1386 replies to this topic

[stjobe]

DonPablo94, on 01 August 2013 - 08:35 PM, said:

I can't believe my first post is about this

I'm sorry your first post had to be one that so spectacularly shot your own foot. In a word, you're dead wrong.

To just illustrate one of the ways in which you're spectacularly and impressively wrong, the damage value of a ton of MG ammo isn't 2 points, it's 400 points.

This old canard has been thoroughly disproved over and over again, so I suggest you put some more effort and research into your posts in the future.

One last thing: Appealing to the authority of having played BT since "the early 90's" isn't going to impress anyone around here; many of us have played since the game first came out in the mid-80's, and are still playing.

[DonPablo94]

I stand by my statement. MGs are basically 20mm gatling guns that likely fire at a rate of 10 rounds per second. So let's say a MG fires twice a round, or twice every ten seconds, to keep the barrels from overheating. That means each firing is worth 1 point of damage in game terms. Now you have to assume that the damage is spread out across a mech given their movements on the battlle field. That means your 10 rounds could spray from left torso to right arm. Even if we assume the use of HEI, HEAT, or APIS rounds (likely since the ammo explodes), it's not going to cause 1 point of damage on every piece of armor hit. It's going to make small holes and dents, and if lucky, a round might get through some weakness in the armor (critical).

So assuming armor points are more than likely a reflection of how likely some sub-component is to be damaged, and not that you have zero plating left when your AP hits zero, then the likelihood of a machine gun doing anything to a mech is ridiculously small until the armor starts looking like swiss cheese. So putting that into MW:O terms, programming the game to adjust damage likeliness based on current AP remaining seems unlikely. Instead, it's better to assume that MGs aren't going to do much damage against a mech and move on with life.

PS: I bought Battletech in the '80s as well.

[Warge]

2 dam for MGs and none crit bonuses!

[Amsro]

DonPablo94, on 02 August 2013 - 09:37 AM, said:

I stand by my statement. MGs are basically 20mm gatling guns that likely fire at a rate of 10 rounds per second. So let's say a MG fires twice a round, or twice every ten seconds, to keep the barrels from overheating. That means each firing is worth 1 point of damage in game terms. Now you have to assume that the damage is spread out across a mech given their movements on the battlle field. That means your 10 rounds could spray from left torso to right arm. Even if we assume the use of HEI, HEAT, or APIS rounds (likely since the ammo explodes), it's not going to cause 1 point of damage on every piece of armor hit. It's going to make small holes and dents, and if lucky, a round might get through some weakness in the armor (critical).

So assuming armor points are more than likely a reflection of how likely some sub-component is to be damaged, and not that you have zero plating left when your AP hits zero, then the likelihood of a machine gun doing anything to a mech is ridiculously small until the armor starts looking like swiss cheese. So putting that into MW:O terms, programming the game to adjust damage likeliness based on current AP remaining seems unlikely. Instead, it's better to assume that MGs aren't going to do much damage against a mech and move on with life.

PS: I bought Battletech in the '80s as well.

This is not a matter of "moving on with life" lol, welcome to the party.

Its supposed to be as effective as AC/2 with 90m range, no heat, must remain 100% constant on one location.

So basically a light needs to stay still behind the enemy to achieve this, while it's safer behind an enemy, his team mates may still have a great shot. (not a recommended tactic by the way!) unles your sure your enemy is alone.

Right now with hit detection at an all time low, lights seem to live forever. But once they are back to exploding easily you will see even more cries for a real light weapon.

Machine guns are relevant and useful in TT, I'm not sure where you're basing they should suck against armor crap, we're talking about a 1500 lb gatling gun /with ammunition !! Think a little bigger the GAU-8 Avenger 30mm @ 4200 rounds per minute. haha. So you picked the weapon to compare it to, how can you even argue with yourself? Its almost identical to the 20mm vulcan cannon (pretty much just changed the caliber).

"Another multi-barrel design well-known among aviation enthusiasts is the hydraulically-driven GAU-8 Avenger 30 mm cannon, carried on the A-10 Thunderbolt II (Warthog) attack aircraft, a heavily-armored close air-support aircraft. It is a seven-barreled cannon designed for tank-killing and is currently the largest bore multi-barrel weapon active in the U.S. arsenal, and heaviest autocannon ever mounted into an aircraft, outweighing the WW II German Bordkanone BK 7,5 75mm aircraft-mount, tank-killing single barrel autocannon by some 630 kg (1,389 lb), with ammunition."

