29 replies to this topic

[Fishbulb333]

They suck. Can unload 3 tons of ammo from my quad mg spider point blank into enemies back and do, at best, 40 damage with them per game. If we really need to keep the current (terrible) crit seeking mechanic can we at least have crits effect engines and/or give a much higher chance to cause ammo explosion?
Peronally I'd prefer the crit-seeking thing to be scrapped entirely and simply buff the mg's base damage (and make flamers generate more heat on the target than the mech firing them) but since neither of these seem likely to happen - just do something, anything, to make them worth using.


thread neccesary? not really, but if the devs state they're only looking for trends on forums, I'll do my bit.

edit - great idea from bagheera, crits damaging actuators & gyros etc, and affecting movement/aiming would make the crit seekers very appealing. As it stands now, you can really only take out weapons or ammo (which usually doesn't explode), most other locations contain nothing that is affected by crits.

For a really good example of how well component damage impairing movement can work, check out War Thunder..

Edited by Fishbulb333, 13 April 2013 - 08:28 AM.

[Roadbeer]

in before lock.

[N0ni]

In before mention that Flamers are fine.



Flamers are fine and can wait a few months.
(called it)

[MonkeyCheese]

But my 4x raven with 2mg 2flamers gets kills

[Juree Riggd]

Bryan Ekman, on 08 April 2013 - 11:36 AM, said:

Ask the Devs #35

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). Bumping MG damage will turn it into a laser that can be kept on with no heat penalty until it runs out of ammo. Now imagine the devastating effect that a 6 MG spider could do to the back of an Atlas! We are still investigating balance of the MG but don’t expect any significant increase in damage.

[Critical Fumble]

MonkeyCheese, on 13 April 2013 - 06:45 AM, said:

But my 4x raven with 2mg 2flamers gets kills

Cooking off your own MG ammo and killing yourself does not count as "getting a kill"

[Fishbulb333]

Juree Riggd, on 13 April 2013 - 06:47 AM, said:

Quote 2 - Dimwit dev who doesn't know hardpoints in own game -
"Now imagine the devastating effect that a 6 MG spider could do to the back of an Atlas! We are still investigating balance of the MG but don’t expect any significant increase in damage."

Now imagine that 6 mg spider actually existed., and if it did? Well it would suck precisely 50% less than the 5k, which is still a lot of suck.

Edited by Fishbulb333, 13 April 2013 - 06:51 AM.

[MonkeyCheese]

Critical Fumble, on 13 April 2013 - 06:49 AM, said:

Cooking off your own MG ammo and killing yourself does not count as "getting a kill"

Oh if only that where a thing.

[shintakie]

Fishbulb333, on 13 April 2013 - 06:50 AM, said:

Now imagine that 6 mg spider actually existed., and if it did? Well it would suck precisely 50% less than the 5k, which is still a lot of suck.

I dunno man. Based off everythin the hypothetical 6 MG Spider would probably only have 4 JJ's because PGI would want to make sure such a thing wasn't horrendously overpowered compared to its poor energy wieldin brethren.

Edit - Or maybe even no JJs. Gotta watch out for those 6 MG spiders. They're like 3 second Jenners. No one believes they exist except in magical PGI fairyland, but one day. One day they'll show us all!

Edited by shintakie, 13 April 2013 - 06:52 AM.

[neviu]

mg hmmmmm,
where have i seen this before?

[Thedrelle]

MonkeyCheese, on 13 April 2013 - 06:50 AM, said:

Oh if only that where a thing.

It is a thing. If you overheat, your ammunition can explode. boom goes the spider.

[Juree Riggd]

Fishbulb333, on 13 April 2013 - 06:50 AM, said:

Quote 2 - Dimwit dev who doesn't know hardpoints in own game -
"Now imagine the devastating effect that a 6 MG spider could do to the back of an Atlas! We are still investigating balance of the MG but don’t expect any significant increase in damage."

Now imagine that 6 mg spider actually existed., and if it did? Well it would suck precisely 50% less than the 5k, which is still a lot of suck.

Even if it did exist, why would you want to take 6 MGs anyways? The point of the answer is to reiterate that MGs aren't for DPS, but for critseeking. That's what they designed MGs to do, and if you don't like what they do, then don't put MGs on your loadout.

[Bagheera]

Juree Riggd, on 13 April 2013 - 07:59 AM, said:

Even if it did exist, why would you want to take 6 MGs anyways? The point of the answer is to reiterate that MGs aren't for DPS, but for critseeking. That's what they designed MGs to do, and if you don't like what they do, then don't put MGs on your loadout.

