1386 replies to this topic

[Deathlike]

Maybe the MG should fire @ the same speed as the PPC. I mean, the AC2s run @ those speeds as well.

As a comparison.. the current MG speed is the same as an LRM and AMS. Neither of these really threaten anyone... (well, LRMs anyways).

MGs are literally 1/20 the speed of the PPC...

Edited by Deathlike, 14 April 2013 - 03:43 PM.

[RealityCheck]

Well projectile speed only really matters if you are firing at something beyond 90 meters. The lead is pretty small within that range and your accuracy should be fairly good (the pinpoint elite skill helps A LOT).

For me, 4 primary areas to be looked at for a buff:

1. Damage
2. Ammo
3. Crit Modifiers
4. Spread

With 1 as most important and 4 the least.
Just a thought...

RealityCheck

Edit: Removed random smiley

Edited by RealityCheck, 15 April 2013 - 05:52 AM.

[Xelah]

LackofCertainty, on 14 April 2013 - 07:35 AM, said:

Before I delve into quote madness, I have one thing to say regarding MG's not having their proper rate of fire in game. Don't ask the devs to buff MG damage to fix a bug with their rate of fire. Ask them to fix MG's rate of fire first, the buff MG damage so that they're balanced. It's better to fix the core problem rather than slap a patch job overtop of it and pretend it's fine.

I'd like to see them do both. Fix it, and raise the damage. If they raise the damage, but don't fix it, the weapon will suffer in the hands of those with a higher ping. If they fix the ping related problems but don't buff the damage, the weapon will suffer for everyone.

Quote

An MG should not do the same damage as an SL in .75 seconds. The reason for this is that the SL has factors that limit it's rate of fire (heat and Cooldown) whereas the MG does not. (technically ammo, but that's not a factor unless you drastically reduce the ammo/ton) If you want to compare things with a straight up 1SL vs 1 MG fight, then you have to use the MG properly.

Weight was covered by someone else in another post. You do seem a little confused on what most of us are asking for. We don't want mg's to do 3 damage in .75s like the small laser. We want them to give 3 damage over 3 seconds like the small laser (or something similar... only the extremists are asking for more than 1.5dps).

Quote

However, the crux of the problem comes when you apply 4dps MG's against a slow target. Against an atlas, you're not going to be missing much, and if even 1/4 of your bullets hit the location you're aiming at, you're doing the same focused damage than an SL as well as shredding the surrounding armor with your spread.

Why do you keep harping on the 4dps guys?! Very few people are asking for that. I'm going to continue the reply as though you're against 1dps mg's since that's what you're doing.

For the first five seconds of an engagement, a 6ML jenner has an effective DPS of 12. After which they can break off or circle strafe. Most builds would be able to continually fire 2 of their lasers for 2.5 dps after. In fact, that's actually how my weapon grouping is set on my Jenner. Button one is alpha strike. Button two fires two lasers.


For argument's sake, let's say a fight between an atlas and our spider and an atlas and a jenner that sticks around lasts twenty seconds.

The Jenner deals 60 damage in the first eight seconds, then circle strafes for the next 12. This can generate up to 84 damage. Our spider with the 1dps mgs and LL deals 6.12dps for the entire 20 seconds potentially inflicting 122.4 damage. A bit of a difference.

Lets switch the Jenner's loadout back to SL's since that is what we were talking about and would have a more similar attack style. Without shaving armor and boating sinks, the max sustainable DPS is 4.26 on a heat neutral map. On a cold map however, the full 6dps is sustainable. I tested this out.

Setting my SL's to two groups and chainfiring to simulate the effect of the dreaded 6mg spider or the 4mgLL spider with 1dpsMGs, the fights played out EXACTLY how I expected. The heavies shot my legs off because I couldn't turn away from them for long and I was at point blank range. When my SL's weren't chainfired, I did quite a bit better. My damage wasn't spread out all over the mechs and managed to kill a few because I could evade fire and direct 18 damage alphas to locations of my choosing.


1DPS mgs will not be in any way OP.

Quote

At point blank 4MG spider could strip one of the rear armor locations of an atlas in about 2 seconds.(possibly less) The only cost to the spider for such immense power is 3-4 tons of gear. That is a problem.

