116 replies to this topic

[Tastian]

Comparing the medium laser and ac2 is flawed since the rate of fire and range of the two is drastically different. Trying to balance all the weapons so that they all have some perfect weight/range/tonnage/damage/ammo/heat equation is also impossible and will quickly deviate from their origins even further then they already are. They are supposed to be choices and trade offs and variant uses.

The ac2 is supposed to do the same damage as a machine gun but just have incredible range. But as it is, the machine gun dps is pathetic to the point of uselessness and the ac2 recycle has been increase making its dps much higher then its roots.

The fact is that people use a good mix of most of the weapons with the exception of machine guns, flamers, small and large pulse lasers and probably regular srm2s.

If anything needs to be done; I'd suggest doubling ammo per ton of all ballistics and missiles to compensate for the doubling of armor.

[rgreat]

Also UAC jam mechanics need to be redone.
Simple random chance to jam (high one) make it completely unpredictable and unpractical to use in double shots, as it effectively do LESS DPS that way.

We need something better, like ultra-autocannon overheat level, where chance of jam raise from 0 to 100%, as long as you shooting non stop, but it get back down to 0% after you allow UAC5 to cool down.

Edited by rgreat, 11 January 2013 - 05:23 PM.

[Yokaiko]

hashinshin, on 11 January 2013 - 05:06 PM, said:

Nothing in mechwarrior is BAD (okay flamers, PPCs, machine guns, and LBX are bad) but ballistics right now are "inferior."

Every time I take my Ily out its good for three kills and in the neighborhood of 700 damage. Likewise my AC20 Flame, its only the canon and four MLas, I destroy with it. I also use the AC10 on my -1N and Fang, both of which are good mechs for me.

Of course the Dragon was the first mech I ever fell in love with so I learned ballistics early, once you figure out the aim they are pretty good for sustained damage, its a matter of playstyle.

[hashinshin]

Yokaiko, on 11 January 2013 - 05:23 PM, said:

Every time I take my Ily out its good for three kills and in the neighborhood of 700 damage. Likewise my AC20 Flame, its only the canon and four MLas, I destroy with it. I also use the AC10 on my -1N and Fang, both of which are good mechs for me.

Of course the Dragon was the first mech I ever fell in love with so I learned ballistics early, once you figure out the aim they are pretty good for sustained damage, its a matter of playstyle.

you know you're a legendary founder with 4 founders mechs which I'll go ahead and assume are all properly built, with properly built mechs...

going up against a 10 SHS centurian with an LBX10.

[rgreat]

Yep, but 4 MLAS give more DPS then your AC20, while weight several times less.

[Grumbling Coot]

OP, you seem to gloss over a few things about ballistics and energy weapons to help make your case...

First, ballistic weapons rock your opponent's view and make it harder for them to aim. (missiles do too, but are either affected by ecm or very short range).

Second, ballistics do all their damage to a single location. Lasers are harder to aim in this respect because you have to hold the beam on that location for the whole duration.

Third, ballistics generate a lot less heat than lasers. An AC/10 or 5 can be fired continuously without generating much (or any) heat. However, it's ridiculous to suggest that one heat sink will sufficiently offset the heat generated by a medium laser.

Fourth, ballistics have longer range than most lasers. I've tagged people with an AC/20 (one of the shortest ranged ballistics) from 600m away. Only large lasers and above can shoot that far.

While I agree that ballistics take more skill to use, they definitely have their advantages.

Edited by Grumbling Coot, 11 January 2013 - 05:30 PM.

[TruePoindexter]

I would like to add an idea I've had for awhile for LBX... What if it was set so that the damage ramped up from 1 per pellet to 2 per pellet at longer range. E.G. an individual pellet would reach its maximum damage at 540m. From there it could ramp down to 0 at 2x range instead of the 3x range that other ballistics enjoy. This would make the weapon worth shooting at range but keep it from being too powerful in close combat. The actual numbers may need to be adjusted. Here's a graph of what I mean:

[Soy]

hashinshin, on 11 January 2013 - 04:16 PM, said:

The one truth of online forums: Somebody somewhere thinks you're wrong despite perfect math. Somebody somewhere just died to it and thinks it's OP. Somebody somewhere happened to just do good with it and thinks it's fine. Somebody somewhere just did bad with it and thinks it's bad. Etc. Etc. Forums are mostly a shouting contest.

SHATTERING FORUM WARRIOR ETHOS SINCE 2013

[Protection]

TruePoindexter, on 11 January 2013 - 05:46 PM, said:

I would like to add an idea I've had for awhile for LBX... What if it was set so that the damage ramped up from 1 per pellet to 2 per pellet at longer range. E.G. an individual pellet would reach its maximum damage at 540m. From there it could ramp down to 0 at 2x range instead of the 3x range that other ballistics enjoy. This would make the weapon worth shooting at range but keep it from being too powerful in close combat. The actual numbers may need to be adjusted. Here's a graph of what I mean:

That seems a little odd. For maximum effect, you would want to be standing exactly 600m from the target?

[Korochun]

Ballistics suck, huh? This will come as news to my 3x UAC5 Muromets. You know, the one that goes 6-0 with 1200 damage.

[rgreat]

2 damage per pellet for LBX seems overkill. 1.1-1.3 seems more reasonable.
Or maybe increasing number of pellets per shot by a few will be better.

Edited by rgreat, 11 January 2013 - 06:31 PM.

[Kinjry]

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."

1. Pretty much every energy weapon generates far more heat than any comparable ballistic weapon, Sure ballistics weigh more and require ammo, but they can often be far more heat effective despite this, I'm sure your "math" did not even attempt to take actual HPS into account.

