298 replies to this topic

[Sifright]

Novawrecker, on 07 February 2013 - 03:14 PM, said:

Sirfright, keep thinking that people will not abuse the MG if it's raised to 1.2 dps. We currently have legal mechs that can carry 4 ballistics on them (you know, one of those "factors" not accounted for, according to you). If the Pirannah, or omni-mechs with pod weights instead of other factors, are released, expect this matter to be even more absurd.


We've beaten this dead horse enough to ensure the zombie apocalypse, but 300% increase in damage is leading to broken levels. Don't want to believe me? Let them succumb to this appeal and have them do this increase .... then the real crying will begin.

You are seriously blinkered.

Spider with 4 machine guns at triple damage
4.8 DPS hardly game breaking.
Has to accurately hit the same spot constantly on a moving mech whilst constantly facing it with no ability to take evasive action.

Spider with 2 medium lasers
2.5 DPS
Only has to maintain laser on target 1 second out of every 4

Can take evasive action

Can engage targets at much higher range.

Edit: No one will care that the machine guns have been increased in damage even if you did it by x5 they still wont be powerful enough to make a difference to the game play that occurs because i'll still turn your light mech into scrap metal if your engage my a1 at 90 meters or less.

The difference is that light mechs that have to take machine guns go from being an utter joke to a something I have to actually deal with because they are some what dangerous to leave on my ***.

Edited by Sifright, 07 February 2013 - 03:24 PM.

[Eggs Mayhem]

Sifright, on 07 February 2013 - 03:21 PM, said:

You are seriously blinkered.

Spider with 4 machine guns at triple damage
4.8 DPS hardly game breaking.
Has to accurately hit the same spot constantly on a moving mech whilst constantly facing it with no ability to take evasive action.

Spider with 2 medium lasers
2.5 DPS
Only has to maintain laser on target 1 second out of every 4

Can take evasive action

Can engage targets at much higher range.

Edit: No one will care that the machine guns have been increased in damage even if you did it by x5 they still wont be powerful enough to make a difference to the game play that occurs because i'll still turn your light mech into scrap metal if your engage my a1 at 90 meters or less.

The difference is that light mechs that have to take machine guns go from being an utter joke to a something I have to actually deal with because they are some what dangerous to leave on my ***.

Then lets include all of your factors and all of Novas and use math to directly compare them, yes?

Sifright:
-must hold on target continuously, exposing CT to enemy fire
-crit bonus won't help
-still inferior to ML, even with 4 MGs at 3x damage

Nova:
-Lack of heat means balance against other weapons
-ton for ton, the MG is superior even without 3x damage and crit bonus

So lets imagine that the MG can only fire 1 second out of every 4, making it behave like the ML in that respect. Lets also keep the damage at its current value, .04 per shot. With the bursting, this is simply .1 DPS on average. The MG is heat neutral out of the box, but we need heat sinks for the ML to be that way. If my math is right (it is) then the ML will need 10 heat sinks to be purely heat neutral. Also, I'm going to ignore the crit system.

Now ammo. I've only run out of MG ammo once and that was with 1 ton of it feeding 4 MGs. Lets be generous and do 1 ton of ammo per MG. So now:

MG
1.5 tons
0 Heat
.1 DPS
0.07 DPS/ton

ML
11 tons
0 Heat
1.25 DPS
.11 DPS/ton

The ML is currently 57% more efficient than the MG, and I think we're all in agreement that the MG needs a buff of some form. Now lets triple the damage, and thus triple the DPS and DPS/ton. The MG would have a DPS/ton of .21 and the ML would have a DPS/ton of .11, making the MG 91% more efficient than the ML. In addition, the MG will have the option of occasionally holding down the trigger for quadruple the damage (unlike the ML), making it 663% more efficient than the ML during those periods. Lets look at those two stock spiders in your example now, still bursting the MGs with triple damage:

5V (2x ML):
2.5 MaxDPS
1.25 AveDPS

5K (1xML 2xMG):
1.85 MaxDPS
3.65 AbsMaxDPS (hold down the trigger)
1.85 AveDPS

Swapping out an ML with two MGs not only increases the average DPS, but has the option of really laying into someone. So again, ton for ton, the MG will be far superior to any direct-fire weapon in terms of efficiency as it basically just adds raw DPS at little cost to your build. This could all be balanced if some form of heat were introduced to the MG, keeping it from being so vastly superior (again, that was 663% greater). 0.08 heat per shot would be sufficient, imo.

