64 replies to this topic

[Fuerchtegott]

aniviron, on 01 October 2013 - 11:57 PM, said:

Why is everyone so waaaah about no-heat mgs? The gauss has no heat (or might as well not). Most ACs are highly heat efficient. Sure they weigh more, but have between half and seven times the range, and you don't have to constantly face your opponent to use them. If MGs were crazy OP, heavier mechs would be taking them constantly; spoiler alert, aside from the rare DD Jager, they don't.

I described the spider, not the mgs, they are fine in my opinion too.
And on a spider, it's just easier to use the advantages mgs have and avoid their disadvantages.
There is a reason, we don't see 40 kmh mechs carry a bunch of mgs.

[focuspark]

AHahahah! it takes 1 second to strip 1 point of armor with a MG. Even boating four of them means it takes 15+ seconds to strip the armor off of the CT of an Atlas and you can cannot miss or stop shooting or it takes longer.

MG is hardly powerful.

[ZonbiBadger]

Beliall, on 02 October 2013 - 05:49 AM, said:

spiders dont do more damage than any other mech unless everyone just decides hey dont shoot that spider as it kills everyone in their backs.

Question have you actually piloted a spider? You will find out not op at all. Actually you are just constantly running for your life while getting a few shots in.

Actually I had a couple spiders in the past week just stand there shooting me with mgs while I shot them with ac10 rounds until they died...it was weird haha.

Mebbe it was the same spider pilot...

Edited by ZonbiBadger, 03 October 2013 - 09:36 AM.

[Zyllos]

I think problem here is that some weapons are just bad at hitting small, fast targets but are really good against large, slow targets.

All weapons are effective against large targets because it's easy to hit a large target. But not all weapons are effective against small targets.

The disparity here is that in CBT, a large mech will just dominate the small mech. This isn't the case in MWO because small mechs do not get hit as often as they did on the TT.

That is partly why I think weapons need more spread so that when firing against a larger mech, the weapon damage gets more spread out on multiple locations. But when firing at the small mechs, the spread nature really wouldn't effect them because we already spread and miss fire against them.

Then, when slugging it out against two large guys, the spreading of damage will help reduce the pace of combat from being as fast as possible, torso twisting madness, alpha striking all the time, to calculated movements and chaotic shots.

[Lostdragon]

Mawai, on 02 October 2013 - 12:08 PM, said:

Although it is anecdotal ... I have seen a number of mechs being very quickly cored by 4 MG Spiders after the armor has been stripped from the CT. (It has happened to me a few times too ... it feels much faster than being attacked by a Jenner or other light in the same circumstances). The MG damage against armor doesn't seem too bad but spiders excel at hit and run strikes during a melee and distracting opponents during a push ... so there are often other weapons being used to break through the armor making the effect of the MGs alone hard to judge.

The best solution is to take a MG mech onto the testing grounds and see how many rounds are required to strip a certain amount of armor followed by how many additional rounds are needed to core the opponent. If 4 MGs can core an Atlas which is missing it's CT armor in under 10s then I would say they are overpowered.

OK - so I decided to test it - here are some ACTUAL results from the testing grounds.

JM6-S - 4MGs - fires 1000 MG rounds in 25 seconds

I was able to core all 8 test mechs using just 5 tons of MG ammo.

Testing - fired from 30m and damaged the CT only on all targets. I recorded the number of rounds used to strip all armor and then to core the center torso of each mech using ONLY 4 MGs. These numbers have been converted to time using the 25s for 1000rds (which matches the stated specs for MG and was also tested in game).

Table:
Mech - time to strip armor - time to kill mech
Commando - 4s - 2.1s
Cicada 2A - 5.5s - 4.8s
Catapult A1 - 12.4s - 4.5s
Atlas D - 24s - 7s
Jenner - 5.5s - 3.2s
CN9-A - 9.1s - 4.1s
CTF-1X - 13.1s - 5.1s
AWS-8D - 15.2s - 5.9s

So - if the CT armor is stripped - 4 MGs can core any mech in the game in less than 7s of continuous fire. Any CT weapons are destroyed long before the mech is destroyed.

I don't have the armor stats for stock mechs handy but these numbers could easily be mapped to the actual armor on a mech - however, the internal structure is the same for all variants ... so the armor stripped kill times should be accurate in all cases.

Now ... are MGs overpowered? It is up to you to decide. The can strip armor fairly effectively and once the armor is gone can core EVERY mech in the game in 7 seconds or less.

This would tend to support my observation of the effectiveness of 4 MG spiders at killing off damaged mechs.

Of course - this is under ideal conditions ...

Well we know machine guns have a theoretical max DPS of 1 against armor. Using your values the DPS against the IS of the Atlas was 8.85, the Awesome was 8.47, and the Cataphract was 8.63. ThT averages out to 8.65 against those mechs for four MGs or about 2.16 per MG.

If you just take the avaerage of the weapon's DPS vs. armor and IS you get 1.58 max theoretical DPS, assuming you are shooting armor and IS an equal amount. My guess is you are probably typically shooting armor more in a 1v1, so if we assume you are shooting armor 75% of the time the DPS is 1.29. If you are shooting at armor 65% of the time your DPS would be 1.4.

Now obviously an experienced 5K pilot is going to look for wounded targets if they are available and that will push the DPS up, so if you shoot IS 75% of the time the DPS of an MG would be 1.87. If you shoot IS 65% of the time it becomes 1.75 DPS.

So what does this mean? It means MGs are situationally better than SLs, which we already knew. The SL does a straight 1 DPS all the time but has the advantage of not requiring ammo and not requiring constant exposure. So for the weight of 4 MGs and one ton of ammo you could fit 6 SLs and do a constant 6 DPS regardless of shooting armor or IS, but you would have to manage heat. The MGs have slightly better range, generate no heat, and better DPS against IS but worse DPS against armor, require constant time on target, and are limited by their explosive ammo.

Based on those factors I'd say MGs are pretty well balanced. I think SLs could use a bit of a buff to make them more viable, I would say if they did 1.2-1.5 damage they would be in a better spot and you might see them used more. You have to boat them to make them effective and they are just outshined by the ML, making them relatively rare. The thing is the MG is also not as good as the ML either though, and if the 5K had energy hardpoint and ballistics in the arms you would rarely see one with MGs because the ML is so much better.