Seriously. Get over 4dps. We're not asking for that.
I can't do this in my 6SL Jenner. in 2 seconds. MAYBE... MAYBE 5 seconds in a 6ML Jenner if the Atlas stands still after my first alpha and has low back armor... but I have to run after that.

Quote

4DPS MG's would be anti-assault cannons, and would remain mostly ineffective vs lights. I'd rather see spread reductions, range boosts, and moderate damage buffs instead of just multiplying MG's damage by 10 and pretending it's reasonable.

Most of the reasonable people here are not asking for 4dps machine guns. You really are trying to make a straw man argument out of this aren't you? You've picked the most extreme damage buff anyone has suggested and ran with it as what the majority have suggested. Most have suggested somewhere between .6 and 1.5

I'd take .6 if range were increased 250%
I'd take 1 as is, even with an ammo nerf.
I'd take 1.5 with a heavy ammo nerf.

Also, your hypothetical 4dps MG would shred enemy lights in light vs light combat. a 4mg spider with a LL would have 18dps. That's a pristine Jenner's leg in a little more than 5 seconds (realistically, like 10 or so). If you let a jenner kill you in under 10 seconds in a light on light duel, you're doing it wrong.

[Rattlehead NZ]

Anything beyond 1DPS i think would cause some problems. I think the main concern is boating which is a valid point. Even at 1DPS 4x mg's almost have the total dps of an AC20 at 5 dps. Of course you have to keep it on target but because there is no heat you wouldnt need many DHS to run extra lasers to really boost up the damage.

The original 0.8 DPS from tabletop is still more than double what we have now (ROF tested to be slower than listed) and would still make them effective. And not only the light mechs with many ballistic points would benefit from this change.

Regardless of what change is made, a change has to be made. The funny thing about the MG argument is that there are 2 sides. One saying that MGs are useless because they are seriously under powered and people who think they are meant to be useless because they are in TT. Regardless of each sides reasoning one thing is common and that is both sides agree that MG's are in fact totally, completely useless.

[Wintersdark]

Give me 1 DPS; nerf ammo per ton if necessary, I don't care. But at least 1dps. That's not at all unreasonable. Sure, it generates no heat - it's an ammo based weapon, most don't generate noteworthy heat, except the AC/2 which can do damage at extreme range.

And, when all is said and done, the Small Laser generates virtually no heat as well.

If all that was changed was Machine Guns were moved to 1DPS, they still wouldn't be better than Small Lasers.

[Wintersdark]

Rattlehead NZ, on 14 April 2013 - 05:17 PM, said:

Anything beyond 1DPS i think would cause some problems. I think the main concern is boating which is a valid point. Even at 1DPS 4x mg's almost have the total dps of an AC20 at 5 dps. Of course you have to keep it on target but because there is no heat you wouldnt need many DHS to run extra lasers to really boost up the damage.

The original 0.8 DPS from tabletop is still more than double what we have now (ROF tested to be slower than listed) and would still make them effective. And not only the light mechs with many ballistic points would benefit from this change.

Regardless of what change is made, a change has to be made. The funny thing about the MG argument is that there are 2 sides. One saying that MGs are useless because they are seriously under powered and people who think they are meant to be useless because they are in TT. Regardless of each sides reasoning one thing is common and that is both sides agree that MG's are in fact totally, completely useless.

Comparing them to AC20 DPS is deliberately misleading.

Weapons like the AC20 are all about "Up Front Damage" - that's why larger weapons do more and more overall damage but don't really push DPS very high. They hammer a single location hard.

Look at all the weapons' DPS. Ballistics are all around 4ish, give or take a bit but more noticably with enormous ROF, individual hit, range, and heat differences.

At 1DPS, a machine gun mirrors a Small Laser for over time damage, but:

The machine gun advantages:
1) No heat. This of course is mitigated by the fact that similar mechs with energy hardpoints packing small lasers will treat them as effectively 0 heat as well - it makes no difference.
2) Increased crit chance

1) Requires a minimum investment of 1.5 tons.
2) If you're running 4, you will run out of ammo with just one ton of ammo, so you're effectively spending 4 tons for your 4 machine guns. Even with two tons, in a long fight you have the real possibility of running out of ammo.
3) Inaccurate. The cone of fire is a substantial disadvantage, as it makes holding your damage output on a single location largely impossible.
4) And, arguably the most important disadvantage: They require 100% Time on Target. This removes the MG mech's ability to twist to spread incoming damage or maneuver to avoid it entirely without reducing it's DPS.

