1386 replies to this topic

[Deathlike]

Well, here's another anecdote.

Just played a match recently @ Frozen City (or was it Night) and there was an Atlas D-DC and a Spider-5k (4 MGs+1med laser).

I had some commando buddy and perhaps one other mech going after the ECM Atlas (I was in a Jenner-K) and pretty much ignored the MG spider while trashing the ECM atlas (who was struggling to shoot us).

Suffice it to say, the Spider was killed off later, and I didn't feel threatened at all, during that confrontation.

[ICEFANG13]

Krzysztof z Bagien, on 11 April 2013 - 02:06 PM, said:

One more chart.

Compared single machine gun to single small laser. Time shown above is average time required to destroy a weapon in given component for selected mechs. This does not include time to strip armour from component! Stock mechs are used as targets, in most cases they only have one weapon in any given location. Notice that for weapons located in center torso time to destroy by MG fire is significantly longer (because engine takes most of critical hits that currently have no effect on engines, actuators etc.). Time to destroy component is shown for reference - for SL it is often equal to the time reqired to destroy a weapon, that means that weapon wasn't succesfully crited before component destruction. Notice that for light mech time required to destroy component by SL is shorter than time to destroy a weapon in this component using MG.

As mentioned above - this chart shows values for components with already removed armour and does not show time needed to do so. Just for comparition: you need about 44 seconds to strip armour from stock Commando's center torso front using single MG. Small laser can do it in about 14 seconds. In general - max armour value on any component is two times greater than that component HP, so we can safely assume that time to remove armour from component would be two times higher than time required to destroy it listed above (Eg: Atlas' arm with full armour - MG would need roughly 178s of constant fire to strip armour, and than 11 seconds more to destroy ML located there, so total time would be about 189s [over 3 minutes! not to mention that it would take more than one ton of MG ammo]. Single small laser would destroy that arm in about 75s - almost three times faster!)
On a side note: in training grounds MG fire rate is slightly lower than 9 shots per second (not 10 as officialy stated). Some guys tested it in live game and it is even lower there. That reduces MG usefullness even further.

So you're saying for people to shut the heck up about crititng internals?

Thanks for the research

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

ICEFANG13, on 11 April 2013 - 02:35 PM, said:

So you're saying for people to shut the heck up about crititng internals?

Thanks for the research

Seems that I have to much time
And yes, just kill'em already!

Edited by Krzysztof z Bagien, 11 April 2013 - 02:55 PM.

[Falconic]

Triple the damage, triple the weight, same slot space, call it MG array. DONE

[Pinselborste]

Falconic, on 11 April 2013 - 02:58 PM, said:

Triple the damage, same slot space, call it MG. DONE

fixed it for you

[Team Leader]

Krzysztof z Bagien, on 11 April 2013 - 02:06 PM, said:

One more chart.

Compared single machine gun to single small laser. Time shown above is average time required to destroy a weapon in given component for selected mechs. This does not include time to strip armour from component! Stock mechs are used as targets, in most cases they only have one weapon in any given location. Notice that for weapons located in center torso time to destroy by MG fire is significantly longer (because engine takes most of critical hits that currently have no effect on engines, actuators etc.). Time to destroy component is shown for reference - for SL it is often equal to the time reqired to destroy a weapon, that means that weapon wasn't succesfully crited before component destruction. Notice that for light mech time required to destroy component by SL is shorter than time to destroy a weapon in this component using MG.

As mentioned above - this chart shows values for components with already removed armour and does not show time needed to do so. Just for comparition: you need about 44 seconds to strip armour from stock Commando's center torso front using single MG. Small laser can do it in about 14 seconds. In general - max armour value on any component is two times greater than that component HP, so we can safely assume that time to remove armour from component would be two times higher than time required to destroy it listed above (Eg: Atlas' arm with full armour - MG would need roughly 178s of constant fire to strip armour, and than 11 seconds more to destroy ML located there, so total time would be about 189s [over 3 minutes! not to mention that it would take more than one ton of MG ammo]. Single small laser would destroy that arm in about 75s - almost three times faster!)
On a side note: in training grounds MG fire rate is slightly lower than 9 shots per second (not 10 as officialy stated). Some guys tested it in live game and it is even lower there. That reduces MG usefullness even further.

Nice! MGs need a buff. Surely. Get on this PGI.

[LackofCertainty]

@Kmeiciu

If you go back to my original post, you'll see that I want MG accuracy increased so that it can effectively target out to 90m. Additionally, I want it to have ballistic falloff instead of energy falloff, so it'd do damage out to 270m instead of 180m.

