Bryan Ekman, on 08 April 2013 - 11:36 AM, said:
Ask the Devs #35
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.
Maxx Blue: What is the desired role for machine guns, and do you feel they are currently working as intended? In casual play I'm having a hard time determining if they are hurting the enemy in any meaningful way.
A: They are working as intended. They do not pose a real threat to a fully armored `Mech, however once damage, machine guns are deadly against internal components.
oldhasu: When ammo is destroyed by a critical hit, sometimes it explodes. Sometimes not. How does this calculated? What is the percentage of the probability?
A: There are two different times that ammo can explode. If an ammo bin is destroyed by a critical hit (each bin currently has 10 health), there is a 10% chance that the ammo remaining in that bin will explode. When a location, such as the right torso, is destroyed, each ammo bin in that location that had not already been destroyed by crit hits has an individual 10% chance to explode. There are two exceptions to this. The first is that, if you have ammo stored in your arm, and your arm falls off when your side torso is destroyed, there is no chance of the ammo exploding. The other is that Gauss Rifle ammo never explodes. However, all the explosion rules also apply to Gauss Rifles, except that they have a 90% chance of exploding.
I have a feeling that Bryan plays MWO on some other server than we do. I have never seen any 6 MG Spiders on public servers. Machine guns do not "tear up" internals. They damage internals at the same pathetic rate they damage armor. They do more damage to ITEMS (also known as CRITICALS) - they have , on average 5 DPS against ITEMS.
http://mwomercs.com/...-a-brief-guide/
But he also stated that destroying a LOCATION (bringing the internal HP to 0) destroys all the ITEMS inside. Imagine a battle between "6 MG Spider" and "6 SL Spider". Let's assume they don't have leg armor at all and both store some kind ammo inside.
This is the perfect scenario for a MG. Too bad 6 small laser have the potential to destroy an unarmored leg in ONE salvo (0.75 seconds). 18 damage against 14 internal HP. The mech is legged and there is a chance 2*10% that the ammo will explode and take the whole mech out.
The realistic scenario we see in game is even worse for machineguns. Light mechs always have fully armored legs, so the machineguns are useless while small lasers work in every scenario. A light mech using small lasers never suffers from ammo explosions, since it does not carry any ammo, while the MG mech is sitting on a powder keg.
With 10% ammo explosion rate, machineguns are only useful against Gauss rifle, that explodes 90% of the time. But since Gauss is so huge and fragile, a single hit from any weapon that deals 3+ damage has the potential to destroy it. To be precise the chance is between 24,5% (if you pad it with 1DHS and 2 ammo) to 42% (if it's a sole item in a location).
So, the chance to disable Gauss is higher than a chance for a UAC5 to jam. I don't know about you, but I prefer to disable Gauss rifles sitting comfortably 600 meters away from the enemy and not running like mad at 90 meters.
According to my stats I did 4007 damage with UAC5 in 773 hits. How come they did 5.18 damage per hit, when my machineguns did 77/2104 = 0.036 per hit ? That's because UAC5 are great at destroying items.
In fact, I did 105 damage in 7 ERPPC hits. That's exactly 15 damage per hit! I know the sample is too small but on average I dealt 10 damage to the armor\internal + 5 damage to the items per hit.
As for Gauss Rifle: 6,089 damage in 400 hits = 15,22 damage per hit. Even though I often use it outside the effective range. The bonus comes from item destruction.
My point is: if the Machine gun was efficient at destroying ITEMS, weapons stats would reflect it. If the average damage per hit is higher than the base damage of a weapon, it means the item damage makes up for the damage drop at range. In my case that is true for ERPPC, Gauss, UAC5
The average damage per hit for machine guns is lower than the base damage (0.036 < 0.04). That means the machine guns do a poor job at destroying items.
PS. I might be a "spreadsheet warrior", but I played 2 hours yesterday in a 8vs8 mode and I did not see a single machinegun on the battlefield. All I saw was Jenners with lasers, Cicadas with lasers and Ravens with Streaks and lasers.
Edited by Kmieciu, 11 April 2013 - 01:01 AM.
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