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For a long while people have said the machine guns are a sort of hitscan weapon, you point them and they all instantly hit where you are aiming, out to 120m or even 240m. That may have been the case originally as a sort of "cheat" to keep the number of projectiles in game down, with a "visual fx" showing them hitting all over the place and sparking...a vfx that supposedly does not correspond to the reality of where they are hitting. The thing is, in testing, it kinda does correspond now and I think there's something else to be noted...the projectile velocity of the machine gun is 100m a second. That means it literally takes a whole second for those bullets to reach the guy right in front of you, still in optimal range. The bullets you fire NOW are chugging slowly through the air over the entire time that you enunciate the words "one-one thousand". So wherever you are aiming over that second is where they are going...making them immensely inaccurate on moving targets and when fired while pivoting and circling. This isn't right. It's a source I think of much of the SUCK to this weapon...what little damage they often do can't even be placed accurately when they take so long to reach target.
For comparison, this projectile speed of 100m/s is basically, 223miles per hour...sounds like an impressive speed, until you realize that most normal handguns fire bullets at four or five times as fast. Even the slow .45 caliber bullet travels at about 600+ mph. By comparison, longbow arrows and crossbow bolts move roughly this speed, 100 meters a second. Yeah. Arrows. Crossbow bolts. That's why your machine gun can't hit anything, it's immensely underpowered. So yeah, them bullets ain't going much further than a longbow arrow or crossbow bolt either. This probably isn't even intentional though, just something forgotten in the files and such - that this projectile speed is so slow, and thus so inaccurate.
Why does it matter, especially since as someone said to me recently...the weapon is actually hitscan doing instant damage. Well, again... I don't think so after testing and years of play. In testing, you can be in testing grounds and swing your aim across a target out at the edge of optimal range... 120m, or even out by max range, 240m. As your aim comes onto the hitbox of whatever you are firing at, there is a delay commesurate with ballistic velocity of 100m/s and there is no ping or server variance to explain that delay if the weapon really is "hitscan" like a laser. Out at 200m, that delay when pulling on aim to a target is closer to 2 seconds. This really seems to imply that yes, that velocity matters. So as back up weapons, machine guns that are supposed to be useful for opened armor and critical locations...cannot accurately hit these locations because they are so slow and thus lag way behind aim like a water stream from a garden hose.
While it may be rather a moot point if you are hoping your machine guns will bring down an opponent, when your other weapons have not...this is still a problem cause a good number of mechs do have to rely on machine guns and in a quick fight, light mech...having to actually fire for one second, one and a half, or two seconds before the bullets GET to your cored enemy target, just directly in front of you 100m-200m away, is life or death. He could have a cherry red core, one single bullet might drop him, but that bullet and dozens like it are moseying their way over to him, while a hit scan laser... A REAL HITSCAN weapon, kills you first, with no travel time. Perhaps it would be good to fix this?
Edited by Mad Porthos, 08 January 2016 - 10:57 PM.
