Does PPC Effect do anything to enemies?

[Jivebot]

When I get hit by a PPC or even if I use one at too close a range, I get this visual glitch effect that sort of throws my aim off for a few seconds(though usually at that range it's sort of a moot point so whatever) but as far as I can tell that's all it's doing. Aside from the damage of course.

Is it having an effect beyond that which i'm not noticing? Does that even have any meaningful impact on enemy aim? Cuz it doesn't really have much noticeable impact on my aim other than just being kind of annoying.

Am I missing something here because more and more i'm thinking i'm just better off with a Long Range laser instead. Just to not have to put up with the stupid glitch effect if I have to use it in close range. Do PPCs inflict splash damage? Their effect looks sort of explosive but EVERYTHING looks sort of explosive in this game. lol

[Explore]

I'm not sure about splash damage, but I don't think so. Also have no idea what the distortion effect has on AI.

The main advantage of a PPC over a regular large laser, is it does damage all to 1 spot on the mech. On paper large lasers look a lot better heat/damage, but in practice they're only great against slow mechs where you can hold the laser steady on one spot. Against faster moving mechs you'll find the damage gets spread about to different areas, making it a lot less effective. In practice against those mechs, it would be far better to concentrate the damage to any 1 area (while sometimes missing completely). I mostly use large lasers against vehicles and turrets.

You might want to consider Pulse Lasers as an alternative to PPC's. For short range battles with laser heavy mechs I'm a fan of using lots of the short burst medium lasers (if you have the Heroes of the Inner Sphere DLC).

[Hykril Tynyx]

Maybe some of the modders familiar with the damage systems can elaborate on whether PPC actually affects enemies' behaviour.

[Crusard]

They temporarily reduce enemy AI accuracy by a fixed modifier. I think I read -20% somewhere.

[Hammer Of Evil]

your basics on paper is that PPC will do 40% more damage, at 40% more heat and 40% more weight than a large laser.

afaik no splash, no visual disruption, etc. on targets.

the difference is on your preference in rate of fire and accuracy.

if you're super accurate, a laser is probably better because you can hit that same part more often. if you're not accurate, you're going to drag the laser over multiple parts, and split the damage on multiple parts due to that long burn time.

ppc is easier to use, because it frontloads that entire shot into a single energy bullet, and you dont have to worry about an ammo explosion. but if you miss that shot you are paying for it in spades with weapon cooldown time.

the problem there is if you have lower rank captian / lesser skilled captain ai lance, they're usually going to shoot while they're still turning and send their first shot into low orbit instead of target on.

so thats where the longer ranged equipment has less use, weapons with a quicker fire rate are preferable on cpu controlled lance (i'd put like 85% lasers 15% ppc), and if you got humans well, then you can put your cannons, slug rifles, ppcs and just blow stuff up as soon as it peaks its cockpit over the ridge with coordinated fire. lol.

[Kosevich]

In a player hand PPC and actually any ballistic weapon can shoot at 1-2km distance, far beyond your radar detection radius.

In Coop 2 player can destroy several mechs before they reach radar detection zone (800m). Most problem + enemie mech actually not always present on the map and you actually need to lure them by activating quest target or damaging nearby structure ls to trigger spawn.

[Thundercracker]

and not that it's a factor, because ECM is so rare, but a PPC hit should disable ECM on a mech equipped with it.

[Guts]

At the high end of gameplay, once you have the energy weapon mods unlocked, the tier 5 ERLL is definitely better than the PPC. But the PPC outperforms the large lasers for most of the game, at the cost of extra weight, heat, and not being able to fire it at short range without hurting yourself.

The issue is cycle time. The PPC deals all it's damage at once. Until you have the mod that shortens energy weapon fire time, it's very hard to get all the damage on your target. The PPC also has a much better range until you have high end equipment, and the extended energy weapon range mod.

[Lord-Knight Fandragon]

Yeah that distortion effect, paired with the travel time and wonky accuracy makes PPCs quite annoying to use in this game. They like to just veer off randomly. Its like they have that World of Tanks RNG applied to them.

[JayPAC]

The distortion on PPCs has an effect on enemy AI by reducing their accuracy in the same way that ECM does. But ECM does so continually but at a short range while the ppc does so at every shot for however long the distortion holds. Not a very useful effect, I just like PPCs for how cool they are.

[Jack left town]

I always interpreted PPC visual distortion as your penalty for using a sniper weapon inside its minimum range in a game franchise that forgot minimum ranges for a lot of things

[-=EDF=- Kouta Seto]

You do know your crosshair is still pointing where you left it even with the EM effect?... its VISUAL not GAMEPLAY here, you can ignore and still hit the enemy (safe your not using the basic "turn where you aim" controll wich i know exists and glad i dont care about XD).

[Guts]

Originally posted by -=EDF=- Kouta Seto:

You do know your crosshair is still pointing where you left it even with the EM effect?... its VISUAL not GAMEPLAY here, you can ignore and still hit the enemy (safe your not using the basic "turn where you aim" controll wich i know exists and glad i dont care about XD).

It's not entirely visual. It decreases accuracy on weapons with spread, like PPCs and ACs. It also deceases AI accuracy for a short time.