This has all been said before.

I sincerely don't understand how anyone can be against a machine gun buff. It wouldn't matter so much, but those mechs have no real options other than machine guns, because the next weapon up is far too large to effectively mount on a Light.

A buff to machine guns only really benefits those Lights (and the Cicada) that are already viewed as the weakest of their respective variants. Nobody is going to start running Grossly Overpowered 3 Machine Gun Dragons. (some may set that up, but without the Grossly Overpowered part, because that's just silly)

And "Well, here's a end of battle screen showing me get 8 kills with a Machine Gun spider" posts mean nothing. You can do well with anything if A: You are good enough, or B: Your opponents are bad enough.

[Rattlehead NZ]

Obviously an AC20 has that instant damage over the mg's constant fire. But in any light mech keeping your mg's on any one location for a second is easy to do. Who hasn't (in any mech) taken off an enemies limb with lasers? And that takes longer than a second to do with small or medium lasers. Also as they have constant fire you can keep the aim on the target much easier.

Having to keep yourself 100% on a target to keep the DPS up is a personal issue. Same goes for lasers as well as the time it takes to keep the beam on and having to keep it on target. Sure you can turn away in between cooldown but you can do the same with the mg's in between their firing cycles.

This aside I agree the mg's need the buff. Putting aside range, ammo and or playing styles the mg's have to change or just remove them. They aren't even good at critical seeking. In the test server i can use 1x mg to make critical hits and knock out weapons pretty quickly. On the live server though i was shooting an Atlas with 4x mg's and he had no torso or arm armour with all weapons intact and the only thing that I could critical was 1 LRM 20, Was on him for at least 30 seconds.

[Gman1211]

I don't care how they balance MG's, but they need to hurry up and do it. There are to many mechs that rely on being able to mount lightweight, effective, ballistic weapons.

[Conraire]

Rashhaverak, on 14 April 2013 - 10:38 AM, said:

Not sure I agree that they need a major DPS boost just because I didn't feel satisfied. Again, I don't meed them shredding armor, I just need them to do something useful. Crit seeking can be useful, but I got the impression that wasn't happening at the rate I would have expected.

By the way, take the machine guns out on the training grounds and you get a very different experience. You can kill mechs very quickly on the training grounds with ammo explosions, and the weapons tear appear the opponent mechs. I don't know why the experience was so much different in the real game.

I don't know what training ground your playing in. But I tested extensively last night, with a JM6-S, 4x LL, 4x MG. It consistently took 500-600 rounds to core the stationary Commando with 4mgs after stripping the armor off with the LL's. Larger mechs took more. Don't even bother trying to shoot them at armor, it's a waste of time. And mind you, I've got that mech completely mastered, mod slot and all.

And I'm not asking for 4dps either. I think if they were doing somewhere between 1-2dps, they would be just fine. No need to increase range etc. Missed shots with the MG equate to wasted dmg, which is something SL don't have to contend with. And the ammo doesn't need to be nerfed. The dmg per found and rof just need to be done right to make it equate out to the BT stats of the weapon. I think it's funny, every time they go against canon they screw something up.

Edited by Conraire, 14 April 2013 - 09:22 PM.

[Kmieciu]

Deathlike, on 14 April 2013 - 03:41 PM, said:

Maybe the MG should fire @ the same speed as the PPC. I mean, the AC2s run @ those speeds as well.

As a comparison.. the current MG speed is the same as an LRM and AMS. Neither of these really threaten anyone... (well, LRMs anyways).

MGs are literally 1/20 the speed of the PPC...

I'm pretty sure machine guns in MWO are instant hit weapons, like lasers and flamers. At least on testing grounds: you can shoot a mech 199 meters away. If the 100 meters/second were true, id would take damage after 2 seconds, when in fact the paper doll instantly shows damage.

My biggest gripe with machineguns is the spread: you cannot use them for legging, headshoting or taking out arms. That makes them useless against light mechs.

