550 replies to this topic

[Buckminster]

hashinshin, on 14 March 2013 - 02:58 AM, said:

The MGs they're firing aren't tiny little human carried machine guns.

They're shooting THESE ROUNDS

AS A MACHINE GUN.

The whole "anti-tank rifle" concept still blows me away. I love that in WW2 people just made big fricking rifles to take care of tanks.

And for all the "it's just a machine gun" people - consider the GAU-8. 30mm cannon, 4200 rounds per minute, can penetrate 70mm of armor at 500 meters, and the thing is the size of a volkswagon. *That* is what they mean by a "machine gun"

http://en.wikipedia....i/GAU-8_Avenger

Edited by Buckminster, 14 March 2013 - 03:11 AM.

[Critical Fumble]

hashinshin, on 14 March 2013 - 01:56 AM, said:

Ohgodwhyohgodwhy?

Why has it been over a year and still to this day I can't load a mech up with 4 MGs and go to town on anything within 200m of me?

Why are mechs with more than 1 ballistic slot handicapped from MGs being so worthless?

But then there might be more viable variants. Can't have that.

[Fehrir]

As a non-damage related incentive/buff, they could make MG fire intercept missiles. Terrible damage notwithstanding, it would at least make them utilitarian.

[Sifright]

Fehrir, on 14 March 2013 - 03:12 AM, said:

As a non-damage related incentive/buff, they could make MG fire intercept missiles. Terrible damage notwithstanding, it would at least make them utilitarian.

missiles have 1 hp in the case of lrms and 2 for srms.

The ams does 2DPS or to put it a different way if we could shoot AMS at enemy mechs we would kill them faster than using machine guns whilst having longer range and the same tonnage.

[AlexEss]

hashinshin, on 14 March 2013 - 02:58 AM, said:

The MGs they're firing aren't tiny little human carried machine guns.

They're shooting THESE ROUNDS

AS A MACHINE GUN.

I know what they are shooting... Did i ever say it was a 50 cal you had on your mech... No i did not. I was just poiting towards the fact that in the BT games MG's are designed to take out light / fast vehicles or groups of PBI. they CAN be used against Mechs but are not all that effective in that role and carry to little mass to do any real harm... That is the lore.. Like it or not but that is the way it is.

In this game they are designed to drill in to internal structure and rip it to sherds with crits. Personally i feel it is a good niche. Not saying they do a overly good job at that either and i know very few times i would take a MG over anything else. But it has it's uses as a filler for bigger mechs or on some light mechs.

Edited by AlexEss, 14 March 2013 - 03:15 AM.

[hashinshin]

AlexEss, on 14 March 2013 - 03:14 AM, said:

I know what they are shooting... Did i ever say it was a 50 cal you had on your mech... No i did not. I was just poiting towards the fact that in the BT games MG's are designed to take out light / fast vehicles or groups of PBI. they CAN be used against Mechs but are not all that effective in that role and carry to little mass to do any real harm... That is the lore.. Like it or not but that is the way it is.

In this game they are designed to drill in to internal structure and rip it to sherds with crits. Personally i feel it is a good niche. Not saying they do a overly good job at that either and i know very few times i would take a MG over anything else. But it has it's uses as a filler for bigger mechs or on some light mechs.

no good lord they are not.

Why do you keep saying that?

How could MGs be intended to kill infantry BEFORE INFANTRY EXISTED?

[AlexEss]

hashinshin, on 14 March 2013 - 03:16 AM, said:

no good lord they are not.

Why do you keep saying that?

How could MGs be intended to kill infantry BEFORE INFANTRY EXISTED?

Now you lost me... completely AFAIK footsloggers have been aroud since the dawn of war... They have always been a part of the Battletech universe and as i said in my first post the fact that they are not in this game is the reason i feel the MG should have been left out of it. YMMV

Edited by AlexEss, 14 March 2013 - 03:21 AM.

[Sifright]

AlexEss, on 14 March 2013 - 03:14 AM, said:

I know what they are shooting... Did i ever say it was a 50 cal you had on your mech... No i did not. I was just poiting towards the fact that in the BT games MG's are designed to take out light / fast vehicles or groups of PBI. they CAN be used against Mechs but are not all that effective in that role and carry to little mass to do any real harm... That is the lore.. Like it or not but that is the way it is.

In this game they are designed to drill in to internal structure and rip it to sherds with crits. Personally i feel it is a good niche. Not saying they do a overly good job at that either and i know very few times i would take a MG over anything else. But it has it's uses as a filler for bigger mechs or on some light mechs.

This post is why I will never listen to anything you have to say ever again. You are so astronomically wrong you warped around hit being right for a moment and then shot off into wrong land all over again.

[Fehrir]

Sifright, on 14 March 2013 - 03:14 AM, said:

missiles have 1 hp in the case of lrms and 2 for srms.

The ams does 2DPS or to put it a different way if we could shoot AMS at enemy mechs we would kill them faster than using machine guns whilst having longer range and the same tonnage.

Well that's downright silly. One would assume being essentially the same manner of weapon they'd share similar damage profiles. In that case why not give the MG what the AMS has, intercept capability and all.

[Sifright]

AlexEss, on 14 March 2013 - 03:20 AM, said:

Now you lost me... completely AFAIK footsloggers have been aroud since the dawn of war... They have always been a part of the Battletech universe and as i said in my first post the fact that they are not in this game is the reason i feel the MG should have been left out of it. YMMV

No they haven't the first version of battle tech had machine guns on mechs and no infantry at all. coincidentally they did reasonable damage to mechs at 90m the same as an AC/2 infact whilst weighing a lot less.

[AlexEss]

Sifright, on 14 March 2013 - 03:21 AM, said:

This post is why I will never listen to anything you have to say ever again. You are so astronomically wrong you warped around hit being right for a moment and then shot off into wrong land all over again.