Giving it 4 DPS would be a terrible idea, because it would mean that it would be an assault slayer weapon. A spider packing 4 of those could easily slide up to an atlas, and deal the full 16 dps without issue. Meanwhile it would continue to be relatively ineffective against anything speedy, and relatively useless for anything slow. Not really a fixed weapon, just borked in a different way.

With range and accuracy increases (coupled with a reasonable damage buff) it could become a different but equal competitor to the SL.

Also, ammo per ton on MG's is so ridiculous that you can barely count it against MG's currently. 1 ton of ammo services 2-3 MG's easily.

@HammerSwarm

I also want a light ballistic weapon with reasonable power, but I don't want a weapon that absolutely shreds anything at close range. At 4 DPS a single MG would pump out damage similar to an LB10X, except at 10.5 less tons, 5 less crit slots, and no heat. (granted it'd have shorter range, but with the spread on the LB10X it isn't effective past 300m anyway)

As I said above, a 4 DPS MG would absolutely ruin the game for any slow mech. (particularly assaults) Any fast mech touting stacked mg's would destroy slow mechs so quickly, and MG's are light enough that they wouldn't even have to cripple their build to accomodate them. (2 tons for 8 dps that generates no heat? Eff yeah!)

[General Taskeen]

Falconic, on 11 April 2013 - 02:58 PM, said:

Triple the damage, triple the weight, same slot space, call it MG array. DONE

Unfortunately that's not going to happen at this time. An MG Array I would imagine would be added later with the addition of LMG's and HMG's. An HMG does the same damage as a Small Laser. (LMG 1 Damage, MG 2 Damage, HMG 3 Damage)

They added MG's due to stock record sheet variants put into the game. If they change the basic MG at all (crit/weight), it invalidates a record sheet and build rules put into the game.

The only way to balance any weapon in the game is damage, heat, cool downs, ammo, etc. In the MG's case, it needs a straight up damage boost, like a lot. The MG in this game is pitiful in comparison to MW3's, where just 2 MG's with 200 Ammo can do decent damage. A base Shadow Cat, for instance, has 18 points of armor on the leg in that game (MW3 used TT Armor Values), which can be destroyed completely in about 12 seconds on a stationary target (I was missing when the AI moved on the video below).



THAT is what people want for an effective, damaging Machine Gun, balanced by MWO hardpoints, low ammunition, and short range without changing any fundamental mechanics. If it has to be balanced by cooldown, which is what the Mech Warrior 3 devs did, then so can the MWO Devs.

And again the MW3 MG stats are:

.2 Damage (in bursts, potential of .8 Damage per shot)
.625 Cool Down
200 Ammo Per Ton

Since MWO has double armor, and is affected by latency, they could go with

.8 Damage Per Bullet
.325 Cool Down
200 Ammo Per Ton

(or a combination of tweaking any of those)

[Wildstreak]

I see no reason for buffing the MG other than personal bias.
This is not MW3 and clearly MW3 did the MG wrong.

[Deathlike]

You know what would be a good demo?

Have a Hunchback-4P with 6 meds in the RT and 2 DHS. That's 80HP of stuff right there. I wonder how long it would take to strip the weapons with the 4 MG Spider vs something like the 4 SL Light mech (any Jenner could do this). This would require people wanting to do this test with the same builds.

This is impractical, but we need some projected #s and real numbers. Of course all numbers assume that the MG hits the RT as much as it can....

I wonder what is the average amount of HP is in a torso section (I'm thinking like 20-40HP) that would be better for an MG than it would be for SL... because I get the strong feeling that the SL is still going to do a significantly better job.

Edited by Deathlike, 11 April 2013 - 04:40 PM.

[Xelah]

So, I've been staying off this topic for about two days now. I was wondering if it was just my rabble rousing abilities the other night that got all threads on this subject locked or if people really felt this way. In the two days of me not posting, this thread gathered many new replies and some of them are pretty level headed and contain actual replicatable results on the uselessness of MG's.

I eagerly await whatever "official response" we are given.

[Das Wudone]

i think ppl are just underestimating what mgs are capable of right now. with 4 mgs on my spider it takes roughly 30-40 sec to strip armor off an underarmored CT of the commando in testing grounds. now we can all say at this point it does crappy damage to armored mechs. however, if the mech has no armor, my 4 mgs aimed at any component with 10 hp is destroyed within 3 sec. the ac20 on the atlas has around 18 hp and gets blown off a bit over 3 sec. imagine what that can do if u gave it a 200% boost against ammo bins and gauss rifles. and again this is all tested in the testing grounds. so in a real battle while on the move it may take a bit more than that but essentially anything without armor is screwed when facing a mg boating mech. in fact internal structure takes a beating too out of mgs. i have legged countless ravens with mgs when their leg armor is gone.

now if u compare it to other weapons that deal considerably and exponentially more damage u would think its better to just blow off that part of the mech rather than strip it with mgs. i would half agree on that if ur a really good shot with heavier weapons but if ur like say a mech that cant mount that much firepower then mgs would be a good weapon for humiliating, stripping and crippling internals.

