550 replies to this topic

[Deathlike]

I had this realization. There are ZERO threads about MGs being underpowered. There has been a lot more LRMs being OP AND UP at the same time. LRMs outside of the insane damage they are doing right now would actually be balanced for the most part.

This should tell you that there are problems with the MG. Not many people complain about weapons that are balanced... they just hate it if it can be boated. MGs being boated still does nothing.

Edited by Deathlike, 14 March 2013 - 07:50 AM.

[Mavairo]

Joseph Mallan, on 14 March 2013 - 07:49 AM, said:

Yes but the AC2 doesn't do 2 damage per turn in MWO it does up to 40 per turn. With a much larger shell than the 20 mm bullet that a Machine gun fires.

And at a much much longer range. Seriously the MG stops doing damage at 100 meters. It doesn't even get the ballistics triple range.
The AC2 does it out to 720 (really up over 2000 with the triple range ballistics have) The MG, also has to have alot more shells hit the same point in armor for it to deliver it's full damage, vs an AC2.
.
If you can't see how the AC2 has a dramatic advantage over the MG, there's no debating this with you.

The Large laser, also does far far more damage in 1 turn than an LL in TT
same with the ML
SL
And every other weapon. Using that as a ''justification'' for why the MG has to suck and fail at life, is stupid when you conveinently ignore the rest of it.

I'm saying flat out the MG should do at least 2 DPS. The AC2 does 4. (with it's half second reload time) That way when you have 2 MGs on it's = to an Ac2. And when you have 3 it's a lil better, 4 it's better yet but still lightweight.

If you have any brains and are anywhere beyond the ''hur hur hur must face hump'' skill bracket, you'd still pick an AC2 if given a choice, unless the mech didn't have the tonnage. Due to the sheer range difference, and burst vs sustained nature of the respective weapons.

Edited by Mavairo, 14 March 2013 - 07:58 AM.

[Terror Teddy]

I'm so tired on those who simply say:

"It's anti-Infantry"

"You must learn how to use it"

"It's supposed to be a crappy weapon"

I'm just wondering - are these the same people who:
-Defends ECM
-Whine about OP LRM's
-Boating
-Whine about the latest OP one-trick-pony
-Frantically goes on the defensive whenever critisism about their favourite weapon arises?

Seriously, are people so BLIND that they cannot see the damn FACTS and NUMBERS straight in the face when something is UNDERPOWERED as well?

Not to mention doing RESEARCH into the tech they defend or critisize?

[Jetfire]

FupDup, on 14 March 2013 - 07:27 AM, said:

Battletech uses metric tons, not english (after all, we use the metric system for distances so why would mass be different?). So, that makes MGs 500kg or 1102.31 pounds.

A metric ton to a long ton to a short ton is a whopping difference of about 200 lbs, so we are talking variations of 100 lbs on a 1000 lb weapon. Long story short, MG's could logically and should logically output more damage and affect armor much more than they do. Not sure how anyone can think this is a half ton 50 cal BMG.

[x4vn]

Joseph Mallan, on 14 March 2013 - 07:29 AM, said:

the GAU-8 is an Auto Cannon. The military even classifies it as such. it is also a 30mm cannon not 20mm. though your size is correct for a Clan Weapon cause the GAU-8 weighs in around .25 tons sans ammo and feed equipment.

Cool, and as soon as I can mount a rotary auto cannon weighing just 0.28T I'll be fine, in the mean time I'll continue to compare it to the BT 0.5T 'Machine Guns' and feel a little underwhelmed

I doubled the damage on a spider-k by stripping the MG's and JJ; fitting a large pulse instead of the medium pulse, miss the JJ's but the all the MG's did was tickle.

Whats worse is that with the spider I'm going for the backs of Mechs and not seeing any component destruction's, the rear torso locations do not appear to be linked to the equipment in the section. In hind sight I'm going to confirm this in the proving grounds.

[Joseph Mallan]

x4vn, on 14 March 2013 - 07:25 AM, said:

Yes it's the GAU-8 (already mentioned) and here's what it does to Tanks:

Yeah amazing how the tank blows up when it is hit with a "Missile". And the GAU-8 as an Auto Cannon fires HEAP shells not bullets.

[Xyroc]

From the pages I've read no logical arguments have been posted everyone that is against them basicly says " no because I said " ... SOOOO come on devs

[Terror Teddy]

Deathlike, on 14 March 2013 - 07:49 AM, said:

This should tell you that there are problems with the MG. Not many people complain about weapons that are balanced... they just hate it if it can be boated. MGs being boated still does nothing.

Those who says we should be happy about it usually dont use it or has the tonnage to use heavier weapons.

I love light mechs and I want all weapons to be equally viable.

After all, the 6ML Jenner is rather nice.

