78 replies to this topic

[Eyepop]

In TT, machine guns do 2 damage per turn, equal to an AC/2's 2 damage per turn. Machine guns have 400 damage per ton of ammo, while AC/2's get 90.

In MWO, machine guns do .8 DPS, while AC/2's do 2.78, and are affected by ballistic ROF quirks, and have a cooldown module. Machine guns have 160 damage per ton of ammo, while AC/2's get 150.

Now, I understand that, in TT, we don't have as many hardpoints as we do in MWO. For instance, the SDR-5K has only 2 B mounts in TT, versus 4 in MWO. This prevents machine guns from being boated as effectively in TT as they can be in MWO. But still, there's a huge disparity in the way that machine guns are handled in this game.

The reason that I find machine gun usefulness as such an important point is that they're the only ballistic weapon that can reasonably be thrown onto a light. At present, if it's not a Huginn or a Firestarter, lights just don't bring the utility and viability of any other weight class. A buff to the usefulness of the ballistic mounts on the lights would help pull them out of the mud a bit.

Due to hardpoint inflation, I'm not going to suggest 2 DPS machine guns for MWO (imagine the rampaging BJ-A's... delicious, but probably not balanced).

Instead, could we at least see a bump up to 1 DPS? That way, Machine Guns will be in a viable position balance-wise compared to small lasers; small lasers weigh the same, and have the same DPS, but would trade ammo dependence and face time for heat generation.

Edited by Eyepop, 27 May 2015 - 02:50 PM.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

I'd like it to fire projectiles and have a base DPS of 1.00 too.

Right now it's hit-scan, sorta like lasers.



The other thing is to have them go from 160 damage per ton to at least 200.

[Mcgral18]

They nerfed it 20% straight up damage some time ago, and 25% DPS before that (67% crit chance down to 52%).


It's something we've requested for months on end.



Don't get your hopes up.

[Carrioncrows]

haha..

This guy.

Great men have tried. All have failed.

[Ragtag soldier]

machineguns aren't meant to be effective- they're a holdover from tabletop, weapons there only for fighting infantry. they make for a good way to seek out damaged components in close though. good for breaking places crippled by the small lasers they are in no way competing with thanks to how weapon slots works.

[Mcgral18]

Ragtag soldier, on 27 May 2015 - 03:11 PM, said:

machineguns aren't meant to be effective- they're a holdover from tabletop, weapons there only for fighting infantry. they make for a good way to seek out damaged components in close though. good for breaking places crippled by the small lasers they are in no way competing with thanks to how weapon slots works.

And another false statement.


MGs deal the same damage as AC2s.


They are a low damage, heatless weapon. They are designed to destroy mech armour.

[FupDup]

Ragtag soldier, on 27 May 2015 - 03:11 PM, said:

machineguns aren't meant to be effective- they're a holdover from tabletop, weapons there only for fighting infantry. they make for a good way to seek out damaged components in close though. good for breaking places crippled by the small lasers they are in no way competing with thanks to how weapon slots works.

Your face is a weapon for fighting infantry.


...No really, it is!

[Eyepop]

Carrioncrows, on 27 May 2015 - 02:58 PM, said:

Great men have tried. All have failed.

Oh, I have no high hopes for this. It is something that should be kept on PGI's mind, though; they seem to often forget about stuff that the community very clearly desires.

Ragtag soldier, on 27 May 2015 - 03:11 PM, said:

machineguns aren't meant to be effective- they're a holdover from tabletop, weapons there only for fighting infantry. they make for a good way to seek out damaged components in close though. good for breaking places crippled by the small lasers they are in no way competing with thanks to how weapon slots works.

Why is it okay that there are any ineffective weapons in this game? If they're not supposed to be in this game, then why are they?

The point is not that machine guns are supposed to compete with small lasers; heck, if I could put Energy weapons in Ballistic slots, I'd still roll small lasers on every light, since high facetime just kills lights, and they don't really have room for the .5-ton-per-MG of ammo to do MG right.

No, the point is that machine guns need to be effective for those mechs that are pretty much forced to use them. Take the SDR-5K, for instance. It's not a choice between small lasers and machine guns; it's a choice between machine guns and not taking a mech at all.

[stjobe]

Here's the funny part: The MG actually had a DPS of 1 for a while.

Then they "pro-actively" nerfed it "in preparation for upcoming fixes" to 0.8 DPS.

I've spent way, way too much time fighting to buff the MG (back when it had 0.4 DPS and no extra damage or crit chance).

