19 replies to this topic

[Orzorn]

Today's Ask the Devs answers had this to say on the subject of machine guns:

Quote

CCQ 3: Why is Machine Gun damage so low?
A: Partly due to the nature of how MGs work in the TT rules, partially due to how we chose to make it useful. When equipping a MG, keep in mind that it is not meant to burn through armor but is very useful for tearing up internals (crits). Bumping MG damage will turn it into a laser that can be kept on with no heat penalty until it runs out of ammo. Now imagine the devastating effect that a 6 MG spider could do to the back of an Atlas! We are still investigating balance of the MG but don’t expect any significant increase in damage.

First, let my start by refuting several things, and then we can move on to further issues.

You can not fit 6 machine guns on a spider. In fact, no mech in the game currently has the ballistic slots available to create such a build, with the exception of one Jagermech variant.

Second, machine guns are not like a no-heat laser, because they work exactly opposite of lasers. A laser has a burn time and a cooldown time. If a machine gun dealt the same exactly damage per second as a laser, the context is still wildly different. I would have to point my machine guns at the target the entire time and never miss to deal the same damage as the laser. The laser, on the other hand, need only point while it is being fired, in which while it is on cooldown the user can torso twist and perform other maneuvers that would upset the aim of a machine gun.

Machine guns, currently, have a spread as well. They also have ballistic flight times (I believe its 100 m/s?). All of these factors mean that even a machine gun with the same damage as a laser would very likely not be able to apply that damage as well as the laser could. It would spread, miss, have to stop firing to torso twist, and other such things.

Finally, the damage for machine guns is beyond abysmal. To take them in any capacity is to seriously hurt yourself, and you can not rely upon them in any way when they are your majority of weapons, such as on a Spider or Cicada.

I would ask the PGI devs to sit down with a Spider 5K built with machine guns and grind it to maximum experience, and do the same with a Cicada, and see what the experience is like. If PGI wants us to test by feel and not by spreadsheets, then the machine gun performs even worse than on paper, simply due to the way MWO plays. You don't have the luxury of sitting behind an Atlas for the 17.5 seconds it would take 4 machine guns to deal their damage, and keep in mind, this is with you never missing, the enemy never twisting away, and your shots managing to not spread to hit other parts of the mech.

Please PGI, you must realize that to make a weapon a good weapon, it must be a decent killing machine first, and have a gimmick second. A weapon without good damage and a gimmick is just that; a gimmick, and games are not won on gimmicks. The damage of machine guns is simply too low. Note that the damage of the machine guns was not even transfered over properly along with the other weapons. For instance, the small laser dealt 3 damage in the TT. It deals 3 damage now, but every 3 seconds, making its damage per 10 (one table top round) actually 3 times higher. Machine guns went from dealing 2 damage per 10 to dealing 4 damage per 10, only a two times increase. Additionally, they went from 200 damage per ton of ammo to only 80, further punishing them.

But as I said, if PGI is not interested in spreadsheet warrior online, then I ask them to actually pick up these mechs and play them. It takes literally seconds in a match to realize how poorly they play, how under-gunned they are, and how useless the machine gun as a weapons platform is, or even as a "crit seeking" weapon.

These mechs that rely on these systems will be underused or have to resort to strange builds (UAC/5 Spider) to get by, and mechs like the Hunchback 4G will continue to have underused hardpoints because they have no weapon worth placing in them (and even if they did, they'd only have 80 damage in one ton of machine gun ammo, and it takes 2 machine guns 100 seconds to do that. Keep in mind that 80 damage will not all be placed on one target, let alone actually even be placed on any target.

I urge PGI to reconsider their position on machine guns. Its very unhealthy for these mechs that rely upon them, whether as primary (Spider and Cicada) or secondary (Hunchback) weapons.

And when it comes down to it? Machine guns are not fun. If anything strikes a cord, that should be it.

Edited by Orzorn, 08 April 2013 - 04:00 PM.

[Deathlike]

Orzorn, on 08 April 2013 - 03:40 PM, said:

You can not fit 6 machine guns on a spider. In fact, no mech in the game currently has the ballistic slots available to create such a build.

The only exception is the Jagermech. There is one variant with 6 ballistic slots (no joke).

