is off limits due to Mechwarrior being based on the (flawed) BT rules then:

AC2: Ammo per ton increased to 100 from 75. This would reduce the "effective weight" of the AC2 and allow it to be used far more on different mechs. It would only maybe free up maybe 2 tons at most on even AC2 spammers, but that's a good start. A more powerful recommendation going past conversative changes would be to reduce the heat of the AC2 to 0.8 to allow it to also use fewer heat sinks, again reducing it's effective weight.

AC5: Refire rate reduced to 1.1. Just to match the UAC5. Seems ... well.... reasonable. I don't know who could argue against this. Might need a little more after this, might recommend increasing ammo per ton to 35 from 30. Would possibly effect the below change.

UAC5: Ammo per ton increased to 30 from 25. Just to match the AC5. Would reduce it's effective weight again a little bit. The UAC5 is decently good as is, just needs a little bump of help. Also, the JAMMING shot should always fire. You should ALWAYS get off the second shot. The jamming will happen, but the shot must fire. The entire intent of the second shot is when you're desperate, to jam AND not fire the shot is just a **** move.

AC10: Refire rate reduced to 2.5 from 3 seconds, ammo per ton increased to 20. Would increase it's DPS to 4 instead of 3.33. Would make it more comparable to the AC20 considering it only weights 2 tons less. The extra range and 2 tonnage lower cost would help offset the additional aim time required from a faster firing weapon (as well as being 20% DPS lower after buff.)

AC20: Ammo per ton increaesd to 8 from 7. Just a tiny little bump. A little "Thank you for putting down 16 tons on to a short range weapon."

Rate of fire changes will NOT affect the Damage/armor dynamic. It'll just eat up more ammo, for less "real" damage, so you're stuck with sacrificing even more things for weight to get more ammo.

This is going Further away from game balance and intended weapon design.

The same result we see now would be happening if they Cut all weapon damage in half, instead of doubling armor. 1 damage, 2.5 damage, 5 damage, etc.

And Ballistics still come out last due to their low ammo capacity and high weight dependency on a single weapon system + it's ammo.

Edited by BerryChunks, 11 January 2013 - 07:36 PM.

[ChaosAvenger0]

[REDACTED]

The physics don't make sense.

Even if you wanted to change the damge/distance ratio, from a ballistics stand point, it would make more sense to do more damage right out of the barrel when the velocity is highest.

Edited by Viterbi, 12 January 2013 - 09:40 AM.
Removed quote of removed content

[M4rtyr]

I'm going to say that ballistics are FAR from poor. Not because of the weapons themselves, but because the heat/rate of fire is completely imbalanced and has a massive impact on Energy weapons effectiveness.

I just started playing this week, but from my expereince so far and from what I've been reading so far. Missiles are certainly dominate by a large margin (ever with ECM, don't get all the people that whined about that). Ballistics only hindarence is the lagshield, which hopefully they can address better. But They are being stupid by useing the base TT stats for balance when you fire about 3x faster then TT. You can't have the same heat generation as TT when you fire faster then TT was designed.

[Polojilarious]

You know, I have some problems with the OP's logic, but the proposed changes are actually all pretty reasonable.

Of everything, AC5s definitely need the boost the most, as there's pretty much no reason to take them over UAC5s right now. Even if you never double shoot, the UAC5 still has better dps and range.

One thing that a lot of people seem to be ignoring is the hardpoints are just as much of a resource as anything else. Yeah, sure, you'd be better off taking two medium lasers and some heatsinks over a single large laser, but heavy and assault mechs often don't have enough slots or hardpoints to take advantage of that while still filling out their tonnage.

And that's where ballistics come in. They basically have the highest damage per hardpoint out of anything that isn't an LRM 20.

Edited by Polojilarious, 11 January 2013 - 08:15 PM.

[LanceUy]

they are fine. it takes some skill to aim and that is alright

[Valore]

My main problem is that

Quote

Light Mech with Ballistic Hardpoints = Gimped Mech

There are NO viable options for light mechs that make it more desirable to take a ballistic over an missile or laser weapon. None.

Best of luck to PGI trying to fix MGs, because any good fix they do will have to completely change the role of MGs as they are in the fluff. Which will start a crapstorm on its own no doubt.

[Grumbling Coot]

hashinshin, on 11 January 2013 - 06:46 PM, said:

Things I learned today:

Anybody can have $120.


How to win any argument:
Start with the end result, find an argument that supports it.

I'm willing to bet the stats show that ballistics mechs have lower win rates than energy/missile mechs and apparently the developers have those stats and they agree with me based on their response.

Since I'm right and the people that matter know I'm right I won't waste time argument with the crazies. I'm tired of wasting time on the crazies.

Umm...I think you're wrong and also...I like Garth and all, but the dev with the stats (and who you would need to convince) is probably Paul...

[Tranceraver]

ive played mech 3, 4, merc, and they all have three things in common

1. laser boats do tons of damage then over heat shutdown cool off rinse, repeat

2. a/c users better know how to aim or ur worthless.

3. missile boats pretty much win the fight unless u actively jam them as no ams system ever blocks all of the damage.


also as far as increasing the fire rate of the A/C5 to near that of the UA/C5.... um theres a reason it has the word ULTRA in the name....

Edited by Tranceraver, 11 January 2013 - 08:40 PM.

[QuantumButler]

Dude smart people have known this since Closed Beta.

[Tranceraver]

im just saying buffing it cause the original OP obviously sucks at using it is no reason to buff it... this is the way its suppost to work if it was an issue it would have been addressed in any one of the original games... hell im still astounded at the whole aiming system.... used to have to piviot till the aim point was on the target not MOVE the aim point. granted this is loads better but stop complaing over the system working the way it always did id hate for it to become some neutral based all is fair and balanced game play half the fun of mechwarrior has always been the choices u make in the load out u use.

[Lukoi Banacek]

Garth Erlam, on 11 January 2013 - 04:48 PM, said:

I like your ideas, and have actually sent a list to design of weapon change ideas from the forums which include numbers that may not match, but are close to these.

I personally will become extremely overpowered if you increase the ammo in a ton of AC2 but hey...feel free