59 replies to this topic

[Kaeb Odellas]

Vermaxx, on 22 May 2013 - 12:07 AM, said:

I just did the math, and provided a small laser is still 0.5 second duration plus 2.25 cooldown (for a total 'time' of 2.75), a MG does 2.2 damage in the same amount of time.

In short, by raw math, a MG is BETTER than one would hope when compared to the small laser. Maybe they finally did fix it. If this is true then I can't ask for anything more. I'm having too many game problems to stress test MG performance.

Those are still very poor numbers for a machine gun. Consider that a mech with small laser can dump all of its damage in 0.5 seconds and disappear for the other 2.25 seconds to attack its target from a different angle, or torso twist away to distribute damage away from its CT.

A machine gun requires you to face the target for the entire duration of the fight to output the same damage, and keep that component in your crosshairs to deal efficient damage. This makes you vulnerable to counter-fire (a very bad thing for lights with ballistic hardpoints) or requires you to only engage when the enemy is distracted with another target or can't otherwise engage you, which limits your utility severely.

With lasers and SRMs, an experienced pilot can maximize damage to the enemy and minimize damage to his mech by focusing on aiming when firing and moving erratically or to cover between cooldowns.

Machine guns require you to reduce your damage output, since moving erratically makes it harder to aim, and you have to constantly aim your machine guns at the enemy to do damage. There is no cooldown period in which you can duck and weave.

Edited by Kaeb Odellas, 22 May 2013 - 08:18 AM.

[Barghest Whelp]

Liquid Leopard, on 21 May 2013 - 11:41 PM, said:

120mm cannon shells don't penetrate an Abrams tank. Turning a .50 cal on an Abrams would annoy the crew, because they'd have to repaint the tank later.

First of all, you should not be comparing real life physics to "fairyland all made up stuff with absolutely no basis in reality" physics.

Secondly, it is stated several places in the lore that balistics in BT don't work anything like today's modern guns. Look up light rifles on sarna and you'll get an idea of what I mean. If that's not enough for you, then I can tell you that in real life a larger caliber usually means longer range, yet in BT it works the other way around.

This is because the cannons of the BT universe have a much smaller case, and fire a larger explosive payload than todays conventional weapons. This is because it works better against the ablative armour of the BT battlemechs.

So, imagine if you will, that these "machine guns", which weigh in at half a ton, fire explosive shells at something that can be compared to extremely solid paper mash. This means that they would basically tear the armour off layer by layer. Ever heard of the A10 tank killer? It's cannons weigh about half of what the BT MG's weigh, and it's called a tank killer for a reason.

[shabowie]

Caelroigh Blunt, on 21 May 2013 - 03:19 PM, said:

So why am I seeing guys with 6 machine guns cutting down mechs (including assault mechs - when used in concert with other weapons)?

Because you're wrong. That's the short answer. They do damage mechs in canon. Quit efficiently in terms of weight and heat.

Edited by shabowie, 22 May 2013 - 09:17 AM.

[Stingz]

shabowie, on 22 May 2013 - 09:16 AM, said:

Because you're wrong. That's the short answer. They do damage mechs in canon. Quit efficiently in terms of weight and heat.

Along with the drawbacks of short range, and most explosive ammo in TT (600 per ton ammo explosions).

Edited by Stingz, 22 May 2013 - 01:21 PM.

[Seddrik]

Aegic, on 22 May 2013 - 07:33 AM, said:

...The MG in MWO does negligible damage unless there is no armor in the target location.

Imagine a mech with gaping holes and internal UNARMORED components and parts showing. Why would a heavy machine gun do no damage to those components?

And this is exactly what MGs are for. I ALWAYS aim at the broken spots with machine guns. I regularly blow up ammo or equipment, taking out arms and legs with machine gun fire. I see lots of bonus cash and xp from this weapon! I have not one complaint about such a small weighted, one slot, NO HEAT weapon!

I don't know why people want machine guns to be a better stand alone weapon... because then they will HAVE to add more cons to it. It is not meant to be the same as every other weapon. I love the variety this weapon affords in your builds! Yeah, that one spider is weak verses a fresh mech with only MG - BUT not useless IF you know your role!!! That spider is perfect for harassment and opportunist strikes. Mr. Machine Gun spider, spam those MG in someone's back to freak them out. Spam that MG in their exposed arm and blow up ammo. THATS how you use the weapon... and where people will learn your name as a dreaded spider pilot. "Oh no... so in so is on in his spider..."

MGs worked perfectly fine before this patch. They made it stronger now in damage but WEAKER in crits.............................. derp. I use the MG and want PGI to leave it as it was! Don't mess with it it was FINE and fun as it was. Why change it at all? IMO you made it over all WEAKER for its purpose... whats next? Heat and cool down? Increased weight? Then whats the point.... just make a different MG, a larger one for all that... leave the MG alone as it WAS before please.

