54 replies to this topic

[Adridos]

xhrit, on 29 March 2013 - 12:04 AM, said:

Here is where I point out the fact that machinegun boats are the highest DPS build in mechwarrior 2, mechwarrior 3, and would be in mw4 too, if not for the hardpoint system that prevents you from effectively boating them.

Don't forget they were the best weapon in MW1, too.

Locust had a field day and mayn considered it an exploit.

[Michael Costanza]

It's actually a bit easier to keep the ammo safe in MWO than in TT. In MWO, you don't have crits through armor and you can fire off rounds without having a target. In TT, it'd take a round to dump all ammo. Also, it would take _forever_ to shoot through 200 rounds of MG ammo.

Edited by Michael Costanza, 29 March 2013 - 03:05 AM.

[3rdworld]

I don't really get their PoV on balancing.

It seems like they willingly keep some weapons as near useless. Or give others buffs to the point they should be considered standard equipment.

If it shot 10 rounds a second with a 90m max range, doing .15 dmg or even .2 damage per bullet considering how spread it will be is more than fair. It isn't like there is a mech that can use more than a handful of these and it might make the ballistic heavy lights not trash.

Edited by 3rdworld, 29 March 2013 - 05:08 AM.

[Skyfaller]

This is a good find OP.

The missing 300'ish rounds however do not make much of a difference when the MG's do so little damage.


I will add to your findings one more tidbit of info:

MG's were purposefully nerfed in rate of fire by PGI.

As you know, MWO has double armor than TT and triple the rate of fire than TT rules.

Triple rate of fire...except the MG's. They are the only weapon that was not given such a buff.

So essentially the MG's we have now are missing two thirds of their damage output.

0.4 dmg x 3 = 1.2.

1.2 damage with a very high rate of fire, no heat, very short range is where we should have our MG's at.


The devs could fix this in a variety of ways:

1- Give every ballistic mech three times the ballistic slots they have now. Their tonnage and slot size wont allow them to load more than what they do now (AC2 or bigger) but it will enable them to equip the MG's in those slots which will make up for the lowered rate of fire. MG weight would need to be cut down to 0.25 ton per gun and double the ammo per ton.

2- Up the rate of fire of the MGs by 3x. Problem with this is the server code may not be able to track that damage properly.

3- Increase damage of MGs accordingly to match the triple rate of fire. Problem with this is it makes the MG too effective in dmg per ton of ammo ratio.

Personally I favor the increased ballistic slot solution. It allows the player to fully customize his machine gun mech if he wishes or give his heat-generating ballistics a good backup set of machine guns for the job.

[Tice Daurus]

For the OP a question...if this has been posted, has a ticket been sent to MW:O to have them check this out for this problem yet?

[Lonestar1771]

PGI already explained why they can't or won't buff the MG...

Making video games is hard. At least that seems to be the defacto excuse why developers make ****** games.

[Mercules]

I think that video of MGs in previous MW titles is why we don't get huge damage per shot. The hardpoints help limit their damage some however....

AC 2 doing 2 damage per shot and shooting every .5 seconds. 6 of them do 24 damage a second. Imagine if MGs did even this for no heat and 3 tons plus whatever ammo their brought. Ugh... If they did .2 damage instead of .04 we might be approaching 12 damage per second for 6. I am thinking instead of .04 they might want to look at about .25. If the fire rate actually is 9/second then that would be 2.25 damage per second and puts us at about 13-14 damage per second from 6 of them. 6 Small Lasers do 18 Damage, but also generate 12 heat, they don't have ammo to run out of though. This would make them do slightly less damage the Small Laser but still do enough to put them on a mech.


Whoops.. forgot recharge so Small Lasers would end up with... well, Right around 6 damage per second for 6. Hmmmmmm... So 12 per second for MGs seems more reasonable. back to .2 - .21 per shot. Still 5 times more damage than they currently do.

Edited by Mercules, 29 March 2013 - 06:42 AM.

[Lucian Nostra]

They don't the dps of an ac/2 but the dps of a small laser (or slightly higher) is WHAT they should have. They should be viable, they don't need to be OP.

Edited by Lucian Nostra, 29 March 2013 - 06:55 AM.

