1386 replies to this topic

[Terror Teddy]

Tennex, on 10 April 2013 - 11:05 AM, said:

Reasons not to:

6 MG spiders.

So we should remove the DD Jagermech with X6 MG's and Twin ER PPC's because that one would be too OP in that case.

6MG spider OK since the 12 MG piranha mechs would be.

[AC]

This is right out of the Battletech discription for MG

"The Machine Gun is the quintessential anti-nfantry weapon, issuing a stream of bullets at a high rate of fire to cut down opposing soldiers, while still being effective at damaging BattleMechs. It should be noted that despite their enhanced effectiveness against infantry, BattleMech machine guns are perfectly capable of stripping the armor off any BattleMech."

Edited by AC, 10 April 2013 - 11:34 AM.

[HammerSwarm]

Runenstahl, on 10 April 2013 - 08:04 AM, said:

The Devs decided to make MG's a niche weapon. Instead of doing normal damage it's supposed to destroy the enemies components. And it works quite well at that.

I'm still undecided about it's usefulness however... MG's DID save my butt a few times by taking out weapons in damaged (but not destroyed) zones. But since engine/gyro/activator hits are missing in the game, the usefulness of critical hits IS somewhat limited.

Someone supposed testing an MG-buff for a few weeks. I think that would be a good idea. Or implement critical hits to non-weapon components... if MG's could quickly kill an engines once the armor is gone they would be fine as they are.

No. Nice trolling attempt. This is why your argument is incorrect: All other niche weapons have a use or comparable alternative. The Flamer is the same tonnage as a medium laser, flamers also heat mechs, The LBX-10 is roughly similar to the A/C 10, the LBX-10 is still a good weapon. Tell me exactly what the alternative for the machine gun is?

*crickets*

It's not just that machine guns are useless, but that they are the only option for so many mechs because the next lightest ballistics weapon weighs 6(7) tons. So if you are a light or medium mech and you have ballistics slots you're options are limited. (by limited I mean non existent)

[General Taskeen]

Tennex, on 10 April 2013 - 11:05 AM, said:

Reasons to buff the MG.

1. Light mechs need something for the ballistic slot.
2. MGs currently do 1/3 the damage of light lasers (which are already underutilized and rarely used effectively)
3. MGs have horrendous range.
4. MG damage is spread
5. Critical component only accounts for 1/3 of a mech's health and is a bad balancing mechanic.
6. By the time a MG begins to crit a component. a light laser already killed the enemy mech. DESTORYING ALL OF ITS COMPONENTS.
7. Speaking from a realism point, the MG weighs 1.5 tons. And is not the same machine gun we use today. This much heavier machine gun is used by mechs against mechs.
8. MG predated infantry and vehicles in Battletech
9. They deal 2 damage per turn vs. mechs in TT. That's the same as an AC2, with (a lot) less range. - Barghest Whelp
10. It currently takes 40s for a 6 MG jagermech to core an atlas from the back. It takes 12s for a 4ml jagermech.


Reasons not to:

6 MG spiders.
3 second jenners?

And

8.1 "...while still being effective at damaging BattleMechs."

[LethalMezzle]

Bryan Ekman, on 08 April 2013 - 11:36 AM, said:

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.

If you want to make the MG fill this role without making it a laser with no heat penalty - increase the damage the MG does against unarmoured components (i.e. internals), but keep the damage as it is against armoured components.

This means you can't just walk up behind someone with 6 MGs and shred their armour, but you can really hurt someone who has taken enough damage to have their armour compromised. It's such a simple fix I'm sure someone's thought of it before but honestly, I think this is the best way to do it.

[Pinselborste]

LethalMezzle, on 10 April 2013 - 11:54 AM, said:

If you want to make the MG fill this role without making it a laser with no heat penalty - increase the damage the MG does against unarmoured components (i.e. internals), but keep the damage as it is against armoured components.

This means you can't just walk up behind someone with 6 MGs and shred their armour, but you can really hurt someone who has taken enough damage to have their armour compromised. It's such a simple fix I'm sure someone's thought of it before but honestly, I think this is the best way to do it.

and it would still be useless, its the main weapon on some lights and meds so it should deal damage just like other weapons do, we need a light ballistic weapon thats usefull.

PGI could also use their Imagination and introduce new ballistic weapons to improve viability of light and meds that have lots of ballistic hardpoints.

majority of Players doesnt care for canon, they want a balanced and fun game that allows for multiple playstyles and not all light mechs have to carry streak and ecm to be viable.

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

Some more numbers, straight from training grounds (or is it testing? Can't remember that.)



Some explanation:
What you see here is time required to destroy component (and thus kill a mech), either head (fired directly from the front) or center torso (from the rear) at a given distance. To do it I used single small laser and quad machine gun (so we can think about it as a single MG with its damage output quadrupled). Values for small laser doesn't change with distance of course, as it is pinpoint weapon. For machine gun however we can see a difference beacuse damage is spread over more components.
Both my targets and I were stationary of course.
Question mark (?) indicates that center torso was destroyed before the head and value in [brackets] shows time to do that instead. Notice, that for Cicada it took less time from 89m than from 50m - it's because in the latter case head took more damage (more bullets hit the head) than in the first (spread was greater), thus that damage was effectively "wasted".

Conclusion: even buffing machine gun damage 4 times wouldn't make it more powerfull than small laser. Theoretical 6MG Spider would be able to kill stationary stock Atlas in about 10 seconds - just like Jenner with 6 SL can do now.

I think PGI should nerf the living **** out of the small lasers - they are so powerfull, scary and gamebreaking! /irony

Edit: I belive that aformentioned "6MG Spider" must be a cousin of almighty "3 seconds Jenner".