First off, you *can* put 6MG onto something and test out just how "effective" they are at crit seeking for yourself. I'll save you the time, they are still not all that effective.

In the time it takes for MGs to trigger enough crit damage to destroy that medium laser in the exposed torso you were shooting, you could have just completely destroyed that torso section with regular weapons. There's little point in taking them, even for crit seeking.

Try it sometime. Go to the Testing grounds, strip the armor from a side torso, then see how much faster it is to just destroy it outright than to wait for MGs to trigger enough crits to do the same. Unless you are supremely lucky with the RNG, you're better off doing actual damage.

[Juree Riggd]

Bagheera, on 13 April 2013 - 08:05 AM, said:

First off, you *can* put 6MG onto something and test out just how "effective" they are at crit seeking for yourself. I'll save you the time, they are still not all that effective.

In the time it takes for MGs to trigger enough crit damage to destroy that medium laser in the exposed torso you were shooting, you could have just completely destroyed that torso section with regular weapons. There's little point in taking them, even for crit seeking.

Try it sometime. Go to the Testing grounds, strip the armor from a side torso, then see how much faster it is to just destroy it outright than to wait for MGs to trigger enough crits to do the same. Unless you are supremely lucky with the RNG, you're better off doing actual damage.

You're probably right, and I'll take your word for it. That doesn't mean MGs need DPS increase because the mechanics they have in place for it aren't balanced properly. If the critseeking were increased, light mechs could run in MGs ablazin' and blow up all of that ammo that didn't explode after the armor was stripped at range.

[jeffsw6]

I'm convinced the dev doesn't actually understand how crits work.

[Bagheera]

Juree Riggd, on 13 April 2013 - 08:08 AM, said:

You're probably right, and I'll take your word for it. That doesn't mean MGs need DPS increase because the mechanics they have in place for it aren't balanced properly. If the critseeking were increased, light mechs could run in MGs ablazin' and blow up all of that ammo that didn't explode after the armor was stripped at range.

To be fair: idk what the best answer for MGs will be.

As they stand though they make a neat sound and occasionally destroy a component when you get lucky, at extremely close range, when the opponent is already stripped. Still seems very far from what we should consider "par" for a given weapon.

[Juree Riggd]

Bagheera, on 13 April 2013 - 08:12 AM, said:

To be fair: idk what the best answer for MGs will be.

As they stand though they make a neat sound and occasionally destroy a component when you get lucky, at extremely close range, when the opponent is already stripped. Still seems very far from what we should consider "par" for a given weapon.

I agree, but I don't think the current mechanic should be abandoned just to give us another generic DPS weapon. I like the critseeking idea, but it needs to actually work.

[Bagheera]

One thing that would help is if we could actually crit all of the components in a given section. For example, if we crit a hip-actuator the mech slows down. If we crit an arm actuator it looses some articulation. If we crit a gyro it's harder to maintain a steady aim. Stuff like that.

[Juree Riggd]

Bagheera, on 13 April 2013 - 08:16 AM, said:

One thing that would help is if we could actually crit all of the components in a given section. For example, if we crit a hip-actuator the mech slows down. If we crit an arm actuator it looses some articulation. If we crit a gyro it's harder to maintain a steady aim. Stuff like that.

This would be great and possibly make the MGs more viable.

[Imagine Dragons]

"PGI has attempted to find a unique place for the machine gun in the Mechwarrior Online armory by reworking them into “crit seekers”, with an increased chance of knocking out weapons and ammo. Following the infamous machine gun tweak patch, machine guns were actually quite adept at destroying internal components. Unfortunately, their effectiveness was due to a bug where they were working with an 80% crit rate. Shortly after discovery, the machine guns were nerfed back into uselessness.

What did we learn? Even with a huge unintended advantage in the area where PGI intended the weapons to perform well, most players didn’t bother with the machine guns. They still did far too little damage at too short of a range, all while requiring ammo that turns your battlemech into a firework should you stub your toe on a map’s geometry. We know there is a reworking of the crit system somewhere over the horizon, but as it stands the machine gun is a weapon without a use."

- http://themittani.co...ing-machine-gun

For the love of god, the author or this article is right... PGI just needs to raise the crit chance back when it was 80% when it was unintended...

Edited by XenomorphZZ, 13 April 2013 - 08:26 AM.