6 tonnes weapons - can benefit from double heatsinks

4MG's +4 tonnes ammo = weight - 200 seconds fire are also six tonnes wtih total damage of 320 - I bet the X6ML does more.

[Joseph Mallan]

Mavairo, on 14 March 2013 - 07:52 AM, said:

And at a much much longer range. Seriously the MG stops doing damage at 100 meters. It doesn't even get the ballistics triple range.

At 12 times the mass of a MG and having shells that weighs 26 lbs a piece v a 1lbs bullet for a Machine Gun. No I cannot see a reason that an MG should do as much damage as a AC2...

[Terror Teddy]

Jetfire, on 14 March 2013 - 07:54 AM, said:

Not sure how anyone can think this is a half ton 50 cal BMG.

Well, It could be made out of LEAD completely and designed for people 4 meters tall?

[x4vn]

Joseph Mallan, on 14 March 2013 - 07:55 AM, said:

Yeah amazing how the tank blows up when it is hit with a "Missile". And the GAU-8 as an Auto Cannon fires HEAP shells not bullets.

Keep watching, though I'm also waiting for Arrow IV's to come out

[Mavairo]

Joseph Mallan, on 14 March 2013 - 07:58 AM, said:

At 12 times the mass of a MG and having shells that weighs 26 lbs a piece v a 1lbs bullet for a Machine Gun. No I cannot see a reason that an MG should do as much damage as a AC2...

Range.
Burst dps, vs sustained.
Table top damage value.
Now unless you want to go totally derp, and hypocritical here, and say that TT is fine for every weapon -but- the MG because you have a hate on for lights, and mediums (which given your Steiner faction fatty roots wouldn't surprise me in the least).

Seriously you would have to be functionally ******** to not notice the fact that an AC2 int his game can reach out to 2100 meters reliably, while the MG can't even hit a target at over 100 meters.

Unless you want to tell us you have not yet advanced past the 'hur hur hur I must face hump'' skill level?

As it stands right now, tell me why would you ever take a 4X raven over the 3L? Or the massed laser sloted jenner variants? Why would you even consider taking the ballistic cicada? Why would you ever attempt to use the full ballistic slots on a 5N dragon?

You wouldn't. Unless you suck and fail at this game and don't know better.

Which one do you shoot at first? The Mg light, or the laser and SRm light? Unless you're a derp mode player, you're probably picking the one that's actually a threat.

An AC2 in this game does 4 DPS. That's -double- TT value. Asking for the MG to do 1/2 of that isn't a stretch, especially since a small laser does more than 1/2 the damage of an ML. And an ML does more than 1/2 the damage of an LL, with much smaller range gaps in each.

Edited by Mavairo, 14 March 2013 - 08:06 AM.

[Noobzorz]

Joseph Mallan, on 14 March 2013 - 05:14 AM, said:

My buff keeps it on par with other .5 ton weapons 0.8 damage at 20 bursts per turn is 16 damage. where a Small laser does 4.4 damage per turn(2.25 cyclic) and an SRM 2 delivers roughly 4 damage per turn(3.5 cyclic)
So again how is 16 damage possible per turn somehow worse than other 0.5 ton weapons?

Stop talking about the numbers in the TT. It's irrelevant. Like, unfathomably, egregiously irrelevant. It would be like using information from World of WarCraft to justify balance decisions for the Frozen Throne, or making StarCraft 2 balance decisions based on a campaign cinematic.

Yes.

It's that dumb.

Stop doing it.

The MG doesn't work. It's miles from working. The spirit of the weapon (the actually important part) is that it sandblasts off ablative armor from close range. It's not doing that, and 0.8 DPS is not going to do it either.

Edited by Noobzorz, 14 March 2013 - 08:04 AM.

[Noobzorz]

Terror Teddy, on 14 March 2013 - 07:58 AM, said:

Well, It could be made out of LEAD completely and designed for people 4 meters tall?

I expect the barrel would heat and the weapon would melt, so that's probably out too. Maybe they're just dumb?

[Dr Killinger]

Noobzorz, on 14 March 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:

Irrelevant. In the lore, the MG is a powerful anti-battlemech weapon that just happens to be good at killing infantry and armored vehicles. This isn't a Call of Duty weapon, nor was it ever envisaged as such.

Now when Lore and Gameplay are at odds, I get that, but in this case, making the weapon effective is good for both, and that makes it an automatic must-change.

I don't see how it's irrelevant.

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Machine_Gun

"The Machine Gun is the quintessential anti-infantry weapon".
...and no mention of being a powerful anti-mech weapon at all. Maybe CBT games played out that way, but the balance in CBT is laughable, and canonically it was relegated to anti infantry and light vehicles, as per Sarna.

As far as I can tell, PGI have only included these smaller, anti-infantry weapons to place them on stock loadouts as required. I do feel there is some need for a lighter ballistic weapon, but I also don't want machine guns running around with AC/10 DPS or anything.

