550 replies to this topic

[Joseph Mallan]

Terror Teddy, on 14 March 2013 - 08:54 AM, said:

Uum...What are these numbers and where do you find them?

Ah, MWO wiki and take DPS X10 seconds?

SL would do 10 but benefit from DHS and have unlimited ammo so it's still damn good.

No I took the Cool down divided a 10 second turn by it then multiplied it by the max damage the weapon will do per trigger pull.

A small laser will fire 4.+ times in a turn 3*4=12 damage max
An AC2 will fire 20 times in a turn or up to 40 damage in 10 seconds.
My MG would have the same fire rate as a AC2 so at 0.8 damage per second for 10 seconds= 16 damage. it is a reasonable amount of damage for so small a weapon.

[Pinselborste]

Joseph Mallan, on 14 March 2013 - 09:01 AM, said:

No I took the Cool down divided a 10 second turn by it then multiplied it by the max damage the weapon will do per trigger pull.

A small laser will fire 4.+ times in a turn 3*4=12 damage max
An AC2 will fire 20 times in a turn or up to 40 damage in 10 seconds.
My MG would have the same fire rate as a AC2 so at 0.8 damage per second for 10 seconds= 16 damage. it is a reasonable amount of damage for so small a weapon.

0.8 dps means 10 seconds = 8 damage, not 16

[MustrumRidcully]

Holy fracking excrements, are you guys once again quoting the same frigging pages from rulebooks, Wikipedia and whatever source you can find?

Man, I get it; I am somewhat invested in balancing the game by also returning many aspects back to TT "proportions", but we have gone through all this a trillion times now and there is no point.

One guy points out: "Here, that's a weapon that weighs as much as the BT MG". THen another guy says. "Yes, but in real life, that'S an auto-cannon, not an MG". "But here, look at this rulebook text, it says it'S a 20mm Vulcan Cannon for some variants, that means it is just like that gun you saw over there, even if we today call it Auto-Cannon, not MG". "Whoc ares, it says right here it's anti-infantry" "Nunuh, it says anti-infantry, but it was released when there wasn't even any infantry and there was a mech build around MGs who's only goal was to fight in pure mech vs mech battles on the Solaris gameworld" "But when you buff it like you buffed the AC/2, it would be totally overpowered"

blablablablablablayaddayaddayaddayadda

1) MGs exist in Mechwarrior ONline.
2) Infantry does not exist in Mechwarrior Online
3) Crit Seeking has a low (not non-existing, but low value)
4) Having Mechs in the 20 to 40 ton weight area with 4 ballistic slots basically force them to carry 4 MGs or otherwise they can never use all those 4 slots.
5) If all a Mech has is one energy weapon and 4 MGs, he's not as useful as an alternative mech on the battlefield that doesn't need 4MGs but can install other weapons.
6) We don't need useless mech variants or useless weapons in MW:O. Useless mech variants and useless mech weapons are a waste of development effort, the only thing they contribute to the game is adding a trap for noobs that have no idea that the mech variant or weapon they chose sucks and now suck two-fold, once because they are new and don't know how to fight welll, and once because they use terrible equipment that wouldn't give them a fair chance even if they knew what they were doing, overall leading to frustration and giving up on the game and never ever bothering to buy a Mech Credit.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 14 March 2013 - 09:08 AM.

[Terror Teddy]

MustrumRidcully, on 14 March 2013 - 09:07 AM, said:

Holy fracking excrements, are you guys once again quoting the same frigging pages from rulebooks, Wikipedia and whatever source you can find?

Sorry....most likely my fault

[Squigles]

Pinselborste, on 14 March 2013 - 09:07 AM, said:

0.8 dps means 10 seconds = 8 damage, not 16

He made an oops, his suggestion was that it did .8 damage at the fire rate of an AC/2, e.g. 2 rounds per second.

So 1.6 dps for 10 seconds = 16.

[stjobe]

We're talking 'mech-scale weaponry here. The MG isn't some piddly man-sized gun, it's a 500kg behemoth of a gun.