Latest Patch on the Machine Gun:
- Damage 0.08 (up from 0.04)
- Range 120-240 (up from 90-200)
- Crit Chance 0.11,0.06, 0.02 (down from 0.14,0.08,0.03)


PGI please leave the MG alone! Put it back even with the higher crits! We don't want every weapon to be just like every other... We don't want the MG to be a balisitic small laser. Its damage and range and CRITS are different and thats what makes it fun!

Edited by Seddrik, 22 May 2013 - 02:35 PM.

[PropagandaWar]

Once knockdowns come back in (Heh). That spider will be on its bum more often than not if hes tottin MG's.

[Vermaxx]

I swapped my triple AC2 Hunch for triple MG.

Damage is still flat arse. Some fraggin Atlas carrying too many LRM got all the kills I was working. His SPLASH DAMAGE was better at plunking mechs than my three machine guns.

Considering machine guns are now doing eh about what they should do compared to a small laser, I guess they're just always going to be worthless. Therefore, by extension, mechs with large numbers of ballistic hardpoints are going to be largely worthless if they cannot at least tote AC2s.

The problem is still beam duration. A MG does about what it should when compared to a small laser MATHEMATICALLY, but it is still COMPLETELY BONED by that two second beam duration. Seriously, it takes more than one second of sustained fire to do one damage.

The machine gun needs to stop being a lawl cannon, and it needs to become a cooldown weapon with a 0.5 or 0.25 second duration (depending if it does one damage or two damage per burst).

Edited by Vermaxx, 22 May 2013 - 11:04 PM.

[Vermaxx]

Frankly I think they need to set MG to .1 per bullet, so the guns can do 1DPS. Even then it's a one second beam for one damage, but at least then it's SORT OF competitive.

THAT or let the gun do way more damage, but have it's own heat gauge capable of overheating and requiring a cooldown, like emplaced support weapons in shooter games.

[Amberite]

0.1 per bullet would be OP. Thats 4 dps in 4 seconds. With a weapon that weighs 0.5 tonnes.

That would mean it does 40% of the dmg that a ERPPC produces, with no heat, for a tiny fraction of the weight.

It becomes a short range rain of death and it allows me to still fit an bunch of other heavy gear.

EDIT: Just to clarify, the primary purpose of MGs as it stands is to attack internal components when armour is stripped. MGs fulfill that purpose nicely, the DPS is just a slight bonus.

Edited by Amberite, 22 May 2013 - 11:29 PM.

[Aegic]

Took my BJ-1 and subbed the AC/2s for MGs, added some armor and heat sinks and I feel alot better in it!

[Dude42]

Aphoticus, on 22 May 2013 - 07:14 AM, said:

I thought the damage was .08 not .8....anyways, I took a 2 MG and 2 Pulse Medium to the training grounds and pin-pointed the Atlas dead center and let her rip.

It was interesting compared to before the patch; I recommend others take a look.

Two things
First, the damage is 0.08 per shell with 10 shells fired per second resulting in 0.8 damage per second.
Second, the mechs in the testing ground do not have max armor, so you must take that into account when testing weapon damage. In other words, do not expect weapons to be as effective in real world scenarios where the targets have a realistic amount of armor.

On-topic: As pretty much everyone has stated, OP should probably read the original TT rulebook. MGs are most certainly intended to damage mechs. I'm pretty happy with their damage output currently. I run my DRG-5N with 3xMGs, 2xERPPCs(since way before the patch). The PPCs peel the armor, the MGs get in there and blow blow up the juicy internals. As nature intended.

Edit: The build will be MUCH better when they add actuator/gyro/engine damage from crits That's the main reason I run it that way, to prepare for the future.

Edited by Dude42, 23 May 2013 - 04:38 AM.

[CanAm]

Funkadelic Mayhem, on 21 May 2013 - 03:26 PM, said:

This is not a book. Nor is it the top of a table. a 50cal can penetrate an Abrams tank now days. how far in the future is this suppose to be?

I loved MG before. They are better now. Who knows what the future holds.

The game is a port of the tabletop game, only set in real-time and not turn based.

Also, what part of the tank can a .50 BMG round penetrate? The engine cover? .50 has a tough time making it through 1/4 inch AR500 steel. It won't make it through anything else on an Abrams, given that the weakest armor on the entire tank is equivalent to 22 inches of steel.

A tungsten tipped penetrator might make it into an M2/M3, however, and will probably enter and exit an M113.

[Hayashi]

Why is everyone forgetting that the machine gun has a spread where the small laser doesn't?

[Deathlike]

Hayashi, on 23 May 2013 - 07:13 AM, said:

Why is everyone forgetting that the machine gun has a spread where the small laser doesn't?

They are also forgetting about 100% uptime, but you know, forget these important aspects since DPS seems to be the # we should be focused on.

Edited by Deathlike, 23 May 2013 - 08:02 AM.

