1386 replies to this topic

[MadPanda]

Michael Costanza, on 09 April 2013 - 02:32 AM, said:

They have an Ask The Devs thread, Command Chair posts, Bug Reports threads, developers have responded _directly_ to posts in the past. You've been here awhile, you would know this. Look at that whole uproar over coolants and consumables that no one really even cares about anymore? And again, we're talking about MG. Of all the things the Devs could be working on, would you rather the Devs be focusing on MG balancing or something else like 12v12 or new content or Community Warfare?

"MG Balancing" is changing couple of numbers on a spreadsheet. So yes I want PGI to take 5 seconds of their time and change couple of numbers, and on the next patch maybe change them again if they werent right. Too much to ask?

[Team Leader]

It's not about game balance, it's about sending a message.



Ok it's totally about game balance I just wanted to say that

[Wolfyop]

its funny how its crit seeking now when everyone is going to core CT and there is no crit seeking use.

Edited by Wolfyop, 09 April 2013 - 02:52 AM.

[CECILOFS]

My stats:

Weapon         Matches   Fired   Hit   Accuracy   Time Equip.   Damage
SMALL LASER     21       2,744   1,978   72.08%   01:54:17      3,278
MACHINE GUN     11       3,302   1,755   53.15%   00:59:50      60

I have used SL more (On my 4P with 7 of them). I find them easier to hit with and deal way more damage as the stats above show. I think I must have been out of range for most of the MG fire since the damage is woeful.

I think I have killed 1 or 2 mechs from MG crits in all of those games. Mostly it doesn't seem worthwhile putting them on a mech.

Edited by CECILOFS, 09 April 2013 - 02:59 AM.

[ChapDude]

i don't have the time or enough friends *sob sob* to do this right now but are there any groups of 16 ppl out there willing to do some 'reality check' recording. aka 8 man sync drop against your 8 man group, carefully strip away the armor (or have an unarmored opponent) and RECORD (video) the number of bullets/time it takes for a single mg to destroy an engine or take out a none guass rifle weapon.

note: always do multiple trials! didn't science class teach us anything but especially with this crit system.

[Xelah]

Being that they've told us that they do not read our suggestions, I'm just adding another post to create a trend. It only took a community outcry and 828 posts to get them to start locking threads and tell us to post here. Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll see the post count here and be "oh ****, we need to nerf everything else so mgs will be usable" . . . or something like that.

[Sifright]

Xelah, on 09 April 2013 - 03:04 AM, said:

Being that they've told us that they do not read our suggestions, I'm just adding another post to create a trend. It only took a community outcry and 828 posts to get them to start locking threads and tell us to post here. Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll see the post count here and be "oh ****, we need to nerf everything else so mgs will be usable" . . . or something like that.

even worse the mod put this thread in the game balance section. Very few people look at the game balance section compared to general discussion. So this isn't going to get any where near as much feedback as it should.

Sorry I didn't mean feedback I meant trend setting...

[Xelah]

Sifright, on 09 April 2013 - 03:06 AM, said:

even worse the mod put this thread in the game balance section. Very few people look at the game balance section compared to general discussion. So this isn't going to get any where near as much feedback as it should.

Sorry I didn't mean feedback I meant trend setting...

You underestimate my ability to spam this thread.

[irony1999]

Until more internal crits are put into the game, I don't see the harm in boosting it to at least half the DPS of an AC/2. Right now a crit seeker with most crits not in place (gyro, actuators, etc) is pointless.

[Sir Ratburger]

Damn and there was some really good points being made on the 'Machine guns need to be better' thread.
I would like to condense some of the really good points that where made.

1 - make the damage more to armour and possibly make the ammo a bit less <---lets say about 1k ammo per ton
2 - Being able to use machine guns to shoot down incoming missiles <-- my favourite one,it requires you to stand in the direct path of the missiles and still get hit if (quite possibly) some get through as well as skill needs to be involved.
3 - extend the range slightly <-- I personally disagree with that as it is a close up and personal weapon.
4 - make the fire rate quicker <-- I disagree as I think the servers wont catch up and they sound nice as is. In fact I think they sound, fire and look fantastic.