[ICEFANG13]

Das Wudone, on 11 April 2013 - 06:07 PM, said:

i think ppl are just underestimating what mgs are capable of right now. with 4 mgs on my spider it takes roughly 30-40 sec to strip armor off an underarmored CT of the commando in testing grounds. now we can all say at this point it does crappy damage to armored mechs. however, if the mech has no armor, my 4 mgs aimed at any component with 10 hp is destroyed within 3 sec. the ac20 on the atlas has around 18 hp and gets blown off a bit over 3 sec. imagine what that can do if u gave it a 200% boost against ammo bins and gauss rifles. and again this is all tested in the testing grounds. so in a real battle while on the move it may take a bit more than that but essentially anything without armor is screwed when facing a mg boating mech. in fact internal structure takes a beating too out of mgs. i have legged countless ravens with mgs when their leg armor is gone.

now if u compare it to other weapons that deal considerably and exponentially more damage u would think its better to just blow off that part of the mech rather than strip it with mgs. i would half agree on that if ur a really good shot with heavier weapons but if ur like say a mech that cant mount that much firepower then mgs would be a good weapon for humiliating, stripping and crippling internals.

This was just shown as untrue, even in ideal situations its no good at all.

[Xelah]

Das Wudone, on 11 April 2013 - 06:07 PM, said:

i think ppl are just underestimating what mgs are capable of right now. with 4 mgs on my spider it takes roughly 30-40 sec to strip armor off an underarmored CT of the commando in testing grounds. now we can all say at this point it does crappy damage to armored mechs. however, if the mech has no armor, my 4 mgs aimed at any component with 10 hp is destroyed within 3 sec. the ac20 on the atlas has around 18 hp and gets blown off a bit over 3 sec. imagine what that can do if u gave it a 200% boost against ammo bins and gauss rifles. and again this is all tested in the testing grounds. so in a real battle while on the move it may take a bit more than that but essentially anything without armor is screwed when facing a mg boating mech. in fact internal structure takes a beating too out of mgs. i have legged countless ravens with mgs when their leg armor is gone.

now if u compare it to other weapons that deal considerably and exponentially more damage u would think its better to just blow off that part of the mech rather than strip it with mgs. i would half agree on that if ur a really good shot with heavier weapons but if ur like say a mech that cant mount that much firepower then mgs would be a good weapon for humiliating, stripping and crippling internals.

We tested that already. A SL is still faster at taking out the components on an unarmored limb. Not to mention if firing at a side torso, it takes the attached limb off also. We have numbers to back this up. Scroll up. Look at the big chart posted by Krzysztof z Bagie.

Stop listening to the stuff PGI is spoon feeding you and test this out for yourself if you don't believe us.

[shintakie]

Merchant, on 11 April 2013 - 04:38 PM, said:

I see no reason for buffing the MG other than personal bias.
This is not MW3 and clearly MW3 did the MG wrong.

You mean other than the fact that there are currently 3 mech variants that absolutely need MG's to be viable in order to do any sort of meaningful damage without ignorin their ballistic slots completely isn't a good reason to buff them? How about a fourth variant added on top of that when the Flea gets released.

Face it. MG's need to be viable to give a reason for ballistic light mechs (and my beautiful Cicada) to exist.

[Eddrick]

No new details yet. But, I think I may have stumbeled across a ray of hole.

Bryan Ekman, on 08 February 2013 - 11:55 AM, said:

Artgathan - Is there a chance of seeing 'manufacturer-specific' weapons (meaning that weapons would have variants that are slightly different from each other, such as longer range or faster reload, for example)?
A: Possibly, we have a design for it.

I am asking for an update on this in the new "Ask the Devs".

[Critical Fumble]

In a recent thread about changing the devs about the statement, "Working as intended", I commented that you can't necessarily persuade them to change it by proving it is pathetic. This is because they may very well intend for it to be pathetic. It may be that they think that because its 1/12^th the weight of an AC/2, it should only be 1/12^th as effective. The only persuasive argument at that point is that it adversely effects the game.

In that theme, the first thing that comes to mind is that it breaks the fairness of their hardpoint system. Cicadas (sorry, I play a lot of Cicada, its what I know best) have 5-6 hardpoints as a baseline. The X-2 has 4E, 2M and the CDA-2A has 6E; all torso mounted. The CDA-2B has 5E, as near as I can tell it has one fewer for the privilege of having some in the arms. The CDA-3M has 4E, 1B, which theoretically compensates for having ECM, but it was also tuned down when they added in its "quirks". Then there's the CDA-3C with 1E, 4B. I've heard of people mounting dual AC/20s or quad AC/2s, but then I also hear that armadillos think its a good idea to cross busy roads.