Ok my bad. I did not play the frist version of the game. Hench why i used the word LORE rather then RULES.

Edited by AlexEss, 14 March 2013 - 03:26 AM.

[Sifright]

AlexEss, on 14 March 2013 - 03:23 AM, said:

Ok my bad. I did not play the frist version of the game. Hench why i used the word LORE rather then RULES.

See my post above your post which explains that earlier Btech had no infantry and mgs were weapons for use against mechs only.

Later versions of Btech which introduced infantry gave mgs a bonus to hurting infantry and their anti mech usage was just as effective.

This is ignoring the fact you point out the mgs are filler weapons and basically useless outside of a tiny niche in current game play mechanics and are filler weapons. When there are mech variants which are supposed to use them as their primary weapon.

Edit: the lore states they work well against mechs and even better against infantry which they do tremendous bonus damage to.

Edited by Sifright, 14 March 2013 - 03:30 AM.

[Sifright]

Fehrir, on 14 March 2013 - 03:22 AM, said:

Well that's downright silly. One would assume being essentially the same manner of weapon they'd share similar damage profiles. In that case why not give the MG what the AMS has, intercept capability and all.

I'd be okay with this. would be amusing to have manual control over AMS pretty sure i could shoot down more missiles than it does.

plus then light mechs get a light ballistic weapon that isn't a giant ****

[AlexEss]

Ok i give that i was wrong.. I played a later version of the game and that was the experience i had. I just like to point out that the LORE(primarly the books) of the game backs up my opinion, most likley because the writers mistook the mech class MG's for regular MG's but still. So over the years it have simply become a way to look at it.

I am still not sure it would be such a good idea to put a good damage, high crit easy to aim CQC weapon in a game that does not have any randomness in it. Usually it is solved by "bloom" but that does not make sense for a mech game.

Would be interesting to try out in a controlled environment.

[Harmin]

Sifright, on 14 March 2013 - 03:21 AM, said:

This post is why I will never listen to anything you have to say ever again. You are so astronomically wrong you warped around hit being right for a moment and then shot off into wrong land all over again.

You're a zealot.

Anyway, I'll strill try to be reasonable.

Machine guns are extremely light. Produce no heat. Buffing them would make them unbalanced in my opinion. The small laser, it's nearest energy equivalent (same 90m range), produces 2 heat, has a 2.25 sec cool down and does 3 damage. That makes it 1DPS.

The machine gun does 0.4 DPS. Given that it produces no heat and has special bonuses against internals that sounds pretty approriate to me.

[Fehrir]

Sifright, on 14 March 2013 - 03:33 AM, said:

I'd be okay with this. would be amusing to have manual control over AMS pretty sure i could shoot down more missiles than it does.

plus then light mechs get a light ballistic weapon that isn't a giant ****

IMO It would give Mechs with an abundance of ballistic slots, especially lights like the SDR-5K, more tactical options, and a more clearly defined role on the field.

[Tombstoner]

The MG has been assigned the roll of destroying equipment once the armor has been removed.
this would work well if the games lasted longer then 4 minutes. given he choice i would just destroy the entire section and be done with it. no sense looking for crits when i can just kill the mech out right.

MG as crit finders work great as a concept, but the reality of current game speeds does mean it should be given a damage boost.
personally i think they are the best sounding weapon in the game. i have the 4 mg spider just for that reason, but i know i'm going to have my head inverted into my CT with in 120 seconds. MG at the moments are a liability at best and should never be taken except for fun.

[Sifright]

Harmin, on 14 March 2013 - 03:35 AM, said:

You're a zealot.

Anyway, I'll strill try to be reasonable.

Machine guns are extremely light. Produce no heat. Buffing them would make them unbalanced in my opinion. The small laser, it's nearest energy equivalent (same 90m range), produces 2 heat, has a 2.25 sec cool down and does 3 damage. That makes it 1DPS.

The machine gun does 0.4 DPS. Given that it produces no heat and has special bonuses against internals that sounds pretty approriate to me.

No I'm just sick of arguing with people who have no understanding of the game mechanics.

The small laser not firing 10 times a second to maintain that dps makes it vastly better than the machine gun which isn't allowed to take it's recticle off the enemy for even a fraction of a second or it drops dps.

even if both of them did 1DPS exactly the laser would come out vastly ahead just for that alone.

2 heat for the laser is nothing, pretty much every mech runs DHS which gives 2 heat per second dissipation just with internal heat sinks alone given the small laser deals that heat out in 3 seconds the heat they produce is functionally irrelevant. which brings up another point Small lasers treat heat sinks as their ammo and they don't need more than the internal 10 doubles to fire for ever where as mgs need to bring tonnes of ammo to deal any damage at all

Mgs are trash. Crit seeking buff or otherwise if you think otherwise you DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE GAME.

tl;dr edit:

3 small lasers 3 DPS with double heat sinks you never over heat and never run out of ammo

3 MGS, 1.2 DPS have to bring tonnes of ammo further making your mech worse no benefit from sinks and ammo explosions.

Edited by Sifright, 14 March 2013 - 03:46 AM.

[Carrioncrows]

I support this thread.

Every weapons should be viable.

[AlexEss]

Sifright, on 14 March 2013 - 03:42 AM, said:

Mgs are trash. Crit seeking buff or otherwise if you think otherwise you DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE GAME.

You also forget that the MG has the best control in the entire game. No weapon give the use as much control over were and how they put the damage. Not that it is a huge advantage but it still is a very noteworthy feature.

But what the heck, knock your self out. We are still in beta. I personally feel that they will be a bit too good if they get a meaningful buff. But as noted that is pure gut and no maths. I have been wrong before.