[Corrado]

Maverick01, on 05 February 2013 - 06:44 PM, said:

Machine gun range should be changed to 750 meters. This would make the MG great for suppressive fire tactics (although an ammo consumption monster). Furthermore, I would argue the DPS needs to be "slightly" increased to make this weapon viable on the battlefield (yes, all weapons need to be viable in MWO). The developers are taking the wrong approach in balancing this weapon: http://mwomercs.com/...apon-balancing/

For comparison purposes, the light machine gun employed by the U.S. Military is as follows:

M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW)
Effective Range: 800 meters (point target)

the 105mm of the M1A2 Abrams penetrates armor at 2500m range. Why the AC10 then have just 450 meters, nobody knows.

oh wait... it's a game.

[Wolfways]

EmperorMyrf, on 07 February 2013 - 05:33 PM, said:

Then lets include all of your factors and all of Novas and use math to directly compare them, yes?

Sifright:
-must hold on target continuously, exposing CT to enemy fire
-crit bonus won't help
-still inferior to ML, even with 4 MGs at 3x damage

Nova:
-Lack of heat means balance against other weapons
-ton for ton, the MG is superior even without 3x damage and crit bonus

So lets imagine that the MG can only fire 1 second out of every 4, making it behave like the ML in that respect. Lets also keep the damage at its current value, .04 per shot. With the bursting, this is simply .1 DPS on average. The MG is heat neutral out of the box, but we need heat sinks for the ML to be that way. If my math is right (it is) then the ML will need 10 heat sinks to be purely heat neutral. Also, I'm going to ignore the crit system.

Now ammo. I've only run out of MG ammo once and that was with 1 ton of it feeding 4 MGs. Lets be generous and do 1 ton of ammo per MG. So now:

MG
1.5 tons
0 Heat
.1 DPS
0.07 DPS/ton

ML
11 tons
0 Heat
1.25 DPS
.11 DPS/ton

The ML is currently 57% more efficient than the MG, and I think we're all in agreement that the MG needs a buff of some form. Now lets triple the damage, and thus triple the DPS and DPS/ton. The MG would have a DPS/ton of .21 and the ML would have a DPS/ton of .11, making the MG 91% more efficient than the ML. In addition, the MG will have the option of occasionally holding down the trigger for quadruple the damage (unlike the ML), making it 663% more efficient than the ML during those periods. Lets look at those two stock spiders in your example now, still bursting the MGs with triple damage:

5V (2x ML):
2.5 MaxDPS
1.25 AveDPS

5K (1xML 2xMG):
1.85 MaxDPS
3.65 AbsMaxDPS (hold down the trigger)
1.85 AveDPS

Swapping out an ML with two MGs not only increases the average DPS, but has the option of really laying into someone. So again, ton for ton, the MG will be far superior to any direct-fire weapon in terms of efficiency as it basically just adds raw DPS at little cost to your build. This could all be balanced if some form of heat were introduced to the MG, keeping it from being so vastly superior (again, that was 663% greater). 0.08 heat per shot would be sufficient, imo.

You also have to take into account that a ML has a range of 270m, while a MG has a range of 90m.

[Eggs Mayhem]

Wolfways, on 07 February 2013 - 06:08 PM, said:

You also have to take into account that a ML has a range of 270m, while a MG has a range of 90m.

True. if you do the same math comparing it to a SL, you'll get similar results at the same range. SL DPS/ton is .14 while the triple MG is still .21 (changing the bursts to match the SL doesn't change it), making it anywhere from 50% to 500% more efficient than the SL.

[Tincan Nightmare]

Traditionally light mechs have rarely carried ballistics in comparison to energy weapons (save for the MG) due to the advantage energy weapons had in damage versus weight. In the few exceptions, such as the Urbanmech or Garm, they paid for that by sacrificing one of a light mechs strengths, speed, to make space for the AC. The MG has always been outperformed by the Sm. laser in the TT, doing 3 points of damage versus 2 at the same range with no need for ammo, the only drawback the 1 point of heat it generated to the MG's zero heat. Even weight was in favor of the laser as the MG would need at least a half ton of ammo, meaning that an MG would take at least 1 ton (comparable to the med. laser doing more than double the damage and greater range) in comparison to the Sm. lasers half ton. In MWO that is compounded by the fact that you can't take half ton lots of ammo for the MG so it goes up to 1.5 tons for an MG mount, making an MG a poor choice if a Sm. laser can be mounted instead.

