Merchant, on 21 April 2013 - 05:35 AM, said:
I agree with the last paragraph including on other topics. However some of the argument here is actually separate arguments.
The rational of SDK-5K and CDA-3C needing this change is bogus. As I learned from being involved in game balance and design in other games, when a few units using a weapon have problems you fix the units, not the weapon. There are other, bigger Mechs carrying a decent number of Ballistics, what happens when they have a buffed light weight MG? No mention or analysis.
It is like the time I spent involved at Amarillo Design Bureau (ADB) where they make some combat games based off Star Trek (the original, not the later stuff like Borg, Ferengi, etc.) and they had a starship combat shooter of their board game much like Mechwarrior is to CBT.
You take a race like the Federation, lots of ships of different classes all using the Photon. If a few ships had problems involving damage based on Photons, they did not fix the Photon, they redesigned the few ships. I have seen them do this in other cases such as when they had to fix an Orion ship found to have problems regarding Phasers, they did not fix the Phaser, they fixed the ship design.
To fix a weapon, the problem has to be universal to almost all designs.
If only a few units suffer, then you fix the unit designs not the weapon.
Further, if you suffer from few weapon choices, you find a new weapon to propose without violating canon.
Thank you for your well reasoned reply, I disagree and here is why. Machine guns are not limited to a few variants and within the current system I don't believe that their is a simple redesign that could fix this issue.
Any mech with ballistics slots suffers from not having a viable machine gun. Your point that a larger mech could use machine guns is well understood. I understand this and I want to point out why this is in my opinion incorrect. The reason is range. The range of a machine gun is 90m the max range is 200 meters. The A/C 2 is 720/2160. That is reason enough for me not to fear that as a primary weapon. It's simply not a good idea to boat machine guns because their range is not sufficient to close open ground.
Further more there is 1 mech with six ballistic slots, 4 mechs with four, and three with 3. There are eight mechs that would substantially benefit from a change. But that also means there are only 8 that could really pack in the machine guns. This in my opinion negates much of the argument that making these better would make them too powerful. When something like SRM or Lasers can already be boated in this way and have greater, and in some cases much greater range.
So returning to my assertion that all mechs suffer from not having a viable light ballistic:Two mechs I'd like to focus on for this. The Atlas D and the Trebuchet 7K. The Atlas D has 2 ballistics slots as does the trebuchet, both are in a torso opening up the AC/20 as an option but adding that removes the flexibility of the XL engine. Other options that you can use there can be stacked but become quite heavy very quickly. Weight is less of a problem but is certainly relevant in an atlas. This is the bottom line. Having a viable light weight ballistic would benefit both mechs because they could include a short range defense weapon while relying on long range missiles or lasers to remain balanced. Any effort to use both slots otherwise adds lots of weight and takes up many critical slots limiting flexibility for being unique. Currently to utilize both ballistic slots in the torso you have a minimum of 12(13) tons and a maximum of 22(23) tons. The weight to utilize to energy slots? 1 ton. Two missile slots? a more moderate 2(3) tons.
Because of hard point restrictions, because of range, weight, and critical space machine guns need to be viable not just for mechs that can carry 3-4-6, but for mechs that can carry 1-2. 32 mechs have ballistic slots, and all 32 of them a currently forced to use a 6(7) ton weapon if they intend to fill that slot with anything useful.
So the question for me isn't should we buff the machine gun, it's to what level should we buff the machine gun. I personally think 2-3 DPS would be reasonable for a weapon with a range of 90m, that is ammo dependent, and has to be constantly fired to be effective. Some people would argue more but I think when the ridiculous cone of fire is removed the level I have suggested will be sufficient to see some machine guns used.
Edited by HammerSwarm, 22 April 2013 - 07:31 AM.
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