550 replies to this topic

[Sifright]

moneyBURNER, on 17 March 2013 - 05:15 PM, said:

Not to mention that a miss from a high-burst weapon with a slow cooldown can be catastrophic versus the ability to fire frequently in lower bursts.

This is true at the same time I 100% assure you if given the chance every player at high level play would take something like the AC/80 above because they will be good enough to remove most enemies from play in one shot. a team working together using such weapons could remove half the enemy team almost instantly and then has merely to survive the next 40 seconds which they could easily to by scattering and then reforming when their ability to shoot is back.

That is the power of high damage bursts.

[MustrumRidcully]

KuruptU4Fun, on 17 March 2013 - 12:05 PM, said:

As long as that damage severely drops off at a set short distance (IE 150 meters) I have no problem with that...


...Then again, at 150 meters your going to be spreading that damage over everything from the RA to the LA anyways.

The MG has a range of 90m currently. Did anyone mention that should be increased, too?

Actually, now that you mention it - quadrupling its normal range and doubling its DPS might also work. At least you don't have to be quite the knive fighter with it anymore then. Not that it's easy to fire continously at "long" (270m) range.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 17 March 2013 - 11:33 PM.

[MustrumRidcully]

moneyBURNER, on 17 March 2013 - 05:15 PM, said:

The value of high-burst/low ROF vs low-burst/high ROF varies depending on the situation.

In a long range standoff, high-burst damage means everything, and heat can be a non-issue when there's lots of time to cool off safely.

In a massive short-range brawl resulting from a quick onrush, continuous low-burst damage can be a lot more efficient and effective in allocating damage to multiple enemies, where instead of wasting the full burst of a weapon to finish off one critically injured section and then waiting for the next shot, damage can be applied more 'granularly' to different sections/mechs.

Not to mention that a miss from a high-burst weapon with a slow cooldown can be catastrophic versus the ability to fire frequently in lower bursts.

The trick with high-burst/long-cooldown weapons is - you know how important they are, and adding another second to aim carefuly barely affects your theoertical DPS - but it significantly improves your actual damage. If you have to fire fast and often, you cannot afford to aim as much for each shot, as it cuts more into your DPS.

In a brawl, one or two powerful attacks can take out a single hit location, lowering your enemies damage output - and than it doesn't matter anymore that he'd out-DPS you eventually, because you just took out some of the armnament he could have out-DPSed you. If you don't manage to breach that "threshold", and aiming is of little concern, it might not make a difference...

But, say, you need 150 damage to kill your opponent.
If you take a single Gauss Rifle, that's 10 shots - which you can fire in 36 seconds.
With an AC/2, you need 75 shots - that's 37 seconds!

If you just use the raw DPS figure, you would say the Gauss would need 40 seconds and the AC/2 37.5 seconds. But that ignores that you can shoot at 0 seconds, you don't have to wait a cooldown cycle before you fire your first shot. If you'd need 1,500 damage, that would be 396 seconds for the Gauss and 374.5 seconds for the AC/2, so the DPS advantage wll eventually win out. But the "front-loaded" damage can be very important in more realistic scenarios.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 17 March 2013 - 11:45 PM.

[Carrioncrows]

Damage: 0.2 dmg a round (0-90m) 0.1 dmg a round (91M-200m)
ROF: 10 Rounds a sec
Ammo: 400 rounds a ton. 200 rounds for a 1/2 ton.

Thats it. I could care less about crits or critical damage or killing modules.

Buff it or remove it completely from the game, one or the other just don't waste my time.

Edited by Carrioncrows, 18 March 2013 - 05:55 AM.

[moneyBURNER]

Sifright, on 17 March 2013 - 11:24 PM, said:

This is true at the same time I 100% assure you if given the chance every player at high level play would take something like the AC/80 above because they will be good enough to remove most enemies from play in one shot. a team working together using such weapons could remove half the enemy team almost instantly and then has merely to survive the next 40 seconds which they could easily to by scattering and then reforming when their ability to shoot is back.

That is the power of high damage bursts.