The main arguments where the fact that small and medium lasers do far more damage and don't really generate that much heat to put the machine guns no heat at the cost of ammo and has a chance to cause crit damage on unarmored opponents as an advantage. To mount 1 machine gun with 1 ton of ammo is 1.5 tons and is not very accurate, has terrible range and almost useless damage. A medium laser can be mounted for 1 ton and does 5 damage, uses no ammunition, is 'accurate' (in a sense) and produces very little heat. Now lets say we put 2 machine guns and 1 ton of ammo (altogether 2 tons) against 2 medium lasers (altogether 2 tons) - the 2 medium lasers fired at once do 10 damage a shot! the machine guns do hardly anything after hundreds of shots.

Also whats the massive advantage of having machine guns do crit damage to an unarmored foe anyways at the expense of laughable armour damage, Im pretty sure AC's also have this advantage but also have a large change to kill off unarmored targets in a few hits even if they don't cause an ammo explosion from a crit.

Machine guns 'feel' so good in the game but just don't really have any use at the current damage they do.

Edited by Sir Ratburge, 09 April 2013 - 03:15 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

The Machine Gun is a bad weapon currently. The reaosn it is so is not because of anything related to the table top game. The Machine Gun did the same damage as the AC/2 did, it just had a much shorter range. Once the table top game added infantry units, it got additional bonuses against infantry, but it never got weaker against battlemechs.

In MW:O, the Machine Gun deals 0.04 damage per hit, the AC/2 deals 2.
In MW:O, the Machine Gun has .4 DPS, the AC/2 has 4.

From one ton of ammo, the Machine Gun can deal 80 points of damage.
From one ton of ammo, the AC/2 can deal 150 points of damage.

There are no 6 MG spiders in MW:O, but if there were, we would need to compare them to other mechs that can carry light weapons of similar tonnage. There is the Jenner with 6 Small Lasers and for example the Death Knell with 4 Medium Lasers.

The 6 MG Spider with 3 tons of ammo could deal 240 damage in total, taking about 116.6 seconds to do so.
The 6 SL Jenner with only 10 Double Heat Sinks can fire 12 seconds without overheating and deal 72 damage in that time. It would take it 31.25 seconds to overheat and could deal roughly 180 damage in that time. It needs 25 seconds to completely burn off that heat, allowing it to repeat this damage output again, allowing to to deal 360 damage in less than 90 seconds.
This means the 6 SL Jenner deals about 50 % more damage in the same time as the MG does, for half the weight investment, and that is basically the ideal case for the Machine Gun here -uninterrupted fire. The SL Jenner can actually twist and maneuver without needing to focus the entire time on the enemy. Moreover - more than 20-30 seconds of uninterrupted fire is unlikely to happen anyway. (And I doubt any Atlas would worry let any mech more than 10 seconds to shoot its back.)

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 09 April 2013 - 03:31 AM.

[Sifright]

MustrumRidcully, on 09 April 2013 - 03:21 AM, said:

The Machine Gun is a bad weapon currently. The reaosn it is so is not because of anything related to the table top game. The Machine Gun did the same damage as the AC/2 did, it just had a much shorter range. Once the table top game added infantry units, it got additional bonuses against infantry, but it never got weaker against battlemechs.

In MW:O, the Machine Gun deals 0.04 damage per hit, the AC/2 deals 2.
In MW:O, the Machine Gun has 4 DPS, the AC/2 has 4.

From one ton of ammo, the Machine Gun can deal 80 points of damage.
From one ton of ammo, the AC/2 can deal 150 points of damage.

There are no 6 MG spiders in MW:O, but if there were, we would need to compare them to other mechs that can carry light weapons of similar tonnage. There is the Jenner with 6 Small Lasers and for example the Death Knell with 4 Medium Lasers.