[Catalinasgrace]

yeah, here is what I don't get... There are a ton of people that say MGs are only for infantry right? I have a little problem with this and I'll show you what I mean. If you look at the screenshot those barrels are not much smaller than a modern day tank main gun... However those same people think that they should not do any damage to a mech? They are after all for infantry... lol...

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

xhrit, on 29 March 2013 - 12:04 AM, said:

Here is where I point out the fact that machinegun boats are the highest DPS build in mechwarrior 2, mechwarrior 3, and would be in mw4 too, if not for the hardpoint system that prevents you from effectively boating them.

Here is an example of how hard machineguns own; the 14 machinegun Mad Dog build.

It carries 17 tons of ammo, 6800 total damage, and can empty it all in 80 seconds, with zero heat buildup.

It has 84 DPS, and can core an atlas through the center torso in under 3 seconds.

*sighs*

Yes they were great for boating in MW2... the weapon however was broken in this game, not to mention the unlimited customization makes boating anything in MW2 op. Your point is bad and you should feel bad.

Then we look at a HMG carrying Annhiliator back in MW4 mercs and you realise that even with it's hardpoint restrictions... MW4 failed at balance. Killing a Daishi that quick was just drity and wrong.

At the end of the day, the machine guns, as seen in MWO, just aren't that good, and the problem with balancing them is, how do you deal with a short range, fast firing weapon balance wise and keep it from becoming absolute cheese?

The answer is, we don't. There will always be weaponry that's just, not used, even the Small Laser is barely used in MWO right now. the AC2 is in a similar place, These weapons have uses that are not represented in MWO that well, [save for the SL since it's an anti mech weapon].

At the end of the day though, in competitive multiplayer games, there are always things that people just, don't use. And in MWO, those are the AC2, Machineguns, and Sl/SPL

[Sixart]

I think that's a cop out, Jade. Many people use Small Lasers to great success. Many people use AC2's. Small Pulse Laser doesn't have a place since Medium Lasers are so optimal. Even Flamer has its uses.

Machine guns *had* a place. They were actually useable before they fixed the 80% chance for double damage to components bug. I have loads of gameplay experience with the SDR-5K where my 4 MGs were incredibly useful for the team since I disabled weapon systems with precision and speed.

Since the patch, it's very difficult to use them. I feel like they need to readjust MGs. The crit-seeking is a great idea and is very useful for a team in the right hands, but right now it seems too weak to even do that task.


Bonus video of flamer/small-laser/machine-gun/ac2/ssrm RVN-4X

[Terror Teddy]

Jade Kitsune, on 29 March 2013 - 07:53 AM, said:

The answer is, we don't. There will always be weaponry that's just, not used, even the Small Laser is barely used in MWO right now. the AC2 is in a similar place, These weapons have uses that are not represented in MWO that well, [save for the SL since it's an anti mech weapon].

Of course there will be subpar weapons but where a 20-30 tonner has an energy point to put a medium laser OR a small laser is a 0,5-1 tonne difference.

The problem wtih MG's is that we either have 0,5 tonnes +ammo OR 6 tonnes +ammo.

There's a magnitude in tonnage difference and usually ballistics tend to do slightly higer damage due to their demand in tonnage.

We cannot have a MG with the same damage as the AC/2 but it should be no problem having them doing 1,0-1,5 DPS between light and medium laser - after all, the few light mechs that can in any way boat these will need the ammo tonnage to match.

[Heeden]

Terror Teddy, on 29 March 2013 - 08:16 AM, said:

Of course there will be subpar weapons but where a 20-30 tonner has an energy point to put a medium laser OR a small laser is a 0,5-1 tonne difference.

The problem wtih MG's is that we either have 0,5 tonnes +ammo OR 6 tonnes +ammo.

There's a magnitude in tonnage difference and usually ballistics tend to do slightly higer damage due to their demand in tonnage.

We cannot have a MG with the same damage as the AC/2 but it should be no problem having them doing 1,0-1,5 DPS between light and medium laser - after all, the few light mechs that can in any way boat these will need the ammo tonnage to match.

1 - 1.5 would be a huge buff for lighter mechs carrying MGs, but apart from the SDR-5K they should all stay pretty much in line with other variants of the same chassis. It also shouldn't be too massive abuse for heavier mechs that use them as a space-filler (Cataphract-4X and Catapult-K2 for example).

