251 replies to this topic

[Gaan Cathal]

Sifright, on 21 March 2013 - 09:49 AM, said:

yaaay, a convert to the land of the rational.

Now if only we could get a pgi dev to do the same :|

I hear one of them pilots Cicadas, if they had a borderline-useless varient that boated them that might help.

Ah yeah, sorry. Silly me.

[Braggart]

KuruptU4Fun, on 21 March 2013 - 07:47 AM, said:

Guidance system for the bullets, no, but more like akin to the tracking systems on unmanned vehicles.



A .22 can't do much damage against a Kevlar vest compared to a .45. Some things simply aren't worth the trouble to try and complete the job it's proponents want to.

An MG does 2 damage, a small laser does 3 damage in table top. A small laser still does 3 here, but what about the MG????????????????????????

The only reason the MG is terrible in MWO is because the developers made it terrible. The MG in table top is useful.

for some reason missiles do way more damage in MWO than tabletop, and MGs do a fraction of what they do.

Edited by Braggart, 21 March 2013 - 09:56 AM.

[stjobe]

Braggart, on 21 March 2013 - 09:55 AM, said:

The only reason the MG is terrible in MWO is because the developers made it terrible. The MG in table top is useful.

Absolutely correct.

[KuruptU4Fun]

Braggart, on 21 March 2013 - 09:55 AM, said:

An MG does 2 damage, a small laser does 3 damage in table top. A small laser still does 3 here, but what about the MG????????????????????????

The only reason the MG is terrible in MWO is because the developers made it terrible. The MG in table top is useful.

for some reason missiles do way more damage in MWO than tabletop, and MGs do a fraction of what they do.

Armor also got doubled in MW:O over TT way in the beginning. Missiles work best in softening armor, so to some degree that does make sense. MG's should be able to chew thru armor at short distances, the downside already being that you're close enough to get torso twisted and fired on before you may realize it....

[Strig]

Someone mentioned "crit-seeking" as a reason not to improve the Machine Gun (or as the "design goal" for the weapon) and I would like to point out the obvious flaws in this line of thinking:

There is no need to use a crit-seeking weapon that might do more than its miniscule base damage if it scores a crit, even if it has a high rate of fire when almost every other weapon loadout will outright destroy that entire section or has an equal or better chance to completely destroy a component with a single shot.

If a single crit from a MG guaranteed a destroyed component regardless of that components health, then perhaps taking 1 (and only 1) machine gun would be a worthwhile build choice.

Short of that simply firing "effective" weapons will always be a superior choice.

If there is no reason to use this item, remove it from the game. If you want it in the game, give us a reason to use it as opposed to something else.

[Abledime]

I would see the MG fitted to mecks akin to a M61 vulcan this is a vehicle mounted AP (armor piercing) armament. rather than the light anti personnel weapons it seems to be.

MG should be armor shredding mid range weapons that chews through ammo like no tomorrow. eg 1 tonne of ammo =2000 rounds with a M61s 6600 rounds per minuet lasting about 13 seconds

Edited by Abledime, 21 March 2013 - 10:14 AM.

[KuruptU4Fun]

Abledime, on 21 March 2013 - 10:13 AM, said:

I would see the MG fitted to mecks akin to a M61 vulcan this is a vehicle mounted AP (armor piercing) armament. rather than the light anti personnel weapons it seems to be.

MG should be armor shredding mid range weapons that chews through ammo like no tomorrow. eg 1 tonne of ammo =2000 rounds with a M61s 6600 rounds per minuet lasting about 13 seconds

MG's at mid range spread out too much to effectively damage much in short periods of time.

The more you can mount the faster they should damage a span of RT to LT within short range only.

[Heeden]

Braggart, on 21 March 2013 - 09:55 AM, said:

An MG does 2 damage, a small laser does 3 damage in table top. A small laser still does 3 here, but what about the MG????????????????????????

