1386 replies to this topic

[Terror Teddy]

Hmm, interesting

The Piranha was actually existing and deployed by the Clans at the battle of Tukayyid in 3052.

[Straften]

Hayashi, on 09 April 2013 - 02:17 AM, said:

CCQ 3: Why is Machine Gun damage so low? A: Partly due to the nature of how MGs work in the TT rules, partially due to how we chose to make it useful. When equipping a MG, keep in mind that it is not meant to burn through armor but is very useful for tearing up internals (crits).

All weapons are good at damaging internals, why would anyone consider taking 1.5 tons of equipment that can only damage internals?

[HammerSwarm]

I played spread sheet warrior online just now. I used Excel and the =rand() function.
I used the formula =IF(B7<0.74,.04,IF(B7<0.88,.5,IF(B7<0.96,1.0,1.5))) This gave me the following ranges.
00-74 for 0.04
75-87 for 0.50
87-95 for 1.00
96-99 for 1.50

I calculated 100 times. taking the damage done per 100 bullets or 10 seconds of fire from 1 machine gun under fictional PGI conditions. The DPS I calculated was 2.3816, or 2.4. This fictional 2.4 DPS presumes a couple of things: All bullets find an area with exposed internals, and that machine guns actually fire at 10/s.

The reasons for this fiction are the cone of fire and client/server restrictions on rate of fire.

So to anyone saying that the crit seeking makes DPS "comparable!" on an unarmored section a 1.5 ton machine gun is only twice as good as a 1 ton medium laser. This comes at the disadvantage of being useless against armor at .4 vs 1.25. This is again under fictional optimal conditions for the machine gun. The medium laser has the advantages of burst damage, and pinpoint damage. Don't forget ammo.

Side by Sides help me:
MG ML SL
DPS(armor) 0.04 1.25 1.00
DPS(core) 2.38 1.25 1.00
Range 90/200 270/540 90/180
Weight 0.5(1.5) 1.0 0.5
Ammo 2000 Inf Inf

This is the problem. Right there. Machine guns are useless vs armor.

If you go ton for ton or hard point for hard point we see more divergence (4 tons, 6 hard points):

MG ML SL
DPS(armor) 0.24 5.00 6.00
DPS(core) 14.28 5.00 6.00
Range 90/200 270/540 90/180
Weight 3.0(4.0) 4.0 3.0
Ammo 2000 Inf Inf

If you had no cone of fire boating these would still do nothing to armor but then against a mech with no armor they could be quite powerful. Lasers still offer a better set of options in this scenario. Better or similar range, infinite ammo, and the ability to eat armor up.

Dispute the facts, no more "I think because it can crit it's okay". you'd have to remove cone of fire for that to be the case and improve the visual ques for exposed internals other than a white texture. (painting your mech white really throws those ques off) Also while it can crit unless that damage is transferred from the uncrittable engine to the internal HP then it's all for moot.

(Edit)
Also with my nifty spread sheet I calculated that with a damage of .26 per bullet the Regular DPS would be 2.6 and the critical DPS would average out to 3.95(roughly the 4.0 of the A/C 2) This would be in line to what I think would be reasonable.

If you changed it to 0.2 - 0.5 - 1.25 - 2.0 it would be 2.0 and 3.99 which would be even more perfect Imho.

Edited by HammerSwarm, 24 April 2013 - 01:39 PM.

[Straften]

HammerSwarm, on 24 April 2013 - 01:09 PM, said:

I played spread sheet warrior online just now. I used Excel and the =rand() function.
I used the formula =IF(B7<0.74,.04,IF(B7<0.88,.5,IF(B7<0.96,1.0,1.5))) This gave me the following ranges.
00-74 for 0.04
75-87 for 0.50
87-95 for 1.00
96-99 for 1.50

I calculated 100 times. taking the damage done per 100 bullets or 10 seconds of fire from 1 machine gun under fictional PGI conditions. The DPS I calculated was 2.3816, or 2.4. This fictional 2.4 DPS presumes a couple of things: All bullets find an area with exposed internals, and that machine guns actually fire at 10/s.

The reasons for this fiction are the cone of fire and client/server restrictions on rate of fire.

So to anyone saying that the crit seeking makes DPS "comparable!" on an unarmored section a 1.5 ton machine gun is only twice as good as a 1 ton medium laser. This comes at the disadvantage of being useless against armor at .4 vs 1.25. This is again under fictional optimal conditions for the machine gun. The medium laser has the advantages of burst damage, and pinpoint damage. Don't forget ammo.

Side by Sides help me:
MG ML SL
DPS(armor) 0.04 1.25 1.00
DPS(core) 2.38 1.25 1.00
Range 90/200 270/540 90/180
Weight 0.5(1.5) 1.0 0.5
Ammo 2000 Inf Inf

This is the problem. Right there. Machine guns are useless vs armor.

