76 replies to this topic

[Byzan]

I sont see the big deal. I keep hearing "MGs are lethal against mechs with stripped armour"

but aren't all weapons lethal against mechs with stripped armour? Hitting weak points late in a match will always blow off parts and rack up kills whatever weapon you use. I dont think they are Oveerpowered, you really need 3 or more of them hitting the same spot to get them to work well. Same goes for small lasers, stuff all on their own but 3,4,5+ hitting the same spot and magic happens.

[Sephlock]

Redwood Elf, on 11 August 2013 - 07:55 AM, said:

MGs and Flamers are SUPPOSED to suck...they're close in "Last ditch" or harrassment weapons, not intended to be able to take down an undamaged mech in less than about 1 full minute. Mounting multiples, sure, they become a bit less sucky, but they're not supposed to compare to ERPPCs or AC20s.

*ahem*... also, what carrion said.

Edited by Sephlock, 11 August 2013 - 12:36 PM.

[Carrioncrows]

Redwood Elf, on 11 August 2013 - 07:55 AM, said:

MGs and Flamers are SUPPOSED to suck...they're close in "Last ditch" or harrassment weapons, not intended to be able to take down an undamaged mech in less than about 1 full minute. Mounting multiples, sure, they become a bit less sucky, but they're not supposed to compare to ERPPCs or AC20s.

No they are not.

That is what I am trying to get across.

Show me where in battletech that says that?

MG's do 2 Damage
AC2 does 2 Damage
Flamer does 2 Damage

These are battlemech sized weapons.

The actual machine gun weighs 1000 pounds.

Gatling Gun 20mm Layover Quikscell Company

Source: Sarna.net

[Royalewithcheese]

Redwood Elf, on 11 August 2013 - 07:55 AM, said:

MGs and Flamers are SUPPOSED to suck...

This is a computer game about shooting robots. If there is a robot or weapon in this computer game, it should be a thing that makes the game more fun, not a trap that makes the game less fun for people without enough system mastery to avoid said trap.

Edited by Royalewithcheese, 11 August 2013 - 12:48 PM.

[Utilyan]

See what happened is a long long time ago a TT nerd got his butt handed to him with MGs and Flamers. Ever since then he's been pushin his own house rules on Battletech.

So this is the TT nerd who if you played TT and killed with MGs he'd be like wait no that doesn't count......you can't kill mechs with MGs......

MGs killing mechs is stupid. Its stupid huh? isn't it dumb?

And your like well look what it says here in the rule book......

[Redwood Elf]

Who said they were useless? Not me! They are low damage, short range weapons. They suck, but they're not useless, assuming you can get in to close range and stay there and in one piece long enough to hose down an enemy without him headshotting you with his AC20...they're backups, not primary weapons. If you think you can run an Awesome-Q with all flamers successfully, by all means give it a shot, but the same mech with 4 ERPPCs will cut you to ribbons before you get close enough to do any damage.

And yes, I already know that a "Machine Gun" in this game is really a 1000 LB (Half a ton) rapid fire minigun, not a "Machine gun" like an uzi. Whoever told you otherwise is about as intelligent as a sub-par banana slug.

Here's a simple example...just did a match where me (in the current trial Cicada with 2MGs and a PPC) and a Jenner with more or less the standard medium laser loadout circled each other for almost the entire match, with me pumping machine gun rounds into him and him mostly missing with his lasers.

My damage total when I was out of MG ammo and he finally cored me with his medium lasers while I was chasing him with the PPC? 48. That's all for two MGs and all the ammo on the mech, and I hit him with a few PPC shots too (not that the PPC does much damage up close.)

The trial Cicada has one ton of MG ammo. Let's say that the PPC did about 15 damage (3 hits at half damage because of point blank range) before I got cored. That means that Machine guns do about 32 damage per ton of ammo (more MGs would just speed up the ammo usage and damage, so if the mech had had 6 MGs, it would have done the same 32 damage, but would have done it in 1/3 the time.

Tell me that's not a sucky weapon.

Edited by Redwood Elf, 11 August 2013 - 07:57 PM.

[Gallowglas]

Redwood Elf, on 11 August 2013 - 01:50 PM, said:

Tell me that's not a sucky weapon.

It's not a sucky weapon.

If you're not doing well with MG's, it's either because you're dying before you can get into short range (which in most cases is correctible), or else you're not using them correctly. You can't just use them on non-exposed locations and expect them to do amazing damage. If you use other primary weapons to expose internals, the damage and criticals that a MG does is off-the-charts sick. I've downed undamaged Atlases 1v1 (and quickly!) with a little piloting to avoid taking too many alphas.

Edited by Gallowglas, 12 August 2013 - 08:15 AM.

[ShadowbaneX]

Against armour, they're still mostly useless, but MG's are a lot stronger than they used to be against internals. I've had matches in the past 47-72 hours in which I scored over 100-200 damage with 3-4 kills because I found mechs with their CTs already exposed and was able to put enough MG rounds into those exposed areas and get kills.

In a way, it's a big like a predator hunting a pack. They don't bother with the strongest members of the pack, they focus on the weakened ones and take them down. It seems stronger at taking out those weakened ones, but I'm not sure how much stronger it is over say a pair of medium pulses like you'd find on the other spiders, but it does seem a little OP at the moment.

