1386 replies to this topic

[BUDFORCE]

+1 post to say they need to "slightly" increase machine gun damage.

I made a non-serious fun build with a cicada with 4 MG's its only then, you truely realise how little damage they do.

[C E Dwyer]

Eric darkstar Marr, on 09 April 2013 - 06:00 AM, said:

Okay lets look at the old TT rules on weapons:



If you notice what the DPS of a MG is 2 with 200 ammo per ton the trade off in TT is the range. Now why would someone take a AC/2 over a MG with the current meta of the game?

You get so much more with MGs then AC/2s and with no heat we will look at the Jager The DD would mount 6 x MG with 5 tons of Ammo and 2 x LLs with a standard 315 engine and near max armor FF and Endo even has CASE to stop explosions (which would be 400 per ton of ammo) JM6-DD

So we will say it goes off the TT 12 DPS from the MGs alone paired with the LLs its another 4.24 dps so a total of 16.24.

So tell me how this would be a good thing for the game? Tell me how they made a bad judgement by nerfing the lightest cheapest ballistic to a reasonable level for current game play.

Yes it differs from TT yes they tried to make it a lot weaker then a AC/2 to make AC/2 viable since most people do not play a range game.

Please inform me how a 0 heat half ton 2 dps weapon on a mech is not over powered in how almost everyone plays the game.

In old style TT game there was zero pin point accuracy, hit locations were based on dice rolls...it wasn't a min max twitcher game..

Only similarity they have in both games is that they are a liability..mg ammo explosions where deadly in TT, as the ammo reduced slowly if hit you could pretty much garantee at least 200 points, the larger calibre balistics used up ammo faster, so by the point you were likely to get an internal the damage wasn't as bad..

AC2 and MG's were not popular in the group I played with..

We tried various ways of making them less of a liability, bonuses against ground troops and soft skins (which isn't an option here), and carrying less ammo.

This is of course a group that used original battletech(battledroids) city tech and mechwarrior rpg..there were no artemis, ecm beagle and as a group no intrest in clans and making it easier to hit

[C E Dwyer]

Bishop Steiner, on 07 May 2013 - 05:20 AM, said:

Cool, now find me some infantry to shoot or crowds to control in this game......

or give me MGs that have a snowballs chance in hell of being useful. Half as useful as a Small Laser would be near to 10x as useful as they are now.

Or don't use them..

one weapon is allways going to be the worse, only reason presently is the noise they make.. which is good enough for me

[Enzane]

I am sure it has been said before and I'll say it again.

The only Buff MGs should get is the ability to shoot down LRMs. (Imagine having 2 MGs act as a long range AMS for someone. They should be able to take out more missiles then AMS due to more advantageous firing positions. As well as Manual targeting.)

The only other buff I have considered in the past is letting them have a small chance of auto critting a component even if it has armor. I mean come on, we are firing tiny slugs into an armored mech, They are not COMPLETELY sealed, Eventually a bullet has to ricochet or bounce into an area that it shouldn't, and maybe nick that one wire, Servo, Gear, or Piston that you really needed!

[FupDup]

Cathy, on 12 May 2013 - 03:10 AM, said:

one weapon is allways going to be the worse, only reason presently is the noise they make.. which is good enough for me

What ya'll love to ignore is how other small-size equipment deals with the direct-upgrade dilemma:

Energy Weapons: At one ton or so, you've got the Medium Laser. The SPL and Flamer are terribad, and the SL is underwhelming. But, you've still got the ability to take an ML in place of any other those.

Missile Weapons: SRM2 and LRM5 are kinda wonky at the moment, but you've got the SSRM2 for easy aim against lights.

Weight-Saving Upgrades: You can just take Endo Steel unless you have enough crit spaces to take FF with it simultaneously

Heat Sinks: Take DHS and don't look back.

...

Ballistic Weapons: You don't have a f*cking thing until you reach the AC/2 or higher.




See the problem there? Also, defending an underpowered weapon as "the natural order" is a pretty damn boring and uncreative way to view the game. Any of those underperformers mentioned above could, if somebody took the time to play spreadsheets with them (all of five or ten minutes), find some kind of abstract niche for them to fit in to. The only thing standing in the way are people who want this game to be FoTM-warrior Online--which is the end result of deliberately leaving numerous items mathematically inferior to all others of similar weight categories.

Edited by FupDup, 12 May 2013 - 06:45 AM.

[Deathlike]

I've always thought that ballistics were always meant to be heavy in BT. You have the short range MG... and then there's a serious gap to the AC2.