[Dude42]

Deathlike, on 23 May 2013 - 08:02 AM, said:

They are also forgetting about 100% uptime, but you know, forget these important aspects since DPS seems to be the # we should be focused on.

Yea 100% if you can hold it on the target constantly. Depends on the target.

[Deathlike]

100% exposure as a light mech or any mech long term is usually a mech that wishes to die soon. Anyone who fails to understand this clearly hasn't been tickled by a Spider-5K enough.

Edited by Deathlike, 23 May 2013 - 08:28 AM.

[Vermaxx]

Six machine guns (the most any mech can carry) will do a maximum of 4.8 damage in one second WITH spread AND the one second beam duration.

Six small lasers will do a maximum of 18 damage in .75 seconds (or .5, I'm not sure if the wiki is current and Ohm's thread is broken) with no spread. All they suffer is heat, which is a far better tradeoff than "constant uptime."

The machine gun looks good, sounds good, and seems good from the viewpoint that "critting is awesome." The crit chance went down, and the damage per hit is still too low to disable anything in short order per bullet. You HAVE to boat machine guns to critseek. A single AC2 is better at critting than multiple machine guns based ONLY on it's rate of fire and much higher damage. Yes, an AC2 weighs six tons. It also shouldn't have such a low cooldown.

The small laser is vastly better than a machine gun, and it should only be marginally better. People act like the heat savings are OP. Heat savings for lower damage (and VERY explosive ammo) was the POINT of MGs in tabletop. I know they were abused in other games, but they don't have to be worthless here to avoid that.

Let's look at it this way for context. Do the math for one ton of ballistic ammo on any gun, they're all ABOUT 150ish damage for the total shots included. A ton of machine gun ammo is 2000 rounds, which will do a total of 160 damage (DOUBLE what it used to be), AND you have to spend 200 seconds firing that ammo to produce the damage.

Now, if you think a gun that takes 3.3 minutes to produce 160 damage UNDER PERFECT CIRCUMSTANCES is anything like balanced, useful, and valid, then I cannot debate with you.

[TOGSolid]

Hayashi, on 23 May 2013 - 07:13 AM, said:

Why is everyone forgetting that the machine gun has a spread where the small laser doesn't?

This should definitely be the next tweak to MGs. A spread reduction would be a huge boost to their usefulness.

[NoxMorbis]

Caelroigh Blunt, on 21 May 2013 - 03:19 PM, said:

Machine guns, according to every other aspect of the BattleTech universe are considered anti-personnel or soft target weapons. In the books they don't even damage a mech. In the RPG they do so little damage as to be negligible to a mech. So why am I seeing guys with 6 machine guns cutting down mechs (including assault mechs - when used in concert with other weapons)?

No, a .50 calibre will not penetrate an M1s main battle armor, ever, even the uranium rounds nor armor peircing. Also, how do you know the machine guns on a mech are .50 cal? Mabe they're bigger and faster? Why would you think a 50 cal could penetrate the battle armor of an A1? I mean other 120mm armor peircing tank shells can't even pentrate that armor.

The A1/A2 use steel-encased, depleted-uranium armor, designated HA (heavy armor). "In the Gulf War, Abrams tanks survived multiple hits at relatively close ranges from Iraqi Lion of Babylon tanks and ATGMs. M829A1 "Silver Bullet" APFSDS rounds from other M1A1 Abrams were unable to penetrate the front and side armor (even at close ranges) in friendly fire incidents as well as an incident in which an Abrams tried to destroy an abandoned Abrams stuck in the mud."

The M829 is an American Armor-Piercing, Fin-Stabilized, Discarding Sabot (APFSDS) tank round designed specifically for the 120 mm M256 main gun on the M1A1 and M1A2 main battle tanks. This sub-caliber anti-tank round is essentially a dart made of a depleted uranium (DU) alloy which gives it good performance against nearly all known types of tank armor. The penetrator is held in place by the sabot during the acceleration in the gun barrel. (Translation: A LOT MORE POWERFUL THAN A 50 CAL Round.)

(Source: http://en.wikipedia....M1_Abrams#Armor )

Edited by NoxMorbis, 23 May 2013 - 12:52 PM.

[aniviron]

Dear everyone: stop talking about Abrams tanks and calibres and etc etc. We are space warriors traveling faster than light a thousand years in the future on space tanks that look like people and shoot space bullets that only go about as far as a strong human can throw a rock. What part of this makes sense.

The answer is none of it. So please stop trying to make sense of it. I am tired of your garbage about "unnnh but it doesn't make sense that a gun can go though metal." This is a game that defies logic in the most absurd ways and yet you are worried about what the calibre of the gun is.

What you should be worried about is: is this weapon fun to use, and is it useful? If the answer to either is no, then there is a problem with it, and we should fix it. Since you are all so good at logical induction, I invite you to instead debate ways to make this weapon useful and fun- in the game, that is.