124 replies to this topic

[KinLuu]

Double the range, double the DPS.

Adjust from there. The way they are now is not good.

[Khobai]

Yeah lets just double everything without even doing the math or considering game balance with other weapons.


IMO the only changes machine guns need are as follows:

1) 50% damage increase from 0.04 to 0.06
2) increase max range from 200 to 270 (all other ballistic weapons get triple max range)

[stjobe]

It's even simpler.

1. Triple the per-projectile damage.

Done.

That's what's maddening, it really is that simple and instead we get overly-complex, useless crit buffs, and all manner of thinly veiled buff-but-really-a-nerf suggestions.

Just triple the per-projectile damage. That's all the MG needs to be viable.

Mind-boggling.

Edited by stjobe, 01 April 2013 - 01:10 PM.

[Khobai]

triple the damage are you nuts?

Machine Guns would do 1.2 dps each then... the same as a medium laser... but with NO heat.

A six machine gun jagermech would get the equivalent of six medium lasers that generate 0 heat. That would be insanely broken.

I am glad you're not working for PGI... because underpowered machine guns are better than the overpowered crap youre proposing. Machine Guns at most need a 50%-75% damage buff. Anything more than that is too good for a weapon that generates 0 heat.

Edited by Khobai, 01 April 2013 - 01:18 PM.

[Yokaiko]

Khobai, on 01 April 2013 - 01:15 PM, said:

triple the damage are you nuts?

Machine Guns would do 1.2 dps each then... the same as a medium laser... but with NO heat. That would be insanely broken.

90m and ammo, and 100% uptime without missing to get there.

[FupDup]

Khobai, on 01 April 2013 - 01:15 PM, said:

triple the damage are you nuts?

Machine Guns would do 1.2 dps each then... the same as a medium laser... but with NO heat. That would be insanely broken.

Downsides:
1. Garbage range
2. Ammo consumption (we can even reduce the ammo per ton a bit if necessary)
3. Has to be held over the target area constantly, whereas Medium Laser only needs 0.75 seconds to do full damage
3a. DPS almost always loses to alpha-strike damage
3b. You can't torso twist to spread damage or else you lose your DPS advantage (gotta keep shooting the target)
4. Projectile speed of LRMs (100) ensures that your bullets will spread all over the place

Edited by FupDup, 01 April 2013 - 01:21 PM.

[Khobai]

1) 90m range is not that bad, considering its going to be backed up by at least two ER PPCs in the Jagermechs energy slots.
2) 2000 rounds per ton hardly qualifies as ammo consumption. I have never run out of machine gun ammo in a game. ever.
3) Big deal it generates NO HEAT. You obviously fail to understand the serious ramifications of that.

[FupDup]

Khobai, on 01 April 2013 - 01:23 PM, said:

1) 90m range is not that bad, considering its going to be backed up by at least two ER PPCs in the Jagermechs energy slots.
2) 2000 rounds per ton hardly qualifies as ammo consumption. I have never run out of machine gun ammo in a game. ever.
3) Big deal it generates NO HEAT. You obviously fail to understand the serious ramifications of that.

1. Yes, it is bad.
2. Like I said above, an ammo/ton reduction would probably go well with a damage increase (think of it as bigger bullets being loaded)
3. Lack of heat buildup might be a little more significant if heat was even a problem in this game (and if it didn't have the other downsides). You can chain-fire some Medium Lasers for something pretty close to heat neutrality and the ability to hurt things.

Also, lack of upfront damage is in fact a very big deal. Most of the builds in this game that aren't lights and Dakkaboats are alpha-strike based. The flaw of DPS is that you need TIME in order to dish out your damage. Alpha striking gets all damage done instantly. You obviously fail to understand the serious ramifications of that.

Edited by FupDup, 01 April 2013 - 01:29 PM.

[Khobai]

Quote

Lack of heat buildup might be a little more significant if heat was even a problem in this game. You can chain-fire some Medium Lasers for something pretty close to heat neutrality and the ability to hurt things. You obviously fail to understand the serious ramifications of that

You are 100% wrong. No mech can fire 6 medium lasers nonstop without overheating. And thats the dps capability you want to give Jagermechs.

All you would do is turn the game into machinegunwarrior online... because 6 machine gun jagermechs would outdps every other mech in the game... and no 90m isnt bad because most brawling takes place at around 90m and the Jagermech would still have two er ppcs for sniping.

six machine guns would be 7.2 dps... plus the jagermech could easily fire two energy weapons almost non-stop in addition to that... so thats at least 10dps non-stop with basically no heat build-up.

That is more DPS than most atlases can sustain. Again your triple damage suggestion is completely asanine. Machine guns need a buff but not a 300% damage buff. Again like 50%-75% would be more than reasonable.

