203 replies to this topic

[Jakob Knight]

Note that for this to have any effect, it has to hit the generating Mech. Just hitting a mech that is protected by ECM will produce no change to that mech being protected, and if another mech is in range of a generating mech, the ECM generating mech won't be exposed because the PPC has not hit the unit protecting it.

Ultimately, the devs are trying to install dozens of changes to other systems that are designed to not actually counter ECM, in order to avoid any changes to the ECM they have been waiting their whole lives for. Three patches since ECM was put in with qualities they knew were overpowered and would shut out two weapon systems and one primary combat role in the game from use, and not a single change to ECM itself. This is clear indication they have no intent to make any changes to ECM at all, and are only interested in seeking everything -but- tweeks that might remove anything from their private dream module.

Good to see Golum in charge of Mechwarrior, eh?

Edited by Jakob Knight, 31 January 2013 - 01:16 PM.

[Suprentus]

Sheraf, on 31 January 2013 - 01:11 PM, said:

If that D-DC got hit with PCC every 5 sec, I think he already dead before the effect of PCC become useful, so are light if you can hit them with PPC, I don't think they can live long enough to provide ECM disrupt or cover;)

I don't know about that claim. Even if you hit dead center torso every time, it's typical to see 80-100 points of armor on an Atlas. With a PPC doing 10 damage per shot, you're going to be wailing on an Atlas quite a while before he's dead.

Meanwhile, all the other Mechs that are hidden around him are all shown to your team: information warfare. Seems like the effect of PPCs would be useful right off the bat. A few people could even get a few streaks off in the process.

Edited by Suprentus, 31 January 2013 - 01:35 PM.

[StalaggtIKE]

Suprentus, on 31 January 2013 - 01:34 PM, said:

I don't know about that claim. Even if you hit dead center torso every time, it's typical to see 80-100 points of armor on an Atlas. With a PPC doing 10 damage per shot, you're going to be wailing on an Atlas quite a while before he's dead.

Meanwhile, all the other Mechs that are hidden around him are all shown to your team: information warfare. Seems like the effect of PPCs would be useful right off the bat. A few people could even get a few streaks off in the process.

More than likely an ECM team will have backup. So you will not be disrupting their cloak at all. Of course you could have PPC pilots go for numerous ECM pilots.

Instead of simply focus firing on the Atlas?

Nah, I rather my team focus on killing the Atlas off. Thinking of PPC as a ECM counter is a joke.

Edited by StalaggtIKE, 31 January 2013 - 03:14 PM.

[Novawrecker]

StalaggtIKE, on 31 January 2013 - 03:12 PM, said:

Thinking of PPC as a ECM counter is a joke.

Agreed. However, I do not think people will run PPC to counter ECM, more like use it as a weapon that helps them semi-take away the ECM blanket and make them vulnerable to additional (types of) weapon fire.

Edited by Novawrecker, 31 January 2013 - 03:27 PM.

[Novawrecker]

M A L l C E, on 31 January 2013 - 03:26 PM, said:

People might stop laughing at PPC commandos, too, when they turn off your DDC ECM

Nah, seeing as they die a pretty hilarious death as they turn into a blazing inferno from SRM6 pack shots now hehe

[Solis Obscuri]

M A L l C E, on 31 January 2013 - 03:26 PM, said:

This is an interesting choice since it gives an intangible benefit to the PPC that you can't describe with raw numbers, and it also means that your typical "blob atlai" can't rely on their own ECM. People might stop laughing at PPC commandos, too, when they turn off your DDC ECM

More accurately, it's a way to say PPCs are being buffed without actually buffing them, and say you're creating a counter for ECM without actually creating one.

[Stingersun]

IMO ECM doesnt need to be countered, i personally and several people i know use tag quite effectively to counter it and ECM can be used to counter ECM. having PPC counter it a bit aswell would be a nice bonus aswell if you ask me

[Suprentus]

StalaggtIKE, on 31 January 2013 - 03:12 PM, said:

More than likely an ECM team will have backup. So you will not be disrupting their cloak at all. Of course you could have PPC pilots go for numerous ECM pilots.

Instead of simply focus firing on the Atlas?

Nah, I rather my team focus on killing the Atlas off. Thinking of PPC as a ECM counter is a joke.

Then more than likely one of your own team will have an ECM to counter their backup. You're already countering one of them. It's all hypothetical anyway, so let's just go all the way with it.

Your PPC disables enemy ECM1
Enemy ECM2 provides backup
Your ECM1 counters enemy ECM2
Enemy ECM3 provides backup
...
Enemy ECM91,462 provides backup
Your ECM91,460 counters
Your PPC1 and PPC2 disables 2 enemy ECMs
Enemy Raven 3L #6819 casts shadow clone jutsu
Full enemy ECM blanket


Hm, your team lost after all. I guess you're right, and PPC is going to be a useless counter.

Edited by Suprentus, 31 January 2013 - 04:05 PM.

[Tincan Nightmare]

Well Pretty Baby is going to be in the mechlab soon so maybe this 'addition' to PPC's is just a sales tool to bump revenue for the new hero Awesome. Something like 'hey you going to buy that new Awesome?' 'Not sure, why should I?' 'You can disable ECM with its PPC!' 'CRAP, I'm buying it right now!'

[Solis Obscuri]

Tincan Nightmare, on 31 January 2013 - 04:09 PM, said:

Well Pretty Baby is going to be in the mechlab soon so maybe this 'addition' to PPC's is just a sales tool to bump revenue for the new hero Awesome. Something like 'hey you going to buy that new Awesome?' 'Not sure, why should I?' 'You can disable ECM with its PPC!' 'CRAP, I'm buying it right now!'