Damage per tonne is also pitiful: who wants to take additional 2MG+1t ammo (max 80 damage) when they could take 2 tonnes of AC ammo instead (125 - 150 damage). And I never had a ballistic mech that had any spare weight to begin with.

[stjobe]

Rattlehead NZ, on 14 April 2013 - 05:17 PM, said:

The original 0.8 DPS from tabletop is still more than double what we have now

I'm just going to pick on this part from what is otherwise a rather good post.

The BT DPS was 0.2 - which is almost exactly what *my* MGs gets in practice. Not the listed 0.4 DPS, not even the 0.36 or so the server makes it, but 0.2; half my shots miss. Some of that of course is due to my bad aim, but some of it is due to the inaccuracy of the weapon itself, a.k.a. spread. Some of it is even due to keeping the trigger depressed while franticly trying to torso-twist away from real weapons. The end result, though, is the same; you cannot get the full listed DPS of the MG in practice - and that's why comparing the DPS of the MG to any other weapon is semi-pointless.

So if it has the same DPS as the SL it won't actually DO as much damage as the SL due to all the other mitigating factors of the weapon's design: Continuous-fire, low range, high spread.

The only way the MG would actually do as much damage as a SL in a real-game situation is if it had substantially higher DPS than the SL, by about a factor of four as has been shown in this thread several times.

[RealityCheck]

Damage wise, I don't believe more than 1 dps is really required. After I got the pinpoint skill for my Cicada 3C, I started picking up mg kills. The increased convergence speed really helps center your bullet storm into a more centralized location, making your damage more effective. It still needs the damage buff (even with an ammo and crit modifier nerf to be fair) though. I can't tell you how many times I have been blasting full tilt with four machine guns and my single large pulse laser on a bright red CT. I keep blasting away and...I get killed first or someone else snags it from me.

I feel like I've been cheated out of so many kills...
RealityCheck

Edited: Fix posting error

Edited by RealityCheck, 15 April 2013 - 05:50 AM.

[General Taskeen]

The MW3 MG is still the champion.

.8 Damage - 0.625 CD - 1.28 DPS (VS Stock TT Armor Values)

MWO has double armor so

0.8 Damage - 0.3125 CD - 2.56 DPS - 200 Ammo Per Ton. Good damage, high fire rate, short range, low ammo. Hurts Mechs, and gives the lighter ballistic Mechs an actual good, ballistic weapon.

The 3 second 6-MG Spider will be pleased. In actuality a 4 MG Spider would then be doing 9.6 DPS and expending 120 Ammo in 10 Seconds. And all of this is dependent on the round actually hitting, like any ballistic weapon.

Once that is done they can bring in the LMG for .6 Damage (1.92 DPS, 200 Ammo Per Ton) and HMG for 1 Damage (3.2 DPS, 100 Ammo Per Ton).

Edited by General Taskeen, 15 April 2013 - 05:57 AM.

[FrostCollar]

Rattlehead NZ, on 14 April 2013 - 08:19 PM, said:

Having to keep yourself 100% on a target to keep the DPS up is a personal issue. Same goes for lasers as well as the time it takes to keep the beam on and having to keep it on target. Sure you can turn away in between cooldown but you can do the same with the mg's in between their firing cycles.

What's an MG firing cycle? They fire constantly.
The 100% uptime requirement is one of MG's central disadvantages, not just a personal issue.

[RealityCheck]

General Taskeen,
Giving the machine gun a cooldown is an option. Honestly, I'd like to keep the continuous fire and give it a cooldown only as a compromise for actually giving the weapon a buff. Furthermore, the best option for convincing the devs to buff the mg is if it involves changing numbers (like damage and spread) instead of changing how the weapon works (giving it a cooldown). Pretty sure the devs wouldn't be for giving the weapon a cooldown because it is a more drastic change.

Still a good idea to keep on the table though...
RealityCheck

[Wildstreak]

Rattlehead NZ, on 14 April 2013 - 05:17 PM, said:

The funny thing about the MG argument is that there are 2 sides. One saying that MGs are useless because they are seriously under powered and people who think they are meant to be useless because they are in TT.