I highlighted the important part. Quoted from here and here .

If it can take out tanks it can take out mechs. Its even a little lighter then whats in MechWarrior.

Face Palm

GG

Edited by Amsro, 02 August 2013 - 01:36 PM.

[Leafia Barrett]

DonPablo94, on 01 August 2013 - 08:35 PM, said:

Having played BattleTech since the original table-top game back in the early 90s, and MechWarrior since the first edition was released, I'd like to set the record straight on what MG's are actually used for - anti-personnel weapons. They aren't meant to take out mechs, or tanks, or star fighters. They are meant specifically to take out troops running around with an SRM2, bombs, or flamer on the battlefield. Same with flamers. They aren't really meant to do damage to a mech. They are meant to fry troops to a crisp and for troops to use overpower the heat sinks and cause a mech to shut down unexpectedly. That's why you see a lot of assault mechs loaded with them on rear-facing mounts - to take out those guys before they start climbing up your legs and attaching bombs.

I can't believe my first post is about this, and I can't believe I'm actually seeing this being discussed. It's a small caliber weapon. Sure, the rules state the MG does like 2 damage, but in reality that would be if you hit the exact spot with probably a ton of ammo. Now an actual round in BT is ~10s. A modern M2 Browning can fire 60 rounds in that time, and will do virtually no damage to a tank. So let's modernize things to 3050. Nope, still ain't doing anything to an armored vehicle except scratch the paint.

Each bullet from the MG is somewhere between half a pound to a pound, depending on if the entire bullet is fired or if it uses the standard cartridge type that we use today. The heaviest MG bullets used today weigh maybe half that. Don't even TRY to tell me that that wouldn't damage armor.
But let's put that aside and look at game balance instead, The fact is, there are no infantry in this game. If there were infantry to worry about, then you might have a point. But as it stands, the MG needs to have a different utility, lore be damned. If a weapon is useless in a competitive game, then it either needs to be made useful or be removed outright, and considering the next lightest ballistic is the AC/2 at 6 tons, it can't exactly just get removed, since it would make the lights with ballistic HPs completely pointless.

[General Taskeen]

Yet more delusional souls that believe the MG should be anti-infantry only, in a game where infantry does not exist.

I'm convinced people that played MW3 and MW4 got their feelers hurt when they got destroyed by better, more competitive, and balanced MG's and other such weapons/equipment that are crap in MWO (MG, Flamer, LB-X, NARC, etc.).

The MG and Flamers in their current iteration are more useless than Small Lasers. Epic Sad.

Edited by General Taskeen, 03 August 2013 - 08:20 AM.

[Utilyan]

DonPablo94, on 01 August 2013 - 08:35 PM, said:

Having played BattleTech since the original table-top game back in the early 90s, and MechWarrior since the first edition was released, I'd like to set the record straight on what MG's are actually used for - anti-personnel weapons. They aren't meant to take out mechs, or tanks, or star fighters. They are meant specifically to take out troops running around with an SRM2, bombs, or flamer on the battlefield. Same with flamers. They aren't really meant to do damage to a mech. They are meant to fry troops to a crisp and for troops to use overpower the heat sinks and cause a mech to shut down unexpectedly. That's why you see a lot of assault mechs loaded with them on rear-facing mounts - to take out those guys before they start climbing up your legs and attaching bombs.

I can't believe my first post is about this, and I can't believe I'm actually seeing this being discussed. It's a small caliber weapon. Sure, the rules state the MG does like 2 damage, but in reality that would be if you hit the exact spot with probably a ton of ammo. Now an actual round in BT is ~10s. A modern M2 Browning can fire 60 rounds in that time, and will do virtually no damage to a tank. So let's modernize things to 3050. Nope, still ain't doing anything to an armored vehicle except scratch the paint.

So there's my rant. I'd like to think the developers actually care about this game (from what I've read) and are trying to be as accurate as possible. That said, if you want a rapid-fire projectile weapon that will actually damage a mech and produce little heat, get an autocannon and stop hoping for some miracle (cheat) weapon.

I would LOVE to have a M2 50 caliber machine gun.

You got to understand the implications. Lets say your sweet highlander loses his CT armor.........That CT as a target is now an UNARMORED target.

