Posted 08 March 2013 - 06:15 AM
I'm glad some people find a use for machine guns in their present form.
They do not function the way any other weapon (save flamers) function in MWO. And that is - as a primary weapon. Even small lasers, which by the way were really only last ditch / rear facing weapons in tabletop. Seriously, a weapon with a range of 3 hex (90m) and at that range it was +4 to hit, that only does 3 damage? Sure, only one heat, but the negatives outweighed it pretty hard.
It was a great 'last shot' gun because one heat almost never mattered. They couldn't be primary weapons unless you were fast as hell, had a bunch of them, and won initiative. Otherwise every enemy would just stay 4 hex away from you, where you couldn't do shart.
In MWO, the small laser is terrifying, because it shoots often, has a short beam duration, almost every map has clusterfork areas built into it, and almost every match devolves into a brawlfest. Weapons also hit where you aim, all of them.
So, the small laser got good. The AC2 got AMAZING, the medium laser was so overpowered they had to narf the cooldown rate AND raise heat.
The MG and flamers, got shart upon. Whereas a medium laser can fire three or four times in the 'ten second window' that tabletop represented; a machine gun can fire "twice." It takes five seconds to apply two damage with a machine gun.
Let's relate that to lasers - say your medium laser took five seconds to apply five damage. NO ONE would call that fair. Hell, let's even it up and say your SMALL LASER took five seconds. It only does three damage, that's not much, maybe IT was designed to fight infantry too!
No? Ok then, stop with this "MG aren't primary weapons" krap. NOTHING in BT was a primary or secondary weapon. Everything had pros and cons, mainly range and heat. Everything was a primary weapon because everything functioned on a basic playing field.
PGI ported the basic playing field math into MWO, and then seriously amped the rates of fire. They chose to make machine guns and flamers into constant fire cool-looking-cool-sounding weapons, but this cannot balance with the rest of the system.
MGs (and flamer) are the way they are because their damage in previous games was much higher, and their rate of fire was nearly auto or fully auto. As such, they were terribly op. PGI was afraid of that happening here and both got preemptive strikes.
The MG is not even a backup weapon in MWO. It is not worth slotting. No, it is not worth downgrading your large pulse to an ER (btw ER large are still terrible) to take machine guns for critwork. The mg has a higher "dps" against internals, fine, but you are better off with real weapons capable of punching armor and cutting off components.
It's time to cut out this autofire thing for machine guns. Turn it into a small laser. Hell, turn it into a one-damage-per-shot weapon with a .25 second beam duration and let it fire twice in the about-three-seconds it takes a small laser to fire and cycle.
MGs and flamers look and sound cool. I have never played a game where a weapon was worth taking just because it looked and sounded cool, unless it also functioned properly. The MG does not function properly by tabletop. It does not even function on the same amped damage potentials as everything else.
Stop telling us what MGs are supposed to be used for. Most of us know the gimmick PGI expects us to use them in, and we don't like it. We want MGs that are capable of being what they are supposed to be: scaled up vehicle-mounted short range cannons capable of doing two points of damage to MECH ARMOR in a reasonable amount of time.
Five seconds, wherein all bullets must hit the same location to really be effective, is not reasonable.