Second group is described inaccurately. The MG is not useless in TT because there is no hardpoint system limiting what you can do. You can take a bigger Mech, stuff as many MGs as you want into it and play the right tactics to drive people nuts. A Vulcan and Firestarter if used right can be a threat in TT.

[stjobe]

Merchant, on 15 April 2013 - 06:02 AM, said:

Second group is described inaccurately. The MG is not useless in TT because there is no hardpoint system limiting what you can do. You can take a bigger Mech, stuff as many MGs as you want into it and play the right tactics to drive people nuts. A Vulcan and Firestarter if used right can be a threat in TT.

Not to mention the Piranha. 12xMG.

But yeah, the MG was always a regular damage-dealer in BattleTech, and in all the previous MechWarrior games. Only in MWO did the devs decide to give it their "special" treatment. Why, only they know. The end result is a useless weapon, that much is painfully obvious. I wish they'd reconsider and just make it a plain old damage-dealer again.

[HammerSwarm]

Rattlehead NZ, on 14 April 2013 - 08:19 PM, said:

Obviously an AC20 has that instant damage over the mg's constant fire. But in any light mech keeping your mg's on any one location for a second is easy to do. Who hasn't (in any mech) taken off an enemies limb with lasers? And that takes longer than a second to do with small or medium lasers. Also as they have constant fire you can keep the aim on the target much easier.

Having to keep yourself 100% on a target to keep the DPS up is a personal issue. Same goes for lasers as well as the time it takes to keep the beam on and having to keep it on target. Sure you can turn away in between cooldown but you can do the same with the mg's in between their firing cycles.

This aside I agree the mg's need the buff. Putting aside range, ammo and or playing styles the mg's have to change or just remove them. They aren't even good at critical seeking. In the test server i can use 1x mg to make critical hits and knock out weapons pretty quickly. On the live server though i was shooting an Atlas with 4x mg's and he had no torso or arm armour with all weapons intact and the only thing that I could critical was 1 LRM 20, Was on him for at least 30 seconds.

I find it most apt to compare machine guns and A/C2s why? because the A/C 2 is a rapid fire ballistic weapon.with High heat, great range, and good dps.

Now lets compare:
A/C2: Range:720/2160 RoF: 0.5 Damage: 2.0 Heat: 1.0
MG: Range: 90/180 ROF: .1 Damage .04 Heat 0.0

Both you have to turn towards the target and fire fairly consistently to achieve their full potential. One is useful and one is not. Why? It's because the useless one is disadvantaged in every way.

Facts:
The high heat cap allows the A/C2 to be fired many times before shutdown.
There is no bridge weapon below the A/C2 for lighter mechs.
We all mostly agree the machine gun in it's current state is nearly useless.

Reasonable Arguements.
Should the MG have the same stats as the A/C2? nope because it weighs 1/12 as much. That doesn't mean it should do 1/10th damage? Also no because of the hard point limitations; you can't equip enough machine guns to make the current iteration competitive with any other ballistic weapon. So what should it have? no less DPS that the regular A/C5.

So lets say DPS at 2.94 and we'll half the rate of fire so that it actually works, and add some heat.

NEW MG: Range 90/180 RoF: .5 Damage: .58 Heat:.2
That'd be a compelling gun I must say.

Think about it.

[Spyder228]

I'd gladly trade a bit of heat generation for more damage output. What if they fired in bursts with a short cool down like they did in MW4? Buff the damage, add recycle time. I'm not a numbers guy, just tossing out ideas in a thread I honestly didn't read all of.

[RealityCheck]

Merchant, on 15 April 2013 - 06:02 AM, said:

Second group is described inaccurately. The MG is not useless in TT because there is no hardpoint system limiting what you can do. You can take a bigger Mech, stuff as many MGs as you want into it and play the right tactics to drive people nuts. A Vulcan and Firestarter if used right can be a threat in TT.

I love the Firestarter, my favorite Inner Sphere light mech followed closely by the Flea. Hopefully, if and when it comes out the machine guns and flamers will be better so its not a waste of content...

I think when we get closer to the release of the Flea, PGI may show a bit more give when they realize their new light mech won't really be using those ballistic slots. At 20 tons, most people won't be gimping the build for an AC2 or mgs in their current state if there a few energy hard points they can capitalize on.

RealityCheck