MGs did 0.2 dps in TT, SLas did 0.3. If PGi wanted to maintain that balance the MG would get a whopping boost to 0.66 dps which is probably less than peeps would like.

[Gaan Cathal]

Heeden, on 21 March 2013 - 10:26 AM, said:

MGs did 0.2 dps in TT, SLas did 0.3. If PGi wanted to maintain that balance the MG would get a whopping boost to 0.66 dps which is probably less than peeps would like.

No-one actually gives a **** about the specific TT DPS values because they don't work in live play. It's used to demonstrate that the people who claim that MGs are nonfunctional as Ant-Mech weapons in BTech because "I'm a superfan and have done BTech since before it was design and have the original limited edition Optimus Prime for it." are talking utter ********* and apparently have large, core, gaps in their knowledge about their 'fandom' that can only be explained by idiocy, senility or weapons grade ********.

[Vermaxx]

How are you getting 0.2 DPS for tabletop? A tt turn was "10 seconds," but only VIRTUAL seconds. That doesn't mean the gun is 0.2 DPS because the turn length was an arbitrary figure to give you some scale to the battle.

A tabletop small laser does three damage. An MWO small laser does three damage over 0.5 seconds, with a 2.25 second cooldown.

Make the machine gun fire identically for 2 damage, or fire twice for one damage each over the course of 2.75 seconds. Voila, the gun is balanced against its closest comparison, it will never outshine its closest comparison, and it cannot be overpowered in boating anymore than the small laser can.

[stjobe]

Heeden, on 21 March 2013 - 10:26 AM, said:

MGs did 0.2 dps in TT, SLas did 0.3. If PGi wanted to maintain that balance the MG would get a whopping boost to 0.66 dps which is probably less than peeps would like.

Following that logic: MGs did 0.2 DPS in TT, AC/2 did 0.2. If PGI wanted to maintain that balance the MG would get a whopping boost to 4 DPS which is probably way more than anyone would ask for.

Again, triple the damage, optionally roll back the crit buff. Done. No need for fancy-schmancy "balancing" that's more nerf than buff anyway, just triple the damage and we're done.

[Vermaxx]

I'm continually reminded how many problems arise from when they modify tt tenants, not from when they USE them.

Missiles are kind of OP because they do not hit the mech in a magical cloud like in tabletop.

Crits needed work because they decided to give everything hitpoints instead of a one-crit-and-done like it is supposed to be.

Games were too short with aim, so double armor was added, and then things were off balance. Rather than impart some form of weapon inaccuracy or cone-fire (replicating tabletop), they came up with double armor, which makes a lot of weapons less impressive.

The MG/flamers were really abused in previous games, so PGI hammered them. Then they got weird bonuses, instead of just working like everything else does - with cooldowns and tabletop values.

SOME changes were good, like the things to make 'large' energy weapons more useful. Most of the major headaches PGI has, not including the netcode and backend stuff, come from when they start deviating from the relative balance tabletop had.

[BoPop]

[Wildstreak]

Sifright, on 21 March 2013 - 09:43 AM, said:

The no heat doesn't come close to making them acceptable in MWO. it's so far off the mark with mgs that they are a complete joke.

Well, the no heat is one of their benefits. Really, the crit bonus is silly and the only change I can agree with is what Vermaxx said, give them a damage boost compared to their Energy equivalent, the Small Laser, while getting rid of the crit bonus stuff.

[Ialti]

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'm probably re-hashing quite a few arguments here, so I'll be brief.

There are two quotes from Sarna that I'm pretty sure you didn't read, they are taken from your own link and the support machine gun page (which is directly mentioned in the article you linked):

Quote

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

and from Support Machine Gun http://www.sarna.net...ort_Machine_Gun

Quote

Support Machine Guns are large crew-served support weapons mounted on vehicles or emplacement turrets. Too massive for a single trooper to carry, these guns fire large-caliber bullets at much greater ranges than most other ballistic weapons and with enough firepower to be a threat to heavily-armored vehicles.

You. Fail.

