131 replies to this topic

[Vermaxx]

A machine gun heavy mech, if ignored, could flat out MURDER heavier mechs in tabletop if it was able to get behind them. Zero heat, two damage, copious ammo, and low back armor values. Yes, they could be a primary weapon.

They can't be a primary here, when everything else in the game can be if you dedicate to that build.

[Jakspanky]

I have never been a TT guy but loved mechwarrior 2 I love this game but I do feel the gap between the MG. and ac/2 is quite big
1.5 tons and 7 tons.

Even in this thread its is said the MG. is a 20mm. These are the type fitted to fighter jets and take out tanks maybe there is room in the game for a higher calibre weapons to bridge the gap between the mg. tickle and the ac/2

[Team Leader]

That suck. Let them do 1 dps. You have to hold it on target the entire time anyway sooo..

[shintakie]

LogicSol, on 26 February 2013 - 04:34 PM, said:

so can machine guns, just not right now. hello giant elephant in the room! Engine crits aren't in yet. Once they are a 4x mg spider can kill a mech with an exposed torso in under a second crits willing.

I'd rather have balanced fun weapons than garbage cheese like instant death engine crits for MG's. The fact that people want cheese garbage like that worries me.

LogicSol, on 26 February 2013 - 02:14 PM, said:

A mech with 4 MGs isn't meant to "solo" someone.
just saying.

A mech with 6 SL's (same weight as 4 MG's + 1 ton of ammo) can solo someone. Why can't a mech with 4 MG's do the same?

[LogicSol]

Vermaxx, on 26 February 2013 - 04:39 PM, said:

A machine gun heavy mech, if ignored, could flat out MURDER heavier mechs in tabletop if it was able to get behind them. Zero heat, two damage, copious ammo, and low back armor values. Yes, they could be a primary weapon.

They can't be a primary here, when everything else in the game can be if you dedicate to that build.

Good thing this isn't TT then.

shintakie, on 26 February 2013 - 04:53 PM, said:

I'd rather have balanced fun weapons than garbage cheese like instant death engine crits for MG's. The fact that people want cheese garbage like that worries me.

Cheese garbage? reality check here. Any weapon that does 5 damage can instantly kill an engine with a lucky crit. A machine gun needs 10 3x crits on the same component over a sustained second of fire to do the same. It's possible but not guaranteed.
Hell, my CN9-AL can onehit kill just about anything short of an assault with an alpha to an exposed CT.(54 damage)

FupDup, on 26 February 2013 - 03:48 PM, said:

A mech with 6 SL's (same weight as 4 MG's + 1 ton of ammo) can solo someone. Why can't a mech with 4 MG's do the same?

repeat after me, because that mechs role is not soloing people. And besides, you can. 4mg + 1 ml is 3-6 ml hits to the rear torso to expose it and mgs to finish(again once engine crits are in)

[Bren McGuire]

Vermaxx, on 26 February 2013 - 04:18 PM, said:

I want machine guns to have the same clear worth I can see in EVERY OTHER WEAPON IN MWO. They just don't, even with the crit bonus.

I'm not asking for much, I just want machine guns and flamers to be clearly worth using. Small lasers were almost completely worthless in tabletop due to their range. They're incredible here due to accuracy and ranges of confrontation. This game am everything in tabletop better, generally speaking. Machine guns and flamers got worse, and they were already very situational to begin with.

Agreed.

There is no middle ground. BT devotees don't want the stats changed (PGI too; it creates problems in standard mech loadouts and their relative power), players who want a useful anti mech weapon also have a very valid point; there's nothing in the game that MG's or flamers are actually useful on, rendering those mech variants also useless.
Within those two constraints, the only option PGI has is the need to invent a similar weapon system with the same tonnage that occupies the middle ground as a side grade until they figure out the role of infantry. We already have the mechlab that throws out standard mech play. Why not expand it by providing effective alternatives to weapon systems that are useless by definition!

[rgreat]

LogicSol, on 26 February 2013 - 05:08 PM, said:

repeat after me, because that mechs role is not soloing people. And besides, you can. 4mg + 1 ml is 3-6 ml hits to the rear torso to expose it and mgs to finish(again once engine crits are in)

Irony is in your name, man.

[FupDup]

Bren McGuire, on 26 February 2013 - 05:14 PM, said:

Agreed.

There is no middle ground. BT devotees don't want the stats changed (PGI too-

The people who want MGs to remain unchanged are not BT devotees, because the MGs here work nothing like they did in TT. Most of the anti-MG folks probably are just a little bit OCD when it comes to realism (even though our current MGs are hella unrealistic as it is, not to mention every single other item in the game).