Subsequently a ballistic platform realistically starts at around the 50 ton level (like the Hunchback for instance). Anything under that would require the MG to perform pretty much something similar to a ML (although for the purposes of balance, it shouldn't). The MG doesn't have to be glorious, but if the MG was redeveloped to something similar the MW2 MG, with a longer cooldown or limited burst.. it wouldn't be the redheaded stepchild that PGI thinks it should be and happens to be.

Edited by Deathlike, 12 May 2013 - 06:52 AM.

[Deathlike]

Here's my take on how the MG could be rebalanced with awesomesauce from MW2 and MW3.

The MG would burst fire 4 bullets, dealing .5 damage per bullet within 1 second.
Cooldown would be dependent on the # of bullets fired from the gun. Every bullet fired would mean 1 to 1.25 seconds before the next firing of the MG. This means that cooldown can be from 4 to 5 seconds when all bullets are fired.

Ammo would have to be recalculated and rebalanced.. as 1 ton should provide 200 bullets (or maybe 100, someone has to do the #s).

This idea combines the behavior of the beloved MW2/MW3 MG, and combine it with the MW3 pulse laser behavior... the duration of the fire affects the cooldown involved. This would limit the overall damage potential, but it wouldn't suck when they are used in battle.. probably optimally in a chain fire or quick burst fire role to be reasonably useful.

Does this sound good to anyone?

[Utilyan]

MG was nerfed for being TOO GOOD. We don't have the dicipline for them. Folks would get chewed up in a brawl and to thier horror......close range weapons are better at close range......DUURRRR!!!!

For crying out loud......FLAMERS got NERFED......because they made the enemy mech hot.......Please think about what I just said.

We had to nerf flamers.....because it was making mechs hot and they would be kept shut down......fire bad......makey thingys catch on fire......

Who rides with close range weapons? who has flamers, MGs, small pulse, small lasers? NO ONE DOES. Close range Got nerfed to hell because medium and long range didn't have the dicipline to stick to thier game.

Imagine your armed to the teeth with MGs and theres enemy armed to the teeth with LRMS. You guys are 800m away from each other...... Guy with MGs is SOL.........in trouble. Now your within range 150m .......LRM guy is now SOL in trouble.

Thats how it is..... One moment we cry for simulator......why mess with weapon balance if its a "SIMULATOR"?

Before ECM if you were out in the open and shot with LRMs you were dead. As dead as you were sopose to be for walking around out in the open. It was brutal but I thought it was just fine.


The weapons didn't need to get nerfed, The player skill needed a buff. We might be better off not touching MGs.......just sit back and laugh.

Lrms got put on chop block, who's next PPC? Then LLs, then medium laser.....


Its not hard to predict where its going...... I'm pretty sure the whining forcast is LLs when PPC gets nerfed.


This is why I strongly advice when pushing for MGs and flamers GO for LOOKs..........flamers looks awsome, but its the only weapon that doesn't emit SMOKE.....the one thing you'd expect from fire and used in TT and mentioned in battletech fluff for causing smoke and cover.

The MGs let it shoot across map n' more tracer colors. Don't torture yourself with powergamer's power because in the long run the nerf inquisition isn't going to stop. The moment MGs even become BELOW avarage weapons it will be "TOO GOOD".

Go for differ types of optional MGs with differ sounds and looks. We can have them make BURRRRPS like a gatling gun, or some old scould dakka like a rambo M60....

The devs talked about introducing EPIC weapondry......Well differ sounding/looking MGs might be a safe start.

[stjobe]

Deathlike, on 12 May 2013 - 06:51 AM, said:

I've always thought that ballistics were always meant to be heavy in BT.

Yes, that's their balancing factor. Weight and ammo dependency, just like energy weapons are balanced by heat - heat generation and heat dissipation (but heat is broken in MWO in my opinion, although that's for another thread)

The MG though, wasn't balanced by weight; it was balanced by range and damage. It did its 2 damage at the very shortest range available (3 hexes; can't have less if you want at least one hex for close, medium, and long range modifiers).

And to the guy above who is so nice as to point out to us that every distribution needs to have a starting point and an end point: We know. Thank you Captain Obvious.

However, we don't mind if the MG is the weakest weapon in the game. That's okay, but we want it to do proper damage to armour just like it did in BattleTech and in every other incarnation of the BattleTech universe. Currently the MWO devs are holding back its damage against armour because they (erroneously) believe that it's supposed to be a crit weapon.

Problem is, there's no such thing in the BattleTech universe; *every* weapon is a "crit weapon" - or if you prefer, none is. All weapons have a 1/36 chance to score a through-armour crit in BattleTech, so it's prudent to have as many weapons hit a target every round as possible; this is where the MG comes in for heavier 'mechs: It's a free crit chance, more or less.