Some fun MG facts:
* The MG is a hit-scan laser with bullet graphics.
* The MG was the first so-called "crit weapon" - an utterly redundant category of weapons.
* Because ALL weapons can crit - in fact, all weapons have a 42% chance to crit on an exposed section.
* The MG has a lower chance to crit than any other "crit weapon" (LBX, flamer).
* It only has 10% more chance to crit than all the non-"crit weapons".
* It does have a rather large crit multiplier of 9 though.
* But then again, each hit does only 0.08 damage (before crit damage).
* So a full 3-crit hit does 0.08 * 9 * 3 = 2.16 damage.
* 15% of that is applied again as bonus IS damage. That's a whopping 0.3 damage.
* An AC/10 that hits an exposed crit location destroys that location without even needing a crit.


If anyone's interested, here's a Brief History of the MG in MWO:



I started campaigning for a buff to the MG back in the Mk. I days. It took a while but in Spring 2013 they actually started to buff it.

The Mk. II was still rather useless, but the Mk. III started to feel like it wasn't a complete waste of tonnage.

The Mk. IV and Mk. V are the same, except the Mk. V does 15% of its damage as bonus damage to internal structure as well.

Mk. V was the one with the highest damage, it made it useful to pack even two MGs on a 'mech. Sadly, people complained rather vocally about the 6-MG JagerMech (completely ignoring its dual PPCs and heavy-class armour), so it was quickly nerfed into Mk. VI.

Why they thought Mk. VI was too powerful and needed a nerf is beyond me, it took the MG back to the bad old days where it was useless unless you could mount at least three, preferably four or more.

So yes, needless to say I am all for a buff back to Mk. VI levels.

Edited by stjobe, 27 May 2015 - 03:29 PM.

[Madcap72]

MG's can be SUPER effective if played right. The Urbie with 4 MG's and the fire rate quirk is a component critting animal.

I'd rather see flamers get made to be more useful first, so they can be more effective in role warefare/ team builds.

[Eyepop]

Madcap72, on 27 May 2015 - 03:26 PM, said:

MG's can be SUPER effective if played right. The Urbie with 4 MG's and the fire rate quirk is a component critting animal.

I'd rather see flamers get made to be more useful first, so they can be more effective in role warefare/ team builds.

The reason that I'm not so quick to campaign for flamers is that the benefit of working, viable MGs is so much greater. We already have 1-ton energy weapons that can be taken instead. But right now, ballistic slots on lights are pretty much worthless.

The MG state is so bad, that people actually take them off of the Pirate's Bane because the amount that they reduce your visibility with muzzle flashes reduces your damage more than having two more guns increases it.

[Deathlike]

Church of Paulconomy said:

We can't have nice things.

[bad arcade kitty]

FupDup, on 27 May 2015 - 03:18 PM, said:

Your face is a weapon for fighting infantry.


...No really, it is!

Christopher Marlowe said:

Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

(:

Edited by bad arcade kitty, 27 May 2015 - 03:46 PM.

[Hidden Sniper]

I used to like machine guns, now I know how they work, and it makes me sad.
This really makes me sad: "* The MG is a hit-scan laser with bullet graphics."

[Mcgral18]

Hidden Sniper, on 27 May 2015 - 04:22 PM, said:

I used to like machine guns, now I know how they work, and it makes me sad.
This really makes me sad: "* The MG is a hit-scan laser with bullet graphics."

You can't forget, it also has a CoF.

A spread of 1.5...which might mean a CoF of 3M...but I'm still not clear on if it means radius or diameter. I'm almost certain it's not an angle.


It may or may not stay static with the range; so a 180M MG has a better spread than a stock 120M MG, or if it's a 1.5 "spread" at 120M either way, and the CoF just gets progressively larger.


So, it's a laser with a not clarified CoF, which does not produce heat, but does require ammo.



MWO, everyone.

[LordNothing]

any light with less than 4 ballistic points needs mg quirks, 35 tonners with ballistic also need ac2 quirks.

Edited by LordNothing, 27 May 2015 - 04:34 PM.

[Templar Dane]

My spider 5K has been sad for a long long time. It was my favorite mech before machine guns got nerfed.

And a point I'd like to make about battletech machine guns............they aren't your standard issue infantry weapon, they aren't even man-portable heavy-weapons. An example of one is a 20mm minigun.

[LordNothing]

for reference the gau-8 only weights 619.5 pounds. or a little bit more than a clan machine gun (or does battletech use metric tons).

Edited by LordNothing, 27 May 2015 - 04:46 PM.

[FupDup]

LordNothing, on 27 May 2015 - 04:44 PM, said:

for reference the gau-8 only weights 619.5 pounds. or a little bit more than a clan machine gun.

The IS mech MG weighs 500 kilograms, aka 1102.31 pounds.

The Clan MG is 551.1557 pounds.

Edited by FupDup, 27 May 2015 - 04:45 PM.

[LordNothing]

yea i had a brain flop on the units, in metric its 281 kg, which is close to a quarter of a metric ton.