Orzorn

After a hunch, my friend and I loaded our mechs up (him in a catapult with 2 LLAS, 2 MLAS, and 2 Artemis LRM 15s. Me in a Trebuchet 5N with 2 LRM 15 with no artemis, 1 tag, and 3 MLAS) and got into a game.

We stood side by side and fired at the same targets. Artemis seemed to have no noticeable effect on missile grouping, at least when the missiles were in the air (perhaps they alter just before striking?).

As an aside to people having issues with the new LRMs. Equip AMS. It helps a lot. And cover still works, just some doesn't work at all anymore due to the steeper drop. I'm not saying LRMs aren't strong, but I'm going to withhold judgements of being overpowered until I experience them more. Like I said, AMS helps a lot.

Today's Ask the Devs answers had this to say on the subject of machine guns:

Quote

First, let my start by refuting several things, and then we can move on to further issues.

You can not fit 6 machine guns on a spider. In fact, no mech in the game currently has the ballistic slots available to create such a build, with the exception of one Jagermech variant.

Second, machine guns are not like a no-heat laser, because they work exactly opposite of lasers. A laser has a burn time and a cooldown time. If a machine gun dealt the same exactly damage per second as a laser, the context is still wildly different. I would have to point my machine guns at the target the entire time and never miss to deal the same damage as the laser. The laser, on the other hand, need only point while it is being fired, in which while it is on cooldown the user can torso twist and perform other maneuvers that would upset the aim of a machine gun.

Machine guns, currently, have a spread as well. They also have ballistic flight times (I believe its 100 m/s?). All of these factors mean that even a machine gun with the same damage as a laser would very likely not be able to apply that damage as well as the laser could. It would spread, miss, have to stop firing to torso twist, and other such things.

Finally, the damage for machine guns is beyond abysmal. To take them in any capacity is to seriously hurt yourself, and you can not rely upon them in any way when they are your majority of weapons, such as on a Spider or Cicada.

I would ask the PGI devs to sit down with a Spider 5K built with machine guns and grind it to maximum experience, and do the same with a Cicada, and see what the experience is like. If PGI wants us to test by feel and not by spreadsheets, then the machine gun performs even worse than on paper, simply due to the way MWO plays. You don't have the luxury of sitting behind an Atlas for the 17.5 seconds it would take 4 machine guns to deal their damage, and keep in mind, this is with you never missing, the enemy never twisting away, and your shots managing to not spread to hit other parts of the mech.

Please PGI, you must realize that to make a weapon a good weapon, it must be a decent killing machine first, and have a gimmick second. A weapon without good damage and a gimmick is just that; a gimmick, and games are not won on gimmicks. The damage of machine guns is simply too low. Note that the damage of the machine guns was not even transfered over properly along with the other weapons. For instance, the small laser dealt 3 damage in the TT. It deals 3 damage now, but every 3 seconds, making its damage per 10 (one table top round) actually 3 times higher. Machine guns went from dealing 2 damage per 10 to dealing 4 damage per 10, only a two times increase. Additionally, they went from 200 damage per ton of ammo to only 80, further punishing them.

But as I said, if PGI is not interested in spreadsheet warrior online, then I ask them to actually pick up these mechs and play them. It takes literally seconds in a match to realize how poorly they play, how under-gunned they are, and how useless the machine gun as a weapons platform is, or even as a "crit seeking" weapon.

These mechs that rely on these systems will be underused or have to resort to strange builds (UAC/5 Spider) to get by, and mechs like the Hunchback 4G will continue to have underused hardpoints because they have no weapon worth placing in them (and even if they did, they'd only have 80 damage in one ton of machine gun ammo, and it takes 2 machine guns 100 seconds to do that. Keep in mind that 80 damage will not all be placed on one target, let alone actually even be placed on any target.

I urge PGI to reconsider their position on machine guns. Its very unhealthy for these mechs that rely upon them, whether as primary (Spider and Cicada) or secondary (Hunchback) weapons.

And when it comes down to it? Machine guns are not fun. If anything strikes a cord, that should be it.

It seems the time is finally upon us to see what some of this will all look like. It seems obvious now that IGN would be the one to report on this, considering some of their previous exclusives.

www.ign.com/articles/2013/03/32/mechwarrior-online-community-warfare-and-clans-exclusive

Totally blown away.

We'll call it "Thunder Thighs".

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__1824378

Check out that video!

https://www.youtube....h?v=sub2J-bJBRo

That's way different than what we've got now! I like it.

Now I really want to see what SRM formations will look like.