[Mavairo]

Dr Killinger, on 14 March 2013 - 08:10 AM, said:

I don't see how it's irrelevant.

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Machine_Gun

"The Machine Gun is the quintessential anti-infantry weapon".
...and no mention of being a powerful anti-mech weapon at all. Maybe CBT games played out that way, but the balance in CBT is laughable, and canonically it was relegated to anti infantry and light vehicles, as per Sarna.

As far as I can tell, PGI have only included these smaller, anti-infantry weapons to place them on stock loadouts as required. I do feel there is some need for a lighter ballistic weapon, but I also don't want machine guns running around with AC/10 DPS or anything.

Here's the relevant section for you
hese weapons are much heavier than those typically carried by infantry, but can be used by them when placed on a static mount, where they are called Support Machine Guns
http://www.sarna.net...ort_Machine_Gun
[edit] Description

Support Machine Guns are large crew-served support weapons mounted on vehicles or emplacement turrets. Too massive for a single trooper to carry, these guns fire large-caliber bullets at much greater ranges than most other ballistic weapons and with enough firepower to be a threat to heavily-armored vehicles. Support machine guns achieve superior accuracy at these ranges thanks to their stable, static mounts and built-in recoil compensation.^[1]
[edit] Notes

[Joseph Mallan]

Noobzorz, on 14 March 2013 - 08:03 AM, said:

Stop talking about the numbers in the TT. It's irrelevant. Like, unfathomably, egregiously irrelevant. It would be like using information from World of WarCraft to justify balance decisions for the Frozen Throne, or making StarCraft 2 balance decisions based on a campaign cinematic.

Yes.

It's that dumb.

Stop doing it.

The MG doesn't work. It's miles from working. The spirit of the weapon (the actually important part) is that it sandblasts off ablative armor from close range. It's not doing that, and 0.8 DPS is not going to do it either.

The MG needs 0.8 DpS and a 0.5 second Refresh. I have been touting this for a short while now. But some of the more ardent feel its not enough to do 16 damage a turn from a 0.5 ton weapon. Does a small laser get that much per weapon does an SRM2 do 16 damage per turn? No... I don't think so. So 0.8 per second with 20 bursts per turn is plenty of damage potential.

[Squigles]

http://www.sarna.net...Mech_Technology

This should be mandatory reading before talking about battlemech "anything". These are basically direct pulls from the Tech Manual for those without.

Battlemech armor isn't inches thick, it's centimeters and millimeters thick. It's designed to ablate on impact. It fragments pretty much any ammunition hitting it, but shatters to bits in the process.

Dr Killinger, on 14 March 2013 - 08:10 AM, said:

I don't see how it's irrelevant.

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Machine_Gun

"The Machine Gun is the quintessential anti-infantry weapon".
...and no mention of being a powerful anti-mech weapon at all. Maybe CBT games played out that way, but the balance in CBT is laughable, and canonically it was relegated to anti infantry and light vehicles, as per Sarna.

These weapons are much heavier than those typically carried by infantry, but can be used by them when placed on a static mount, where they are called Support Machine Guns.

Excerpt from that gives us..... "enough firepower to be a threat to heavily-armored vehicles." The excerpt you posted is essentially fluff for a machine gun that does something like .17 damage per trooper and has an entire platoon of men doing basically jack squat to a battlemech.

[Harmin]

Terror Teddy, on 14 March 2013 - 07:57 AM, said:

I love light mechs and I want all weapons to be equally viable.

Sounds more that you are biased towards a weapon system to make your preferred choice of mech more viable. I strive to be adequate in all chassis types, I more or less successfully play lights, medium, heavies and assaults. I think that giving a weapon which is extremely light and produces no heat a damage buff would be a very bad idea.

I would support giving the MG more damage if

tonnage would be increased to 4t
or
it would create much more heat, 2 heat sounds fine.
or
it will chew through ammo at 10x the rate

Or any combination of above with slightly lower values.

So I'm not wholly against the idea of some MG tweaks, but not wholesale upping it without rebalancing.

-Armin

[Noobzorz]

Joseph Mallan, on 14 March 2013 - 08:14 AM, said:

The MG needs 0.8 DpS and a 0.5 second Refresh. I have been touting this for a short while now. But some of the more ardent feel its not enough to do 16 damage a turn from a 0.5 ton weapon. Does a small laser get that much per weapon does an SRM2 do 16 damage per turn? No... I don't think so. So 0.8 per second with 20 bursts per turn is plenty of damage potential.

Let me try again.

Mechwarrior Online is not a tabletop game. It is not turn based. It is a real time first person mech combat simulator.

If you are talking in turns, you are thinking of another game with firing cones and D6s.

It is really dumb.

Stop it.