f13.net forums - The Big New PPC nerf (balance)

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Hey folks,

It's time to address the whole PPC/Gauss combo, the PPCs themselves and an additional weapon that is in high need of tuning... the Clan ER-Large Laser.

The PPC Weapon System

First off. Reading through the feedback we know that both solutions are not favorable as it will significantly affect PPC behaviour. The problem is, we need to have a change to the PPC as it has been out of alignment in terms of what we wanted its role to be in the game. Yes it is meant to be a mid to long range weapon but right now it's a long long range weapon. We still want the weapon to be accurate but we also want to pull in its effective distance. By effective distance we mean full damage range. We could pull in the actual max range value but that would no longer allow the PPC to reach out to 540m at full damage levels.

With the overwhelming feedback of the firing mechanic being far too complex, we have decided to give the projectile speed change a chance. We will be watching its performance as time goes on.

The new values for the PPCs are as follows:
Inner Sphere PPC - Speed = 850 m/s down from 1500 m/s.
Inner Sphere ER-PPC - Speed = 950 m/s down from 1500 m/s.
Clan ER-PPC - Speed = 950 m/s down from 1500 m/s.

We have tested this internally and also have had some of the high competitive players look at it. The overall feeling is that it's about right but as I said, we will keep looking at tuning this if warranted.

What the speed decrease does is the following:
Highly desyncs PPC/Gauss projectile impact times when fired simultaneously. The long range target 'Mech will be able to torso twist damage across multiple components or if it's moving fast enough, possibly evade the PPC shot(s).
Adds much higher skill requirement to using the weapon. Beyond 600-700m, you will have to lead your targets in order to hit. If you want instantaneous hits at longer ranges,then moving to a gauss rifle is what you will want to do.
Brings the effective range of the PPC into the 600-800m range instead of out at 1000m+.
Fallback scenarios mentioned by the community:

There have been comments that people will switch to the PPC/AC10 combination. This works out fine as the long range damage efficiency is now at 450m.

The same holds true for AC/5s including dual AC/5 builds. The effective long range sits at 620m but at this point the speed of projectile is significantly different.

Overall, the PPC becomes a mid to long range (90m - 700m) weapon. While still able to deal damage out to 1080m, it's going to require a very skilled shot to pull off.

Next up, the Clan ER Large Laser.

The Clan ER Large Laser has been on the nerfing radar for a while. It is firing in almost heat neutral Clan heavy/assault builds. It also has a very long range with a relatively short beam duration. To fix this weapon and make it have the firing attributes we would expect it to have, the following changes have been made.
C-ERLL beam duration increased from 1.5 -> 2.0 seconds.
C-ERLL base heat value increased from 8.5 -> 9.0.
C-ERLL minimum heat penalty (number of weapons fired simultaneously that will trigger Heat Scale) decreased from 3 -> 2. This means you can fire 1 for free, but firing 2 or more will incur the Heat Scale penalty.
C-ERLL heat penalty (Heat Scale multiplier) increased from 3.0 -> 12.0.
What this has produced in testing:

The numbers sound drastic, but the only one that makes a noticible change is the beam duration increase. Holding a beam at long range is going to require high player skill to get full damage on target.

The amount of heat being generated by such a powerful and long range weapon is severely out of sync with the rest of the game. Testing this weapon on default loadout Clan 'Mechs showed that the amount of heat being generated is near negligible. The Heat Scale numbers make the weapon start to blip on the heat meter. It's not really high enough yet but we will start low and work our way up.

The limit of 1 Clan-ER Large Laser for free is assocated with the findings from above. Even with this new minimum heat penalty setting, firing 2 Clan-ER Large Lasers still makes the weapon just start to blip on the heat meter. As always, we will be monitoring this weapon system very closely as to its effectiveness on the battlefield.

In Conclusion

This post is to let you know that these changes are going to be quick patched into tomorrow's build. The servers will be down for a very short amount of time (minutes, not hours) and the change will be in place. We are going to run with these numbers and see how the game adapts and performs with these changes and will update as needed as we continue investigating the weapons and new Clan technology now in the game.