26 replies to this topic

[War Kitten]

Greetings All,

I have a Timby and loadout is 4 srm6 + art and 4 MGs. Now, the mgs have a rating of 0.08 for damage and when I mount one is tells me the firepower is 4. I assume that is 4 pts of damage, and I don't know what the '0.08' means (8/10ths of a dam pt?), but what I am trying to figure out is does the mg do 4 pts of dam per second per gun? How does the dam shake out...I know one or two isn't a big threat unless you are cored, but 3 or more becomes a problem even with armor.

I could understand if they did 1pt of dam per round and put out say, 5 rnds a second....but just trying to see if 4 mgs is doing anything much....seem like it at 16 pts of dam, but how fast is that dam being put out?

Thank you all for any help..

War Kitten

"He can speak french...in Russian....if he were to pat you on the back, you would list it on your resume."

[Fobhopper]

Machine gun bullets do .08 damage a round, so for dps (I forgot the fire rate of them) but effectively they do 1 dps, so 4 would do 4dps (4 damage per second of firing). Machine guns are completely and utterly terrible for damaging mechs armor, BUT they are incredibly great for dealing criticals to internals after the armor has been destroyed on a section of the mech. So at best, machine guns are only a secondary weapon system that is only effective after the armor has been ripped off.

If you want to make full use of them, they are only usefull mid-late match where most armor has been destroyed and people are running around with structure left. So you better bring heavy hitting weapons like LPL and SRM's to tear through armor before you fire your machine guns.

[Roland09]

I'd never thought I would ever say anything like it, but... I feel sorry for your Timber Wolf.

Smurphy gives 0.8 damage per second per C-MG, which sounds reasonable since one MG will fire approx. 10 rounds per second, doing 0.08 damage per round (which is far removed from 1 damage per round; for comparison, 1 damage per hit is what LRMs do). Disregard the figure 4 listed as "firepower" in the mechlab.

[Fox With A Shotgun]

Another thing to note is that MGs will NOT deal additional STRUCTURE damage. Their extra damage comes entirely from crits.

If the component you are targeting has nothing to crit (i.e. no extra equipment on the component other than things like Gyro, Lower Arm Actuator or the like), it will NOT do any additional damage. This being said, due to their extremely high crit chance, they're very good at seeking ammo explosions for instant kills.

See that King Crab over there? Break open his leg, and MG it. Usually ammo sits in assaults' and heavies' legs, so go for those. If the ammo goes boom, the mech is dead. If not, you've just killed its mobility and it can hardly move, making it an easy kill.

That being said, a MG is not really a good choice for a TBR. You're big and slow, with loads of pod space. Get some bigger ballistics because you can, and because mediums and lights can and will get away from you, and you don't want to sit in front of an assault or heavy for extended periods of time staring at them. Use C-AC/2's if you really feel the itch to critseek, but honestly, you're better off using a UAC/10 or UAC/20.

Edited by Fox With A Shotgun, 28 March 2016 - 02:56 PM.

[Koniving]

War Kitten, on 28 March 2016 - 02:34 PM, said:

Greetings All,

I have a Timby and loadout is 4 srm6 + art and 4 MGs. Now, the mgs have a rating of 0.08 for damage and when I mount one is tells me the firepower is 4. I assume that is 4 pts of damage, and I don't know what the '0.08' means (8/10ths of a dam pt?), but what I am trying to figure out is does the mg do 4 pts of dam per second per gun? How does the dam shake out...I know one or two isn't a big threat unless you are cored, but 3 or more becomes a problem even with armor.

I could understand if they did 1pt of dam per round and put out say, 5 rnds a second....but just trying to see if 4 mgs is doing anything much....seem like it at 16 pts of dam, but how fast is that dam being put out?

Thank you all for any help..

War Kitten

"He can speak french...in Russian....if he were to pat you on the back, you would list it on your resume."

