157 replies to this topic

[7c Nickel]

The crit seeking behavior is only worthwhile in a very limited set of circumstances.

A. The section you are attacking will kill or completely cripple the mech when destroyed.

AND

B. The section you are attacking contains enough equipment to make a large difference if they are destroyed a few seconds quicker.

If you don't have A, then you are wasting damage stripping the armor off a section that won't end the enemy as a threat. You'll just have to strip off the armor off another section to actually kill them off. During that time they will be attacking you with real weapons.

If you don't have B, then there's no point in the crit seekers in the first place. Just use actual weapons to burn through the armor and destroy the whole section much more quickly.

Edited by 7c Nickel, 07 March 2013 - 09:56 AM.

[Terror Teddy]

stjobe, on 07 March 2013 - 09:50 AM, said:

Either way, the "it's an anti-infantry weapon" line is a red herring, since it does do as much damage to 'mechs as an AC/2 - and nobody would argue that an AC/2 is an anti-infantry weapon.

yea, especially since it is not "A" machine gun but a vehicle mounted machine gun ARRAY. I e, multiples of vehicle mounted weapons.

And here we have an even MORE fun thing.
http://usmilitary.ab...ns/l/blmk19.htm

The 32kg 40mm machine gun (without cradle). So lets say 50 kilograms but add 50 kilos for loading mechanics and vehicle mounting and targeting servos.

That's 5 40mm machine guns per half a ton.

Anti-INFANTRY???

What kind of infantry do they USE in battletech? Are Battle Armor included in that "infantry" part? Ya know, the POWER ARMOR GUYS?

[MaddMaxx]

Vodrin Thales, on 07 March 2013 - 09:47 AM, said:

What I really think they need to do with both the MG and the flamer is give each weapon a 0.75 second burst for 2 damage when each is fired and give it a 3.25 second cooldown between bursts. Change the MG ammo to 200 per ton and have each burst consume 1 ammo. It instantly makes both weapons at least somewhat viable while still allowing them to work effectively within current game constructs.

So the MG can do 400 damage per ton, or are you factoring in some miss percentage?

You do realize that the craziest weapon, that is currently not a missile based type, does only 140 damage per ton right?

Edited by MaddMaxx, 07 March 2013 - 09:57 AM.

[7c Nickel]

MaddMaxx, on 07 March 2013 - 09:55 AM, said:

So the MG can do 400 damage per ton, or are you factoring in some miss percentage?

You do realize that the craziest weapon, that is currently not a missile based type, does only 140 damage per ton right?

He's just using the Battletech stats where yes, they got 400 damage per ton. It was not unreasonable for a custom mech to only take .5 tons of ammo for 10 machine guns. In fact it was quite wise to limit the explosive power of a potential ammo detonation.

Edited by 7c Nickel, 07 March 2013 - 10:01 AM.

[Josef Nader]

7c Nickel, on 07 March 2013 - 09:54 AM, said:

The crit seeking behavior is only worthwhile in a very limited set of circumstances.

A. The section you are attacking will kill or completely cripple the mech when destroyed.

AND

B. The section you are attacking contains enough equipment to make a large difference if they are destroyed a few seconds quicker.

If you don't have A, then you are wasting damage stripping the armor off a section that won't end the enemy as a threat. You'll just have to strip off the armor off another section to actually kill them off. During that time they will be attacking you with real weapons.

If you don't have B, then there's no point in the crit seekers in the first place. Just use actual weapons to burn through the armor and destroy the whole section much more quickly.

See my post a few pages back with the video. What's the point of knocking out a whole section when you can knock out the important bits and move on in a fraction of the time? If I can knock a whole in your armor and gimp your mech, it makes killing you a lot easier. There are plenty of occasions where you're fighting a mech with open armor and all of his toys. The MGs knock out whatever toys he's got and tilt the battle in your favor. That's significant.