For lighter 'mechs though, the MG is a dangerous weapon in its own right; if your total armour is 64 points spread over 11 locations, 2 damage is a sizeable chunk of that armour.

[HammerSwarm]

Utilyan, on 12 May 2013 - 08:44 AM, said:

MG was nerfed for being TOO GOOD. We don't have the dicipline for them. Folks would get chewed up in a brawl and to thier horror......close range weapons are better at close range......DUURRRR!!!!

"Durr" basically covers your point. Who uses short range weapons? mechs with the speed to close that range or other larger mechs for defense. It's almost as though you are willfully ignorant as to how weapons work.

Before replying ask yourself, what factor would make me choose a weapon with less range over a weapon with more range. If you answered closing speed and damage you'd be correct. Look at the AC20 and the AC5. The AC 20 is larger, and heavy, and does more damage. The Ac 5 is lighter, shoots farther, but lacks the same potency. You don't see many Atlasii with A/c 5s in their shoulder because they have the tonage and space to fit such a weapon. Likewise you shouldn't see many lights with an Ac20 because it could be most of their tonage.

The machine gun needs to be changed to remove the spread and do damage to armor. It is the short range low weight ballistic. Removing this option changes every mech from an atlas to a flea because it's a weapon that is intended to be there in the table top rules. This game is loosely based on table top rules, or it was suppose to be.

[Keifomofutu]

HammerSwarm, on 13 May 2013 - 04:07 PM, said:

"Durr" basically covers your point. Who uses short range weapons? mechs with the speed to close that range or other larger mechs for defense. It's almost as though you are willfully ignorant as to how weapons work.

Before replying ask yourself, what factor would make me choose a weapon with less range over a weapon with more range. If you answered closing speed and damage you'd be correct. Look at the AC20 and the AC5. The AC 20 is larger, and heavy, and does more damage. The Ac 5 is lighter, shoots farther, but lacks the same potency. You don't see many Atlasii with A/c 5s in their shoulder because they have the tonage and space to fit such a weapon. Likewise you shouldn't see many lights with an Ac20 because it could be most of their tonage.

The machine gun needs to be changed to remove the spread and do damage to armor. It is the short range low weight ballistic. Removing this option changes every mech from an atlas to a flea because it's a weapon that is intended to be there in the table top rules. This game is loosely based on table top rules, or it was suppose to be.

I'm pretty sure the guy you are responding to was being totally sarcastic.

[Utilyan]

HammerSwarm, on 13 May 2013 - 04:07 PM, said:

"Durr" basically covers your point. Who uses short range weapons? mechs with the speed to close that range or other larger mechs for defense. It's almost as though you are willfully ignorant as to how weapons work.

Before replying ask yourself, what factor would make me choose a weapon with less range over a weapon with more range. If you answered closing speed and damage you'd be correct. Look at the AC20 and the AC5. The AC 20 is larger, and heavy, and does more damage. The Ac 5 is lighter, shoots farther, but lacks the same potency. You don't see many Atlasii with A/c 5s in their shoulder because they have the tonage and space to fit such a weapon. Likewise you shouldn't see many lights with an Ac20 because it could be most of their tonage.

The machine gun needs to be changed to remove the spread and do damage to armor. It is the short range low weight ballistic. Removing this option changes every mech from an atlas to a flea because it's a weapon that is intended to be there in the table top rules. This game is loosely based on table top rules, or it was suppose to be.

Thank you Hammer, do you see the light?

The point I was making is that all close range weapons indeed are sopose to be great at close range, Because they actually were very good close range is exactly why they got nerfed.

Far as my asking who uses short range weapons......the answer still is NO ONE. I'm talking about right now as the game is, no one uses them. You might see streaks and srms. Its very rare I catch someone using MGs, small laser, flamers and small pulse.

I agree totally with you, fast mechs are suppose to mount them, big mechs should mount them for nearby enemies. That doesn't mean they do.


These are close range weapons that are sopose to be good at close range. They used to be great.....TOO GOOD, they got nerfed because it was prob too ruthless vs noobs who just zombie/zerg towards nme's and shoot.


In TT if you had a large laser spider face to face up close vs a devastating 6mg spider who would win? I'm guessing the MGs right?


I think folks should consider why the close range catagory is so nerfed, My theory is noob sympathy, If these weapons were as "balanced" as table top.......they would be tearing people up and you'd have a brawlfest.


I am a twitch player, I DO use machine guns and flamers as is, its fun and a welcomed challenge. To hear in the upcomming patch that using mgs will be twice as easier and flamers according to a dev twitter will no longer cause as much massive heat on the shooter and "exponentially" more to target...... is not going to make me lose any sleep.