If you go ton for ton or hard point for hard point we see more divergence (4 tons, 6 hard points):

MG ML SL
DPS(armor) 0.24 5.00 6.00
DPS(core) 14.28 5.00 6.00
Range 90/200 270/540 90/180
Weight 3.0(4.0) 4.0 3.0
Ammo 2000 Inf Inf

If you had no cone of fire boating these would still do nothing to armor but then against a mech with no armor they could be quite powerful. Lasers still offer a better set of options in this scenario. Better or similar range, infinite ammo, and the ability to eat armor up.

Dispute the facts, no more "I think because it can crit it's okay". you'd have to remove cone of fire for that to be the case and improve the visual ques for exposed internals other than a white texture. (painting your mech white really throws those ques off) Also while it can crit unless that damage is transferred from the uncrittable engine to the internal HP then it's all for moot.

(Edit)
Also with my nifty spread sheet I calculated that with a damage of .26 per bullet the Regular DPS would be 2.6 and the critical DPS would average out to 3.95(roughly the 4.0 of the A/C 2) This would be in line to what I think would be reasonable.

If you changed it to 0.2 - 0.5 - 1.25 - 2.0 it would be 2.0 and 3.99 which would be even more perfect Imho.

TL:DR He did math and the math shows that even with exposed internals-
TL:DR Buff the machine gun now.

[Homeless Bill]

I feel like they might be worth taking if the critical hits also applied damage to the internal structure (either in place of or in addition to the components). I like the idea of the machine gun having a niche role, but it sucks at that role right now.

Having it bad against armor and good against internal structure would give it a use. Between these 34 pages of rage and your in-house statistics (that must show no one equips machine guns), it should be clear that a damage increase is needed. My suggestion is just one out of hundreds you have to choose from; just do something.

I'm sort of curious if a player's likelihood of equipping machine guns is inversely proportional to their Elo ranking...

[shintakie]

Homeless Bill, on 24 April 2013 - 03:20 PM, said:

I feel like they might be worth taking if the critical hits also applied damage to the internal structure (either in place of or in addition to the components). I like the idea of the machine gun having a niche role, but it sucks at that role right now.

Having it bad against armor and good against internal structure would give it a use. Between these 34 pages of rage and your in-house statistics (that must show no one equips machine guns), it should be clear that a damage increase is needed. My suggestion is just one out of hundreds you have to choose from; just do something.

I'm sort of curious if a player's likelihood of equipping machine guns is inversely proportional to their Elo ranking...

The damage to internals would need to be ridiculously high in order to justify the MG bein utter garbage 70% of the fight. We're talkin, you see exposed internals, train your MG on it, internals have now evaporated into dust.

No one would want that.

[Homeless Bill]

shintakie, on 24 April 2013 - 07:29 PM, said:

The damage to internals would need to be ridiculously high in order to justify the MG bein utter garbage 70% of the fight.

I don't see any reason for that. And I disagree that armor is 70% of the fight. Stripping armor is half-way at best most of the time.

You're often running hot by the time you get to their internals, so as long as it put out something like Small Laser DPS against internals, it's heat-free nature would make up for many of its shortcomings.

[Critical Fumble]

Ok, for everyone who's got it in their heads that an "only versus internals" weapon would be worth having, I have a fun math question for you. Its actually stolen and modified from my ninth grade science teacher who was trying to get us to think, but it is very appropriate here.

Weapon A deals 4 DPS continuously and kills a mech in a given time. Weapon B deals 2 DPS versus armor, and extra versus internals. Assuming that the section targeted has a 1:1 ratio of armor and structure, how much extra damage would weapon B need to deal in order to kill the same mech as weapon A in the same amount of time? Answer in the spoiler, but try to come up with an answer first.

Spoiler

Answer, it would have to instantly kill the mech once the internals were exposed.

Scale down to whatever time ratio you feel would be appropriate for MGs, but there's no real way to go down that road and make a weapon that is all of: worth taking, fun to use, and fun to play against.

[hammerreborn]

Luckily we can confirm one thing, MG > Flamers

[Straften]

hammerreborn, on 24 April 2013 - 08:32 PM, said:

Luckily we can confirm one thing, MG > Flamers

4 minutes! Yeah, these weapons don't need buffs PGI, you guys are right. /thread

[hammerreborn]

Straften, on 24 April 2013 - 08:59 PM, said:

4 minutes! Yeah, these weapons don't need buffs PGI, you guys are right. /thread

Thats not true, all weapons need a nerf. If every dual lasted 4 minutes it would be so much more awesome than HI GUYS *bang* <hammerreborn has died>.

Edited by hammerreborn, 24 April 2013 - 09:27 PM.