The 6 MG Spider with 3 tons of ammo could deal 240 damage in total, taking about 116.6 seconds to do so.
The 6 SL Jenner with only 10 Double Heat Sinks can fire 12 seconds without overheating and deal 72 damage in that time. It would take it 31.25 seconds to overheat and could deal roughly 180 damage in that time. It needs 25 seconds to completely burn off that heat, allowing it to repeat this damage output again, allowing to to deal 360 damage in less than 90 seconds.
This means the 6 SL Jenner deals about 50 % more damage in the same time as the MG does, for half the weight investment, and that is basically the ideal case for the Machine Gun here -uninterrupted fire. The SL Jenner can actually twist and maneuver without needing to focus the entire time on the enemy. Moreover - more than 20-30 seconds of uninterrupted fire is unlikely to happen anyway. (And I doubt any Atlas would worry let any mech more than 10 seconds to shoot its back.)

you fudged a number on the dps of the mg. it's 0.4 and not 4

[Xelah]

MustrumRidcully, on 09 April 2013 - 03:21 AM, said:

In MW:O, the Machine Gun deals 0.04 damage per hit, the AC/2 deals 2.
In MW:O, the Machine Gun has 4 DPS, the AC/2 has 4.

Correction, the machine gun has .4 DPS... or it is supposed to actually. I tested this in game and the MGs only fire 7.6something rounds per second and only deal .3 DPS.

[jeffsw6]

CECILOFS, on 09 April 2013 - 02:53 AM, said:

Weapon		 Matches   Fired   Hit   Accuracy   Time Equip.   Damage
SMALL LASER	 21	   2,744   1,978   72.08%   01:54:17	  3,278
MACHINE GUN	 11	   3,302   1,755   53.15%   00:59:50	  60

But Machine Guns are perfect! They are working as intended! All you've done is proven that Small Lasers are over-powered. They clearly need to be nerfed.

Oh, and so does every other weapon in the game. Except the Flamer. Just nerf everything to the point that a mech with all flamers and MGs is competitive. That'll be fun to play.

irony1999, on 09 April 2013 - 03:11 AM, said:

Until more internal crits are put into the game, I don't see the harm in boosting it to at least half the DPS of an AC/2. Right now a crit seeker with most crits not in place (gyro, actuators, etc) is pointless.

The MG might be OP at 2 DPS. However, they can always nerf it later, if that proves to be the case.

I suspect what they will do is something idiotic, like raise it 50%, and claim they listened. Whatever buff it gets needs to be HUGE. Nerf it afterward if it's too powerful. It's ******* numbers in a configuration file, it is just not hard.

If you really think through the 2 DPS figure, though, the MG's range is very limited. It will only be useful in a brawl, much like the universally-feared Small Pulse Laser. It uses ammo quickly, and you lose out on DPS whenever you need to torso-twist to avoid incoming fire, or the enemy gets out of your cross-hairs for a moment.

I believe there are no mechs that aren't ballistic-dependent with more than 2 ballistic hard-points. Is that correct? For example, JM6 needs guns for damage anyway, so it's not like someone would equip 6 MGs on it; but you might equip a couple to go with your AC20 or whatever. Cataphract, similar. Atlas, similar.

So there doesn't seem to be too much potential for making them hugely over-powered. Atlas builds, for one, will get more interesting though. I welcome that.

Sir Ratburge, on 09 April 2013 - 03:13 AM, said:

2 - Being able to use machine guns to shoot down incoming missiles

I keep thinking this is a very cool idea, but I could imagine it being more difficult to implement than we might imagine. Maybe it is not (currently) worth the implementation cost.

[Critical Fumble]

Sifright, on 09 April 2013 - 03:28 AM, said:

you fudged a number on the dps of the mg. it's 0.4 and not 4

I think you can blame me for messing him up there. I replied to something he said elsewhere and gave an example of 1 DPS MGs and explained why I thought it would not be an issue.