Consider this: A 'mech is 5-10 times taller than a man (9 - 18m). That means that what's a 5.56mm bullet at the man scale is 27.8 - 55.6mm at the 'mech scale.

Or, if you prefer: What's .50 calibre at the man scale is 2.5 - 5 inches at the 'mech scale (63.5 - 127mm).

120mm at man scale is 600 - 1200mm at 'mech scale.

Now do you see why the AC/20 Hunchback has a rather big hole in its right shoulder?

Do you see why the "MGs are anti-infantry weapons only" line is untenable?

The BT and MWO Machine Gun isn't a modern-day M249, nor is it a modern-day Vulcan or GAU-8, it's a 1000-years-in-the-future, 500kg weapon specifically designed to do damage to the 1000-years-in-the-future, space-technobabble ablative armour of 1000-years-in-the-future walking machines of destruction called BattleMechs.

The MG needs to be a viable weapon in MWO, and the only way to make it such is to buff its damage output.

[Noobzorz]

Joseph Mallan, on 14 March 2013 - 08:45 AM, said:

Now I will address THIS again:
My MG will do up to 16 damage in one turn(10 seconds of fire)
A Small Lase does up to 12 damage in one turn(10 seconds of fire)
A SRM2 does up to 14 damage in one turn(10 seconds of fire)

That is balanced among 0.5 ton weapons!
Sorry you were saying again???
I couldn't hear you while you were being so wrong!

BTW: When I decide to insult you, I will not be using smiley faces, and the Mods will have no choice but to ban me.

I am sorry. I forgot myself and I was rude to you. So let me go back on what I said so we can start talking about this and hopefully why I can communicate to you why your proposal is inadequate. That's not an indictment of you, but your idea is not a good one. Further, if I propose that your idea is totally dumb and slap some happy faces on it as a substitute for civility , that makes me a passive aggressive douchebag, as it would make anyone who did such a thing. It is definitely an insult, and to suggest otherwise is to devolve into semantics. I'm guessing English is not your first language, but unless you are from some country I've never heard of, it's douchey there too, and people would not be amused by it. But forgive and forget, let's move on:

For starters, stop using turns. They are meaningless. This is mechwarrior. Use seconds. It is the standard method of communicating, and you are going to confuse people and make them think you are some kind of nutjob. It's an arbitrary and pointless unit of time, and you should not be using it. That's all there is to say about that. You will be received a lot better if you just use DPS.

Second, MGs do not weigh 0.5 tons, since you need to take ammo in 1 ton allotments. Effectively, a machine gun weighs more than 0.5 tons, and likely 1.5.

Third, low cycling times are actually an incredibly bad thing That is an extremely important consideration you are not taking into account. That means to be doing the full DPS, you must be on target the whole time, and you cannot be rotating your torso to spread damage.

Fourth, the range on the machinegun is virtually nonexistent. That is an extremely important consideration you are not taking into account, especially when you keep comparing it to the AC/2. Moreover, most mechs do not have the hardpoints necessary to field vast arrays of them, which sort of obvious the possible complaint about overpoweredness. You would still need to hug people to do damage with the MG.

Fifth, and this is also critical, there is no obvious low ton replacement for the MG. It is not an enormous leap up from an SRM 2 to the mighty SRM 6, at 1 to 3 tons. The medlas is also barely larger than the smallas (which is why the small laser is virtually nonexistent and why 0.5 ton balancing arguments are kind of moot, since they all suck anyway) at 1 ton instead of 0.5 tons. By contrast, if you have an open ballistic hardpoint, you need to sink a whopping 6 tons into an AC/2. You can't just find a spare 5.5 tons anywhere you look. For this reason, the MG needs to be a passable secondary weapon.

Edited by Noobzorz, 14 March 2013 - 09:18 AM.

[Pinselborste]

wouldnt be an mg with same rate as ac2, 0.08 damage at 20 rounds per second would be better.

