131 replies to this topic

[Vermaxx]

now it's time to just make them cooldown weapons like everything else in the game.

The constant-fire thing was fun, damned awesome specifically. Now I'd like useful weapons.

Give them a cooldown, something like the AC2, maybe even do math so they do 2 damage in the same time a small laser does 3, whatever. Give them a cooldown, not automatic fire, and let them do useful damage per shot.

There is literally no reason to take MGs just for the crit boost. Except on the 4G, where two of its hardpoints are wasted with anything approaching a decent weapons payload.

MGs and flamers are never worth their tonnage right now. There is no reason to take them for a crit buff when real weapons simply blow the location out with a true volley.

[Doc Holliday]

Even on the 4G they're a waste, simply because of the tonnage. Those two MGs + ammo are two tons that could better be spent on a bigger engine, another DHS, more armor, or more ammo for your other ballistic weapon.

[HRR Insanity]

Vermaxx, on 25 February 2013 - 07:50 PM, said:

now it's time to just make them cooldown weapons like everything else in the game.

The constant-fire thing was fun, damned awesome specifically. Now I'd like useful weapons.

Give them a cooldown, something like the AC2, maybe even do math so they do 2 damage in the same time a small laser does 3, whatever. Give them a cooldown, not automatic fire, and let them do useful damage per shot.

There is literally no reason to take MGs just for the crit boost. Except on the 4G, where two of its hardpoints are wasted with anything approaching a decent weapons payload.

MGs and flamers are never worth their tonnage right now. There is no reason to take them for a crit buff when real weapons simply blow the location out with a true volley.

As I said when this was first announced... just up the damage.

Edited by HRR Insanity, 25 February 2013 - 08:01 PM.

[Vermaxx]

Well then I guess my post will get ignored too.

[shintakie]

Or up their damage and keep them as they are.

Flamers will still be useless until their heat transfer makes even the slightest bit of sense, but at least if they had some damage there'd be a point. MG's just need a boost to .12 or higher damage per bullet to make them useful, no need to make it a cd weapon and ruin its awesome flavor.

[Vermaxx]

I'd support 0.2 per barrel, allowing them to do 2dps. Anything less is not functional. Even "2dps" isn't functional because it's GOING TO SPREAD LOCATIONS, but at that point I can't complain from a canon standpoint.

An MG needing five seconds to do two damage is not anything related to either real life or tabletop or the odd form factor they used to convert TT damage to MWO.

[Trauglodyte]

Flamers would be acceptable if they set the mech on fire and did a small heat+DOT. On top of that, it needs to be a 90m weapon like it was in TT. I don't get why they short changed it by 30m.

As for MGs, they're the only ballistic weapon that doesn't do 150 damage per ton of ammo and the only ballistic in game that doesn't get 3x the range for "extreme" (its cut off at 200m). The whole crit thing is kind of cool except it does no damage to internal structure as that is considered to be armor. So, you don't do any damage until you get internals and then you've got to sit there and hit the same location but you're only hurting equipment.

[FrostCollar]

Trauglodyte, on 25 February 2013 - 08:27 PM, said:

So, you don't do any damage until you get internals and then you've got to sit there and hit the same location but you're only hurting equipment.

Don't forget, once the armor's gone there's very little health left. Why take MGs when you could get a real weapon to fire in there for the knockout blow?

[Vermaxx]

FrostCollar, on 25 February 2013 - 08:29 PM, said:

Don't forget, once the armor's gone there's very little health left. Why take MGs when you could get a real weapon to fire in there for the knockout blow?

And, by extension, why buy a mech that relies on ballistic slots but is too light to to use anything worthwhile? Bad MGs/flamers makes a lot of mechs bad by association.

[Josef Koba]

I'm not sure what kind of MG weighs a half-ton, and I don't know why the ammo doesn't come in packages less than a ton. Why not a half-ton for the MG and a half-ton for the ammo? MGs don't seem to have any usefulness in attacking mechs, nor should they, really. I'd never attack a tank with an M240. And tanks that come equipped with coaxial MGs don't typically attack other tanks with those coaxial MGs. They do no damage worth noting.

So with that in mind, and given that this MG weighs 1,000 pounds, is it some sort of smaller autocannon? Is it something like 20 or 20mm? If so, then maybe the damage needs to be increased. I used to play BattleTech back in the 90s, but I'm not all that familiar with the canon, so maybe an MG is an MG. If that's the case, then it's an anti-personnel weapon only. As cool as it looks and sounds, there doesn't seem to be much of a point in using it against a mech. Maybe against other lights?

Or maybe PGI is going to implement infantry or something. I don't know, but the discussion is good.

[FupDup]

Josef Koba, on 25 February 2013 - 08:31 PM, said:

I'm not sure what kind of MG weighs a half-ton, and I don't know why the ammo doesn't come in packages less than a ton. Why not a half-ton for the MG and a half-ton for the ammo? MGs don't seem to have any usefulness in attacking mechs, nor should they, really. I'd never attack a tank with an M240. And tanks that come equipped with coaxial MGs don't typically attack other tanks with those coaxial MGs. They do no damage worth noting.

So with that in mind, and given that this MG weighs 1,000 pounds, is it some sort of smaller autocannon? Is it something like 20 or 20mm? If so, then maybe the damage needs to be increased. I used to play BattleTech back in the 90s, but I'm not all that familiar with the canon, so maybe an MG is an MG. If that's the case, then it's an anti-personnel weapon only. As cool as it looks and sounds, there doesn't seem to be much of a point in using it against a mech. Maybe against other lights?