[Viper69]

If we ever get engine crits those CT internal hits may mean something other than taking out a few small energy weapons.

[7c Nickel]

Josef Nader, on 07 March 2013 - 10:00 AM, said:

See my post a few pages back with the video. What's the point of knocking out a whole section when you can knock out the important bits and move on in a fraction of the time? If I can knock a whole in your armor and gimp your mech, it makes killing you a lot easier. There are plenty of occasions where you're fighting a mech with open armor and all of his toys. The MGs knock out whatever toys he's got and tilt the battle in your favor. That's significant.

Because you can't do that without knocking out his armor first.  Armor is 2/3rd of the total health of a section.  Unless all their firepower is in one section, they'll still be using real weapons to core you out as you spend your time burning off armor you didn't need to.

Edited by 7c Nickel, 07 March 2013 - 10:17 AM.

[FupDup]

Sierra19, on 07 March 2013 - 06:59 AM, said:

So what's the point of the video? MG's SHOULD NOT be primary weapons, they, like the LBX10 AC, are crit seeking weapons. They should be used on heavily damaged mechs, to crit internals. Sure, ANY weapon in game can take out a mech, but certain weapons are better than others for a given task, as your video shows.

The definition of a primary weapon on a battlemech is whatever most of your tonnage/space is devoted to. For instance, 3 Medium Lasers on a Cataphract are secondary weapons. However, on a Spider, 2 Medium Lasers are its primary weapons. If most of a mech's weaponry consists of a single weapon type, that weapon becomes its primary weapon. Another example: for a Raven with 4 ML and 1 SRM6, the 4 ML are its primary weapons and the SRM6 is secondary. On a Splatapult, SRM6's are its primary (and only) weapons.

On mechs like the Spider 5K, 4 MGs are its primary weapon system.

Weapons are only primary or secondary or tertiary or whatever based on how you use them, not some pre-determined prophecy in the mechlab.

Edited by FupDup, 07 March 2013 - 10:08 AM.

[Jman5]

So here is what I have gathered from the video. If you know the mech variants well enough to know where the hardpoints are, you can take out weapons with relative ease. However, if you're just blasting wherever, machine guns are not for you.

So if I was a spider with 4 machine guns, I would be scanning the battle looking for injured mechs and jumping on them until I take out some crucial weapon. Then I would run to another exposed target.

[Skyscream Sapphire]

Gevurah, on 07 March 2013 - 09:01 AM, said:

The math speaks for itself.

I like math. Let's do more math to examine this.

Assuming we are shooting a component with only one piece of equipment we are interested in critting (so multiple crits do bonus damage to this instead of spreading), then each machine gun bullet does damage the following expected damage:
39%*0.5 + 28%*2*0.5 + 6%*3*0.5 = 0.565 expected crit damage per bullet.
0.565 damage per bullet * 10 bullets per second = 5.65 DPS to equipment

Not exactly what you calculated for some reason, but close enough to make no difference.

Compared to a medium laser, which does 5 damage in 1 second:
25%*5 + 14%*2*5 + 3%*3*5 = 3.1 DPS to equipment

Not a bad comparison for the MG, but in the meantime the medium laser has done 5 damage to the component versus the MGs paltry 0.4.

However, now the laser has to recharge. Meanwhile the MG can continue to fire. The obvious downside, of course, is that you'll have to stay trained on the target component that whole time, exposing yourself to return fire.

But add a few stacked MGs with no heat penalty and I'm starting to believe that they really can tear apart equipment. I still can't see this being worth taking a MG boat like the SDR-5K or CDA-3C, but at least it's something.

[M4NTiC0R3X]

Whilst playing my Awesome against a ballistic Cicada I realized just how effective machine guns can be.

