I don't know.
Maybe the Devs fear that it's the only completely heatless weapon and is per se overpowered. After all, they increased the heat production of all weapons basically by a factor of 2.5 to 20...
Maybe they are really in love with their critical hit system and want something to exploit what it can do, and are unwilling to realize that critical hits are not deemed valuable enough for this.
Maybe they plan to create a 24 Ballistic Slot mech and fear that anything that could deal more than 10 DPS with 24 MGs would be OP.
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There are so many ways to improve the MG.
Variant 1: Keep Continous Firing Mode
Lower the extra crit-damage bonus to a 1.5 multiplier.
Keep the higher crit rate.
Raise the effective damage per second to 1.2.
Variant 2: Ditch Continous Firing Mode
Lower the extra crit-damage bonus to a 1.5 multiplier.
Keep the higher crit rate.
Give the weapon a 0.5 second duration and a 0.5 second cooldown.
Raise the effective damage per second to 0.8.
Raise Projectile Speed to that of the AC/2.
The weapon no longer requires to target the enemy continiously, which gives you more opportunity for damage bursts, and allows you to move defensively between salvos. Projectile Speed being the same as the AC/2 also means that the AC/2 and the MG can be used together well, requiring the same lead.
And that's just 2 out of a countless of options. And whatever you do, the next step is:
Observe and Adjust
If people start playing 4 MGs Cicadas and 4 MG Spiders and people complain about them being OP, nerf. If you still don't see many of them (particularly in the high ELO brackets), buff some more.
Edited by MustrumRidcully, 14 March 2013 - 05:02 AM.