At the point that most mechs can be reliably one-shotted with no viable defensive measures, the game would need to be reworked. We're perhaps heading toward that point with deadly alphas from highly skilled gunners, but it's still currently possible to use multiple tactics to defeat high-alpha mechs with higher ROF mechs.

Going with your extreme example, given equally high-skilled opponents, with one side equipped with AC80s (likely sacrificing speed/armor, etc.), and the other with high ROF weapons of matching DPS, the result could be decided by something as simple as the high ROF team outranging the enemy, since range is a balancing factor in favour of higher ROF weapons.

But negating range, one conceivable scenario is that the high ROF side could rush through cover using standard engines, and actually prepare to take the first hits of AC80s and survive by allocating enough armor to the front to withstand one CT hit if possible, or approaching in a defensive orientation that could perhaps divert that damage to an arm or a side torso that would promptly get destroyed before returning fire, and then proceed to more carefully and strategically target the slower enemies with their remaining weapons and destroy cockpits or side torsos/arms carrying the AC80s before they could be fired again.


@MustrumRidcully

A Gauss and an AC2 can't be compared directly because burst damage/ROF are further balanced in other areas, such as weight. Ideally, there will be situations where either weapon will excel by the way it's used with regard to other factors.

[Vassago Rain]

moneyBURNER, on 18 March 2013 - 01:09 AM, said:

At the point that most mechs can be reliably one-shotted with no viable defensive measures, the game would need to be reworked. We're perhaps heading toward that point with deadly alphas from highly skilled gunners, but it's still currently possible to use multiple tactics to defeat high-alpha mechs with higher ROF mechs.

Going with your extreme example, given equally high-skilled opponents, with one side equipped with AC80s (likely sacrificing speed/armor, etc.), and the other with high ROF weapons of matching DPS, the result could be decided by something as simple as the high ROF team outranging the enemy, since range is a balancing factor in favour of higher ROF weapons.

But negating range, one conceivable scenario is that the high ROF side could rush through cover using standard engines, and actually prepare to take the first hits of AC80s and survive by allocating enough armor to the front to withstand one CT hit if possible, or approaching in a defensive orientation that could perhaps divert that damage to an arm or a side torso that would promptly get destroyed before returning fire, and then proceed to more carefully and strategically target the slower enemies with their remaining weapons and destroy cockpits or side torsos/arms carrying the AC80s before they could be fired again.


@MustrumRidcully

A Gauss and an AC2 can't be compared directly because burst damage/ROF are further balanced in other areas, such as weight. Ideally, there will be situations where either weapon will excel by the way it's used with regard to other factors.

They can easily be compared.

Both use up my limited ballistic slots. Both are pretty much end-tier guns, because of their weight. One is presently terrible, and the other is really useful.

As bad as AC2 is, AC10 is even worse, because it lies so close to the UAC, AC20, and gauss.

[MustrumRidcully]

moneyBURNER, on 18 March 2013 - 01:09 AM, said:

@MustrumRidcully

A Gauss and an AC2 can't be compared directly because burst damage/ROF are further balanced in other areas, such as weight. Ideally, there will be situations where either weapon will excel by the way it's used with regard to other factors.

It wasn't about comparing the weapons themselves, but about two things with similar DPS but different damage per shot and different cooldown - and showing how for the same DPS, a weapon that "errs" in favor of damage per shot can be be more damaging then a similar DPS weapon that favors recycle rate.

[Sifright]

MustrumRidcully, on 18 March 2013 - 01:29 AM, said:

It wasn't about comparing the weapons themselves, but about two things with similar DPS but different damage per shot and different cooldown - and showing how for the same DPS, a weapon that "errs" in favor of damage per shot can be be more damaging then a similar DPS weapon that favors recycle rate.

This, I was trying to point out to people that say the mgs lack of cool down with 2 DPS damage would mean they have more control. I believe they are asserting this because they have a flawed view of the game works. being able to split your damage between more targets because you have enormous refire speed is not a plus given the way actual combat plays out.