Also with a M2 i'm not shooting at the effective range of 180m and max range of 240m........now im shooting at the effective range of 1,800m and the maximum range of 6,800.



In other words......if you gave us a WWII 50 caliber MG.......YOU'd be giving us a buff not a nerf.

Heres a 50 cal .....not a m2.

[DonPablo94]

It's a 20mm gatling gun, not a 30mm one like the one in the A-10. Also, the A-10 uses depleted uranium rounds. As those don't explode when shot, and given that fusion is used in the BT universe, not fission, I doubt those are the rounds used. Also, a DU round's 4" penetrator can go through an M-1 (in one side and out the other). These rounds don't do anywear near that amount of damage, so let's not compare this to the A-10's autocannon (which also weighs roughly half a mech's MG). Closest thing you can compare this to is the Phalanx system used for anti-missle defense on naval ships, and those have effective ranges of well over 1000m.

Moving on, this supposed 1/2lb (8oz) round includes slug, powder casing, and link (unless a linkless feed system is used). A typical 20mm round weighs about 10oz, and the slug is 3.5oz. Given the round has an effective range of 90m (compared to the avg 2000m), that tells me the powder charge won't produce the muzzle velocity needed for typical armor peircing rounds and that the slug itself is heavier (maybe 5-6oz) with a low grain count. It's a slow, heavy round meant to put a big dent in things, not necessarily pierce it, so it's not going to do a lot of damage to armor. It would take a continuous stream of rounds to a single point to remove enough metal to actually hit the critical infrastructure beneath it. Probably the main use of a MG in mech-to-mech combat would be to eliminate whatever coating is put on the armor that reduces damage from energy weapons, or scratch it up enough to make hits from energy weapons more effective.

Anyway, this is a game and due to that there has to be some suspension of reality, but the thing is these are not powerful weapons meant to take out armor.

PS: That video posted showed how a .50 caliber machine gun can use a whole belt of ammo and barely take down a reinforced concrete wall. And that's all I really care to say on the subject. I'd discuss it more in-depth, but I think at this point we can agree to disagree.

[Utilyan]

The point I was trying to make was not a disagreement on the ineffectiveness vs armor.

I'd think it would be cool if mg were more complete crap vs armor.....thats VS ARMOR.

I'm just saying if your armor is gone from other weapon.......your mech shot at by a MG its gonna get cut in half like that tree. And it will do that a the longer 2000m distances.

That means hey your mech just got a bad ppc alpha that knocked out your right torso armor......he peeks over the edge and someone with a MG 2000m aways....gots dibs on that piece, because he is shooting an unarmored target.

You might be familiar with other games like BF3 for example...... If im on a heavy machine gun like on a jeep that has a 50 cal kinda like the video.........I can shoot at a tank all day and it does nothing.......but if I can blow up helicopters, other jeeps ect. So if a particular piece of your mech has lost its armor and now on internals......The rules should now come into play that this particular piece is now an unarmored target.

Like if your mech lost its arm armor.......you get shot in CT.....it goes plink plink plink nothing right?......but once the stream of bullets reaches the arm without armor....Like that tree....it is gone.

So if a mech loses that plating then now it should be at the mercy of machine guns. I hope that makes sense.

[Amsro]

DonPablo94, on 04 August 2013 - 07:08 PM, said:

It's a 20mm gatling gun, not a 30mm one like the one in the A-10. Also, the A-10 uses depleted uranium rounds. As those don't explode when shot, and given that fusion is used in the BT universe, not fission, I doubt those are the rounds used. Also, a DU round's 4" penetrator can go through an M-1 (in one side and out the other). These rounds don't do anywear near that amount of damage, so let's not compare this to the A-10's autocannon (which also weighs roughly half a mech's MG). Closest thing you can compare this to is the Phalanx system used for anti-missle defense on naval ships, and those have effective ranges of well over 1000m.

Moving on, this supposed 1/2lb (8oz) round includes slug, powder casing, and link (unless a linkless feed system is used). A typical 20mm round weighs about 10oz, and the slug is 3.5oz. Given the round has an effective range of 90m (compared to the avg 2000m), that tells me the powder charge won't produce the muzzle velocity needed for typical armor peircing rounds and that the slug itself is heavier (maybe 5-6oz) with a low grain count. It's a slow, heavy round meant to put a big dent in things, not necessarily pierce it, so it's not going to do a lot of damage to armor. It would take a continuous stream of rounds to a single point to remove enough metal to actually hit the critical infrastructure beneath it. Probably the main use of a MG in mech-to-mech combat would be to eliminate whatever coating is put on the armor that reduces damage from energy weapons, or scratch it up enough to make hits from energy weapons more effective.