Edited by Khobai, 01 April 2013 - 01:36 PM.

[FupDup]

Khobai, on 01 April 2013 - 01:29 PM, said:

You are 100% wrong. No mech can fire 6 medium lasers nonstop without overheating. And thats the capability you want to give Jagermechs.

Jagers can't hold 6 medium lasers.


My cookie-cutter Craven-3L with 12 DHS can chain-fire its 3 Medium Lasers fairly well even when I'm on the brink of shutdown and on hot maps like Tourmaline. Sure, I can't fire completely constantly, but I can get pretty close (and the magic missiles help with heat management, too).

Edited by FupDup, 01 April 2013 - 01:36 PM.

[stjobe]

Khobai, on 01 April 2013 - 01:15 PM, said:

triple the damage are you nuts?

Machine Guns would do 1.2 dps each then... the same as a medium laser... but with NO heat.

A six machine gun jagermech would get the equivalent of six medium lasers that generate 0 heat. That would be insanely broken.

I am glad you're not working for PGI... because underpowered machine guns are better than the overpowered crap youre proposing. Machine Guns at most need a 50%-75% damage buff. Anything more than that is too good for a weapon that generates 0 heat.

DPS isn't everything, especially not with a continuous-fire weapon like the MG.

Zero heat is the only positive thing the MG has going for it.

Here's the negatives:
It has the lowest damage per ton of ammo (by half!) of any ammo-using weapon for no discernible reason.
It has the lowest range of all weapons except the also stupidly broken flamer (90m effective, 200m max).
It has a 100% time-on-target requirement to even get that DPS. Every tenth of a second off-target drops the effective DPS by a tenth.
It has spread, and every bullet that misses again lowers DPS by a tenth.
It needs ammo, which can explode (for a lot more damage than you can practically put on a target)
Projectile speed, while not a great drawback with such a limited range, is the lowest of all projectile weapons (100m/s).
It has virtually no damage capacity versus armour, but needs armour to be removed before it can use its crit buff.

It is currently the most useless weapon in the game, since the Flamer got a buff last patch.
For most 'mechs, that's not a problem, they can mount a viable ballistic weapon or a heat sink instead, but for the ballistic lights the current non-viable state of the MG also makes these 'mech variants non-viable.

In short, perhaps we should be happy that you're not the one in charge of balance over at PGI, since you seem all too happy to not consider all aspects of a weapon before proclaiming it to be "overpowered crap".

Edited by stjobe, 01 April 2013 - 01:35 PM.

[Yokaiko]

I have a spider that has a 2.07 heat efficiency.

Its not scary.

[Noobzorz]

Khobai, on 01 April 2013 - 01:05 PM, said:

Yeah lets just double everything without even doing the math or considering game balance with other weapons.


IMO the only changes machine guns need are as follows:

1) 50% damage increase from 0.04 to 0.06
2) increase max range from 200 to 270 (all other ballistic weapons get triple max range)

Don't forget that a machine gun effectively weighs 1.5 tons (less if you split 1 ton of ammo between multiple MGs) since you need to buy ammo for the stupid thing.

I think 0.8 DPS at 180m actually sounds sufficiently bad that I would continue to talk about the weapon like unuseable trash. It would, however, be a good start.

[ReguIus]

Well... Realism and MechWarrior... no. To put things into perspective, that must be one hell of a machine gun if it can even scratch the armor of a BattleMech at 90 meters. So maybe the weapon ranges shown in the HUD give you the practical maximum instead of the theoretical one.

[Lolpingu]

El Bandito, on 31 March 2013 - 04:45 PM, said:

Stopped reading there.

Realistically Battlemechs are terrible waste of resources. Tanks can own them hard.

Hardly. To start off, a modern MBT, while pretty fast and maneuverable all things considered, can't hit 100 KPH (assuming that a 'mech could be brought to that speed in real world with future technology) and turn as fast as a 'mech. A fast 'mech with the appropriate weapon can go around an MBT and hit it's side and rear armor, whereas the MBT will be struggling with even targetting it. The mounted machinegun might be able to hit the 'mech, but the main cannon will be useless against a speeding 'mech. I can imagine something along the lines of an SRM 6 volley hitting the back of an MBT and rupturing it's fuel tanks and ravaging it's tracks, effectively disabling it.

Edited by Lolpingu, 01 April 2013 - 10:14 PM.

[Sifright]

Lolpingu, on 01 April 2013 - 10:11 PM, said:

Hardly. To start off, a modern MBT, while pretty fast and maneuverable all things considered, can't hit 100 KPH (assuming that a 'mech could be brought to that speed in real world with future technology) and turn as fast as a 'mech. A fast 'mech with the appropriate weapon can go around an MBT and hit it's side and rear armor, whereas the MBT will be struggling with even targetting it. The mounted machinegun might be able to hit the 'mech, but the main cannon will be useless against a speeding 'mech. I can imagine something along the lines of an SRM 6 volley hitting the back of an MBT and rupturing it's fuel tanks and ravaging it's tracks, effectively disabling it.