Now the only mechs currently effected by this are the Spider and Cicada, at least the variants with 4 ballistic hardpoints, due to AC's being heavy (I don't count the Raven variant as it also has 2 energy and 1 missile hardpoints to mount weapons on while the Spider and Cicada only have 1 energy hardpoint in addition to the ballistics.) To fill all 4 hardpoints they must use MG's, and yes MG's are fairly useless right now. The question is do we need to buff a single weapon system based on the hardpoints of 2 variants? While it would suck to have hardpoints that weren't filled, they could sacrifice speed to mount a heavier AC (like the AC20 Raven, or the Urbanmech for that matter.) Boosting the range and/or damage of the MG seems an extreme response just to improve 2 variants. A better option would be a call to change the hardpoint layout on those variants, as the TT variants of the Spider and Cicada in question only mounted a pair of MG's, so they could have given them 2 ballistic slots and 2 energy slots instead.

[Wolfways]

Tincan Nightmare, on 09 February 2013 - 09:30 PM, said:

Now the only mechs currently effected by this are the Spider and Cicada

You forgot the K2 (with PPC's)

[SpiralRazor]

270 is reasonable, and .16 damage per application also seems reasonable.

[Tincan Nightmare]

Wolfways, on 09 February 2013 - 09:53 PM, said:

You forgot the K2 (with PPC's)

No, because the K2 has the tonnage available to use those 2 ballistic slots to very good effect without using MG's (gausscats and ac/20cats and UAC/5cats....) Plus with several energy hardpoints, if it chooses to ignore those 2 ballistic slots you can still mount a good weapon loadout, something tough to do with the Spider and Cicada variants that have 1 energy and 4 ballistic hardpoints. A small buff to MG damage is probably not a serious issue, but the Sm. laser traditionally always had a slight benefit in damage.

[Tetatae Squawkins]

Realism.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[Wolfways]

Tincan Nightmare, on 09 February 2013 - 10:32 PM, said:

No, because the K2 has the tonnage available to use those 2 ballistic slots to very good effect without using MG's (gausscats and ac/20cats and UAC/5cats....) Plus with several energy hardpoints, if it chooses to ignore those 2 ballistic slots you can still mount a good weapon loadout, something tough to do with the Spider and Cicada variants that have 1 energy and 4 ballistic hardpoints. A small buff to MG damage is probably not a serious issue, but the Sm. laser traditionally always had a slight benefit in damage.

I said a K2 with PPC's. The weight of the PPC's (plus DHS) means you can't really use any ballistics except MG's.

[stjobe]

Tincan Nightmare, on 09 February 2013 - 09:30 PM, said:

Boosting the range and/or damage of the MG seems an extreme response just to improve 2 variants. A better option would be a call to change the hardpoint layout on those variants, as the TT variants of the Spider and Cicada in question only mounted a pair of MG's, so they could have given them 2 ballistic slots and 2 energy slots instead.

Why is it "an extreme response"?

If the MG is useless the proper response is to make it useful.

[Tincan Nightmare]

Wolfways, on 10 February 2013 - 12:00 AM, said:

I said a K2 with PPC's. The weight of the PPC's (plus DHS) means you can't really use any ballistics except MG's.

Except why use them at all. Put the weight into another heat sink or an AMS. The build doesn't suffer for lack of those MG's if you remove them. During closed beta I had a K2 (before one of the numerous resets) and the first thing I did was remove the MG's for an AMS, and that was before I had any idea that MG's would be so low damage as they are now.

stjobe, on 10 February 2013 - 01:54 AM, said:

Why is it "an extreme response"?

If the MG is useless the proper response is to make it useful.

Well the same could be said for the Beagle and the NARC. The question is why does the MG need a large damage buff to be useful. They are giving it a boost to critical damage (which we should see how it works first before we say anything else needs adjusted) which is the typical role it filled in TT (besides anti-infantry.) This allows a mech carrying an MG to (hopefully) strip away equipment rapidly on a targeted section that has lost armor. Could be fairly deadly if that section is the CT and your criting the engine. The MG was always more of a secondary weapon that was mounted if a mech had the excess tonnage but would run to hot with a laser mounted. And before CASE, a risky choice if that ammo went up in an ammo explosion. 2 points of damage x 200 rounds= 400 points of damage! MG's have always been a questionable choice, but the question is does the game suffer due to this? You say the proper response is make them 'useful' by boosting their abilities, but that is what they are attempting with the crit damage increase. Lets see if that is effective before we start throwing out range increases and damage boosts. And again, the only 2 chassis that suffer currently are the Spider and Cicada variants with the 4 ballistic hardpoints, as the only way they could fill all 4 would be to use MG's. Of course plenty of mech loadouts can be very effective while not utilizing all available hardpoints, so a viable build could still be possible for both without having to buff MG's.