I kinda grew out of being a powergamer in the sense I'm the guy who does run with a hunchback with 6 flamers(might switch to 9 after patch), I run my machine gun/flamer cicada, my urbanmech wanabe clones.....recently been taking medium lrm mechs, like who rolls with a hunchie 4J?, .... I love rolling with the underdogs.

If killing folks was easy, i'd be disinterested pretty quick, I usually nerf my own mech if im dealing 1500 damage even 500.

Better machine guns, I'm saying careful what you wish for. I will dakka dakka dakka......with great joy.

Edited by Utilyan, 14 May 2013 - 11:59 AM.

[HammerSwarm]

Utilyan, on 14 May 2013 - 11:58 AM, said:

Thank you Hammer, do you see the light?

[edited for size]

If killing folks was easy, i'd be disinterested pretty quick, I usually nerf my own mech if im dealing 1500 damage even 500.
Better machine guns, I'm saying careful what you wish for. I will dakka dakka dakka......with great joy.

Machine guns are an integral part of Battle Tech. Ammo explosions and all

So if by light you mean that I think they should be restored to their relative value as compared to other weapons and ammo explosions should be more devastating? Then yes I am.

I understand that you like pain but I like functioning weapons; I think we both agree the machine gun is crap as is.

[TemplarGFX]

Machine Guns definately do not need a buff in my opinion. I bought a Jager last week, and Ive been struggling to find a setup on that mech that works for my play style and ping. Well that was until early last night when I put 6 Machine Guns in it, and 1 Large Laser.

This Jager is my most effective mech when it comes to kills/assists (infact I got 3 kills and 6 assists in one game!) and thats got nothing to do with the Large Laser, its the 6 MG's.

Considering the LL is the only "power" weapon, doing 317damage tells me the Machine Guns are doing there job.

Edited by TemplarGFX, 15 May 2013 - 03:26 PM.

[Utilyan]

HammerSwarm, on 15 May 2013 - 12:12 PM, said:

Machine guns are an integral part of Battle Tech. Ammo explosions and all

So if by light you mean that I think they should be restored to their relative value as compared to other weapons and ammo explosions should be more devastating? Then yes I am.

I understand that you like pain but I like functioning weapons; I think we both agree the machine gun is crap as is.

Thats right. I'd be alright like you said with a relative value with the other weapons. Like the ac/2 from TT is 45 shots per ton oppose to 75, 90 damage in potential instead of 125 damage, the mg was 400 damage in potential per ton so even here it "OUGHT" to be higher. With our current mg it would take 10000 bullets per ton to get that 400 damage. Inside less then 3 mins of shooting time and thats to go through the entire 10000 bullets and thats with ONE gun, Unlike now where it would take you 13 mins to kill a atlas through the CT with one gun. At about 3900 bullets.

I'm cool with this, the brutality of having the full damage proportional to what the TT had.

If you want to get a good idea what they soppose to do just load up a mech with 4 ac/2z and lettem rip up close on offline mode or something. Only differ is a MG wouldn't overheat.

If we went by assuming that a mechwarrior round happens in 10 secs, you might be suprise to find out MGs is the most accurate conversion from TT to game except for that damage potential in the amount of ammo. Its the only weapon done "right".

I think you got to at least consider that the decision was made on the level of thinking about player retention and trying to show a little mercy to the TT player. At one time the MGS was really super good they got nerfed. Not just the MGs but flamers too. If the most common cause of mech death in TT was MGs then i'd be more inclined for a proportional buff.

I remember back in like the mw2 days the mgs were insanely instant kill and you had like 200 ammo per ton. I think the plan is a gradual buff but nothing that would crank it so harshly where it would cause a backlash and alot of ragequit.

Theres been rage quit over smaller stuff like ECM, Theres been talk about test servers and stuff, personally I think they going in the right direction.

Think of the poor noobs who would get slaughtered by your monster mg mech.

Edited by Utilyan, 15 May 2013 - 04:08 PM.

[TemplarGFX]

Apparently and Autocannons fire explosive rounds while Machine Guns fire solid slugs.

Also the AC's are higher calibre, I believe the AC/2 is at least 25mm or 0.98 calibre.

To me that says the MG should not do more damage, certainly nothing close to the AC/2

[Utilyan]

TemplarGFX, on 15 May 2013 - 04:20 PM, said:

Apparently and Autocannons fire explosive rounds while Machine Guns fire solid slugs.

Also the AC's are higher calibre, I believe the AC/2 is at least 25mm or 0.98 calibre.