I have an XL engine so it's very important if I loose pretty much any section of armor in that billboard size of a 'mech I do not take any further damage to the internal components, meaning I turn to spread damage across other sections. Well, machine guns never stop shooting till the ammo runs dry.. So it was a situation where If I turned to take aim for long I'd get blown up (yes I realize by that point you're pretty much dead anyway, but still) this prevented me from doing anything other than running like a little pig wee wee wee all the way home and I really enjoy when somebody is clever enough to out do me in such ways. Thanks that player + PGI!

[Terror Teddy]

MaddMaxx, on 07 March 2013 - 09:55 AM, said:

You do realize that the craziest weapon, that is currently not a missile based type, does only 140 damage per ton right?

Damage per tonne is highly innacurate because you forget some factors.
-Weapon Range
-Time To Emty (time to emty 1 tonne ammo)

"Time To Emty" with the suggestion of 0,75 rate and 3,25 cooldown and 2 damage is 4 second per 2 damage X 200.
That's 13 minutes of firing constantly with 1 gun. 13 minutes...

The AC20 does that in 28 seconds and have triple the range

Yes, you can have MORE MG's and do it in 7,5 minutes - or with the spider and X4 do it in 3,25 minutes. How often do you stay in a firefight against ONE mech in 3,25 minutes with machine guns? Even WITH such an upgrade.

With the damage we have now it takes
MG's right now has 0,1 recycle time per bullet. 0,1 X 2000 = 200 seconds so we have 3,33 minutes to emty one tonne.

0,4 DPS X 200 = 80 damage in 3.3 minutes. A spiders X4 guns can go to down to 50 seconds to emty a tonne and do MORE damage but that tonne is not very useul since it's DPS no matter how you look at it you just make the DPS more focused by using MORE guns.

And a spider for example NEEDS those tonnes of ammo and cannot afford to spray for 50 seconds straight for 80X4 theoretical damage.

[Shumabot]

Stormwolf, on 07 March 2013 - 07:20 AM, said:

MG's are anti-infantry weapons in a game that doesn't have infantry, so yeah, they are useless.

Then why do they exist.

[7c Nickel]

M4NTiC0R3X, on 07 March 2013 - 10:12 AM, said:

Whilst playing my Awesome against a ballistic Cicada I realized just how effective machine guns can be.

I have an XL engine so it's very important if I loose pretty much any section of armor in that billboard size of a 'mech I do not take any further damage to the internal components, meaning I turn to spread damage across other sections. Well, machine guns never stop shooting till the ammo runs dry.. So it was a situation where If I turned to take aim for long I'd get blown up (yes I realize by that point you're pretty much dead anyway, but still) this prevented me from doing anything other than running like a little pig wee wee wee all the way home and I really enjoy when somebody is clever enough to out do me in such ways. Thanks that player + PGI!

Engine crits do not kill mechs right now. If you had just ignored the machine guns there would be next to no difference.

Edited by 7c Nickel, 07 March 2013 - 10:16 AM.

[Terror Teddy]

Skyscream Sapphire, on 07 March 2013 - 10:12 AM, said:

But add a few stacked MGs with no heat penalty and I'm starting to believe that they really can tear apart equipment. I still can't see this being worth taking a MG boat like the SDR-5K or CDA-3C, but at least it's something.

This is very theoretical since you can (for example) with the SDR-5K emty your 2000 rounds 1 tonne ammo in 50 seconds with 4mg's.

That's 80X4 damage over 50 seconds.

Then you are out 1 tonne ammo. Weight to damage ratio on the MG's becomes very punishing for light builds due to their dependance on ammo.

The FUN thing thought IS being able to amp up the damage of MG's by adding more of them if we go by "Damage per 1 tonne ammo" but we are also mostly limited to the X4 ballistic mounts.

I think that is too few.

[FupDup]

Stormwolf, on 07 March 2013 - 07:20 AM, said:

MG's are anti-infantry weapons in a game that doesn't have infantry, so yeah, they are useless.