A modern battle tank with a micro-SUN inside it would have absolutely no problem achieving speeds of 200KPH plus given a few hundred mega watts of electrical energy to work with.

Given the fusion engine in the mech can supposedly power a rather enormous number of ultra high powered lasers it has to have an output at some where near that level.

All this is ofcourse entirely off topic though.

MG needs triple damage and Khobai these figures have been sanity tested a long long time ago.

The MG has so many downsides compared to every other weapon in the game 1.2 DPS would not be scary in any way shape or form.

[stjobe]

Kurbutti, on 01 April 2013 - 10:02 PM, said:

Well... Realism and MechWarrior... no. To put things into perspective, that must be one hell of a machine gun if it can even scratch the armor of a BattleMech at 90 meters.

That's what some of us are trying to get through the heads of the "MGs are .50s"-crowd; MGs aren't some piddly man-sized weapons, they're 'mech-sized - i.e. 5-10 times the size of the man-sized ones.

Kurbutti, on 01 April 2013 - 10:02 PM, said:

So maybe the weapon ranges shown in the HUD give you the practical maximum instead of the theoretical one.

It does show the "effective" range, i.e. the maximum range the weapon will do its listed damage. After that distance, damage drops off to zero at maximum range.

[MustrumRidcully]

Khobai, on 01 April 2013 - 01:29 PM, said:

You are 100% wrong. No mech can fire 6 medium lasers nonstop without overheating. And thats the dps capability you want to give Jagermechs.

All you would do is turn the game into machinegunwarrior online... because 6 machine gun jagermechs would outdps every other mech in the game... and no 90m isnt bad because most brawling takes place at around 90m and the Jagermech would still have two er ppcs for sniping.

six machine guns would be 7.2 dps... plus the jagermech could easily fire two energy weapons almost non-stop in addition to that... so thats at least 10dps non-stop with basically no heat build-up.

That is more DPS than most atlases can sustain. Again your triple damage suggestion is completely asanine. Machine guns need a buff but not a 300% damage buff. Again like 50%-75% would be more than reasonable.

Khobai, on 01 April 2013 - 01:29 PM, said:

You are 100% wrong. No mech can fire 6 medium lasers nonstop without overheating. And thats the dps capability you want to give Jagermechs.

It's true, no mech can can fire 6 medium lasers non-stop without overheating. (Though in canon, some mechs can. The HBK-4P would be an excellent example for it. That's why it has 8 MLs instead of just 6)

But in practice, no mech needs to stop 6 medium lasers non-stop.
In 9 seconds of firing 6 Medium Lasers, you can fire each laser three times, for that's 3 * 6 * 5 = 90 damage. Now think of what mech have 90 points of armour at any hit location. A mech with about 14 DHS could do this. That's 10 tons of weight investment for heat sinks and guns.
12 Machine Guns with 1.2 DPS would have in that time dealt about 130 damage and consumed about 2 tons of ammo. So we're at 8 tons for ammo and guns. The entire time, the MG guy had to keep its target in its reticule. No single second could have been spent on torso twisting to evade damage (that would have costed 14.4 points of damage). IF the enemy moved too fast to track him the entire time with the reticule, damage would be reduced. If the enemy was that 6 medium laser guy,that enemy could have very well spent 25 % of his time showing the Machine Gun Boat his left side, 25 % of the time showing him the right side, and 50 % of the time showing him the front (25 % of the time are needed anyway merely to fire those lasers at the target, but I give it another 25 % of his time for aiming).

[Demos]

IMHO no (effective) range buff is needed for MG (maybe adjusting the maximum range along the lines of other ballistics), but definitely a damage buff. At least double damage.
So it would be weaker than the small laser, but not as nerfed as in the current state.

[Corwin Vickers]

Noobzorz, on 31 March 2013 - 07:43 AM, said:

I cannot agree with this. If you have the technology to have an 80 robot that moves like a human, you have the technologies to destroy it instantaneously from orbit (we're pretty close as it is; give us another 1000 years and we'll have it down pat). "Hey look, it's a mech lance in open ground. Ok, now it's a crater."

Because of the decay of technology over 300 years of fighting, by the Ares convention, jumpships are off limits to combat. The Innersphere did not have any warships until the Clans came.

Quote

The Succession Wars and subsequent decline into Lostech left no WarShips operative in the Inner Sphere.

The Ares convention also banned use of weapons of mass destruction.

http://www.sarna.net...Ares_Convention

Edited by Corwin Vickers, 02 April 2013 - 08:22 PM.