To me that says the MG should not do more damage, certainly nothing close to the AC/2

First thing that comes to mind is AP round vs a HE round what would you use against a tank? I think the ACs are prob a mix with more lean towards being armor piercing.

I'd be cool with a MG thats not all that great vs armor. Fact i'd be thrilled if we had a old WWII .50 cal. A 50 cal would be ten times as brutal a gun we got right now. The rate of fire......being able to shoot like 2 miles away and be effective against a unarmored target.

Hell i'd even take a 30cal, im pretty confident if I had AK-47 duct taped to my mech it would be more effective then what we got right now.

If we played it out this way then when a mech IS missing armor that section itself would be considered an unarmored target. So the gloves would be off concerning unarmored sections of a mech. And your looking at something that does around 6 damage vs unarmored .

http://en.wikipedia....ing_machine_gun


You know if we look at this old WWII 50 cal. It has amazing stats. 87lbs, not the HALF TON mg we got. 6800m max distance.

So if a atlas has no CT armor, shot off by something else......and he's on the highest peak in alpine waving......your across the other side.........dakka dakka dakka that CT is an unarmored target right?

According to wiki of 50 caliber rounds, they can come with explosive and armor piercing explosive ect....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_cal


Im talking about a 90lb or so WWII mg not a futuristic half ton mg with tech thats a thousand years in the future.

Now if your stance the game would simply be more fun with a weak mg.....i'm absolutely cool with that. Even if its the worst vs targets with no armor too, im cool with that.

Edited by Utilyan, 15 May 2013 - 05:04 PM.

[FupDup]

TemplarGFX, on 15 May 2013 - 04:20 PM, said:

Apparently and Autocannons fire explosive rounds while Machine Guns fire solid slugs.

Also the AC's are higher calibre, I believe the AC/2 is at least 25mm or 0.98 calibre.

To me that says the MG should not do more damage, certainly nothing close to the AC/2

Earlier in this thread, somebody calculated that our current MWO MG ammo weight makes each bullet weigh approximately as much as a 25mm round. If you do the math, our current AC/2 is even bigger.


The people who wrote Battletech fluff don't have any connection to reality when it comes to designating ammo per ton, seeing how they classified the smallest autocannons as 25mm. If we look at the TT ammo per ton of the AC/2, each bullet weighs about 49 pounds...that ain't no 25mm! For the Machine Gun, each bullet works out to 11.02 pounds...which is still pretty big. That is what BT writers call a "20mm Gatling Gun." An AC/20 round is 441 pounds...I don't know my shell weights very well, but I'm guessing that's a naval artillery cannon?

If we look at a modern-day Abrams tank's 120mm cannon, an HE round from it weighs 19kg or about 42 pounds...Lol. For a comparison, the Light Rifle fires 122.5 pound rounds and literally does zero damage to Battlemechs. I think from this data we can conclude that the TT writers didn't intend their weapons to even remotely be connected to real life. I've thus given up on any "this is how they would work in real life" arguments because every single ballistic and missile would need to be redesigned from the ground up if we took real-life weights into account.


I'm sure something you might be thinking is "but why do TT bullet sizes matter to this discussion when MWO has more ammo per ton? Let's talk about MWO!" Well, the damage per bullet is the same here in MWO as it is in TT despite the smaller ammo (although we do have doubled armor). For instance, an MWO AC/20 round only weighs in at 315 pounds compared to TT weight of 441 pounds...and both do 20 points of damage. So, if we really want to use smaller ammo as an excuse to leave MGs useless, you'd better nerf every single other ammo-consuming weapon to be logically consistent.

Edited by FupDup, 15 May 2013 - 06:32 PM.

[Padic]

I just assumed that every bullet weighs a reasonable amount, but that every ton of ammunition comes wrapped in a lot of armor and padding and ammo feed systems and whatnot. This also gives me an excuse as to why we can't load partial tons of ammo.

Really fancy boxes, guys.

[ICEFANG13]

TemplarGFX, on 15 May 2013 - 03:25 PM, said:

Machine Guns definately do not need a buff in my opinion. I bought a Jager last week, and Ive been struggling to find a setup on that mech that works for my play style and ping. Well that was until early last night when I put 6 Machine Guns in it, and 1 Large Laser.

This Jager is my most effective mech when it comes to kills/assists (infact I got 3 kills and 6 assists in one game!) and thats got nothing to do with the Large Laser, its the 6 MG's.

Considering the LL is the only "power" weapon, doing 317damage tells me the Machine Guns are doing there job.

3 kills 6 assists? Are you playing 12v12s already?