The rating is per bullet.
10 bullets are fired every second.
So 0.08* 10 bullets is 0.8 damage per second.
*4 MGs and that is 3.2 damage per second. In theory Firepower should count only 3.2 increase but the thing is well known for sloppy rounding. Or it could be counting higher than 1 second for firepower.
If your rig actually has 5 MGs... that'd make a perfect 4 firepower.
Just a thought.

Anyway.
Maximum possible damage from an MG against structure is: 4.64 damage/sec with 4 MGs. Since that depends entirely on RNG, it's more realistically in the realm of 3.35 to 4 damage/second.

Side note: Do NOT lead MGs -- EVER!

MGs are a hitscan weapon, in other words identical to a laser. Point at and fire, instant hit. Ignore the particle effect.

Edited by Koniving, 30 March 2016 - 04:56 PM.

[Vlad Striker]

I recomment to put MG into the same weapon group with low-heat weapon - (u)AC5, small lases and so on. Spend some bullets on AC5 shooting does not matter, but at close quarters you just hold button - MG will shoot when AC5 reloads.

[Shredneck92]

Try a Timberwolf with 4 SRM 6er and 5 smpl good brawler build and can really kick some ones teeth in if used right.

[Dee Eight]

Koniving, on 28 March 2016 - 03:16 PM, said:

The rating is per bullet.
8 bullets are fired every second.
So 0,08 * 8 bullets is 0.8 damage per second.

Is that american math or something ? 0.08 * 8 = 0.64

[Bloodweaver]

Am American, can confirm 0.08 * 8 comes out to 0.64 here as well as wherever you happen to be, Dee.

Koniving can't get everything right

Edited by Bloodweaver, 29 March 2016 - 06:48 PM.

[Dee Eight]

Well it seems to me like the math at NASA where instead of putting a probe into mars orbit, they smacked it into the planet.

https://en.wikipedia...Climate_Orbiter

[Koniving]

Bloodweaver, on 29 March 2016 - 06:48 PM, said:

Am American, can confirm 0.08 * 8 comes out to 0.64 here as well as wherever you happen to be, Dee.

Koniving can't get everything right

Its my bad. Its supposed to be 8" 10. 10 bullets in 1 second.

[Koniving]

Fixed.

[S 0 L E N Y A]

Dee Eight, on 29 March 2016 - 05:47 PM, said:

Is that american math or something ? 0.08 * 8 = 0.64

I lol'd.

Only math that ever put a man on the moon btw

[Fox With A Shotgun]

Boogie138, on 30 March 2016 - 07:26 PM, said:

I lol'd.

Only math that ever put a man on the moon btw

And the same math that caused a Mars lander to smash into the planet :x

[Void Angel]

Fox With A Shotgun, on 28 March 2016 - 02:53 PM, said:

Another thing to note is that MGs will NOT deal additional STRUCTURE damage. Their extra damage comes entirely from crits.

Only half true - in fact, the additional structure damage that machine guns, Ac/2s, and LB-X series autocannons actually do inflict is dependent on crits. Perhaps this was what you were trying to convey; in any case, anyone looking to use these weapons should know how their extra damage operates.

It works like this: Each piece of equipment in the game (heat sinks, weapons, etc) has a "critical hp" rating - this is the amount of "critical damage" that is required to destroy it.Whenever a weapon deals structure damage, the game also rolls to see if it scores a critical hit. This roll can result in no crit, or a x1-x3^* multiplier. If you get a multiplier, the weapon does "critical damage" to a randomly selected piece of equipment in the exposed location. I... dislike the equivocal terms PGI uses to describe this system; in any case the important thing to note at this point is that "critical damage" and "critical hits" themselves do absolutely nothing to structure.

When equipment takes critical damage, two things happen. First, its crit HP is obviously reduced by the weapon's critical damage; this is typically the same as the damage done by the individual bullet (most ballistics,) or else the amount of damage done by an individual "tick" of a laser or flamer burn. Second, 15% of the damage done to that piece of equipment is also done to the internal structure of that component; this damage is related entirely to the amount of crit hp done, and not the weapon's base damage - if an AC/20 destroys a 10 crit hp piece of gear with a x3 crit, you still only get 1.5 extra structure damage. If - and this is important - there are no applicable critical hit locations (say your side torso is full of endo-steel and ferro-fibrous armor slots,) no extra structure damage will occur.