Or maybe PGI is going to implement infantry or something. I don't know, but the discussion is good.

An M240 with ammo only weighs 12.5 KG at most...Also, the only specified BT MG size is 20MM Gatling (see BT wiki). The folks who invented BT just decided to call it a machine gun instead of auto cannon. Technically speaking, auto cannons are actually considered a sub-category of machine guns.


Something a lot of people miss out on is that adding infantry would not make MGs useful...at all. We have click-and-drag laser beams that can sweep over a large area with a single trigger pull and do more damage to everything hit in that arc than MG bullets ever could. Even with single-shot lasers, I would still rather just chain-fire a few ML's or SL's to eat infantry alive. Better yet, just stomp on the miserable gits (especially if you're a fast light mech). MGs need to be good against mechs to have any use in this game.

Edited by FupDup, 25 February 2013 - 08:43 PM.

[Vermaxx]

The original Battletech had mechs, the machine gun did two damage to MECHS. It LATER got a buff to infantry killing. So did the PPC.

The MG and the flamer were designed to kill mechs. They were scaled up mech weapons, not an M240 strapped to a 20 foot long mech arm. No one in FASA came up with real world physics, ballistic stats, or caliber sizes to explain how that happened.

A machine gun did two damage to "mech armor." It was not a gimp-arsed weapon that required you to fire the entire turn and spread that two damage over the entire enemy mech.

[FupDup]

Vermaxx, on 25 February 2013 - 08:42 PM, said:

The MG and the flamer were designed to kill mechs.

Actually, I'd say that the flamer was mostly meant to overheat enemy units (Sarna even explicitly says they do "negligible damage" against mechs and vehicles). I do agree with MGs needing a damage buff, but I think that flamer should be oriented around heating people up (for one thing, the mech firing it shouldn't overheat faster than his target!). Making flamers into crit-seekers like PGI did is just plain silly at best.

Edited by FupDup, 25 February 2013 - 08:48 PM.

[Elizander]

I'd be happy with 0.06 to 0.08 damage per MG bullet while maintaining the 0.10 second rate of fire.

[OneEyed Jack]

Vermaxx, on 25 February 2013 - 08:25 PM, said:

I'd support 0.2 per barrel, allowing them to do 2dps. Anything less is not functional. Even "2dps" isn't functional because it's GOING TO SPREAD LOCATIONS, but at that point I can't complain from a canon standpoint.

An MG needing five seconds to do two damage is not anything related to either real life or tabletop or the odd form factor they used to convert TT damage to MWO.

Even a small laser only has 1 DPS. I think MGs would be fine at about .5 to .6 DPS, which would keep it right in the range of other weapons doing their TT damage value around 3 times in 10 seconds, at even the mighty Piranha could only get about 6 DPS out of them, assuming they didn't give it more than 12 ballistic hardpoints.

Josef Koba, on 25 February 2013 - 08:31 PM, said:

I'm not sure what kind of MG weighs a half-ton, and I don't know why the ammo doesn't come in packages less than a ton. Why not a half-ton for the MG and a half-ton for the ammo? MGs don't seem to have any usefulness in attacking mechs, nor should they, really. I'd never attack a tank with an M240. And tanks that come equipped with coaxial MGs don't typically attack other tanks with those coaxial MGs. They do no damage worth noting.

So with that in mind, and given that this MG weighs 1,000 pounds, is it some sort of smaller autocannon? Is it something like 20 or 20mm? If so, then maybe the damage needs to be increased. I used to play BattleTech back in the 90s, but I'm not all that familiar with the canon, so maybe an MG is an MG. If that's the case, then it's an anti-personnel weapon only. As cool as it looks and sounds, there doesn't seem to be much of a point in using it against a mech. Maybe against other lights?

Or maybe PGI is going to implement infantry or something. I don't know, but the discussion is good.

Mech MGs are very large weapons, not really represented well with little rattles in MWO. They got a bonus vs infantry compared to other mech weapons, but they're designed to fire at mechs. Think 20-30mm with DPU slugs, rather than a pintle-mounted .50 cal.

I, too would like to see MG ammo purchasable in 1/2 ton lots, like in TT. It would make it slightly easier to justify slotting a single MG into that empty hardpoint if it didn't weigh an effective 1.5 tons.

Unless plans drastically change, there will never be infantry in MWO.

[Ghost_19Hz]

Yea i gave up on the new MG "crit seeker" buff. I see no difference, and usually die with MG's equipped.

[shintakie]

PythonCPT, on 25 February 2013 - 09:24 PM, said:

Yea i gave up on the new MG "crit seeker" buff. I see no difference, and usually die with MG's equipped.

There honestly is a difference. Its pointless in the grand scheme of things, but its actually there.

[coolnames]

I have been dropping in a 3C Cicada with 4 mgs and I really like it. They are great for harassing and I feel that crits can proc pretty well on exposed internals (placebo or not lol).

[80sGlamRockSensation David Bowie]

Ignore the timeline in this one scenario, please.
http://www.sarna.net...chine_Gun_Array

Edited by mwhighlander, 25 February 2013 - 10:55 PM.

[Treckin]

Better idea: Give the MG/flamer to every mech. Have it on a hotkey.
Leave the dmg as is.

Viola - no competing for weapon slots with a sh i t t y weapon.