Having burst damage is always better per given dps value because front loading your damage allows you to knock enemy mechs out of play faster if the weapons are in every other way equal.

This is why damage over time weapons like the MG need to have some sort of reason to take them over burst damage type weapons. The niche in which being able to split damage appropriately over enemies or components is more than offset by the rather huge problems it introduces in having to constantly aim at the enemy and not being able to instantly place large amounts of damage into an enemy.

[Kmieciu]

Using testing grounds:

It takes 40 seconds and 1600 ammo to kill a Stock Commando 1B (16 armor 16 internals) using 4 Mechineguns @ 90 meters
It takes 6 seconds and almost no heat (with DHS) to kill a Stock Commando 1B (16 armor 16 internals) using 4 Small Lasers @ 90 meters.

Now tell me that machineguns are fine.

Edited by Kmieciu, 18 March 2013 - 02:38 AM.

[Sifright]

Kmieciu, on 18 March 2013 - 02:38 AM, said:

Using testing grounds:

It takes 40 seconds and 1600 ammo to kill a Stock Commando 1B (16 armor 16 internals) using 4 Mechineguns @ 90 meters
It takes 6 seconds and almost no heat (with DHS) to kill a Stock Commando 1B (16 armor 16 internals) using 4 Small Lasers @ 90 meters.

Now tell me that machineguns are fine.

buut maah 50 cal boolets cnt hurtet mech armourers

[moneyBURNER]

Vassago Rain, on 18 March 2013 - 01:24 AM, said:

They can easily be compared.

Both use up my limited ballistic slots. Both are pretty much end-tier guns, because of their weight. One is presently terrible, and the other is really useful.

As bad as AC2 is, AC10 is even worse, because it lies so close to the UAC, AC20, and gauss.

If you're considering hardpoint limitations, then you have to compare entire loadouts, because 1 AC2 leaves a lot of weight and space left over to match 1 gauss. As a contrived example for simplicity, how does 2 AC2 plus 3 ML compare to 1 guass?

Dual gauss is such an effective loadout because the advantages of negligible heat and burst damage at long range are amplified because of how heat scales with other weapons to achieve similar damage.

Of course there are good and bad weapons. AC2 is bad? I'm not arguing with that.

Burst damage is better than continuous damage when all else is equal? Of course! The point is they're supposed to be balanced. Continuous fire is not bad when it's coupled with other traits that make it good in certain situations.

As far as the MG is concerned, continuous fire + no heat + 0.5 tons + ammo is a bit too good of a combination if the DPS is 2, because of the amount of damage it can put out in a group of 4 compared to the equivalent DPS in small lasers which are limited by heat in certain scenarios.

Continuous fire is not always a liability, and is sometimes an advantage -- not by itself, but when combined with all the other traits of a weapon that are balanced against other burst weapons. That's all I'm saying.

Edited by moneyBURNER, 18 March 2013 - 03:41 AM.

[Blood Skar]

Yokaiko, on 17 March 2013 - 05:19 AM, said:

The most ballistic slots that any mech has is 4.

....and even then on of those is a phract, a 4MG 2 ml and SRM4 phract? Neeto, its a 70 ton Jenner.

What about when they realise more lights/mediums with Ballistic slots like the hunchback that has 9 energy slots.
Easy to critisise when you dont think things through.

[Blood Skar]

Sifright, on 17 March 2013 - 03:15 AM, said:

adding crit buff over the period of one year is not a buffing it over time unless you happen to be a thousand year old vampire.....

Those don't exist so care to explain how one buff a year is steadily improving?

Love the way you take 2 words from my entire post and use that to critisise me rather than addressing anything i said in terms of improving the game.
If you dont like the words steadily improving then take out the steadily bit.....honestly...
PGI have said they are looking at MG's - they have said they will be looking at improving them and they have improved them already.
How about you address what i wrote instead of nitpicking ffs

I actually give up.
You guys are obviously here to pick fights rather than help improve the game.
Get on with it. Bye.

Edited by Blood Skar, 18 March 2013 - 03:55 AM.