Certain weapons, including the machine gun, are "crit seeking" weapons - they have a better chance to get a crit multiplier, and they do more damage to the items they crit. This directly translates into more damage to structure as long as there are critical hit targets in that location - otherwise, you're just doing base weapon damage.

*: PGI's verbiage indicates that critical hit multipliers are multipliers to the damage of a single crit, not multiple crit rolls like in Tabletop. Additionally, I am not sure if certain crit locations such as actuators or engine slots can sustain crits. I believe that they can be "destroyed" by critical hits (and thus produce extra damage,) but if this is so their destruction has no other impact on gameplay.

[Void Angel]

Fox With A Shotgun, on 30 March 2016 - 08:00 PM, said:

And the same math that caused a Mars lander to smash into the planet :x

Actually, that wasn't a lander - it was the Mars Climate Orbiter, and no one really knows where it is. The programming error that caused its loss made it veer deeply into Mars' atmosphere, stripping its antennae and cutting off telemetry - whether it then crashed and burned up on re-entry, or skipped off the atmosphere to begin a slow tour of the solar system is anyone's guess.

Also, in the spirit of the discussion, I should point out that the error was caused by one engineering team using European metric units of measure while the other used Imperial units. The math in each case was impeccable - just not compatible with each other.

[Fox With A Shotgun]

Void Angel, on 30 March 2016 - 08:06 PM, said:

*: PGI's verbiage indicates that critical hit multipliers are multipliers to the damage of a single crit, not multiple crit rolls like in Tabletop. Additionally, I am not sure if certain crit locations such as actuators or engine slots can sustain crits. I believe that they can be "destroyed" by critical hits (and thus produce extra damage,) but if this is so their destruction has no other impact on gameplay.

Non-equippable items actually can't be destroyed, as they're marked as having 0 hp in the game files.

It is however important to note on OmniMechs, destroying an arm with lower arm / hand actuators will cause the player's horizontal arm aiming range to be severely reduced.

Edited by Fox With A Shotgun, 30 March 2016 - 08:25 PM.

[Void Angel]

Will it really? I'd never come across that in game - only have a few omnimechs, and I leave arm lock on by default.

[Fox With A Shotgun]

Void Angel, on 30 March 2016 - 08:26 PM, said:

Will it really? I'd never come across that in game - only have a few omnimechs, and I leave arm lock on by default.

I get this a lot in my KFX, because only the left arm has an arm actuator if it's packing a UAC20. The RA has no lower arm nor hand actuators, but it gets partial horizontal movement thanks to the LA lower arm or hand actuators. But the moment the LA or LT gets blown off (it's used as a deadside, so this happens a lot) I get no horizontal movement.

Note: never shoot a ballistics KFX's RA. It's actually got 40 points of armour, which makes it about as durable as a 40-45 tonner's arm.

Toggling arm lock on and off is very important for me Being able to shoot 60 degrees to one side usually catches circle-running lights off guard. As is being able to shoot at UAVs 50-55 degrees upwards.

Edited by Fox With A Shotgun, 30 March 2016 - 08:38 PM.

[Satan n stuff]

Void Angel, on 30 March 2016 - 08:06 PM, said:

*: PGI's verbiage indicates that critical hit multipliers are multipliers to the damage of a single crit, not multiple crit rolls like in Tabletop. Additionally, I am not sure if certain crit locations such as actuators or engine slots can sustain crits. I believe that they can be "destroyed" by critical hits (and thus produce extra damage,) but if this is so their destruction has no other impact on gameplay.

According to the patch notes from when the system was first implemented, it's actually up to three separate hits. I have seen single AC/10s and PPCs crit multiple pieces of equipment in one shot so that confirms it though you're welcome to do some testing to try to properly document it, I don't think we have video evidence of it yet.