[Carrioncrows]

Gallowglas, on 12 August 2013 - 08:13 AM, said:

It's not a sucky weapon.

If you're not doing well with MG's, it's either because you're dying before you can get into short range (which in most cases is correctible), or else you're not using them correctly. You can't just use them on non-exposed locations and expect them to do amazing damage. If you use other primary weapons to expose internals, the damage and criticals that a MG does is off-the-charts sick. I've downed undamaged Atlases 1v1 (and quickly!) with a little piloting to avoid taking too many alphas.

If you can't use them on "Non-exposed" locations, then what's the point of having them.

Every other weapon works on Non-exposed locations?

Why waste our time.

Make them better, or just remove them from the game so we can work on a "VIABLE" low weight ballistic option.

[Redwood Elf]

Carrioncrows, on 12 August 2013 - 10:55 AM, said:

If you can't use them on "Non-exposed" locations, then what's the point of having them.

Every other weapon works on Non-exposed locations?

Why waste our time.

Make them better, or just remove them from the game so we can work on a "VIABLE" low weight ballistic option.

They "Work" on armored areas, they just don't start doing significant damage until they get to the internals, which takes a LONG time (even on the trial Cicada legs, which have only 12 armor each, that means 6 seconds of sustained fire on one leg with 2 MGs to start doing internals.

Like I've said several times...they're a secondary weapon, not a primary one, so the "6 machine guns and nothing else" builds people are considering aren't practical at all. Their range is so short and their damage so low, you are, as another poster mentioned, better off finding armor stripped areas and concentrating on them to get internals...as he said, once the armor is off, they're great for critseeking...just not at digging through armor. The MGs nature dictates when it is practical to use them, which is AFTER you break someone's armor with another weapon.

[Carrioncrows]

Redwood Elf, on 12 August 2013 - 12:42 PM, said:

They "Work" on armored areas, they just don't start doing significant damage until they get to the internals, which takes a LONG time (even on the trial Cicada legs, which have only 12 armor each, that means 6 seconds of sustained fire on one leg with 2 MGs to start doing internals.

Like I've said several times...they're a secondary weapon, not a primary one, so the "6 machine guns and nothing else" builds people are considering aren't practical at all. Their range is so short and their damage so low, you are, as another poster mentioned, better off finding armor stripped areas and concentrating on them to get internals...as he said, once the armor is off, they're great for critseeking...just not at digging through armor. The MGs nature dictates when it is practical to use them, which is AFTER you break someone's armor with another weapon.

There are no secondary weapons in battletech.

Only weapons.

Some weapons do more, some do less but they still all do the same amount of damage whether it's against Armor or internal structure.

There is no reason to waste tonnage on a weapon that's only decent when he is stripped of armor. It's a waste of tonnage, a waste of a weapon and a grand waste of time.

They can take all their critical multiplier, additional chance to crit, extra critical component damage versus Internal Structure and just trash it.

Give me a straight up damage buff.

All weapons need to be equally viable. Period.

[-Natural Selection-]

4 of us took Jager DD's.

2 with 6mgs, 2 LPL
2 with 1 PPC/ 1 ERPPC, 6mgs

River city went into cave and met all but 2 of other team (right from the start fresh). We walked out the other side in 3 mins trying to find the last 2 lol.

A nasty thing it is, but even more so with 3 more right beside ya.

Edited by Dozier, 13 August 2013 - 12:01 AM.

[ArchMage Sparrowhawk]

I gnawed someone's head off with 4 MG while they stood there >90 meters, lasering me. They oranged my CT, but I precision decapitated them in maybe half a minute. Neither of us was moving.

[Phashe]

Oh no... first an ac/40 jager in every match... now a MG/12 also.... Perish the thought! :-)

I want to leave mg's as-is, and add a light ballistic weapon to the game (all i have ever wanted, and no, i care nothing for timelines. :-) )

[Tskeet]

Isn't the "MG" supposed to be a "machine gun array" anyway? That's what it said in MW4. And the Clan ones were arrays of 4 individual MGs, not 3.


Anyway I think they're okay at the moment. What do you expect from a tiny little weapon? I'm running a SDR-5K with 4 of them and it's pretty good when everyone else has done the hard work and stripped armour, but it's worse than useless when the opponent is still armoured.

[Zakie Chan]

Rework the critical percentage and im fine with machine guns current state. They SHOULD own internals! Only caveat is let me have a small chance to fight back. Keep internal slashing ability the same, but reduce the speed at which they kill components.

[Leafia Barrett]

Zakie Chan, on 15 August 2013 - 03:36 PM, said:

Rework the critical percentage and im fine with machine guns current state. They SHOULD own internals! Only caveat is let me have a small chance to fight back. Keep internal slashing ability the same, but reduce the speed at which they kill components.

Part of the reason they shred internals so well is that a percentage of crit damage is dealt to the internal structure (even if the critted slots have nothing in them). This happens with all weapons, but the machine guns use it to amazing effect.

Edited by Leafia Barrett, 16 August 2013 - 04:20 AM.