69 replies to this topic

[Alek Ituin]

Carl Avery, on 30 October 2014 - 09:29 PM, said:

The Ember is the only light 'mech that's been used to win group tournament in the last few months. Why do you think that is? Why do the competitive players choose the Ember and not one of the other Firestarter variants?

I'll give you no hints; it's an easy answer, not a trick question.

No-armor Gauss Embers, that's why.

Oh wait, were you being serious?

[FupDup]

Carl Avery, on 30 October 2014 - 09:29 PM, said:

The Ember is the only light 'mech that's been used to win group tournament in the last few months. Why do you think that is? Why do the competitive players choose the Ember and not one of the other Firestarter variants?

I'll give you no hints; it's an easy answer, not a trick question.

The Ember is an outlier regarding MGs. It has 4 Medium Lasers as its primary weapons that can take care of most armor stripping, and it has better hitboxes for brawling than most other lights. Compared to other Firestarter variants, the others simply generate too much heat to compare. The Ember has enough lasers to hurt, and since it has fewer lasers it also generates less heat as it is, and also gets some backup heatless weapons as a bonus. The other FS-9's tend to get toasty real fast.

It's not that the MGs themselves are so amazing, but rather that they give the Ember something to do while other lights would be waiting to vent their heat. Look at MGs on practically any other mech and the results won't be nearly as favorable...

We shouldn't judge the balance of a weapon based on one variant of one chassis.

[Y E O N N E]

FupDup, on 30 October 2014 - 09:40 PM, said:

The Ember is an outlier regarding MGs. It has 4 Medium Lasers as its primary weapons that can take care of most armor stripping, and it has better hitboxes for brawling than most other lights. Compared to other Firestarter variants, the others simply generate too much heat to compare. The Ember has enough lasers to hurt, and since it has fewer lasers it also generates less heat as it is, and also gets some backup heatless weapons as a bonus. The other FS-9's tend to get toasty real fast.

It's not that the MGs themselves are so amazing, but rather that they give the Ember something to do while other lights would be waiting to vent their heat. Look at MGs on practically any other mech and the results won't be nearly as favorable...

We shouldn't judge the balance of a weapon based on one variant of one chassis.

Actually, the LCT-1V is the outlier. It's the only quad(or higher)-ballistic 'Mech that can't mount something punchier to supplement the Machine Guns. The Spider 5K can stick an LL, LPL, or a PPC in there. The Arrow can mount LPLs, MLs, LLs, MLs, AC/5s, LB-10Xs, AC/2s, etc. The Huggin gets punchy SRMs.

Foxfire, on 30 October 2014 - 09:32 PM, said:

As I said, MG's can still be effective. The issue is that the level of effectiveness for different play styles has diminished. Where MG's were once useful as part of the arsenal for a hit and run playstyle and quick backstabber in addition to it's effectiveness as a face to face weapon, it is now only effective as a face to face weapon.

As I stated multiple times before, I acknowledge that MG's are effective in that one role. It is the loss of effectiveness at the other role that is the issue I am talking about. The changes to MG's were supposed to be a net-sum-Zero change by design and yet they effectively neutered MG's for anything other than faceplanting your target.

This is the problem I am talking about. This is the reduction in effectiveness.

But the effectiveness has not changed. Not at all. They are just as good now as they were before, which is why I think the issue is on your end. I think they could benefit from some range, but damage? Unnecessary. What do you think you are going to gain from an additional 0.2 damage per second per gun? You'll shave time-to-kill down by maybe a single second on any given target, which doesn't mean anything to you if you are doing "hit and run."

Speaking of which, MGs were never good as hit-and-run weapons, not even before they were patched. Never have they ever done enough damage to be considered viable for hit and run. Nobody ever takes MGs with the intention of making a quick strike and then getting the hell out of dodge. You take MGs when you want to find the rear-most 'Mech and just sit on his tail until he either dies or his buddies come back to help. You take MGs when you want a constant stream of damage to fill in the gaps between more powerful weapons firing. None of that is hit-and-run. Hit-and-run is streaking between points of cover and popping off a quick salvo of SRMs or a burst from your battery of lasers, then retreating to friendlies or other safe places.