[Keifomofutu]

hammerreborn, on 24 April 2013 - 09:20 PM, said:

Thats not true, all weapons need a nerf. If every dual lasted 4 minutes it would be so much more awesome than HI GUYS *bang* <hammerreborn has died>.

Bring back collisions and dragons would rule the inner sphere. They'd just bullrush through your petty flaming mgs and take all your caps. It would be glorious.

[Terror Teddy]

hammerreborn, on 24 April 2013 - 09:20 PM, said:

Thats not true, all weapons need a nerf. If every dual lasted 4 minutes it would be so much more awesome than HI GUYS *bang* <hammerreborn has died>.

I understand what you are saying but I find it silly when my Spider dont simply get knocked down when I get hit by twin AC/20's and they DONT kill me.

Keifomofutu, on 24 April 2013 - 11:16 PM, said:

Bring back collisions and dragons would rule the inner sphere. They'd just bullrush through your petty flaming mgs and take all your caps. It would be glorious.

That was a known bug.

[Loler skates]

HammerSwarm, on 24 April 2013 - 01:09 PM, said:

I played spread sheet warrior online just now. I used Excel and the =rand() function.
I used the formula =IF(B7<0.74,.04,IF(B7<0.88,.5,IF(B7<0.96,1.0,1.5))) This gave me the following ranges.
00-74 for 0.04
75-87 for 0.50
87-95 for 1.00
96-99 for 1.50

I calculated 100 times. taking the damage done per 100 bullets or 10 seconds of fire from 1 machine gun under fictional PGI conditions. The DPS I calculated was 2.3816, or 2.4. This fictional 2.4 DPS presumes a couple of things: All bullets find an area with exposed internals, and that machine guns actually fire at 10/s.

The reasons for this fiction are the cone of fire and client/server restrictions on rate of fire.

So to anyone saying that the crit seeking makes DPS "comparable!" on an unarmored section a 1.5 ton machine gun is only twice as good as a 1 ton medium laser. This comes at the disadvantage of being useless against armor at .4 vs 1.25. This is again under fictional optimal conditions for the machine gun. The medium laser has the advantages of burst damage, and pinpoint damage. Don't forget ammo.

Side by Sides help me:
MG ML SL
DPS(armor) 0.04 1.25 1.00
DPS(core) 2.38 1.25 1.00
Range 90/200 270/540 90/180
Weight 0.5(1.5) 1.0 0.5
Ammo 2000 Inf Inf

This is the problem. Right there. Machine guns are useless vs armor.

If you go ton for ton or hard point for hard point we see more divergence (4 tons, 6 hard points):

MG ML SL
DPS(armor) 0.24 5.00 6.00
DPS(core) 14.28 5.00 6.00
Range 90/200 270/540 90/180
Weight 3.0(4.0) 4.0 3.0
Ammo 2000 Inf Inf

If you had no cone of fire boating these would still do nothing to armor but then against a mech with no armor they could be quite powerful. Lasers still offer a better set of options in this scenario. Better or similar range, infinite ammo, and the ability to eat armor up.

Dispute the facts, no more "I think because it can crit it's okay". you'd have to remove cone of fire for that to be the case and improve the visual ques for exposed internals other than a white texture. (painting your mech white really throws those ques off) Also while it can crit unless that damage is transferred from the uncrittable engine to the internal HP then it's all for moot.

(Edit)
Also with my nifty spread sheet I calculated that with a damage of .26 per bullet the Regular DPS would be 2.6 and the critical DPS would average out to 3.95(roughly the 4.0 of the A/C 2) This would be in line to what I think would be reasonable.

If you changed it to 0.2 - 0.5 - 1.25 - 2.0 it would be 2.0 and 3.99 which would be even more perfect Imho.

hold up a second

I might be misreading your post but are you making the assumption critical hits are effecting structural hp? because thats wrong if you are.

Critical hits only effect internals like ammo and weapons.

Structural hp is shaved off just as slowly as armour is by machine guns.

[Lord of All]

"SDR-5K - The -5K Spider removes one of the Medium Lasers and replaces it with two arm mounted Machine Guns for anti-infantry use. To make room for its Machine Gun ammunition the 'Mech sacrifices 60 meters of its jump capability. ^[5] BV (1.0) = 433, BV (2.0) = 503^[6]"

[stjobe]

hammerreborn, on 24 April 2013 - 08:32 PM, said:

Luckily we can confirm one thing, MG > Flamers

Note: That's actually the second match, the Flamer Stalker won the first match.
See here: http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__2289480

[HammerSwarm]

Loler skates, on 25 April 2013 - 02:11 AM, said:

hold up a second

I might be misreading your post but are you making the assumption critical hits are effecting structural hp? because thats wrong if you are.

Critical hits only effect internals like ammo and weapons.

Structural hp is shaved off just as slowly as armour is by machine guns.