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

Also, 4 small lasers can be fired indefinitely if chained, and for something like 2 minutes if all fired at one time if you have 10 DHS (which are required to play anyway and don't cost you any crit space or weight as they are built into engine). I'm not considering SHS as they are useless in pretty much every situation with current heat mechanics.

[Orzorn]

Deathlike, on 08 April 2013 - 03:44 PM, said:

The only exception is the Jagermech. There is one variant with 6 ballistic slots (no joke).

Thank you, I have corrected that in the original post.

[Orzorn]

Krzysztof z Bagien, on 08 April 2013 - 03:59 PM, said:

Also, 4 small lasers can be fired indefinitely if chained, and for something like 2 minutes if all fired at one time if you have 10 DHS (which are required to play anyway and don't cost you any crit space or weight as they are built into engine). I'm not considering SHS as they are useless in pretty much every situation with current heat mechanics.

Yes, so no heat generation on machine guns in comparison to the similar tonnage small lasers which, in light on the DHS that we have now, means the small lasers are superior in basically every way. They are more accurate, you need to point them at the enemy less, they do more damage, and they require no ammo (as well, they don't have ammo that only provides a measly 80 damage per ton, not even enough to most any mech due when you count armor and internal health together).

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

That's ^^ my point. This whole "no heat, small laser-level damage balistic" crap is... well, crap. It wouldn't make ANY mech overpowered if MG were comparable to SL DPS-wise.
Either this, or we need a serious nerf for SL.

[Orzorn]

Krzysztof z Bagien, on 08 April 2013 - 04:11 PM, said:

That's ^^ my point. This whole "no heat, small laser-level damage balistic" crap is... well, crap. It wouldn't make ANY mech overpowered if MG were comparable to SL DPS-wise.
Either this, or we need a serious nerf for SL.

Heh, I think what we'd like to see is machine guns be the ballistic equivalent (at least so far as similarities in damage go, which would have its own downsides. As we already know, I'd have to keep my Mguns on target the entire time, whereas lasers would not be. In return, machine guns get better crit capabilities). They should be like that because there are mechs that rely upon them as primary or secondary weapons. I'd really like to be able to use those 2 extra ballistics in my Hunchback 4G, otherwise its just a worse 4H.

[LackofCertainty]

I've said before, and I'll say it again. The problem with the MG is that they combined the disadvantages of all three weapon types to make a perfect storm of garbage.

It has the spread disadvantage of Missiles.
It has the damage over time disadvantage of Lasers.
It has the projectile speed, ammo vulnerability, and weight disadvantage of AC's.

Even with all those negatives, I would still be willing to use it for the dakka-dakka, but they also decided to make it be a rapid-fire spitball launcher damage-wise.

I think the most annoying part of it is that it makes ballistic slots have so much less variety. It's easy to spare 2 tons for an SRM2 or 0.5 tons for a SL, but if you're left with a ballistic slot, the lightest legitimate option is the AC2 at 7+ tons. The only mech that I can find an argument for mounting an MG is the 5K spider, and even then, you're probably better off mounting a LPL or AC2 and pretending MG's don't exist.

Edited by LackofCertainty, 08 April 2013 - 05:03 PM.

[HarmAssassin]

Yet another QQ thread over MG's. MGs were not EVER designed to be primary weapons.

But let me humor you for just a minute. Let's say we do up the damage of MGs from .04 dmg per bullet (.4 dps) to .1dmg (1dps). You could put 4 of them on a mech, and since they don't generate heat, you could put your cursor on any medium, heavy, or assault mech and keep it on target until you've fired 10000 rounds of ammo doing 1000 dmg. Each bullet that hits after the exterior armor is gone has a chance to crit (where as a laser only has 1 chance per laser fired, each AC has one chance per round fired, but the MG has 10 chances every second).

It would break the game. You could use MGs to tear apart any mech. Put 4 of them on a light mech that can dance around the heavier mech, keeping its cursor on the heavy mech the entire time, and be guaranteed damage with no heat until the mech ran out of ammo or the enemy mech died.