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 30 October 2014 - 09:46 PM.

[Foxfire]

I take it you never regularly piloted a Huginn then.

That one single change, without a change to my loadout or my playstyle accounted for an easy drop of ~200 damage a match when piloting a Huginn. The only saving grace is that the same patch that they deployed this fix was also the patch where they deployed the SRM hit detection fix.

That single patch took the Huginn, for me at least, from a Mech where I would reliably get between 450-600 damage to one where I would pull ~200-450 with no changes in loadout or playstyle on my part.

I've pretty much retired that mech, which I used to enjoy, because of how impotent it feels now.

*edits to add*

If there was no change in effectiveness, then there shouldn't have been a noticeable drop in effectiveness. If you played the style where you got into touching range to blast away, of course you wouldn't see or feel a change.

Edited by Foxfire, 30 October 2014 - 10:13 PM.

[FupDup]

Yeonne Greene, on 30 October 2014 - 09:43 PM, said:

Actually, the LCT-1V is the outlier. It's the only quad(or higher)-ballistic 'Mech that can't mount something punchier to supplement the Machine Guns. The Spider 5K can stick an LL, LPL, or a PPC in there. The Arrow can mount LPLs, MLs, LLs, MLs, AC/5s, LB-10Xs, AC/2s, etc. The Huggin gets punchy SRMs.

None of those other mechs have any real significant advantage compared to their brethren. Well, maybe the Arrow seems okay, but it can boat six of the things so that's hardly a fair comparison (almost anything can be lethal when boated hard enough). Some of them are actually pretty bad, like the Huggin in particular (the Spidey 5K is also just a troll mech, but at least it's better off than the Huggin).

The Ember is the outlier in that it's the only MG boat that is currently meta/competitive compliant. The rest all reside within Puglandia, and some even extend downwards into the Steering Wheel Underhive.


PS: The Lolcust can sort of attempt 3 MGs + ERLL + 0.5 tons of ammo.

Edited by FupDup, 30 October 2014 - 10:06 PM.

[Greenjulius]

Foxfire, on 30 October 2014 - 09:55 PM, said:

I take it you never regularly piloted a Huginn then.

That one single change, without a change to my loadout or my playstyle accounted for an easy drop of ~200 damage a match when piloting a Huginn. The only saving grace is that the same patch that they deployed this fix was also the patch where they deployed the SRM hit detection fix.

That single patch took the Huginn, for me at least, from a Mech where I would reliably get between 450-600 damage to one where I would pull ~200-450 with no changes in loadout or playstyle on my part.

I've pretty much retired that mech, which I used to enjoy, because of how impotent it feels now.

*edits to add*

If there was no change in effectiveness, then there shouldn't have been a noticeable drop in effectiveness. If you played the style where you got into touching range to blast away, of course you wouldn't see or feel a change.

This is basically my experience too. The Huginn is nearly worthless since the MG nerf. I regret buying it.

Those saying MGs are fine, or powerful, or anything other than bad, have obviously not run them since the nerf. MGs are terrible. Mechs that get stuck with them should not be punished. MGs need a straight up buff.

Edited by Greenjulius, 30 October 2014 - 10:22 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Outside of Locusts, my most-used chassis is the Blackjack. My most used variant is the Arrow. Ergo, you shouldn't jump to conclusions about who has or hasn't recently used machine guns.

FupDup said:

None of those other mechs have any real significant advantage compared to their brethren. Well, maybe the Arrow seems okay, but it can boat six of the things so that's hardly a fair comparison (almost anything can be lethal when boated hard enough). Some of them are actually pretty bad, like the Huggin in particular (the Spidey 5K is also just a troll mech, but at least it's better off than the Huggin). [/color]

The Ember is the outlier in that it's the only MG boat that is currently meta/competitive compliant. The rest all reside within Puglandia, and some even extend downwards into the Steering Wheel Underhive.

I get that last point, but looking at whether or not a 'Mech is competitive is a poor yardstick because you can't ever have all of them be equally competitive. Differing geometry alone prevents that. In Puglandia, all of them are viable in the right hands, which is as much as you can hope to ask for.