Anyway, this is a game and due to that there has to be some suspension of reality, but the thing is these are not powerful weapons meant to take out armor.

PS: That video posted showed how a .50 caliber machine gun can use a whole belt of ammo and barely take down a reinforced concrete wall. And that's all I really care to say on the subject. I'd discuss it more in-depth, but I think at this point we can agree to disagree.

20mm 30mm, I don't care on barrel size, machine gun ammo is 2000 per ton. That is a one pound bullet not half!!.

You can forget all about range logic as well, there isn't one weapon in this game that makes sense range wise.

The main fallacy of this weapon is the name, call it AC/1, call it Mini AC/2. Simple fact is its an autocannon that has been reduced to junk. Hit scan, cone of fire, useless crit system. Piece of junk based on a name.

You mention suspending logic, then state how the weapons that you have included in your post do not do armor damage therefore machine guns shouldn't.

Let this game have a light ballistic, why must it be garbage, should it really be far worse then a small laser?

[stjobe]

DonPablo94, on 04 August 2013 - 07:08 PM, said:

bla bla bla

Here's a hint for you: 'Mechs have ablative armour, modern tanks don't. In fact, the only thing we have that comes close to ablative armour is the heat-shied on certain spacecraft, that protects them during re-entry.

The game is set 1,000 years in the future (well, 1,037 if you want to be pedantic); our current Main Battle Tank guns have during that time evolved into Rifles, who have in turn evolved into Autocannons. Why would the MG be using 1,000-years old tech?

Ask yourself this: How many 10th century weapons are still in use on our current battlefields? (Hint: Slings and arrows, swords and axes - although the Chinese did invent the Fire Arrow) Why would the armies of the 31st century use 20th- or 21st-century tech?

So please, please, please stop trying to tell us (in excruciating detail) that the 1000-years in the future MG is just like a contemporary machine gun. It is not.

Edited by stjobe, 05 August 2013 - 02:04 PM.

[Booran]

well I just made my first confirmed MG kill, think it was Victor or an Atlas. In my Raven, with only one MG.

[Wintersdark]

Since the heat scale changes, I decided I'd mock the whole "No 2xAC20" thing that has been proclaimed as a holy grail of balance, by replacing one AC20 with a pair of PPC's on my JM6-DD(Look mah! No more "boating"! Still a 40pt pinpoint alpha though). This left some free tonnage and space, so I superglued on 3xMG for lols.

Yes, I've got kills with them. But they're kills because I've stripped armor and most of the internals with other weapons, then used the MG's to kill otherwise helpless targets. Still, three are doing fairly laughable damage, which is sad given it's 2.5 tons and 4 slots invested. I'd do more damage with another heatsink and more ammo for the '20.

[stjobe]

Well, MGs just got useful.

Made a drop in my SDR-5K (LL+4MG), and used the LL to strip armour and then only fired the MGs (alternatively I just didn't fire the LL if the target already had exposed internal sections). I made very sure not to fire the LL on any target with exposed internals.

I got three kills.

[Leafia Barrett]

stjobe, on 06 August 2013 - 02:48 PM, said:

Well, MGs just got useful.

Made a drop in my SDR-5K (LL+4MG), and used the LL to strip armour and then only fired the MGs (alternatively I just didn't fire the LL if the target already had exposed internal sections). I made very sure not to fire the LL on any target with exposed internals.

I got three kills.

Great, you got a single good run. Go give it another 20 matches and see if you keep having the same luck.

[James Warren]

You know, I don't care what machineguns do in real life. I don't care what they do in the battletech tabletop.

In this context, a game where some mechs are too light to carry multiple ballistic weapons larger than a machinegun yet inexplicably have multiple ballistic hardpoints, machineguns need to be useful. Otherwise you just have game elements that have no place in a polished and balanced game.

Since there are no infantry and likely never will be, machinguns need to do damage, or at least do something, worth the cost of taking them. Otherwise we have a number of mech variants that are extremely limited as to what they can do.