[stjobe]

As I posted elsewhere, the only reason the MG sucks in MWO is that the devs have NOT followed the same recipe for the MG as for every other weapon system when converting from BattleTech to MWO. For some reason they decided to nerf the MG - and only the MG - severely.

In BattleTech, the MG was a regular anti-'mech weapon that did as much damage as an AC/2, but with a much more limited range. It also had a huge bonus to killing infantry, but first and foremost it did 2 damage to 'mechs.

The BT rules have gone through several revisions, and in none of them have the authors and game designers lowered the MG's anti-'mech damage from 2 to 1 or even 0 damage, even though there are several weapons in the BattleTech Universe that are simply unable to damage 'mechs - e.g. the light rifle, which does 3 damage to vehicles but has a -3 damage penalty when used against 'mechs, effectively doing 0 damage. Incidentally, the light rifle is basically the main guns on today's tanks.

But no, the MG has stayed at 2 damage against 'mech armour throughout the 28 or so years the BT rules have been around.

This simple fact invalidates any argument along the lines of "MGs shouldn't damage 'mechs" or "MGs are anti-infantry only", and raises an interesting question: Why was the MG treated differently from all the other weapons?

Finally, by making the MG useless against armour and a "crit weapon", the devs effectively denied each and every one of us a viable ballistic weapon lighter than 6 tons. This not only flies in the face of BattleTech lore, it's also very poor game balance, and an equally poor design decision - especially when you have 'mechs already in the game like the SDR-5K, the RVN-4X, and the CDA-3C.

It's time to realize the crit buff experiment failed, roll it back, and try a damage buff instead. It's the only way to bring the MG back in line.

[LordDante]

[Sifright]

Blood Skar, on 18 March 2013 - 03:54 AM, said:

Love the way you take 2 words from my entire post and use that to critisise me rather than addressing anything i said in terms of improving the game.
If you dont like the words steadily improving then take out the steadily bit.....honestly...
PGI have said they are looking at MG's - they have said they will be looking at improving them and they have improved them already.
How about you address what i wrote instead of nitpicking ffs

I actually give up.
You guys are obviously here to pick fights rather than help improve the game.
Get on with it. Bye.

not true, latest word from pgi is that machine guns are working as intended. Check the ask the devs thread.

I also took justifiable exception with you describing the process as steady improvements. exactly one change was made to them over a period of a year. Your word choice makes it sound like improvements are imminent and that its being looked at carefully this is certainly not the case.

Edited by Sifright, 18 March 2013 - 04:17 AM.

[Sifright]

Blood Skar, on 18 March 2013 - 03:47 AM, said:

What about when they realise more lights/mediums with Ballistic slots like the hunchback that has 9 energy slots.
Easy to critisise when you dont think things through.

show a non clan mech that fits more than 4 ballistic hard points. I dare you.

[Heeden]

Blood Skar, on 18 March 2013 - 03:54 AM, said:

I actually give up.
You guys are obviously here to pick fights rather than help improve the game.
Get on with it. Bye.

Geez, how did it take you so long to figure that out? As soon as the "is bad and should feel bad..." meme came out I realised the conversation was mostly pointless, and any attempts to disagree with these guys ends with "buh mah spidder needz DEEPZ!".

Edit: corrected spelling of "DEEPZ" for Sifright

Edited by Heeden, 18 March 2013 - 05:08 AM.

[Sifright]

Heeden, on 18 March 2013 - 04:45 AM, said:

Geez, how did it take you so long to figure that out? As soon as the "is bad and should feel bad..." meme came out I realised the conversation was mostly pointless, and any attempts to disagree with these guys ends with "buh mah spidder needz deeps!".

Pages and pages of arguments and data pointing out why DEEPZ as you so charmingly put it is what is needed and this is the best you can come up with to troll?



Come back when you have reasoned arguments that contribute to the discussion beyond "lol no because i said so"

[Heeden]

Accusing someone of trolling whilst using a meme-image? 4-Chan must be really missing you :-)