Thinking about what that means in terms of their hardpoint design, I come to the conclusion that not all hardpoints are equal on all designs. In other words, you can't add up the total number on a variant, compare it to its fellows and say, "balanced". The value of the hardpoint has a lot to do with what you can reasonably mount there. Like the K2, you can mount gauss or AC/20s in the side torso hardpoints, so the value of those is equal to those weapons. Meanwhile, you can only reasonably mount one "good" ballistic in something the weight of a Cicada, so the first hardpoint has the value of one of those, but the others have the value of machine guns. If its true that one MG is roughly equal to 1/12^th of one AC/2 - or being generous, 1/6^th - then the 3C only has 2.5 hardpoints. (1E + 1B + 3MG, 1MG=1/6B, 1E + 1B + 0.5B = 2.5) Some other variants are effected by this as well.

They don't HAVE to make the MG a passable damage weapon; but if they want to make their hardpoint system fair, they need to either make the MG reasonable, add in a decent light ballistic, or adjust the hardpoint count on mechs to reflect the reduced value of multiple ballistic hardpoints on some variants.

[Skyfaller]

Look, its very simple:

MWO uses 3x the ROF of TT and double the armor than TT as a means to adapt to real-time first person combat.

All weapons were given 3x ROF.... except the machine guns. They retain the original ROF.

Thus the MGs we have now are severely under-performing.

They either need to up the refire rate (could run into game engine tracking problems)

or increase the damage threefold (which could make it OP)

or just increase their range to 1km and let us make use of the massive ammo load plus refire rate from long range. 90m with 1/3rd of what it should be doing is the worst possible scenario.

This crit-seeking absurdity is useless when non-MG weapons just slices the mech part clean off.. components and all.

[General Taskeen]

Merchant, on 11 April 2013 - 04:38 PM, said:

I see no reason for buffing the MG other than personal bias.
This is not MW3 and clearly MW3 did the MG wrong.

Haha.

The MW3 is a direct translation of the Battle Tech MG. How is that "Wrong" or are you just daft?

[shintakie]

Critical Fumble, on 11 April 2013 - 07:18 PM, said:

In a recent thread about changing the devs about the statement, "Working as intended", I commented that you can't necessarily persuade them to change it by proving it is pathetic. This is because they may very well intend for it to be pathetic. It may be that they think that because its 1/12^th the weight of an AC/2, it should only be 1/12^th as effective. The only persuasive argument at that point is that it adversely effects the game.

In that theme, the first thing that comes to mind is that it breaks the fairness of their hardpoint system. Cicadas (sorry, I play a lot of Cicada, its what I know best) have 5-6 hardpoints as a baseline. The X-2 has 4E, 2M and the CDA-2A has 6E; all torso mounted. The CDA-2B has 5E, as near as I can tell it has one fewer for the privilege of having some in the arms. The CDA-3M has 4E, 1B, which theoretically compensates for having ECM, but it was also tuned down when they added in its "quirks". Then there's the CDA-3C with 1E, 4B. I've heard of people mounting dual AC/20s or quad AC/2s, but then I also hear that armadillos think its a good idea to cross busy roads.

Thinking about what that means in terms of their hardpoint design, I come to the conclusion that not all hardpoints are equal on all designs. In other words, you can't add up the total number on a variant, compare it to its fellows and say, "balanced". The value of the hardpoint has a lot to do with what you can reasonably mount there. Like the K2, you can mount gauss or AC/20s in the side torso hardpoints, so the value of those is equal to those weapons. Meanwhile, you can only reasonably mount one "good" ballistic in something the weight of a Cicada, so the first hardpoint has the value of one of those, but the others have the value of machine guns. If its true that one MG is roughly equal to 1/12^th of one AC/2 - or being generous, 1/6^th - then the 3C only has 2.5 hardpoints. (1E + 1B + 3MG, 1MG=1/6B, 1E + 1B + 0.5B = 2.5) Some other variants are effected by this as well.

They don't HAVE to make the MG a passable damage weapon; but if they want to make their hardpoint system fair, they need to either make the MG reasonable, add in a decent light ballistic, or adjust the hardpoint count on mechs to reflect the reduced value of multiple ballistic hardpoints on some variants.

That'd be pretty funny to see. The lights with ballistics and the 3C would need about 12 ballistic hard points to make it even remotely "fair" in that regard. At that point you'd be spendin more tonnage on MG's than if you'd just taken an AC/2. Hilarious.