Aim at the legs as you dance around the heavy mech, and you'll kill it VERY quickly (aim at torsos and you spread the damage across 8 hit locations as you circle, aim at the legs and you spread it over 2 locations). Once both those locations are destroyed the mech, ANY MECH, dies. After doing approx 260 dmg you will have destroyed the exterior and interior armor of both legs of ANY mech in the game.

Now get over it already. MGs are NOT primary weapons. They never have been. In the 30 years that this game has been played in one form or another, the MG has NEVER been a primary weapon!

Get over it!

Edited by HarmAssassin, 08 April 2013 - 05:17 PM.

[White Bear 84]

HarmAssassin, on 08 April 2013 - 05:12 PM, said:

Aim at the legs as you dance around the heavy mech, and you'll kill it VERY quickly (aim at torsos and you spread the damage across 8 hit locations as you circle, aim at the legs and you spread it over 2 locations). Once both those locations are destroyed the mech, ANY MECH, dies. After doing approx 260 dmg you will have destroyed the exterior and interior armor of both legs of ANY mech in the game.

Aiming at the legs is such fun.. ..works a treat on pesky ECM lights

Machine guns do work, plenty of times i have been crit or critted/crittered/critisized? Whatever, they are more for fun really and the extra random chance of blowing something up.. ..pretty good for 2 tonnes (gun + ammo)

Edited by White Bear 84, 08 April 2013 - 05:35 PM.

[Wildweasel1]

HarmAssassin, on 08 April 2013 - 05:12 PM, said:

Yet another QQ thread over MG's. MGs were not EVER designed to be primary weapons.

But let me humor you for just a minute. Let's say we do up the damage of MGs from .04 dmg per bullet (.4 dps) to .1dmg (1dps). You could put 4 of them on a mech, and since they don't generate heat, you could put your cursor on any medium, heavy, or assault mech and keep it on target until you've fired 10000 rounds of ammo doing 1000 dmg. Each bullet that hits after the exterior armor is gone has a chance to crit (where as a laser only has 1 chance per laser fired, each AC has one chance per round fired, but the MG has 10 chances every second).

It would break the game. You could use MGs to tear apart any mech. Put 4 of them on a light mech that can dance around the heavier mech, keeping its cursor on the heavy mech the entire time, and be guaranteed damage with no heat until the mech ran out of ammo or the enemy mech died.

Aim at the legs as you dance around the heavy mech, and you'll kill it VERY quickly (aim at torsos and you spread the damage across 8 hit locations as you circle, aim at the legs and you spread it over 2 locations). Once both those locations are destroyed the mech, ANY MECH, dies. After doing approx 260 dmg you will have destroyed the exterior and interior armor of both legs of ANY mech in the game.

Now get over it already. MGs are NOT primary weapons. They never have been. In the 30 years that this game has been played in one form or another, the MG has NEVER been a primary weapon!

Get over it!

Sooo... you're the authority here and we should all just shut up now that you have spoken? All that power must be a terrible burden on you. MG's are useless now and a bit of a buff to them will not "break" the game, They will never do the burst damage of dual AC20s. It would however make it a little more fun for people that want to use MG's effectively in a build. Sorry it does not mesh with your TT canon, Those are your issues and something we can not help you with.

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

HarmAssassin, on 08 April 2013 - 05:12 PM, said:

Yet another QQ thread over MG's. MGs were not EVER designed to be primary weapons.

But let me humor you for just a minute. Let's say we do up the damage of MGs from .04 dmg per bullet (.4 dps) to .1dmg (1dps). You could put 4 of them on a mech, and since they don't generate heat, you could put your cursor on any medium, heavy, or assault mech and keep it on target until you've fired 10000 rounds of ammo doing 1000 dmg. Each bullet that hits after the exterior armor is gone has a chance to crit (where as a laser only has 1 chance per laser fired, each AC has one chance per round fired, but the MG has 10 chances every second).

It would break the game. You could use MGs to tear apart any mech. Put 4 of them on a light mech that can dance around the heavier mech, keeping its cursor on the heavy mech the entire time, and be guaranteed damage with no heat until the mech ran out of ammo or the enemy mech died.