I tried playing a machinegun spider for the first time since the MG buff, and its still not coming close to the other spider variants as far as damage output. The crit-seeking feature is a nice idea, but in practice it doesn't work anywhere near reliably enough to justify such poor damage potential. I'd suggest perks for light mechs with a high number of ballistic slots to slightly increase rate of fire or damage of machineguns.

[stjobe]

Leafia Barrett, on 06 August 2013 - 05:30 PM, said:

Great, you got a single good run. Go give it another 20 matches and see if you keep having the same luck.

I don't think you understand. I've played lights since August 2012, I have well over 1,000 drops in Commandos (having mastered all five variants) at last count. I've mastered the SDR-5D, but couldn't be bothered to take the 5V or 5K beyond basic since they are so woefully ineffective at actually harming the enemy. I had only 6 kills in my 5K in about 40 matches taking it through basic. I've taken it out for a few drops after every patch that affected the MG to see if the MG was finally made useful.

Prior to yesterday, that wasn't the case. But after yesterday's patch and using the method I described above (i.e. use the LL to strip armour, then fire *only* the MGs), I realized MGs actually do kill 'mechs now. Three of them in one drop, in fact.

It wasn't "a single good run". It was a planned and carefully executed experiment by an experienced Light and Spider pilot (that incidentally has been campaigning for a useful MG since closed beta).

Could the MG become even more useful? Perhaps even useful in pairs? Sure, it could and it probably should. But as of yesterday, they're no longer a waste of tonnage for a ballistic Light like the SDR-5K.

[Pinselborste]

the fact that they only work fine against internals now, but still not armor still means that they are wasted space.

especially since any other weapon also is better against internalls cause of the crit damage bonus that now applies.

[Amsro]

stjobe, on 07 August 2013 - 06:05 AM, said:

They're no longer a waste of tonnage for a ballistic Light like the SDR-5K.

I'll take your work for it and try a batch of matches in the SDR-5K, I'm hoping to be OP now .

[stjobe]

Amsro, on 07 August 2013 - 06:52 AM, said:

I'll take your work for it and try a batch of matches in the SDR-5K, I'm hoping to be OP now .

Oh, don't twist my words that way

They're not OP, they're just not completely useless any more. In 4's and 6's, they are actually rather good at killing stuff.

Pinselborste, on 07 August 2013 - 06:16 AM, said:

the fact that they only work fine against internals now, but still not armor still means that they are wasted space.

No, they really are useful for e.g. the SDR-5K with its four ballistic slots. Prior to yesterday, those slots were indeed wasted space. But with yesterday's patch, it's actually possible to reliably kill 'mechs with those MGs - and not by some random lucky shot, but by actually using them as weaponry. That was what my little experiment was designed to test, and the results support the hypothesis.

Pinselborste, on 07 August 2013 - 06:16 AM, said:

especially since any other weapon also is better against internalls cause of the crit damage bonus that now applies.

This will always be the case, an AC/10 that crits will always destroy a component outright (and now also deal 1.5 to 3.5 extra IS damage).

But we're talking MGs here, the lightest of the ballistic weapons - and it has a crit damage bonus that means the new internal structure damage will be proportionally larger. Remember, it's 15% of crit damage, not 15% of regular damage. In the case of the MG, that means that the internal structure damage will be higher than the regular damage by far:

No crit (39%): 0.1 damage to IS
Single crit (25% + 11%): 0.1 + 0.1875 damage to IS (and 1.25 to component)
Double crit(14% + 6%): 0.2 + 0.375 damage to IS (and 2.5 to component)
Triple crit (3% + 2%): 0.3 + 0.525 damage to IS (and 3.75 to component)

If you do the math, this means that a single 1.0 DPS MG does roughly 3 DPS (2.9875) against a breached target's internal structure, and over 11 DPS (11.36) to its internal components! (Although spread and general accuracy will do its part to lower those numbers by approximately 25% to 50%, that's still a LOT of DPS).

Let me repeat those numbers: The current MG does 1 DPS to armour, 3 DPS to internal structure, and 11 DPS to internal components. That's not bad. At all. And that's a single MG. Now put four of them on a nimble 'mech like the SDR-5K, and you'll be doing 12 DPS to that internal structure.

Yes, you need something (or someone) to breach the armour, but when you do...

Try it, you might like it.

Edited by stjobe, 07 August 2013 - 07:50 AM.