[Scyther]

I see a lot of people quoting 'flavor text' from the game to support their arguments. Keep in mind that flavor text is just that, something typed up to add a little meat to the raw numbers of the game.

The 'TT rules' state that it does the same damage as an AC/2, over the same range as an SL, for 0 heat. (In MWO of course, they have then modified the SL to have significantly higher range than TT rules, as far as I can tell 90-180 vs. 30-90)

However, the BEST reason for having a weapon in the game (TT lawyering and theorycrafting aside) is that it adds OPTIONS, BALANCE and FUN to a game.

Currently it is an option (if you just really like the idea of machine guns) but it is neither balanced nor particularly fun.

One solution would be to simply double the damage it does now. That would make it a 0.8 dps, low-heat, ammo-based weapon filling a ballistic slot, with slightly more range than an SL.

0.8 DPS means you can boat it all you like, it still won't compare to SL, ML, SRM or AC/2 boats, which we already have. It will be of at least mild effectiveness, and expands mech design options with ballistic hardpoints but tight weight or heat constraints.

The crit-seeking can stay or go, as pointed out its not of much use in the current game design.


Badger

Edited by MadBadger, 21 March 2013 - 10:58 AM.

[BoPop]

how about machine guns get a tinsy dmg buff and also jamm like auto ac5?

[Gaan Cathal]

MadBadger, on 21 March 2013 - 10:57 AM, said:

The crit-seeking can stay or go, as pointed out its not of much use in the current game design.

On the topic of Crit-Seeking for the MG. It's come to my attention that MGs were actually running an 80% crit chance up until yesterday's patch where they were fixed to 8%. Their specialist critbuff was ten times what it should have been.

And they were still useless. This is how bad crit-seeking weapons are with the game as it is.

[stjobe]

BoPop, on 21 March 2013 - 11:01 AM, said:

how about machine guns get a tinsy dmg buff and also jamm like auto ac5?

Sure, let's buff them a little and nerf them a bit more at the same time. That'll make them viable.

The MGs need a solid buff, not a buff-and-nerf. In particular, they need a damage buff, and my opinion is that they need to do triple the damage they currently do to be viable, considering all the other aspects of the weapon (limited range, ammo dependency, continuous-fire mechanic, etc).

Why are people so afraid of a 1.5 ton, 1.2 DPS, 90m light ballistic weapon that needs to be held on target 100% to even get that 1.2 DPS when they are perfectly fine with a 0.5 ton, 1 DPS, 90m light energy weapon that only needs to be held on target 25% of the time go get its DPS?

[FupDup]

stjobe, on 21 March 2013 - 11:21 AM, said:

Why are people so afraid of a 1.5 ton, 1.2 DPS, 90m light ballistic weapon that needs to be held on target 100% to even get that 1.2 DPS when they are perfectly fine with a 0.5 ton, 1 DPS, 90m light energy weapon that only needs to be held on target 25% of the time go get its DPS?

The answer is simple. People hate light mechs...a lot. The Raven 3L in particular has stirred up inconceivable levels of hatred against them because of various game issues converging on it into one neat little package...and this hate has spilled over into the entire light mech weight class. That, and people really just hate things that are small and fast in general (therefore hard to aim at). See also: Scout class in TF2, light mechs in all previous MW games, etc...


People are afraid of MG-totting lights somehow becoming like the 3L. There are a few things they fail to realize about this:
1. You would need to seriously ramp the damage up (at least 5x) to make it even remotely comparable to the 3L.
2. The 3L still has a lot of variables in its favor (engine size, ECM + Streaks combo, 3 ML + 2 SSRM2 is pretty good at wrecking other lights and damaged mechs).
3. Wouldn't it be a good thing to mix up the light mech roster a little bit? Some variety would certainly help matters. Let Quad-MG Spiders and Dual-MG Ravens eat a few 3L's. It would be a hilarious new counter to them.

Edited by FupDup, 21 March 2013 - 11:40 AM.