Aim at the legs as you dance around the heavy mech, and you'll kill it VERY quickly (aim at torsos and you spread the damage across 8 hit locations as you circle, aim at the legs and you spread it over 2 locations). Once both those locations are destroyed the mech, ANY MECH, dies. After doing approx 260 dmg you will have destroyed the exterior and interior armor of both legs of ANY mech in the game.

Now get over it already. MGs are NOT primary weapons. They never have been. In the 30 years that this game has been played in one form or another, the MG has NEVER been a primary weapon!

Get over it!

I've got a question for you, just answer "yes" or "no":
Do you think that small lasers are to powerfull for their weight and crit slots requirement?

[Orzorn]

HarmAssassin, on 08 April 2013 - 05:12 PM, said:

Aim at the legs as you dance around the heavy mech, and you'll kill it VERY quickly (aim at torsos and you spread the damage across 8 hit locations as you circle, aim at the legs and you spread it over 2 locations). Once both those locations are destroyed the mech, ANY MECH, dies. After doing approx 260 dmg you will have destroyed the exterior and interior armor of both legs of ANY mech in the game.

Doing 260 damage with current machine guns would require162.5 seconds of continuous, non-missing fire with 4 machine guns. It would also require over 3 tons of ammunition.

Quote

Now get over it already. MGs are NOT primary weapons. They never have been. In the 30 years that this game has been played in one form or another, the MG has NEVER been a primary weapon!

They absolutely were, and they already are. The Spider uses them as primary weapons, as does the Cicada. They dealt 2/3rds (66%) the damage of the small laser in the tabletop, yet in MWO they deal only 40% (per ten seconds, the same as the length of a round in the table top).

Machine guns were literally not translated over in a fair manner. If they were transfered over in a fair way, they would do 0.06 damage per round, allowing their damage per ten seconds to be the proper 66% of small lasers. They would also have had their proper 200 potential damage per ton, as opposed to the 80 we have right now. As it is, many weapons have MORE damage per ton than in the TT (Gauss went from 8 ammo per ton to 10, for instance). The machine gun lost damage per ton.

The truth is that machine guns were never even given a fair shake.

[Orzorn]

Wildweasel1, on 08 April 2013 - 05:38 PM, said:

Sorry it does not mesh with your TT canon

Its important to note that anyone claiming this is absolutely false. Machine guns dealt 2 damage, the same as an AC/2 (which is currently an acceptable, if somewhat below par, thanks to some fire rate issues, weapon). Additionally, machine guns were introduced into Battletech at a time where only mechs existed, meaning their purpose has alwas been as a low tonnage, low heat weapon that is completely capable of fighting mechs.

Regardless, I do not believe it is important to enter into such discussions. This is about MWO and about the machine gun in MWO. If a weapon is in MWO, it needs to be good in that context. The machine gun currently is not, for the reasons I said above. Most importantly, it is not fun, which I believe would be the ultimate goal of a game and of PGI.

[Targetloc]

PGI has some really weird ideas about heat, which is probably why they're afraid to make MG damage decent when it's a 0 heat weapon.

[Gman1211]

Easy solution to the whole heat situation is just make the machine-gun slowly generate heat while firing. Much like lasers or flamers do.

[Zordicron]

I am always amused at the zero heat arguments.
My triple UAC5 ilya basically runs with zero heat too.
my dual AC10 4x doesnt have enough heat to worry about either.

I just got done playing a session of MW3. MG do dmg in that game. They burn through a ton of ammo fast though too. They dont generate heat to speak of. They work.
Pretty much everything works in that game. Speaking of heat, know what generates a lot of heat in that game? Missiles. Fire two lrm20's off in group fire, it damn near shuts down your mech. The talk about het in MWO is laughable, the only thing that does any kind of heat is lasers and PPC. Other stuff may add up over time, but not fast enough you need to worry about it usually.

So instead of MG heat vs laser heat, why not try MG heat vs SRM 4 heat, or SSrm2 heat. Dmg/ton of ammo, DPS, range, you know, all that stuff you consider besides" will it crit that arm off if I shoot it for 12 seconds" because MG arent like lasers. they are like SRM, where you have to face your target longer, have to carry ammo, and have a puny effective range. Compare them to an AC2. Does 7 tons of MG and ammo equal the same DPS as an AC2? Does the heat of one AC2 enough to compensate for like 100x more range over those MG given the same 7 ton comparison?

