251 replies to this topic

[Matta]

This is Spider K from this morning. Agreed, not much matches (and 3/4 lost) but I love what this troll baby does with 1 ER Laser, 4MGs, JJs and full speed. Only because people don't treat me seriously when I appear.

Furthermore, YES - I agree that OP is uber-troll or just plain dumb.

Buff the MGs or lose them out of the game, don't let them be the bad game design detail.

[LordDante]

[Carrioncrows]

I've got better stats than that.


4 Machine Guns, x1 ton of ammo. 239 dmg and 2 kills.....guess how useful that 3 tons of gutless wonder actually was?
31 dmg.

Woopdee-XXXXXXX-do

[Jay Kerensky]

[Sifright]

Man those mg stats.

UNGH 38 damage, what a beast.

[FupDup]

Important fact: The word "quintessential," as it is used on the Sarna page for MGs, does not mean what the OP thinks it means.

Quote

quin·tes·sen·tial
[kwin-tuh-sen-shuhl]

adjective
of the pure and essential essence of something: the quintessential Jewish delicatessen.

of or pertaining to the most perfect embodiment of something: the quintessential performance of theBrandenburg Concertos.

Translation: "The Machine Gun is the perfect anti-infantry weapon." Notice how that sentence doesn't say "weak against mechs." If you take a look along the right side of the page, you'll see that they do in fact deal respectable damage against armored targets.

Claiming that it should suck against mechs just because it's pwnsauce against infantry is invalid because such a claim has no premise to be founded upon. You are, for lack of a better way to put it, pulling that idea straight out of your own rear-center torso.

Edited by FupDup, 18 March 2013 - 10:20 AM.

[Coolant]

In MW4:Mercs you could boat around 17 mg's on an Annihilator and it would shred any mech including assaults in seconds. In MWO, so far we have no more than 4 ballistic slots, so no more than 4 mg's possible. If the trend continues then you will never have mg's decimating mechs like you did in Mercs. So, yes, please buff mg damage as long as the ability to boat them never gets outrageous...

Edited by Coolant, 18 March 2013 - 10:54 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Ground Pounder, on 17 March 2013 - 01:04 PM, said:

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


Nuff said...regardless of what folks want Machine Guns to be, They are, have always been and always will be intended primarily for anti-infantry/anti-light vehicle purposes and at best are a nuisance against enemy battlemechs.

Gl/HF
Very Respectfully,
Ground Pounder

I never use Maching guns. Never have in 30 years. That being said. Machine Guns need to do equal damage to small lasers. this is on a per second basis. 0.5 tons, small damage in bursts. Anything more than that and the weapon will be OP.

[Team Leader]

Vassago Rain, on 18 March 2013 - 01:07 AM, said:

Let me tell you about one of the most dangerous mechs in the game's very long history.

Ah, thank you Vass. The Piranha is said to be about the same size as a commando. OP, you may notice the size of the cockpit versus the size of the machine guns. What's that, you say? The puny machine guns are as tall as a full grown adult man? Huh, interesting fact that such a large weapon wouldn't be able to absolutely shred the armor of anything in front of it. I guess we can only use 6 foot tall "machine guns" against infantry!

[Strig]

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

"The Machine Gun is the quintessential anti-infantry weapon, issuing a stream of bullets at a high rate of fire to cut down opposing soldiers, while still being effective at damaging BattleMechs."

"...while still being effective at damaging BattleMechs."

"... effective at damaging BattleMechs."

"...damaging BattleMechs."

READ IT!

So ... the machinegun does the same damage as an AC/2 (in a given timeframe). It has incredibly short range.

It should still be "damaging BattleMechs."

[MustrumRidcully]

I could probably do another 4 Slow-Pokes to illustrate what is going on in the MG discussion...

I wish that cycle broken instead and go here:

[Joseph Mallan]

Vassago Rain, on 18 March 2013 - 01:11 AM, said:

Piranha, unseen lights, many old mechs, the good, useful 'scouts...' You have no idea how dangerous machineguns are in CBT.

Look at MW3 for a more accurate portrayal. They have no range, but shred everything in seconds when boated.

I do. I have played TT for a long long time. A Piranha is not deadly to most Mechs. A pack of them are. Then again a Point of Proto Mechs are just as deadly. If you are boating 12 of any small weapon you are a force to be respected. 2 of the same weapon...
...
...
I have never been impressed. If folks are pooping themselves over 3-6 SSRM2s. What are they going to do if Mgs get buffed up to par with streak 2s (A mear 5 damage per shot!)???

[Lonestar1771]

Ground Pounder, on 17 March 2013 - 01:04 PM, said:

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


Nuff said...regardless of what folks want Machine Guns to be, They are, have always been and always will be intended primarily for anti-infantry/anti-light vehicle purposes and at best are a nuisance against enemy battlemechs.

Gl/HF
Very Respectfully,
Ground Pounder

" Hai gaiz, so i readed this site caled sarna.net and nows imma exprtz ats owl thngz MWO, I heartz PGI!"

[MaddMaxx]

If the MG was buffed to 2 pts, like the AC2, would a weight of 4 tons be acceptable? There in no way in hell you could ask for a Ballistics based weapon to do 2 pts, have no Heat, keep its current rate of fire, and still have it weight .5t right?

That would be even better than Trolling...