[Deathlike]

MustrumRidcully, on 14 March 2013 - 09:07 AM, said:

6) We don't need useless mech variants or useless weapons in MW:O. Useless mech variants and useless mech weapons are a waste of development effort, the only thing they contribute to the game is adding a trap for noobs that have no idea that the mech variant or weapon they chose sucks and now suck two-fold, once because they are new and don't know how to fight welll, and once because they use terrible equipment that wouldn't give them a fair chance even if they knew what they were doing, overall leading to frustration and giving up on the game and never ever bothering to buy a Mech Credit.

I feel bad for those that have to suffer from the Spider-5K (they have no alternatives). At least the Raven-4X has some options (JJs, and the lone missile hardpoint)... and the Cicada-3C is the bottom of the barrel option of all Cicadas.

That doesn't even factor in how the Hunchback-4G is also a founders mech, which is ironically inferior to the 4H.

Edited by Deathlike, 14 March 2013 - 09:18 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Pinselborste, on 14 March 2013 - 09:07 AM, said:

0.8 dps means 10 seconds = 8 damage, not 16

The weapon fires .5 seconds, cool fires. So In one second it fires twice. I'm not used to thinking in DpS. So DpS would be 1.6??? I was going by damage per burst in 10 seconds.

In my defense. I have never heard of Dps till I joined up in MWO. Lasers I can see this being a factor but I shoot you with an AC20 you take 20 damage in one second(or less)!

[Squigles]

Pinselborste, on 14 March 2013 - 09:15 AM, said:

wouldnt be an mg with same rate as ac2, 0.08 damage at 20 rounds per second would be better.

This here is about what it needs, I think. Still has the machine gun feel with half decent damage and no heat. Boost the ammo per ton to 2500 shots (half the damage per ton value of TT) and I think it'd be spot on for a test run. Actually "keep" all or some of the crit bonus and that makes up for the necessity of having to keep it on target 100% of the time.

[xxx WreckinBallRaj xxx]

You know how it is. A simple 5min value change that could be rolled into the next patch is too easy. We got to spend months working on a long round about backwards change that half fixes the issue instead.

[Terror Teddy]

Squigles, on 14 March 2013 - 09:18 AM, said:

This here is about what it needs, I think. Still has the machine gun feel with half decent damage and no heat. Boost the ammo per ton to 2500 shots (half the damage per ton value of TT) and I think it'd be spot on for a test run. Actually "keep" all or some of the crit bonus and that makes up for the necessity of having to keep it on target 100% of the time.

Here's the kicker though. To keep it in line with ballistics it needs to emty 1 tonne of ammo in 50 seconds per MG.
After all, it is 5 times slower so the DPS is not all. 200 seconds is far to slow compared to the 37,5-51 seconds the others have.

[AdamBaines]

FupDup, on 14 March 2013 - 07:31 AM, said:

My Raven 2X, armed with 2 LL and 2ML, has the same speed as my Raven 4X and is better at defending itself/killing things on top of that.


Also: The 3C, 4X, and 5K can't equip ECM.

Because you can still rely on Lag Shield for anything not a laser :-) Rewind is in place only for Lasers. Just wait till a Gauss and AC/20 properly align with you :-) Then you wont have a leg to stand on..... literally

[LordBraxton]

Terror Teddy, on 14 March 2013 - 02:50 AM, said:

I'm sorry but you are wrong.

MG's: 20mm vulcan guns
AC/2: 25-35mm autocannons

These are not .50 calibers these are vulcan guns that wipe out platoons with a sweep of fire.

They ARE anti-vehicle weapons with added anti-infantry BONUS.

This makes no sense, the MG rounds are tiny compared to the AC\2. **** if the Ac2 is 35mm the MGs are 7.62

[Mavairo]

Joseph Mallan, on 14 March 2013 - 09:18 AM, said:

The weapon fires .5 seconds, cool fires. So In one second it fires twice. I'm not used to thinking in DpS. So DpS would be 1.6??? I was going by damage per burst in 10 seconds.

In my defense. I have never heard of Dps till I joined up in MWO. Lasers I can see this being a factor but I shoot you with an AC20 you take 20 damage in one second(or less)!

What you're thinking of with the AC 20 is Burst Damage. While it's DPS is actually lower, because of it's cool down factor.
The AC20 does 20 damage in a single instant hit. Which is Burst.