The upper range of 1.5ish might be a bit much for the heavier mediums we have at the moment, the speedy CN9-D can already pack a lot of fire power and with 2 MGs in the arm it could absolutely shred both heavier and lighter mechs.

[Mercules]

If MGs fire 9 times per second as stated... Think about 1 damage per shot. What weapon in MWO does 36 damage in 4 seconds? Two Gauss Rifles don't even do 36 damage in 4 seconds.

[xhrit]

Jade Kitsune, on 29 March 2013 - 07:53 AM, said:

Yes they were great for boating in MW2... the weapon however was broken in this game, not to mention the unlimited customization makes boating anything in MW2 op. Your point is bad and you should feel bad.

So you are saying the fact that machineguns were the most powerful weapon in mechwarrior 1, mechwarrior 2, mechwarrior 3 and mechwarrior 4 is bad?

No. It is a fact.

Machineguns are the most powerful weapon in every other mechwarrior game ever made.

I am pretty sure the stock configuration Piranha with its 12 machineguns is one of the highest DPS builds in TT as well, at least using the s7 ruleset.

[Team Leader]

Lonestar1771, on 29 March 2013 - 05:57 AM, said:

PGI already explained why they can't or won't buff the MG...

Making video games is hard. At least that seems to be the defacto excuse why developers make ****** games.

WHERE. Quote and link please.

[xhrit]

Jade Kitsune, on 29 March 2013 - 07:53 AM, said:

At the end of the day though, in competitive multiplayer games, there are always things that people just, don't use. And in MWO, those are the AC2, Machineguns, and Sl/SPL

And here is where I point out that I have used machineguns in the last 243 games I have played.

[Bubba Wilkins]

Xelah, on 28 March 2013 - 09:50 PM, said:

It takes 58 seconds to fire about 1968 rounds from four MG's from my spider. This is without the Fast Fire Elite unlock.

I've tested this repeatedly by shooting the A1 in the legs in testing grounds. It takes 58 seconds to blast a leg off with the machine guns. While this is neither a good or bad thing, I'm using it as a point of data since I was mostly looking into this to see how I could make this spider a viable mech.

58 seconds x 4 machine guns x 10 shots per second = 2,320 shots

Where are my other 352 shots that were supposed to be fired? Did I actually fire this and the Nvidia fairy refils my ammo when I put the spent cartridges under my pillow at night?

I figured this had to be some error on my part, so I started dropping in testing grounds and holding down the trigger from the start to see how fast my ammo ran dry from two tons. The guns go dry between 2:01 and 2:02.


Matches don't actually start until 00:10 due to startup sequence


4000 rounds / 4 guns / (120.5 seconds - 10 seconds for startup) = 9.04.... rounds per second.

9.04 shots per second x 0.04 damage = 0.3619 damage per second


Whether you agree with buffing MG's or not, you should at least agree that they should do the amount of damage/stats they're listed to have, not 90.4% of it. Otherwise, we might as well start loading AC18.08's into our mechs to replace AC20s.

While you're fixing this, could you consider showing the dakka some love and scrapping the failed critseeking thing and let them do some damage... maybe 0.6 or .8 dps?

Two things:

1) The testing grounds don't handle damage correctly and are bugged.
2) Machine guns don't effect armor.

A better test would be to take a snap shot of your mech/weapon stats prior to a round.
Then play a round using only the machine guns and however much ammo you want.
Take a second snapshot of weapon stats.
Then do maths.

Edited by Bubba Wilkins, 29 March 2013 - 08:58 AM.

[Dragonslayer Ornstein]

No love for the flamer? That thing's even more useless than the machine guns. At least the machine guns crit properly. The flamer is just a pyrotechnic display and its a crying shame.

[Terror Teddy]

Dragonslayer Ornstein, on 29 March 2013 - 08:56 AM, said:

No love for the flamer? That thing's even more useless than the machine guns. At least the machine guns crit properly. The flamer is just a pyrotechnic display and its a crying shame.

Yup, that one needs some love.

There was talk that it transfers more heat to enemy now but I cant see it in the mechlab.