Foxfire, on 30 October 2014 - 09:55 PM, said:

I take it you never regularly piloted a Huginn then.

That one single change, without a change to my loadout or my playstyle accounted for an easy drop of ~200 damage a match when piloting a Huginn. The only saving grace is that the same patch that they deployed this fix was also the patch where they deployed the SRM hit detection fix.

That single patch took the Huginn, for me at least, from a Mech where I would reliably get between 450-600 damage to one where I would pull ~200-450 with no changes in loadout or playstyle on my part.

I've pretty much retired that mech, which I used to enjoy, because of how impotent it feels now.

*edits to add*

If there was no change in effectiveness, then there shouldn't have been a drop in effectiveness. If you played the style where you got into touching range to blast away, of course you wouldn't see or feel a change.

I played a Huggin for quite some time on the PTS when Mining Collective was being tested (I believe this was my loadout, and I had all the appropriate weapon modules). The majority of its power came from the SRMs; the MGs only came into play when I had the opportunity to actually linger on the target. I did dandy with it, and thought it was pretty fun. If I liked Ravens at all, I would probably buy one (I don't like Ravens...I think they are ugly).

But my bread-and-butter MG 'Mech is the Arrow. Before the patch, I ran it with an LB-10X, 5x MG, and three medium lasers. It would regularly pull 650-ish damage. Then the Clans came out, and that XL-dependent build was no longer viable, so I swapped the LB-10X for a Standard Engine and an AC/5, and the damage dropped to ~450-500. Now I run it with a full set of Machine Guns linked to twin Medium Pulse and a single Large Pulse, and it's back up to 650+ damage. At no point did I feel that the MGs were underperforming. It was the AC/5 that was underperforming, and it was doing so because the DPS was lower without the 10-rated autocannon and its absurdly fast rate of fire. The pulse lasers pushed it back up because their damage is more front-loaded than with the AC/5, which compensated for the significantly lowered DPS from the LB-10X build.

My question to you is: did you ever consider that it was a change elsewhere in the game that's causing you to not do as well? Things that kill you faster or force you to not do things you used to be able to get away with?

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 30 October 2014 - 11:05 PM.

[Deathlike]

FupDup, on 30 October 2014 - 05:47 PM, said:

Speaking of which, giving mechs +X% MG range quirks is relatively pointless most of the time. MGs being constant fire makes them unable to benefit from cooldown buffs, so something else would have to be done. Something like an increased critical hit chance should be doable with current coding. Maybe even a straight damage per bullet buff, but that might be getting too ambitious.

MG range buffs are useless since the COF remains unchanged. A simple COF reduction is a FAR stronger buff than range could ever be.

If lasers were ever running on the MG's COF, you would be demanding laser buffs immediately after.

Also, AMS is a streak-like projectile (well, it does't have to do all these fancy turns like Streaks, since it likes to "pass through walls" like a ghost). The ROF would arguably be different than the hitscan/laser fire that the MG actually uses...

That preemptive MG nerf that Paul did is pretty much a culprit, followed by the "last MG nerf" when it was ridiculous once upon a time...

Edited by Deathlike, 30 October 2014 - 11:15 PM.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

Lol at the "it's not supposed to hurt mechs" comments.

TT MG damage: 2
TT AC2 damage: 2

[Foxfire]

Yeonne Greene, on 30 October 2014 - 11:03 PM, said:

Outside of Locusts, my most-used chassis is the Blackjack. My most used variant is the Arrow. Ergo, you shouldn't jump to conclusions about who has or hasn't recently used machine guns.


[/font]

I get that last point, but looking at whether or not a 'Mech is competitive is a poor yardstick because you can't ever have all of them be equally competitive. Differing geometry alone prevents that. In Puglandia, all of them are viable in the right hands, which is as much as you can hope to ask for.





