24 replies to this topic

[Sir Ratburger]

Im a big supporter of getting the machine gun upgraded in damage... they sound cool, look great, fit perfectly on small and medium mechs and just something I would really like to use more however something I cant because of the terribly low damage - I get my *** wupped out there and dont contribute anything to the team by using them... I may as well use small lasers that have infinite ammo and way more damage.

[Writer]

If Machine guns were worth their tonnage, you'd see more people slot them into their mech.

[Kmieciu]

Prophet OFC, on 02 April 2013 - 09:54 PM, said:

My bad, should've checked facts instead of going off my (bad) memory...20mm not .50

But still against even standard battlemech armor (which is a triple layer radiation treated steel, carbo-tanium diamond mesh thingy) your 20mm machine gun is like rapid fire spitwads.

In every machinegun thread, it's the same thing over and over again. "In the BattleTech universe, armor is ablative in nature. This means that it is generally destroyed or blown off when hit, but in the process of doing so, it absorbs enormous energies, protecting the unit it is mounted on." Neither Standard and Ferro-Fibrous armor have any damage threshold. That means that every weapon in the game has the ability to pierce it, given enough time.

But you are partially correct: a machinegun in MWO does not damage mechs outside 200 meter range. But it does full listed damage up to 90 meters. In comparison, a small laser does full damage up to 90 meters, and 0 damage outside 180 meters, even though the beam is much longer (visRange="1500").

To my knowledge, there is no weapon in real life with such ballistics. A .45 ACP fired from a pistol at 33 degree angle can travel 2000 yards (almost 2 km). A bullet that is equally effective up to 90 meters, and then the damage decreases linearly to 0 @ 200 meters is simply against the laws of physics. It would have to be a very light round traveling at immense speed, but the damage should max out at muzzle (0 meters) and drop linearly from there.

TL:DR - Real life comparisons are pointless. You either agree with the Battletech rule set, or you don't. According to core rules a machine gun inside it's effective range deals the same amount of damage to a battlemech per round as an AC2.

AC2 in Battletech was quite underpowered, but a single critical hit could destroy up to 3 items or blow off the whole limb (head).
MWO did a fine job making it somewhat usable, as a high heat - high DPS weapon. In TT the AC2 had 2 DPR 1 HPR compared to a medium laser: 5 DPR 3 HPR. So the medium laser could deliver 2.5x more damage during a round. In MWO AC2 has 4 DPS 2 HPS, and the Medium Laser has 1.25 DPS 1 HPS. So the AC2 has more DPS than 3 Medium Lasers, and it's still more heat eficient.

TL:DR - Battletech rules can be modified to better suit a multi-player FPS shooter. Nobody is complaining that the AC2 currently does 20 times more damage than in TT. (10x if you take double armor into account).

I'm not advocating that a Machinegun should have the same DPS as an AC2. Just make them worth their tonnage compared to the other popular weapons.

AC2 ammo = 150 damage per tonne
MG ammo = should be roughly the same.

DPS = start with 1.2 (15 rounds per second) and work from there.

Edited by Kmieciu, 02 April 2013 - 11:30 PM.

[Monky]

Armor in btech does have a threshold, but the MG is capable of damaging above this threshold. This is because it is a heavy duty machinegun like the GAU posted in an earlier pic. Simple infantry weapons are not generally enough to damage standard or ferro fibrous armor.

[stjobe]

Monky, on 02 April 2013 - 11:52 PM, said:

Armor in btech does have a threshold, but the MG is capable of damaging above this threshold. This is because it is a heavy duty machinegun like the GAU posted in an earlier pic. Simple infantry weapons are not generally enough to damage standard or ferro fibrous armor.

Good point. Allow me to expand on it:

There's plenty of weapons in BT that are simply unable to damage 'mech armour - the Light Rifle immediately springs to mind, since it's the descendant of modern-day tank main guns.

The MG does 2 damage to 'mechs in BT. The descendant of a modern-day tank main gun cannot damage a 'mech. Does anyone still believe that MGs in BT are .50 BMG weapons?

We're not talking about M2s, M61s, or even GAU-8s firing at 60 tons of modern-day tank armour. We're talking about half-ton, 'mech-scale, 'mech-mounted weaponry designed specifically to damage other 'mechs by ablating their inch-thick, ablative armour.

They do so by having a very high volume of fire; something that also makes them excel at killing infantry. But make no mistake, their main purpose is to do damage to 'mechs.