To anyone out there who wants to publicize this thread in its less than visible location, just add a link to it in your signature.

because this thread needs more cowbell pitchfork. And that in turn is apparently the only way to get the bigwigs to take any opinion seriously.

[MustrumRidcully]

My previous post only covered the damage dealing part of the Machine Gun.

The other part would be: How important are critical hits.

A mech can carry twice as much armour as it has internal structure. That means that roughly, 2/3 of each combat you have to try to chew through armour. Only on the last 1/3 does internal structure damage or critical hits matter.

Now, the Machine Gun Crit buff is not a buff to internal structure damage. It's only a buff to internal component damage.

Most items have about 10 hit points. If you have two items in a hit location, this means that each crit has only a 50 % chance to hit a specific item.

The Machine Gun delivers its damage in many small damage ticks. That means the damage will spread a lot across the two locations, basically meaning that the MG needs to deal almost 20 damage to kill the first, but the second will follow almost immediately after.

Now look at a weapon like the PPC, the AC/10, the AC/20 or the Gauss Rifle. A single critical hit will destroy almost any component. So on average, weapons like these will take about half the time the Machine Gun needs to destroy the first component, and the same time to destroy both components, assuming weapon configurations that deal equal damage to internal components.
The good news for the Machine Gun - you need not even 1 to beat the DPS of a PPC against internal components.

The bad news for it is -that this means that it beats a heavier weapon in 1/3 of the combat situations on a minor aspect of that combat situation - the ability to crit weapons.

A single PPC crit will not just take out a hit location. It will also damage the internal structure for 10 damage. Even the heaviest mechs have no more than 60 points on the best protected location. The Machine Gun only helps you to take out some components at one location, it doesn't help you out destroying the entire hit location, which will also take out all items in that location, and can also take out the entire mech (center torso, head, side torso with XL Engine), or a second hit location (Side Torso), or severely cripple a mech's maneuerability (Leg).

As a consequence, the crit-seeking buff is not entirely irrelevant, but so minor in practical applications that it doesn't have a chance of making the Machine Gun viable. And it wouldn't help buffing this aspect even further.

Sifright, on 09 April 2013 - 03:28 AM, said:

you fudged a number on the dps of the mg. it's 0.4 and not 4

I, errr.. was just trying to show how easy it would be to buff the Machine Gun. Erm.

Oh, look a pink flying Elephant.

*hides*

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

Michael Costanza, on 09 April 2013 - 02:32 AM, said:

Of all the things the Devs could be working on, would you rather the Devs be focusing on MG balancing or something else like 12v12 or new content or Community Warfare?

I'm pretty sure that "MG balancing" is as much work as changing one entry in a database. How much time do you think it will take? One minute or even less?

[Stargoat]

Yo, could we get this thread somewhere people might actually see it? Like hot topic heatsink?

Anyway, just repeating the old sentiment; buff machineguns. DPS should be around 4 times higher to be in line with other weapons, and damage per tonne should be two times higher compared to other ballistics.

[Barghest Whelp]

For gods sake, just buff the damage on MG's already. Then we can stop this silly farce and start creating a flood of threads about flamers and NARC instead.

[Kurayami]

They should just TRY AT LEAST ONCE. Making LRM extremely OP - done, PPC - done, LL - done, ML - done, GAUSS - need i even mention this one? MG - no f u.
This is beta - what harm could be done with simply listening to the community opinion and giving a little boost to the MG's? at least for one patch? or is it THAT hard to comment "//this part of code contains mg buffs - modify\delete if necessary to roll back changes " in some miraculous case of MG's being op after patch? or are devs that afraid of ultrapwnage non ecm 2mg raven?
i mean i dont ask for thing to be giant killer but when i even theoretically cannot kill light mech with it? even when im boating them? all while being one and only low end ballistic available? WORKING AS INTENDED?