[ICEFANG13]

Can anyone tell me why removing MGs is better than making them balanced and viable? No? Stop saying we should leave them alone because they worth on infantry.

We have some Frankenstein ECM of GECM AECM and Null Sig, we can have MGs that are good, if you want to split hairs we can start calling it the "Anti-Mech Small Ballistic" and you can stop saying its only good on infantry.

[MustrumRidcully]

Orzorn, on 08 April 2013 - 03:40 PM, said:

Today's Ask the Devs answers had this to say on the subject of machine guns:


First, let my start by refuting several things, and then we can move on to further issues.

You can not fit 6 machine guns on a spider. In fact, no mech in the game currently has the ballistic slots available to create such a build, with the exception of one Jagermech variant.

Second, machine guns are not like a no-heat laser, because they work exactly opposite of lasers. A laser has a burn time and a cooldown time. If a machine gun dealt the same exactly damage per second as a laser, the context is still wildly different. I would have to point my machine guns at the target the entire time and never miss to deal the same damage as the laser. The laser, on the other hand, need only point while it is being fired, in which while it is on cooldown the user can torso twist and perform other maneuvers that would upset the aim of a machine gun.

Machine guns, currently, have a spread as well. They also have ballistic flight times (I believe its 100 m/s?). All of these factors mean that even a machine gun with the same damage as a laser would very likely not be able to apply that damage as well as the laser could. It would spread, miss, have to stop firing to torso twist, and other such things.

Finally, the damage for machine guns is beyond abysmal. To take them in any capacity is to seriously hurt yourself, and you can not rely upon them in any way when they are your majority of weapons, such as on a Spider or Cicada.

I would ask the PGI devs to sit down with a Spider 5K built with machine guns and grind it to maximum experience, and do the same with a Cicada, and see what the experience is like. If PGI wants us to test by feel and not by spreadsheets, then the machine gun performs even worse than on paper, simply due to the way MWO plays. You don't have the luxury of sitting behind an Atlas for the 17.5 seconds it would take 4 machine guns to deal their damage, and keep in mind, this is with you never missing, the enemy never twisting away, and your shots managing to not spread to hit other parts of the mech.

Please PGI, you must realize that to make a weapon a good weapon, it must be a decent killing machine first, and have a gimmick second. A weapon without good damage and a gimmick is just that; a gimmick, and games are not won on gimmicks. The damage of machine guns is simply too low. Note that the damage of the machine guns was not even transfered over properly along with the other weapons. For instance, the small laser dealt 3 damage in the TT. It deals 3 damage now, but every 3 seconds, making its damage per 10 (one table top round) actually 3 times higher. Machine guns went from dealing 2 damage per 10 to dealing 4 damage per 10, only a two times increase. Additionally, they went from 200 damage per ton of ammo to only 80, further punishing them.

But as I said, if PGI is not interested in spreadsheet warrior online, then I ask them to actually pick up these mechs and play them. It takes literally seconds in a match to realize how poorly they play, how under-gunned they are, and how useless the machine gun as a weapons platform is, or even as a "crit seeking" weapon.

These mechs that rely on these systems will be underused or have to resort to strange builds (UAC/5 Spider) to get by, and mechs like the Hunchback 4G will continue to have underused hardpoints because they have no weapon worth placing in them (and even if they did, they'd only have 80 damage in one ton of machine gun ammo, and it takes 2 machine guns 100 seconds to do that. Keep in mind that 80 damage will not all be placed on one target, let alone actually even be placed on any target.

I urge PGI to reconsider their position on machine guns. Its very unhealthy for these mechs that rely upon them, whether as primary (Spider and Cicada) or secondary (Hunchback) weapons.

And when it comes down to it? Machine guns are not fun. If anything strikes a cord, that should be it.

You pretty much covered it all.

And maybe if every single thread on the front page of two forums is about Machine Guns, maybe the message will reach PGI? I dunno.

Maybe I should start a "Nerf Machine Guns" thread so that the community is "polarized", which is what PGI wants, right?

[Hayashi]

We have to consolidate all the threads on Machine Gun feedback because there's too many of them at present. Please continue here.