You really think people will buy a 6,000MC Awesome for its one PPC when they could just buy a PPC for 400,000CB? Well, perhaps I assume too much human intelligence... some people might.

[Novawrecker]

Tis not just any PPC, tis a Pretty Baby PPC!

[Solis Obscuri]

Novawrecker, on 31 January 2013 - 04:20 PM, said:

Tis not just any PPC, tis a Pretty Baby PPC!

I'm pretty sure there's a tranny joke in there somewhere but I'm not sure I want to go there...
Oh what the hell...

[DocBach]

The way PGI is handling ECM, I'm starting to believe the ECM end game strategy for PGI is to counter ECM with more and more modules that cost GXP in an effort to get people to convert regular XP with GXP with MC, as a cash grab. I believe ECM is the start of our pay to win mechanic for MWO - if you don't play for days on end, or give in and pay real money, you don't get an effective counter against a broken mechanic.

[TVMA Doc]

Khobai, on 29 January 2013 - 05:01 PM, said:

that means theyre lowering its heat by 1 lol

Nah, probably means that their heat stays the same, it's just the weapon cooldown that increases to help you prevent overheating.

[StalaggtIKE]

Suprentus, on 31 January 2013 - 04:02 PM, said:

Then more than likely one of your own team will have an ECM to counter their backup. You're already countering one of them. It's all hypothetical anyway, so let's just go all the way with it.

Your PPC disables enemy ECM1
Enemy ECM2 provides backup
Your ECM1 counters enemy ECM2
Enemy ECM3 provides backup
...
Enemy ECM91,462 provides backup
Your ECM91,460 counters
Your PPC1 and PPC2 disables 2 enemy ECMs
Enemy Raven 3L #6819 casts shadow clone jutsu
Full enemy ECM blanket


Hm, your team lost after all. I guess you're right, and PPC is going to be a useless counter.

I guess you were trying to be funny? My point being, the buff to PPC wont make a difference. Expecialy versus an organized team. Soloing as an ECM mech has always been a noob move; smart ECM players always paired up.

But as someone posted earlier, this buff will probably just help boost Pretty Baby sales.

[Satori Komeiji]

I feel like it'd be not bad against single Atlas-DDC ECMs, but not good against anything else. I do think it's easier to hit a Light at one point with a PPC than trying to hold a TAG on it, but I think, if you hit a ECM light with a PPC, I feel like the 10 damage it just took is a fairly big chunk of of its total durability, and a lot more relevant than their ECM being turned off temporarily. Also, if there's multiple ECMs within range of each other, I'm guessing one of them being temporarily turned off won't do anything relevant at all.

I also don't really think the PPC effect would be useful for missiles, since a good deal of the 5 seconds of ECM downtime would be used up getting targetting and getting the missile lock, and it'd probably be lost again before the missiles arrive, so I think the missiles would still likely miss. Or, if someone chains enough PPC shots to keep the ECM off long enough to arrive, by that point the accumulated PPC damage is likely to the point where it'd have been better to have something else to go with it rather than missiles.

Where I do think the ECM downtime would be useful though, is that it'd give hit confirmation for the PPC shot, and for the window that the ECM's disabled, it'd allow you to target the Atlas, at long range, and get an idea of how damaged it is and if there's any weak spots to aim for.

I don't think it's an amazing counter, but It's not a bad bonus to have.

[GhostFacedNinja]

I like this idea. It wont be a massive counter to ECM, but it will provide an effect. I LRM boat a lot, currently mainly with Stalkers. I always take TAG, as it is extremely good for piercing the bubble if you know how to use it. The one thing it isn't good for is if you are inside the 180m bubble. Light mechs doing this to you are to be expected, but when atlas's start marching in it can really shut you down completely. You cannot even fire at targets further away than them.
I usually run with lasers as back up to LRMs (suicidal not to). But if this change came in, I'm thinkin a pair of PPCs would be sick. I'd be able to chain fire them forever, whilst firing LRMs. AND have TAG constantly pointed downrange. It'lll do horrible things to ECM bubbles. If nothing else it'll force the enemy team to have to hide all the way in.

[Suprentus]

StalaggtIKE, on 01 February 2013 - 05:44 AM, said:

I guess you were trying to be funny? My point being, the buff to PPC wont make a difference. Expecialy versus an organized team. Soloing as an ECM mech has always been a noob move; smart ECM players always paired up.

But as someone posted earlier, this buff will probably just help boost Pretty Baby sales.

The humor was to added to help emphasize my point, but I don't think you got it. I'll condense it for you. No matter how many hypothetical variables you throw out there, one less ECM on the other team is always advantageous.

You're acting as if a team that has some PPCs will be one that leaves ECMs behind. You do know that the team that has more functioning ECMs is the one that gets ECM coverage, right?

[Codejack]

Oh, come on; this is just another sick joke.

[Suprentus]

Since we're loving hypotheticals, here's another one. Suppose you're in a build that runs ER PPCs and Streaks (like one of mine already does), and you're all of a sudden face to face with an Atlas DDC (like what has happened to me several times now). You can now give him the old one-two. PPCs as one, then a small window to fire streaks at him as a second shot at him. One weapon enables use of the other now. Kind of adds a small layer of tactics to it, doesn't it?

It's even more useful if you just use normal PPCs, and supposing they can still proc under 90m. You're not completely neutered anymore, and you can throw streaks around.

Edited by Suprentus, 01 February 2013 - 08:09 AM.