Edited by MaddMaxx, 18 March 2013 - 11:19 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

MaddMaxx, on 18 March 2013 - 11:17 AM, said:

If the MG was buffed to 2 pts, like the AC2, would a weight of 4 tons be acceptable? There in no way in hell you could ask for a Ballistics based weapon to do 2 pts, have no Heat, keep its current rate of fire, and still have it weight .5t right?

That would be even better than Trolling...

AC/2 DPS is 4, not 2.

I would err at buffing the MG to a DPS of 1.2 Not convinced it's enough, giving the disadvantages, but worth a try. If there ever is a 8+ ballistic boat and we are worried about MGs then, I would then lower the ammo/ton. Instead of boating heat sinks, the mech would need to boat ammo.

But if 1.2 are not enough, I would look at other forms of buff.
1) More Range. Buff it to the medium laser range (270m).
2) Or change it from continuous stream to a burst/cooldown weapon. 0.5 second burst, 1 second cooldown perhaps.

[Tickdoff Tank]

MustrumRidcully, on 18 March 2013 - 11:31 AM, said:

AC/2 DPS is 4, not 2.

I would err at buffing the MG to a DPS of 1.2 Not convinced it's enough, giving the disadvantages, but worth a try. If there ever is a 8+ ballistic boat and we are worried about MGs then, I would then lower the ammo/ton. Instead of boating heat sinks, the mech would need to boat ammo.

But if 1.2 are not enough, I would look at other forms of buff.
1) More Range. Buff it to the medium laser range (270m).
2) Or change it from continuous stream to a burst/cooldown weapon. 0.5 second burst, 1 second cooldown perhaps.

I have been asking for a buff to bring the damage up to 1.2-1.4. And I am also willing to see that amount tweaked downward if it did turn out to be too powerful, though I doubt it would be.

I will also point out that we are in beta, we are here to test stuff. Please let us test the MG with higher damage.

[Roland]

Ground Pounder, on 17 March 2013 - 01:04 PM, said:

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


Nuff said...regardless of what folks want Machine Guns to be, They are, have always been and always will be intended primarily for anti-infantry/anti-light vehicle purposes and at best are a nuisance against enemy battlemechs.

YOU ARE WRONG.
STOP SAYING THIS.

Machine guns were in battletech BEFORE ANYTHING OTHER THAN MECHS EXISTED.

[Heeden]

MustrumRidcully, on 17 March 2013 - 11:53 PM, said:

Here are mine:
Rules and Lore-Wise
1) Despite being the quintessential Anti-Infantry weapon, the MG did a whopping 2 points of damage per shot (at ranges up to 90m). The damage is the same as that of an Auto-Cannon 2.

The damage boost the AC/2 received in the transition from TT rules is not typical and I don't think it is a good base of comparison for the MG. If every weapon received a similar buff AC/20s would do 40 dps and even the humble small laser would have 6.

Quote

2) There is a mech used in mech-only arena combats that exclusively uses Machine Guns. (Funnily enough, it's called "Piranha". It seems Piranha Games doesn't want its name-sake mech to be useful?)

From Sarna:-

Quote

For work against hardened targets, the Piranha mounts a pair of Mk. 3 ER Medium Lasers and a single Series 1 ER Small Laser

Quote

Piranha 2 - This variant of the Piranha is fielded by Clan Ice Hellion upgrades to double heat sinks so that the Machine Guns can be effectively swapped out for ER Micro Lasers. The other lasers were upgraded to heavy models.

Quote

Piranha 3 - This version is more properly adapted to a scouting role by the addition of a Light Active Probe. It also uses upgraded heat sinks to allow for an all-energy configuration.

Quote

Game-Wise (and this is really the important thing)
1) This is a pure Battlemech combat game. We don't need weapons that are not useful against Battlemechs.
2) There are 2 low-weight mechs that come with 4 ballistic slots, in pairs positioned in a single hit location each pair. You don't always have to fill all the slots on a mech, but it would be rather pointless of creating a mech that cannot possibly use these slots. These mechs are not heavy enough to hope to carry more than one AC/2, so they must eventually resort to Machine Guns. But any build currently focusing on these Machine Guns would be inferior to any alternative Mech of the same weight that can use other weapons. A 2 ML Spider is superior to a 4 MG + 1 ML Spider, and the 2 ML Spider is already inferior to a 5 ton lighter Commando!

I find a -5K with 1 ERLLas + 4MG performs much better than a -5V with 2 x MPLas or MLas (although both are inferior to the -5D which in turn struggles against Jenners and the ECM + Streak combos). Spiders are trashy, but the MGs don't make the -5K the trashiest.

The bolded part I agree with, although I find the idea of MGs being boosted to 4 dps to equal the AC/2 a bit ridiculous.

From playing my -5K I think a boost to 1dps per MG would make it much more dangerous - probably equal to or better than the -5D (not counting ECM). Note this doesn't take in to account competitive play where all Spiders suffer from not being 3Ls.

Personally I still prefer the idea of MG-arrays because technically that brings more dakka.

[Gaan Cathal]

Heeden, on 18 March 2013 - 11:40 AM, said:

The bolded part I agree with, although I find the idea of MGs being boosted to 4 dps to equal the AC/2 a bit ridiculous.

The AC/2 is only relevant as proof that MGs can damage Mechs without ******* on some holy BTech grail of purity. MGs are a ballistic Small Laser equivalent. They should do damage approaching Small Laser damage. End. Of.

[General Taskeen]

The Troll is Strong in this OP.

BT MG always did 2 Damage to Mechs. Always did. Bro.