PGI just felt like adding in their own "personal touch" on how they want MGs to work as opposed to how they have worked in the past. They probably fit in the with the realism-kiddies crowd.

Edited by FupDup, 26 February 2013 - 05:40 PM.

[Corvus Antaka]

So far I'm liking the new machine guns. wouldnt mind seeing flamers cause a little more heat though. but with the many cold and neutral maps we currently have the flamer suffers a lot from that too.

[shintakie]

LogicSol, on 26 February 2013 - 05:08 PM, said:

Cheese garbage? reality check here. Any weapon that does 5 damage can instantly kill an engine with a lucky crit. A machine gun needs 10 3x crits on the same component over a sustained second of fire to do the same. It's possible but not guaranteed.
Hell, my CN9-AL can onehit kill just about anything short of an assault with an alpha to an exposed CT.(54 damage)

And that changes my point how?

Lucky engine crits really shouldn't exist in a competitive game. It makes it so that you can utterly dominate someone, then because of RNG get killed.

That's not cool

[Nankam]

We asked for a buff to machine gun dps during closed Beta. We got nothing. When PGI first mentioned the "crit seeker" idea we said it wasn't enough and that machine guns needed a buff in dps. We got nothing again. Now that they've finally implemented their crit seeker idea and machine guns are still predicatbly worthless, we're asking again for a buff to machine gun dps. Third time's a charm right?

In all seriousness, the weakness of machine guns is something that has plagued the viability of several mechs since their inception. Every single low tonnage, high ballistic slot mech in the game is currently useless. There's a reason why you never see any Spider 5Ks, Raven 4Xs, or Cicada 3Cs on the battlefield. They have too low tonnage to effectively use all the AC2 and up ballistic weapons, so machine guns are the only weapon that could make these variants viable. Unfortunately machine guns are terrible because they do pathetically low dps on paper, and even worse real world dps in game since they have to be constantly trained on target.

Just buff the dps to small laser levels already, and let us Beta test it.

[Vermaxx]

FupDup, on 26 February 2013 - 05:39 PM, said:

PGI just felt like adding in their own "personal touch" on how they want MGs to work as opposed to how they have worked in the past. They probably fit in the with the realism-kiddies crowd.

PGI claims they are heading off the risk of machine gun and flamers boating, which apparently made Mech3 and Mech4 really bad. Of course the current hard point system totally eliminates machine gun boating, aside from at most six per mech. Flamers could actually be an issue because they're just energy weapons.

Still, this is not a valid explanation for what happened to machine guns. Everything in this game got a major damage boost from the rate of fire system, and machine guns got what amounts to the longest beam duration in the game.

The crit bonus to machine guns wouldn't be necessary if they just worked to begin with. Instead, PGI made a bass ackwards "buff" to fix an underlying problem that, yet again, stemmed from their taking liberties with the original system. So now we have a gun with a massive bonus to mask its massive downside.

Machine guns work just fine as an idea, the implementation is the failure. Up the damage to 0.2 or even 0.1 per bullet, and suddenly they can do worthwhile damage in short bursts. Or, give the weapon a half second duration and a 2.25 cool down just like the small laser, and let it do two damage in that time period.

[FupDup]

Vermaxx, on 26 February 2013 - 07:40 PM, said:

PGI claims they are heading off the risk of machine gun and flamers boating, which apparently made Mech3 and Mech4 really bad. Of course the current hard point system totally eliminates machine gun boating, aside from at most six per mech. Flamers could actually be an issue because they're just energy weapons.
-Stuff-

Yeah, MGs were pretty wonky in MW3. I can remember a few days ago trying out a 16 LMG Champion. I was able to core an Atlas, Daishi, and Annihilator in several seconds each...without running out of ammo. MW4 MGs weren't really that amazing...but maybe I just never noticed them over the sound and trails of PPC and Gauss everywhere.


As for Flamers, those are sorta solved by the hardpoint system as well. Maybe they could just raise heat up to the enemy's max capacity (or at least somewhat close to it) but not actually force a shutdown? I remember hearing people talk of how you could make people actually explode in MW3 from flamers but I never felt like testing it...I think I'll try that now actually.

EDIT: Test complete. Enemy Daishi explodificated gloriously. Also halfway-killed all of my armor sections.

Edited by FupDup, 26 February 2013 - 08:16 PM.

[Vermaxx]

Flamers fix: let it apply three heat to the target (probably would need to be more for the firing mech) and cause two damage. Make it instant, 3.5 second cool down.