To figure a weapon's DPS, you take the damage it deals and divide it by it's cool down period, or if it's sub 1 second. Multiply until you figure out the damage it does in one second. It's cool down is 4 seconds long, which means an AC20's DPS is 5.

Hence, the AC2's DPS is 4. (it fires 2, 2 damage shots in 1 second)

The MG presently deals a whopping .4 DPS. That's horrendously bad. Especially for a weapon that quite literally will not reach out past 100 meters under any circumstances.

There are also 2 distinct forms of DPS as well.

Burst Damage, which is also sometimes called Front Loaded damage, deals all of it's damage in a minimal amount of time (AC10, AC20, LPL, MPL, PPC, SRMs, LRMs, Gauss).
Versus: Sustained damage, which means for it's damage to be dealt it takes a longer period of time to do so. (AC2, MGs, SL, ML, LL. UAC5)

These two categories can do the -exact- same overall DPS, due to cool down balance mechanics, or individual round damages, or even the duration it takes for the weapon to deliver it's full DPS.

Burst Damage, in MWO is vastly superior if you can afford the tonnage for the simple reason it allows you to deal damage in a very short time, which enables you to resume defensive maneuvers much more quickly than a Sustained weapon.

This creates a very large difference in effective firepower. Which is why an MG even at 2 DPS, is still inferior to an AC2 (which not only deals double the DPS, but it also has 21 times the range). The MG is a Sustained weapon, compared to an AC2, (let alone a bigger AC). The MG's knife fighting range also combines with it, to make defensive postures and maneuvers even more difficult than the sustained, pure rate of fire that it throws down.

An AC5 which is generally considered a pretty sorry weapon on it's own (even when grouped) only deals 2.94 dps. (the weakest of all ACs by a comfortable margin)

TLDR even at 2 DPS there are still massively significant reasons why the AC2 is a superior weapon (let alone MLs which weigh in at less tonnage) I hope this clears things up abit

Now let's take into account the mechs using MGs vs AC2s. You might be saying " a mech with 4 mgs would do 8 dps then!" and yes that's true it would. However, a mech armed with an AC2 typically will be carrying either multiple AC2s, or multiple MLs, or even LLs and PPCs due to the tonnage involved.

The Mechs carrying MGs are using them, as a staggering percentage of their total hardpoints, while the mechs using the AC2s are only using them as supplemental firepower to the rest of the mech weapon systems.

Given the above mentioned disadvantages of the MG why not try them at 2? It's beta after all, and for one night we had Head Shotting LRMs, we had nigh indestructible gauss rifles up till fairly recently. Completely Useless PPCs, and quite a few other gaffes. Part of tweaking and finding the sweet spot, is actually tweaking and setting it loose into the wild.

Edited by Mavairo, 14 March 2013 - 09:41 AM.

[Pinselborste]

Terror Teddy, on 14 March 2013 - 09:23 AM, said:

Here's the kicker though. To keep it in line with ballistics it needs to emty 1 tonne of ammo in 50 seconds per MG.
After all, it is 5 times slower so the DPS is not all. 200 seconds is far to slow compared to the 37,5-51 seconds the others have.

it doesnt have to empty it at same speed, just have the same damage per ammo ton.

[Squigles]

Terror Teddy, on 14 March 2013 - 09:23 AM, said:

Here's the kicker though. To keep it in line with ballistics it needs to emty 1 tonne of ammo in 50 seconds per MG.
After all, it is 5 times slower so the DPS is not all. 200 seconds is far to slow compared to the 37,5-51 seconds the others have.

Eh? No, it really doesn't, UAC/5 already bucks that trend mightily. That being said, 2500 rounds with a rate of fire of 20 per second empties in 125, not 200. Consider I'd feed 4 machine guns with 2 tons of ammo at that fire rate and damage and I'd only get 62 seconds of constant fire with a total maximum damage output of 400.

Which, I'm quite content doing 400 damage in 1 minute for a 4 ton investment....you'll never actually get that damage since you've got to hold the target, but that's good bang for your buck.