To give you an idea, a glance at Ohms, which has done this for you shows that an AC/2 would need around 20 heat sinks to entirely negate the generated heat.

A single medium laser takes about 10, however the DPS is 1.25, so you would need at least 3 medium lasers to even compare potential damage output, and you'd still be .25 dps lower, and require 30 heat sinks to negate heat, 10 heat sinks more than a single AC/2. So 33 tons vs 28 tons for a single AC/2 with 2 tons of ammo, and this is with a .25 dps difference.


2. You must be an ***** to even try and point this out since EVERY ENERGY WEAPON save the PPC's can be counterplayed by doing this. In fact if you do this against an AC/2 they just stop shooting until you look at them again, or they start shooting as you expose weak points. When you turn to shoot back with lasers THEY JUST TWIST RIGHT BACK AT YOU. Only now your lasers are on a predictable cool down, where as the AC/2's can fire every half second. This argument is stupid.


3. So, you mean any ***** can spazz their laser all over the enemy target, dealing the lasers entire damage all over the target. Yes, lasers are easy. However they are actually harder than Ballistics IF you want to actually transfer your weapons damage entirely to one point. With practice ballistics are not that hard to hit with, a decent pilot can become consistent in hitting the general torso mass, all of which are useful areas to damage, especially if the enemy is running an XL engine. Very good pilots can call shots, and place them where needed.

However, lasers CAN do the same kinds of shots, however the accuracy of the shot must be held for longer periods to gain appreciable pin point damage, which requires more skill against moving targets, additionally the damage you get for this when compared to ballistics is generally much lower.

AC/2 : The AC/2 is potentially overpowered, it's difficulty in use actually balances the stupid thing.

AC/5 : It does need a refire increase, can't argue with that. It just seems awkward to have the AC/5 when the U/AC5 is so much better.

UAC/5 : It has less ammo because it's dps is ****** strength, 9.09 potential. Against something heavy like an Atlas, this is very deadly if sustained (and hitting an atlas, even at range is not difficult) Oh, the UAC/5 also has a stupid high 4.54 DPS, which is just barely trumped by the AC/20's 5

AC/10 : The AC/10 is already at 2.5, with a DPS of 4. It's APT is fine, and in line with all other AC weapons.

AC/20 : increasing the ammo to 8 would punch the Damage per ton to 160, which puts it out of line, besides the punch of 20 is more than enough to make up for the lack of ammo. It's not for spamming.



The only work Ballistics need is more improvements to the convergence mechanics, mostly the nearly useless cursor target = convergence range instead of R target = convergence range. This causes lead shots to be random and unpredictable in circle strafe fights, some times resulting in shots flying in utterly random directions.

[Hardstyle]

Ballistics hit one spot. Lasers usually don't. Numbers lie if you don't consider the reality of combat. NO ONE firing MLs can hit the same spot with the entire beam every time with all of their beams. This spreads their DPS across multiple locations of the mech. Even bad players using ballistics will hit ONE component per shell. That means the full damage amount goes to that component. Skilled pilots who target weak points can easily take out opponents with ballistics by targeting components. This is harder to do with lasers since the full damage of the beam is spread over the length of time the beam fires.

[Titan Osis]

ALRIGHT I'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THIS A LOT LATELY, AND You're really bad at this game.

[TruePoindexter]

Protection, on 11 January 2013 - 06:01 PM, said:

That seems a little odd. For maximum effect, you would want to be standing exactly 600m from the target?

It would make the weapon worth firing at range where only a couple of pellets would hit the target. Right now you only really get value out of the LBX firing below 100m. At range where you only hit with a few pellets the weapon deals often the same or less damage than an AC2 spread across multiple sections and this addresses that. The numbers may need to be adjusted so that it still deals an average 10 damage in close combat though.

rgreat, on 11 January 2013 - 06:11 PM, said:

2 damage per pellet for LBX seems overkill. 1.2-1.3 seems more reasonable.
Or maybe increasing number of pellets per shot will be better.

The damage per pellet is my concern - the weapon should really gain in power just gain effectiveness. As I said the exact number probably needs to be tweaked.

As for additional pellets I think that would make it too strong in close combat.

[Korochun]

Or just have it fire a solid slug that explodes into shrapnel in proximity to targets, with some bonus damage if you hit it right on (like 3 damage for a solid hit/10 pellets?).

'cause in the fluff that's what LBX actually does.

[RagingOyster]

hashinshin, on 11 January 2013 - 05:06 PM, said:

Nothing in mechwarrior is BAD (okay flamers, PPCs, machine guns, and LBX are bad) but ballistics right now are "inferior."

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

[Vaneshi SnowCrash]

rgreat, on 11 January 2013 - 05:18 PM, said:

Also UAC jam mechanics need to be redone.
Simple random chance to jam (high one) make it completely unpredictable and unpractical to use in double shots, as it effectively do LESS DPS that way.

The other thing I've noticed on a multi-UAC/5 Mech is that when one jams. They ALL jam. Which... is odd and a trifle annoying.

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

He said PPC not ER-PPC.

[ChaosAvenger0]

Personnaly I like where ballistics are right now. I loved sniping with my 3x ac2 Hunchy, I dropped the ac20.

I had to look up what lag shield was all about, living so close to the servers. If not for lag shield I'm having a hard time understanding why people are finding ballistics and lasers hard to use together. Are people having difficulty managing weapon groups? I have great fun with my slightly upgraded Yen-Lo Wang and my 2x ac20 / 2x medlaser Catapult K2.

Yes please give me more ammo per ton.

[PANZERBUNNY]

BAHAH!

You sound so sure of yourself.

Some people have no vision.