Then it can easily overheat (potentially kill) enemy mechs, and it works closely enough to tabletop to shut everyone up. It also stops being useless. Granted, say nine of them is kind of over the top, but the cool down would make it the longest energy in the game and one of the longest in general. It wouldn't eliminate the temptation to boat, but with massive heat to the user and a long cool down it wouldn't be practical.

[Kmieciu]

The funny thing is, that right now the machineguns are much more effective than PGI wanted them to be.

According to the patch notes:

Quote

The Machine Gun has a 14% increased chance to crit once, an 8% increased chance to crit twice, and a 3% increased chance to crit 3 times. - When the Machine Gun crits, it will deal 12.5x the amount of normal damage per bullet to an internal item. - The Machine Gun crit damage is 12.5 x 0.04 = 0.5 per crit. Max crit of 3 times = 1.5.

But if you take a look inside the gamedata.xml:

critDamMult="12.5" critChanceIncrease="0.14,0.8,0.3"

That means 14%, 80% and 30%. If you don`t believe me, check http://mwo.smurfy-ne...eapon_ballistic

So instead of 67% crit rate (25%+14%+3%+14%+8%+3%), we now have 166% (25%+14%+3%+14%+80%+30%).

I sent a PM about it to Thomas Dziegielewski. He confirmed the bug, and said it`s going to be fixed on March 5th.

So the MG are going to back from barely useful to useless. Don`t thank me :-)

[MustrumRidcully]

I think the fundamental aspect here is:
1) There are many players that think every weapon should be useful. If you do not agree, you might not understand why an underpowered weapon needs a buff. To keep it short: An underpowered weapon is ultimately only a noob trap - someone that doesn't know better will screw up with it. No item should just exist to screw up noobs, they have it hard enough already.
2) There are many players that think there is something like "primary" weapons or "secondary" weapons or "support weapons". In general, such weapons do not exist. Weapons are either worth their weight, crit and hardpoint investment, or they are not. A weapon only becomes primary or secondary for an individual mech build - if you devote 15 tons to MGs and 3 tons on Medum Lasers, your MGs are probably your primary weapon, because that's what you spend most of your resources on.

[Liquidx]

Vermaxx, on 26 February 2013 - 02:31 PM, said:

None of that matters. They weigh a half ton and are supposed to do two damage. They could be useful as either a small AC2, or a reworked small laser. PGI chooses to make them a really awesome sounding and looking waste of space, that rewards you for waiting around to gank someone who was already going to die.

Have you even thought about this. You want a spider to have 4 short range ac/2's.

[MustrumRidcully]

Liquidx, on 27 February 2013 - 12:05 AM, said:

Have you even thought about this. You want a spider to have 4 short range ac/2's.

That's what the Stock Spider had in Battletech, and it worked. Sure, for some reason, AC/2s deal now 20 times the damage they did in the table top, but who's counting.

Personally, I think even 0.8 or 1.2 DPS might work. And then, instead of all this crit-mumbo-jumbo, just give MGs double damage against structure and components. And if you're worried about how this scales to a 100 ton mech with 60 ballistic slots, just lower the ammo per ton a bit.

[Rathverge]

Icky icky icky icky icky.

They just need double damage... stop asking for too much, jeez.

[Vermaxx]

Liquidx, on 27 February 2013 - 12:05 AM, said:

Have you even thought about this. You want a spider to have 4 short range ac/2's.

Yes. I ***** want a mech to be able to carry guns that do the damage they're supposed to do. Up until now, PGI hasn't had a problem giving us guns that did book damage. On top of that, they gave us massive boosts in rate of fire. So yeah, I want short range AC2s. OR, they could leave it as a spray and pray, and just lower the beam time needed to apply damage.

Total cycle time on a small laser is 2.75 seconds, and in that time it does 3 damage. They could make a MG do two damage in the same time period and nothing would break. Right now, it takes an MG five seconds to do two damage.

Either turn the MG into a lead laser, and let it shoot once or twice in the same time frame as a small laser's total cycle. Let those shots add up to two damage. Or, yes, make it a short ranged AC2 with a cooldown equivalent to the small laser. The only reason the AC2 gets away with such a ridiculous lack of cooldown is the fact that it weighs six tons. A MG doing the same ridiculous cooldown with two damage per hit WOULD be overpowered.

Incidentally, I just unforked my 4G. Except I had to use AC2s to do it, and I had to use an XL engine to make the thing go.

Given the rate of fire the AC2 allows in MWO, this mech is re-re-ly superior to anything machine guns could do even in my wildest dreams of balanced weapons.