LordBraxton, on 14 March 2013 - 09:26 AM, said:

This makes no sense, the MG rounds are tiny compared to the AC\2. **** if the Ac2 is 35mm the MGs are 7.62

You're not accounting for the difference in propellant that allows the AC/2 round to fire 23 times further.

Also, 30mm Gau-8 ammo weighs in at 1.53 lbs per bullet, so 20mm for roughly 1lb is pretty much spot on.

Edited by Squigles, 14 March 2013 - 09:32 AM.

[Deamhan]

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

Well, it seems it was suppose to be 200 rounds per ton.

We get 2000 rounds per ton in game.

@ .04 dmg per round for a total of 80 dmg
If we maintain the same dmg per ton but reduced the ammo to the 200 rounds as it is in BT then we get .4 dmg per round. If we keep the same rate of fire of 10 shots per second, then that will give us 4 dmg per second. It also means we'll burn through the 200 rounds in 20 seconds for a total dmg per ton that is only half of what the other ballistic weapons are. This half total damage becomes a fair trade off when you consider the increased chance to crit over all other weapons.

If that still seems too much, then what you can do is require a .X second pause between every full second of firing or else receive a Y% chance to jam.

Also, as far as sizes go with regards to the MG...

Quote

"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."

IRL, a typical MG carried by Canadian Inf is the C-6 which is a 7.62mm round or the C-9 which is 5.56mm round. The C-6 can be tripod mounted but is usually just deployed using its bipod. It can be fired from the hip. The C-9 has a bipod but can actually be shoulder fired.

The MG that comes to mind with the above quote from the battletech wiki site is the .50 cal MG. These MGs are often mounted on vehicles but can be used by foot troops with the use of the tripod. It takes two people to carry the .50 Cal plus tripod plus ammo. A .50 cal with AP rounds is great against light amored vehicles and will always be effective against enemy foot troops.

The AC2 reminds me of the Bushmaster 25mm chain gun. I loved working on that weapon.





The first vid is just straight up full auto.

The second video demonstrates how you can use semi auto to take single shots or simply increase the time between cycles. However, if you listen, they do take some full auto shots in that video as well. The LAV III has a C-6 coax MG and there is alos a C-6 mounted on the top of the turret in front of one of the hatches. You can hear the C-6 being used in the video as well.

It's called a Chain Gun because the bolt is Chain driven. It is housed within the lower receiver (~85 lbs) and the barrel (~105 lbs) also locks into the lower receiver. The upper receiver (~62 lbs) has the BPI (bolt position indicator) and the feed sprockets. There are two feed sprockets that allow the weapon to switch between two ammo types (however, the next round to be fired after switching will be from the previous feed).

@252 pounds not including ammo, the 25mm is a straight up vehicle mounted weapon.


Remember that the .50 cal is just 12.7mm. So 12.7mm MG vs a 25mm AC makes sense.

Edited by Deamhan, 14 March 2013 - 10:15 AM.

[AdamBaines]

General Taskeen, on 14 March 2013 - 08:27 AM, said:

Because you cherry-pick. Simple.

Peruse through Sarna and you'll find the Small Laser being equipped and sometimes described to fend off infantry as well. Therefore, with this tired logic, I don't get why everyone wants the SL to be some sort of primary weapon and expect it to do heavy damage? I must be missing the point so I'll leave the debate to you guys.

Small Laser needs to be 0.06 Damage and become a crit seeker, just becuz guys.

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Machine_gun (2 damage, feel free to quote the "infantry" part, becuz guys its a M249 BRUH LAWL, but it doesn't change the damage values and what they do to a mech at short range)

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/AC/2 (2 damage)

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Small_laser (3 damage)

http://www.sarna.net.../AP_Gauss_Rifle (3 damage)

http://www.sarna.net.../ER_Micro_Laser (2 damage)

Where have I said anything about small lasers or made a comparison? Where have I cherry picked? I believe the small lasers are way over powered here as well. Its NOT a primary weapon for an offensive platform and should not be. At least a small laser generates heat here. While a MG does not.

Feel free to not agree with me and have an opposing point, but please do not tell me I'm cherry picking to make a point when I'm not.