Edited by Krzysztof z Bagien, 10 April 2013 - 12:31 PM.

[WinnieTheWhor]

I simply feel that crit seeking doesn't do anything. Even after playing a JaggerMick with 6 machine guns and constantly firing on a mech with no external armor, I feel like machine guns REALLY do nothing. If they're intended to crit hard, why is it that 6 of them doesn't seem to do as much damage to INTERNAL armor than a single medium laser?

[AC]

https://static.mwomercs.com/forums/public/style_images/master/snapback.pngBryan Ekman, on 08 April 2013 - 02:36 PM, said:
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.



This kind of a response scares me because it is so fundamentally flawed....   A MG does 2/3rds the damage of a SL.  So a 6MG spider is equivalent to 4 getting shot up with 4 Small Lasers.  It also sprays its damage everywhere, so it is hard to concentrate damage.   It has no heat, but the penalty is ammo.  If you are concerned about MG being too op, reduce the ammo count per ton to balance it.

I feel like PGI is putting no thought or effort into balancing machine guns.   Just up the dang damage already.  I don't see 6 machine gun anything being scary.  Yeah, they don't have heat, but they will run out of ammo.   And they have to get so dang close your team mates should have no issue picking them apart.

So what gives PGI?   Do you really think a 4Small Laser spider is that broken????

Edited by AC, 10 April 2013 - 02:06 PM.

[Tagichatn]

6 small lasers are heat neutral with just the 10 heatsinks in the engine and the double heat sink upgrade. How is that not overpowered but 6 MGs would be? A spider can't even mount 6 MGs, just 4 and it's a terrible experience. MGs require you to be close and maintain aim on target for full dps. They're useless right now. I'd really love to see the winrate of mechs mounting MGs versus other weapons.

[RealityCheck]

I've had a thought to the future. When PGI introduces the Clans, won't machine guns become even more ineffective? All Clan technology has less crit slots, so they will be harder to strip...

So who wants to bring machine guns to a fight with the Clans

RealityCheck

[DemonRaziel]

RealityCheck, on 10 April 2013 - 01:44 PM, said:

I've had a thought to the future. When PGI introduces the Clans, won't machine guns become even more ineffective? All Clan technology has less crit slots, so they will be harder to strip...

So who wants to bring machine guns to a fight with the Clans

RealityCheck

But, but, but... Clan MGs only weigh 0.25t (or is it 0.3t?). Can you imagine how OP THAT is going to be?!

[Tennex]

it takes 6MGs 40seconds to kill an atlas in the back with MGs.

but lets put that into perspective. it takes 12 seconds for small lasers to kill the atlas in the same way

[AC]

It is just a lame excuse so PGI can do what they want. I am starting to get the impression Ego is playing a large role here.....

[Tennex]

AC, on 10 April 2013 - 02:08 PM, said:

It is just a lame excuse so PGI can do what they want. I am starting to get the impression Ego is playing a large role here.....

its clearly ego. because logic points to MG buff..

they're so proud of the work they did on multiplayer duke nukkem they think they know how to balance online games now

[AC]

Krzysztof z Bagien, on 10 April 2013 - 12:28 PM, said:

Some more numbers, straight from training grounds (or is it testing? Can't remember that.)

The truely frightening thing with this chart is that PGI was not able to figure this out for themselves.....

[Kurayami]

Fun thing with crits is they are 1st relatively rare 2nd spread across components. when actuators etc will be added into this mgs puny crit damage will be nonexistent. even now mg fired on ct with only engine inside in most cases (and by most i mean like 95%) will kill internal structure faster than engine itself - so how exactly this supposed to be helpful?

i know many of us had some moments when lucky crit destroyed weapon\ammo allowing to escape\kill opponent but think again - if instead of mg+ammo you had sl+heatsink, maybe you could have killed said opponent without going critical?

[LethalMezzle]

Pinselborste, on 10 April 2013 - 12:18 PM, said:

and it would still be useless, its the main weapon on some lights and meds so it should deal damage just like other weapons do, we need a light ballistic weapon thats usefull.

I think it would pretty useful.

Considering Light Mechs dart in and out of the fray, having a weapon suited to destroying internals very quickly would be pretty good - the heavier mechs distract the enemy and compromise their armour, and the Light Mechs can swoop in and quickly finish them off with Machine Gun fire.

I feel like this is the role the devs want for the MG but actually makes the MG have a place and be powerful. Currently you have to rely on the crit system which isn't that handy - destroying the section entirely is better.

Edited by LethalMezzle, 10 April 2013 - 05:08 PM.

[shintakie]

LethalMezzle, on 10 April 2013 - 05:07 PM, said:

I think it would pretty useful.

Considering Light Mechs dart in and out of the fray, having a weapon suited to destroying internals very quickly would be pretty good - the heavier mechs distract the enemy and compromise their armour, and the Light Mechs can swoop in and quickly finish them off with Machine Gun fire.

I feel like this is the role the devs want for the MG but actually makes the MG have a place and be powerful. Currently you have to rely on the crit system which isn't that handy - destroying the section entirely is better.

You'd need a pretty substantial buff to damage of the MG while hittin internals to make that viable. Extremely high to offset the pathetic damage the MG would do to armor.

It'd feel extremely gimmicky in that regard. One second you're fine, then you lose armor, then boom dead. No one would find that fun.

[General Taskeen]

CYBRN4CR, on 10 April 2013 - 05:15 PM, said:

So I propose the following ONE buff to MGs. Make any MGs that hit the internal structure of the HEAD have 90-100% chance to cause an instant head destruction with cause of death being pilot death.

Yeah.

Not going to happen.