[Sifright]

Tincan Nightmare, on 10 February 2013 - 03:00 PM, said:

Except why use them at all. Put the weight into another heat sink or an AMS. The build doesn't suffer for lack of those MG's if you remove them. During closed beta I had a K2 (before one of the numerous resets) and the first thing I did was remove the MG's for an AMS, and that was before I had any idea that MG's would be so low damage as they are now.



Well the same could be said for the Beagle and the NARC. The question is why does the MG need a large damage buff to be useful. They are giving it a boost to critical damage (which we should see how it works first before we say anything else needs adjusted) which is the typical role it filled in TT (besides anti-infantry.) This allows a mech carrying an MG to (hopefully) strip away equipment rapidly on a targeted section that has lost armor. Could be fairly deadly if that section is the CT and your criting the engine. The MG was always more of a secondary weapon that was mounted if a mech had the excess tonnage but would run to hot with a laser mounted. And before CASE, a risky choice if that ammo went up in an ammo explosion. 2 points of damage x 200 rounds= 400 points of damage! MG's have always been a questionable choice, but the question is does the game suffer due to this? You say the proper response is make them 'useful' by boosting their abilities, but that is what they are attempting with the crit damage increase. Lets see if that is effective before we start throwing out range increases and damage boosts. And again, the only 2 chassis that suffer currently are the Spider and Cicada variants with the 4 ballistic hardpoints, as the only way they could fill all 4 would be to use MG's. Of course plenty of mech loadouts can be very effective while not utilizing all available hardpoints, so a viable build could still be possible for both without having to buff MG's.

so many people really have absolutely no idea how the game mechanics work.

How exactly do you think stripping equipment from an already about to be destroyed section is useful, given that the light mech featuring MGS can do nothing until the armour is stripped.

[Wolfways]

Tincan Nightmare, on 10 February 2013 - 03:00 PM, said:

Except why use them at all.

Why use any weapon? If it's in the game it should be useful, and many mechs come with MG's as standard.

[Sifright]

Wolfways, on 10 February 2013 - 03:06 PM, said:

Why use any weapon? If it's in the game it should be useful, and many mechs come with MG's as standard.

I heard there aren't any mechs that only fit mgs.

Yea...

[Snowcaller]

Allow a twin MG weapon, buff DPS slightly, range to 120m.
2 Critslots, 1 ton, 1 hard point, two MG's.
Not a true MG Array, just two MG's for your hard point.

Then when you go shooty...
MOAR BULLETS!!!

Would make the odd Ballistic or twin ballistic HP's into a storm of Duranium, Steel, Hyper-accelerated fluffy bunnies or whatever BT/MW has MG's fire.

After all, what do you do with a Ball-HP when you only have between 1 and 5 tons.
Plus, i really want to mount 6MG's on a DRG 5N.
Just for a laugh.

[Wolfways]

Sifright, on 10 February 2013 - 03:09 PM, said:

I heard there aren't any mechs that only fit mgs.

Yea...

What?

[SpiralRazor]

270 range, .16 on damage application...adjust application rate as needed.


It should be a viable weapon..


but then again, so should the small pulse laser/flamer.

[Phoenix Gray]

Gaan Cathal, on 06 February 2013 - 01:49 PM, said:

"In Battletech"? High-bore ballistics, explosives under 400g in weight and landmines are widely used in modern warfare despite all being banned weapons. Most of the Conventions are more or less ignored these days, to be honest. By comparison some of the BT fluff is fairly civilised from what I can see. Isn't the whole basis of their 'rules of war' the minimisation of civilian casualties, infrastructure etc? That's more or less the reverse of current military trends.

On the Geneva conventions and machine guns, when I was first going through the Fort Benning home for wayward boys many years ago, this was a big stink with the progs, since the .50 cal was originally designed as an anti-armor weapon. Our kind, fatherly drill sergeants explained the situation to us thus: "The M2 .50 caliber machine is intended to engage enemy equiptment. *pause* A belt buckle is equipment. A helmet is equipment. It is not your [deleted] problem how close the enemy chooses to stand to his equipment."