There are a few issues with this quote:

1. Infantry don't magically make MGs useful. It's called use a f*cking Medium Laser to click-and-drag over a whole squad of them and murder them all instantly. Why does nobody actually try to picture this playing out before they say that infantry make MGs useful?

2. If a 500kg weapon is only capable of damaging infantry, the people who designed it ride the short bus to work every day. This is especially true because other weapons of similar tonnage can damage EVERYTHING (Medium Laser, Small Laser, Small Pulse Laser).

3. Why not just strap an M4 to your mech's arm for anti-infantry-only work if a 500kg weapon magically can't hurt anything bigger? Again, it makes no sense. It's a waste of weight.

Edited by FupDup, 07 March 2013 - 10:22 AM.

[Terror Teddy]

I think the main issue with the MG's are thus:

It takes 3,33 minutes to emty 2000 rounds that weight 0,5 kilograms per shot. That's no DPS or damage on hit with it's very low damage - that's damage over time - time you usually dont HAVE.

4MG's do the same in 50 SECONDS and deliver X4 the damage over that time. But that is 6,4 DPS up to 320 total damage.

That SOUNDS like much but few other weapons need to train on a target for that time and need MULTIPLES to be as efficient.

You usually dont have TIME to train the weapons on a target for several reasons
-Limited Range
-Engagement Time before one needs to break off
-Time to AIM.

Say 50% of that ammo is wasted trying to track a fast target - that's half damage right there.

Edited by Terror Teddy, 07 March 2013 - 10:44 AM.

[Pihoqahiak]

verybad, on 07 March 2013 - 09:23 AM, said:

Didn't last long once you got him to red...It's a "finisher" weapon at best, but even more important, it adds to you mech ambiance.
I have them in my K2, and though I plan on improving the K2 in a few ways (DHS, ERPPC, and a few other things)I'm keeping the MGs. I don't care if they're innefective in the overall, they sound cool, and sometimes sounding cool is more important than being cool.

Ha ha, now see, here's something I hope nobody tries to argue, someone just having fun with them while realizing (and stating) the truth of the matter.

[Josef Nader]

Terror Teddy, on 07 March 2013 - 10:32 AM, said:

I think the main issue with the MG's are thus:

It takes 3,33 minutes to emty 2000 rounds that weight 0,5 kilograms per shot. That's no DPS or damage on hit with it's very low damage - that's damage over time - time you usually dont HAVE.

4MG's do the same in 50 SECONDS and deliver X4 the damage over that time. But that is 6,4 DPS up to 320 total damage.

That SOUNDS like much but few other weapons need to train on a target for that time and need MULTIPLES to be as efficient.

You usually dont have TIME to train the weapons on a target for several reasons
-Limited Range
-Engagement Time before one needs to break off
-Time to AIM.

Say 50% of that ammo is wasted trying to track a fast target - that's half damage right there.

You're missing the point. With 4 machine guns, you've destroyed two standard HP components per second of fire. They don't hurt armor. They almost instantly destroy weapons, heat sinks, ammo, ECM, BAP, gyros, and engines. Unfortunately, engine destruction does absolutely nothing right now. When/if it ever gets implemented, you're going to see an AWFUL lot of machine guns running around.

[Shumabot]

Josef Nader, on 07 March 2013 - 10:51 AM, said:

You're missing the point. With 4 machine guns, you've destroyed two standard HP components per second of fire. They don't hurt armor. They almost instantly destroy weapons, heat sinks, ammo, ECM, BAP, gyros, and engines. Unfortunately, engine destruction does absolutely nothing right now. When/if it ever gets implemented, you're going to see an AWFUL lot of machine guns running around.

That's not how they end up working mathematically in the game itself. They don't strip out components that quickly, not even remotely close, even with four of them. Whether its bugged or your math is way off that seems to be well outside of the experience of literally anyone I've ever seen using any number of MGs, including in actual recorded friendly fire tests.

Edited by Shumabot, 07 March 2013 - 10:55 AM.