116 replies to this topic

[Aidan Malchor]

My UAC5's and their regular dmg of 700-1100 a match disagree with you.

Ballistics do suck if you are terribad at aiming.

[kilgor]

The UAC5s do seem to fire a bit too fast especially compared to the AC/5. 'Mechs with mutliple UAC5s can keep even a Atlas rocking to make it hard toshoot back while the UACs chew up their armor.

[SpiralRazor]

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."

You simply can not compare an AC/2 to a Medium Laser in terms of effectiveness....at all....Its Apples to Watermelons. AC/2 allows you to cause damage at over 4x the MLs range...and granted, its not a lot but people will back off ridges and firing positions rather then take continued harassment fire.

Up close and personal and within the MLs 5 damage range band? Yes, of course the ML will be more effective... But your only going to be effective to 540....whereas my AC 2 will cause damage more damage all the way out to about 1.2k.

[Gorthaur]

I completely disagree with the OP. I want him to come and tell me that after facing any of my mechs with a UAC5 on it. Id say the worst AC right now is the 2 and that is just because it causes a lot of heat compared to its damage output. But even then, a cataphract with 2 AC 2s and to UAC 5s is ridiculously dangerous.

[Khobai]

everyone knows UAC/5s are fine. stop even mentioning them. its the ballistic weapons nobody uses that are terrible.

[georgetakei]

ballistics bad

just played a game

Sniping Gauss YLW

first shot= headshot on centurian

you argument is invalid op

[SpiralRazor]

georgetakei, on 13 January 2013 - 01:54 PM, said:

ballistics bad

just played a game

Sniping Gauss YLW

first shot= headshot on centurian

you argument is invalid op

Actually, its your argument thats bad...you must not have read the part where he excepts AC/20 and Gauss.

See? I can use eye rolls as well.

And Khobai, I wouldnt say UAC 5s are good, nor are they bad, but they do suck less then the AC5/10/20. Theres also something clearly going wrong with the AC/2 as its spreadsheet stats dont match up to its in game performance..its noticeably slower then .50 ROF after that one patch.

Edited by SpiralRazor, 13 January 2013 - 02:11 PM.

[Wolfways]

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.

Seriously? I thought the OP was a joke until i read the replies and realised he might be serious...

Ballistics are the only weapon i hate running into on the battlefield, especially AC Cataphracts.

[TruePoindexter]

Wolfways, on 13 January 2013 - 02:41 PM, said:

Seriously? I thought the OP was a joke until i read the replies and realised he might be serious...

Ballistics are the only weapon i hate running into on the battlefield, especially AC Cataphracts.

The OP's title is inflammatory but the adjustments he's proposing are reasonable and a good thing.

[Pr8Dator]

Ballistics will start to become worth their weight when they implement the knockdown on impulse feature. That will make Dakka Dakka 4X mechs worth that slow speed once again. As such, no adjustments to ballistics need to be made since such a powerful feature is going to be added to them soon.

Edited by Pr8Dator, 13 January 2013 - 02:55 PM.

[Valkyrie Brynhildr]

Pr8Dator, on 13 January 2013 - 02:55 PM, said:

Ballistics will start to become worth their weight when they implement the knockdown on impulse feature. That will make Dakka Dakka 4X mechs worth that slow speed once again. As such, no adjustments to ballistics need to be made since such a powerful feature is going to be added to them soon.

Hopefully, I can send a Light flying a few meters with my Dual LBX Cataphract

[Wolfways]

TruePoindexter, on 13 January 2013 - 02:47 PM, said:

The OP's title is inflammatory but the adjustments he's proposing are reasonable and a good thing.

I wasn't talking about the title. I read the whole post and disagree with all of it.
I find AC's to be no harder to use than lasers (and for some reason seem to get a lot more headshots with ballistics), but AC's have the advantage of doing all the damage to one location. Their weight means nothing because of weapon hardpoints...it's not like you can choose to outfit your mech with either an AC2 or six ML's.
And while ballistics need ammo, lasers need a lot more heatsinks.

Everyone has different opinions on all weapons because we have different levels of ability with them. Numbers on paper are no indication of how "balanced" something is...not that anything can truly be balanced for that exact same reason.

If the OP (and others in the thread) feel that ballistics are underpowered then maybe it's just because they aren't as good with ballistics as they are with lasers, or SRM's, etc.
I know i do better with ballistics and i hate fighting against ballistic mechs, but unfortunately the mechs i like tend to be energy-based (i prefer playing mechs i like the look of over their weapon hardpoints).

[Even Dark]

balistics,ppc gauss have for me 1 big problem.

you must move your crosshair and wait few seconds before fire to hit there where the crosshair is. the ac and the moving crosshair are not "=". on range ok on close combat to hard.

i wish the balistics,ppc and gauss would be fire there where the crosshair is likes the lasers. this is for me a design error.

you must hold only in front of the mech when he moves on a large distanz to hit the moving mech but not in closecombat, because the ballistic shot dont need fly a long way to the target.

example:
target 800m = 2 sec must the ballistic fly to the target also hold in front of mech (calculate in your aim the flying time to hit the mech)
target 80m = 0,2 sec must the ballistic fly to the target also target the mech

Edited by Even Dark, 13 January 2013 - 03:32 PM.

[georgetakei]

saying that gauss and ac20 do not count in an argument about ballistics being bad is a poor way to prove a point

that is like me saying that missiles are the worst weapon in the game...except LRMS

ballistics are probably the strongest weapon but the skill cap to use them effectively is far and wide.

you have to hit for the weapon to be worth putting on your mech. that is why people use lasers insta hit.

also before ecm. LRM boats were more prevalent. now no insta lock pew pew your dead.

i love using ballistics. i prefer running mechs that have more hard points for ballistics.

Edited by georgetakei, 13 January 2013 - 04:00 PM.

[Viper69]

I dont understand why a high damage AC like the AC 20 need fly slower than a low damage round like the AC2. Was there a logic behind this at all? I am asking you Garth, not the collective speculation of the forums, but you. Its counter intuitive that a slug round be slow enough you can see it leave the gun barrel. To me it makes little to no sense to have a weapon designed for close quarters combat travel so slow.

[MustrumRidcully]

Viper69, on 13 January 2013 - 04:04 PM, said:

I dont understand why a high damage AC like the AC 20 need fly slower than a low damage round like the AC2. Was there a logic behind this at all? I am asking you Garth, not the collective speculation of the forums, but you. Its counter intuitive that a slug round be slow enough you can see it leave the gun barrel. To me it makes little to no sense to have a weapon designed for close quarters combat travel so slow.

I know you're not asking the speculation collective, but here's my take on it:
- Low speed tends ot mean less effective at longer ranges. Even if the bullet has the same theoretical range, it is less likely to hit it sintended target - any movement or change of direction the enemy executes can lead to a miss.
- AC stats make little sense if you think about real world cannons. The longer the range of a weapon, the higher its speed and usually also the higher the kinetic energy it has, overall leading it to also deal more damage. But in Battletech, they apparantly wanted a trade-off between range and damage for ballistics. (Energy weapons do the opposite - more range, more damage, but also much more weight).

[Stardancer01]

The AC20 (friend blaster) and AC10 need to do more damage
But having the AC20 do 20 damage and the AC10 do 10 damage
is one of the games main control factors
.
so I was thinking that the AC10&20 should do internal like a squash head cannon shell
as the warheads hit the shell is stopped but the shockwave continues through the armour
causing chunks of armour and supporting structure to come louse and ricocheting around the inside
.
1point of internal for a AC10, 2 for a AC20
and while we are here 1point for a PPC
burning out internal systems