I was not clear on this in my post but you are quite correct. I tried to get at it with this sentence "Also while it can crit unless that damage is transferred from the uncrittable engine to the internal HP then it's all for moot." The conclusion of all of that math was that even if you were using a machine gun on internals the damage spread isn't really that great.

[Dawnstealer]

Really, the MG does what it did in the tabletop game: was an annoying thing that was more sound and fury than actual danger.

When I was running my 3-MG CDA, it was a lot of fun to just annoy the crap out of people with the MGs, but I was never under the delusion they were actually doing anything other than making loud clanging noises on the other player's mech. Against mechs, "LORDS OF THE BATTLEFIELD!!!!!!", they really should be ineffective as anything more than a distraction.

I'm fine with what they do now, but to be a viable build, you'd almost HAVE to have AI vehicles and/or infantry involved (would also make Flamers useful). Of course, when the [SPOILER ALERT] clans arrive, there'll be Elemental/TOADS aplenty. The MG will be pretty useful against them.

[FupDup]

Dawnstealer, on 25 April 2013 - 07:26 AM, said:

Really, the MG does what it did in the tabletop game: was an annoying thing that was more sound and fury than actual danger.

They did 2 damage against armored units in TableTop (2D6 against infantry). Their weaknesses were their short range and ammo explosion liabilities, not their damage.

Edited by FupDup, 26 April 2013 - 07:55 AM.

[Wildstreak]

The quote below I find interesting because the night before he posted, I was on testing ground fooling with my LBX equipped HBK-4H and without trying to find anything, I noticed oddness in the LBX spread. Took some screenshots and comparing those to his, it is clear the MG looks more damaging than a LBX Autocannon. So for 1.5 tons, more damage can be dealt out than for an 11 ton weapon.

How long does it take to go through 1 ton of MG ammo? Think I will put the stock Trial RVN-4X on Testing Grounds and compare but I believe the results will not look good for those supporting a MG damage buff.

From both his and mine, I am convinced there is a problem on spread of MG and LBX. But I am also reminded of when missiles were shown to have splash damage. PGI stated that when splash was removed, missiles becaome too powerful and until fixed we have to live with the CT focused splash.

How powerful would MGs be just by removing spread? They clearly seem so far stronger than LBX AC/10s.

stjobe, on 22 April 2013 - 03:05 PM, said:

In an effort to look at the spread of the MG, I decided to take my 6 MG 4 MG Spider to the testing grounds.

Round 1: I find an AS7-D and position myself 88m in front of it, aim for the CT and hold the trigger.
2000 rounds later, this is the result:

As expected, I didn't even breach the armour (AS7-D stock CT has 94 armour, 1 ton of MG ammo is 80 damage). The damage was mostly done to the CT, with some splash to the LT and RT.

Round 2: I choose a smaller target, a CPLT-A1. Again, I stand 88m in front of it and aim straight at it's nose. Result?

CT breached (48 armour), some head damage, but the 42 points of internal structure stopped me from killing it. Not a single bullet found its way to the LT or RT.

Round 3: I want to kill an Atlas from behind. I hear Spiders can do devastating effects there. So I find an AS7-D, stand 88m behind it, aim for the RCT and hold the trigger:

The damage spreads a bit to the LT and RT, but most of it's on the CT. Too bad that CT has 28 points of armour and 62 points of internal structure... That's 10 more than my max damage. I did manage to destroy the two MLs though, so that's something.

Round 4: I know! I'll aim for the LT! That only has 20 armour and 42 internal structure! I can finally kill an Atlas!

No dice. The damage spreads to the LA and the CT, and I can't get 62 damage to the LT. I do manage to kill the weapons in there, but the ammo refuses to explode. The Atlas kill eludes me.

Round 5: So now I want to find out how large the spread really is. I find a COM-1B and stand 199m away from it. At this range I'll hardly do any damage, but at least the paperdoll will light up where I hit. Here's what happens:

Less than 1% damage, and every single hit location hit - I even managed to hit the rear locations... That means that at 199m, the spread is at least 9m in diameter (the height of the Commando). But now I want to kill something!

Round 6: Bloodlust. I find a COM-1B, stand 89m in front of it, aim for the CT, and pull the trigger.
Did I get my kill?

I did, and with 400 rounds to spare. It only takes 1,600 rounds from quad MGs to kill a stock Commando! The damage spread all over the place at this range too, only the legs didn't take damage.

So how bad is the spread? Enough that it takes 1,600 rounds - or 64 damage - to core a stock COM-1B through the CT (16 armour + 16 internal structure). So only 50% of the projectiles actually hit the CT, the rest spread all over the 'mech.

At this point I'd like to take the opportunity again to quote our dear Mr. Ekman: "We’ve removed randomness from weapon firing in favor of skill."

Yeah right.