Xando Parapasu, on 16 March 2013 - 10:45 AM, said:
I guess it depends on what you want the MG buffed to? It is a small (comaratively) Balistic weapon. Its closest realative is 5.5 tons larger than it is. So putting it in to perspective how strong do you want a ballistic pea shooter to be? There is no (good) reason a 0.5 ton weapon should do damage equal to a 6 ton weapon!
1. 1/20 the range, this is the main tonnage difference due to things like barrel length and cartridge size.
2. Damage over time instead of instant damage
3. It takes 3 MG's to get to a simialr DPS of a light laser - and the additional tonnage to have ammunition.
A good damage would be 1,5-2 DPS since you are so very dependant on ammunition and light mechs dont have that much tonnage to spare.
Unlike energy weapons they cannot "regenerate" ammo through heatsinks because they gain no benefit from them.
I have no problem with MG's being slightly slower to deliver damage per tonne but they should still have 125-150 damage per tonne and perhaps deliver them in 80 seconds instead of the more common speed of 37,5-50 seconds like other ballistics.
The above would give a DPS of 1,875 second or 0,1875 per bullet instead of 0,04 per bullet.
And unlike energy weapons like for example the swayback there is no way to "boat" these guns due to limited weight and additional ammunition required - not to mention a maximum of 4 known ballistic slots instead of many energy based mechs with 5+ slots.