I played a Huggin for quite some time on the PTS when Mining Collective was being tested (I believe this was my loadout, and I had all the appropriate weapon modules). The majority of its power came from the SRMs; the MGs only came into play when I had the opportunity to actually linger on the target. I did dandy with it, and thought it was pretty fun. If I liked Ravens at all, I would probably buy one (I don't like Ravens...I think they are ugly).

But my bread-and-butter MG 'Mech is the Arrow. Before the patch, I ran it with an LB-10X, 5x MG, and three medium lasers. It would regularly pull 650-ish damage. Then the Clans came out, and that XL-dependent build was no longer viable, so I swapped the LB-10X for a Standard Engine and an AC/5, and the damage dropped to ~450-500. Now I run it with a full set of Machine Guns linked to twin Medium Pulse and a single Large Pulse, and it's back up to 650+ damage. At no point did I feel that the MGs were underperforming. It was the AC/5 that was underperforming, and it was doing so because the DPS was lower without the 10-rated autocannon and its absurdly fast rate of fire. The pulse lasers pushed it back up because their damage is more front-loaded than with the AC/5, which compensated for the significantly lowered DPS from the LB-10X build.

My question to you is: did you ever consider that it was a change elsewhere in the game that's causing you to not do as well? Things that kill you faster or force you to not do things you used to be able to get away with?

Three things changed that directly effected the mech itself. SRM hit detection was fixed(Good), MG hit detections were fixed (good eventhough this was never really an issue that was visible to anyone who isn't already digging into the hit reg code to find other issues), and damage was reduced for MG's.

As for your last question.. no, nothing else changed or forced me to change post patch. The only major new thing was the release of the Clans and the IS lights have such a huge speed advantage that there really wasn't a need to change my style.

As a regular Huginn pilot, my experience before this patch is that MG's had a decent level of umph to be able to take down a mech with exposed internals(without having to face hug them). After the patch, I can't think of the last time I really scored a kill off the power of MG's and have really only used them as nothing more than damage filler between SRM shots. For a mech that is totally reliant on ammo, you need to have effectiveness for every ton of ammo that you bring to the battlefield.

Edited by Foxfire, 31 October 2014 - 06:32 AM.

[FupDup]

Yeonne Greene, on 30 October 2014 - 11:03 PM, said:

I get that last point, but looking at whether or not a 'Mech is competitive is a poor yardstick because you can't ever have all of them be equally competitive. Differing geometry alone prevents that. In Puglandia, all of them are viable in the right hands, which is as much as you can hope to ask for.

We have to have some kind of standards, or else apparently everything in the game would be all equally effective right now...and that would be a bold-faced lie. Some things are inherently superior to others, sometimes by a small margin and sometimes by a not-so-small margin.

Just saying "oh, this random guy got a high match score with it one time, so it MUST clearly be fine and we shouldn't touch it" is the reason why many weapons like Pulse Lasers (excluding the Clan LPL), Flamers, and LBX (excluding the LB 5-X) have remained underpowered for the longest time in this game. Getting a good match score does not indicate equipment effectiveness, it mostly indicates pilot effectiveness and/or luck. But we aren't having a conversion about the skillz of the pilots, we're talking about the equipment used by them.

Most forumites don't really know how to separate the effectiveness of equipment from the effectiveness of pilots when it comes to balancing conversions, and that's why some random guy posts up a screenshot of himself breaking 1000 damage with his 14 Flamer Nova to "prove" that it's clearly not outclassed by other mediums.

What we have do to accurately assess weapon effectiveness is to eliminate all other variables present, such as the skillz level of each pilot. In the actual game such a situation is rare, but for scientific testing it's still necessary to try to control the effects of each variable to see what their impact actually is. We have to assume that Billy Bob Joe will be walking into combats against Jane Doe, and both of them have completely identical gunnery/accuracy/situational awareness/torso twisting/etc, and the only thing that decides who has the upper hand is how well their robots are built.

Edited by FupDup, 31 October 2014 - 05:33 AM.

[Alek Ituin]

Lord Scarlett Johan, on 30 October 2014 - 11:30 PM, said:

Lol at the "it's not supposed to hurt mechs" comments.

TT MG damage: 2
TT AC2 damage: 2

I think it's more along the lines of having individual rounds doing little damage, but the sheer number of them adding up the damage rather quickly. Kind of like firing an HMG at an MBT, you're not doing much damage per hit, but you'll eventually rip through enough armor to take it down.

Definitely supporting 1 DPS MG's though, they'd be great.

Edited by Alek Ituin, 31 October 2014 - 05:53 AM.

[Lord de Seis]

Alek Ituin, on 30 October 2014 - 09:28 PM, said:

A well trained marksman could use a rifled musket highly effectively. Doesn't mean a rifled musket would cut it on a battlefield.

MG's are inherently bad, but you can easily make them somewhat better.

I disagree, I think they are fine where they are. They shred mechs that are down to internals.

[Alek Ituin]

Lord de Seis, on 31 October 2014 - 06:06 AM, said:

I disagree, I think they are fine where they are. They shred mechs that are down to internals.

I respect your opinion, but I disagree with it almost entirely. MG's do a fine job of shredding internals, true... But for Mechs with minimal (or no) alternate weapons, getting to internals is a challenge.

[Mercules]

aniviron, on 30 October 2014 - 09:03 PM, said:

You see that from many poorly-informed people. Yes, MGs are great against infantry, but it's not their intended function. The first iteration of Battletech, which had no infantry, had MGs, which should make it pretty clear that they're intended as an anti-mech weapon. In Tabletop, a machinegun does the same damage per turn as an AC2.

Yes... The reason why people state MGs and Flamers are for shooting at Infantry, including TRO flavor text, is that MGs and Flamers are "good" against mechs but "incredible" against infantry. I mean shooting a gauss rifle and killing a couple guys is a waste but a MG will rip up most of the squad in a burst. In MWO we all know how "good" against mechs these weapons are.... in other words they could be a bit better.

[Bilbo]

Alek Ituin, on 31 October 2014 - 06:13 AM, said:

I respect your opinion, but I disagree with it almost entirely. MG's do a fine job of shredding internals, true... But for Mechs with minimal (or no) alternate weapons, getting to internals is a challenge.

Which suggests that it would be better to find an opponent that is already there.

Edited by Bilbo, 31 October 2014 - 06:23 AM.

[Alek Ituin]

Flamers are technically an unfocused plasma cutter on steroids. Since they're fed by the fusion reactor, one can assume the temperature of the plasma ejected from the flamer would be in the range of 4.5*10^7 Kelvin.

Unless your Mech is made of powerful electromagnets, you're going to promptly end up as a puddle of hot orange slag.

Bilbo, on 31 October 2014 - 06:23 AM, said:

Which suggests that it would be better to find an opponent that is already there.

Having a short range direct fire weapon be dependent on other team members is... wrong. All weapons should be viable against fresh Mechs in some way, MG's could certainly bring the hurt in TT.

Edited by Alek Ituin, 31 October 2014 - 06:28 AM.

[Jetfire]

MG's are useless... That sure explains why I do so well in my Hero Firestarter, MG Spider and Huginn.... MG's are fine as they are.

[Bilbo]

Alek Ituin, on 31 October 2014 - 06:27 AM, said:

Flamers are technically an unfocused plasma cutter on steroids. Since they're fed by the fusion reactor, one can assume the temperature of the plasma ejected from the flamer would be in the range of 4.5*10^7 Kelvin.

Unless your Mech is made of powerful electromagnets, you're going to promptly end up as a puddle of hot orange slag.



Having a short range direct fire weapon be dependent on other team members is... wrong. All weapons should be viable against fresh Mechs in some way, MG's could certainly bring the hurt in TT.

It's a .5 ton, no heat weapon that can be fired continuously in large numbers through an entire match. It has to have some kind of drawback and in the case of MGs ammo isn't really much of a drawback.

[Gierling]

They should make the ballistic quirks that don't benefit MG's just give them a base damage increase (Cooldown, heat, velocity). Or benefit them in other ways (Cooldown reduce Cone of fire, heat increase raw damage, velocity increase crit chance) etc.

Its kinda crappy to make the lightest Ballistic weapon not benefit from the majority of ballistic quirks.