139 replies to this topic

[Weaselball]

Super cereal topic, one that I know gets brought up now and then before drifting away into the obscurity of the forums... but dangit, PGI, why have you not buffed machine guns yet?

0.08

That is the damage that a single machine gun "shell" does. Zero point zero (stay with me here) eight. Less than ten percent of 1 damage per shot. At a ROF of 10 per second (which the weapon has naturally) you get 0.80 damage done every second held down on a target. Not even 1 full point of damage.

Now before you start saying "well, one second is pretty quick" I want you to count one second in your head. You can use the one Mississippi rule or the one thousand one rule, but think of what could possibly happen in MWO during that span of time. Imagine yourself like that butterfly in the sky, dancing across the battlefield. You're in a brawl, enemy and friendly mechs around you. Your team is counting on you to do some damage and help out! But you're carrying machine guns doing zero point eight damage a second per weapon.

An enemy mech could double tap an ultra AC5 in that time frame, or plaster your mechwarrior across the battlefield with a double gauss double ERPPC tap. In a close range brawl one second of pure un-twisting face time can be brutal, and for what? Eight tenths of a point of damage. You won't even break 1 armor value sitting there for a whole second firing on a target, and that's assuming the target isn't moving. Or, you know, more than melee range distance away from you. And let's not about our friend, the cone of fire. You know, that little thing that some people here on the forums had been asking about for years to be implemented with all other weapons as a means to assuage TTK... yup, that guy. The machine gun has it, so rest easy knowing that TTK has been increased one iota of a second because the venerable machine gun has a cone of fire.

"But wait," you say. "It has no heat. We can't buff a weapon that generates zero heat!" Let me remind you again how much damage it does per shot.

0.08

This isn't exactly the nuclear bomb of mech warfare here people. This is a weapon that requires you to stay on a target for at least one second in order to do less than 1 point of damage, assuming you're within 120 meters of it (or 240 to do even less damage, because why not machine gun?). You know what other weapons do more damage than the machine gun? Every one of them. Well. Except for NARC and TAG, unless you consider deep retina damage a thing. But I digress. Even the flamer does more damage AND it has some sort of use in heating up... enemy... OK the flamer is sort of mega-situational also. But taking a single flamer to aid in a brawl? Not out of the ordinary. Taking a single machine gun to aid in a brawl? Yeah, that happens ALL THE TIME.

Seriously. Why is PGI so hesitant to buff this weapon?

I'm not talking about making it the end-all-be-all of light ballistics. I'm not even sure if I'd want to double its damage. But how about start somewhere? I know TONS of people have been asking for small incremental tweaks to weapons since, well, a long time now... so why not go for that approach on the machine gun? 50% increase in damage? Would it break the game if the machine gun did 0.12 damage a shot?

Do you think we'd start seeing 6 machine gun King Crabs, or 6 MG Maulers roaming the battlefield, slowly tickling mechs to death with their 7.2 DPS lead shredders (that's 7.2 DPS combined, if each MG did 1.2 damage every second, still with the cone of fire, still at 120 meters...). Would light mechs like the Spider 5K become the new menace, overtaking 6SPL Cheetahs or Locusts as top dog? Would the sound of four to six machine guns plinking slowly away at your rear armor be the new war cry of MWO? Or would we instead get some slightly stronger machine guns that still won't tear the meat from a cow but might not be worthless taking into a fight instead?

I mean, for reals. It hurts my brain to think we have someone who's job is to balance weapons, and he looks at ZERO POINT EIGHT DAMAGE A SECOND, at 120 meters away, with a cone of fire, and thinks, "Yeah, this is pretty much good."

/smh

Sorry. Just had to get that off my chest. I'm 99.99% certain that no PGI dev will look at this post. I'm 99.999% sure that no such changes will come to the overpowered machine gun in the next, oh, six months. If ever. Such is the balance of this game at times, and while there are a large number of things that need to be tweaked and balanced I'm going to champion the machine gun... because I really have nothing better to do.

/rant

TL;DR: Waffles are superior to pancakes. If you want to know my reasoning read the whole post above. Thank you.

[El Bandito]

Because Russ is afraid of 6MG Spider. Silly Russ, those only live in Australia.

[Tarl Cabot]

Machine guns were anti-infantry weapons in the TT/lore. The only time they shined were with the Solaris boardgame as they had zero heat and could be fired every 2.5sec round while other weapons had delays (cooldown).

Not every piece of equipment needs to be buffed for serious mech-on-mech (not porn... )

I forgot, but why do we not have infantry that can be splattered, or get surprised by inferno SRMS ??

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 14 November 2016 - 05:46 PM.

[Mcgral18]

You know what the reasoning for their last nerf was?

They "fixed" hitreg, so they had to reduce their damage 20%



Yep...that was the reason. They were lacklustre before that nerf, at 1 DPS.
I'd like that 1 DPS back

And also reduce/remove the CoF which afflicts them.

Tarl Cabot, on 14 November 2016 - 05:44 PM, said:

Not every piece of equipment needs to be buffed for serious mech-on-mech (not porn... )

Yes, yes they do


They were anti-mech weapons in TT, they should be a worthwhile short range weapon here.
You need to sacrifice self-preservation to use them (constant fire, no torso twist), they should at least offer more than the absolute minimum.

[FupDup]

Tarl Cabot, on 14 November 2016 - 05:44 PM, said:

Machine guns were anti-infantry weapons in the TT/lore. The only time they shined were with the Solaris boardgame as they had zero heat and could be fired every 2.5sec round.

Not every piece of equipment needs to be buffed for serious mech-on-mech (not porn... )

Although they generally didn't "shine" in the anti-mech role, they were at least VIABLE in that capacity in TT. They had a pretty decent damage per ton ratio of 4.0 (2 damage per hit, 0.5 ton gun), which is only slightly short of the baseline 5.0 of the Medium Laser.

Having bonus damage against infantry (2D6 to be exact) doesn't preclude a weapon from being used in an anti-mech capacity.

El Bandito, on 14 November 2016 - 05:41 PM, said:

Because Russ is afraid of 6MG Spider. Silly Russ, those only live in Australia.

[RestosIII]

Tarl Cabot, on 14 November 2016 - 05:44 PM, said:

Not every piece of equipment needs to be buffed for serious mech-on-mech (not porn... )

This is a mech combat game. The ONLY things we fight are mechs. So yes, every weapon has to be buffed for serious mech-on-mech combat.

[DaZur]

No offense but I've never understood the inference that machine guns should be anything more than crit seeking nuisance weapon against mechs.

Understanding in fluff and lore, MGs were anti-personnel weapons and were used sparingly at best against anything else.

I know.. I know... this is MWO and it's a wasted weapon. I just can't abide it being buffed into anything more than it is. Due to the ROF it's impossible balance this weapon with anything more than what is.

[Weaselball]

Tarl Cabot, on 14 November 2016 - 05:44 PM, said:

Not every piece of equipment needs to be buffed for serious mech-on-mech (not porn... )

I disagree. If the equipment is a KNOWN bad or "lol" weapon, then why even include it? For lore? PGI isn't exactly making a super immersive lore-driven game here, in case you didn't notice. I'm not jumping onto the battlefield with my FRR brothers duking it out with honor-driven Clan pilots who engage ONLY in single one-on-one mech combat and respect Zellbrigen and other crap.

No.

I'm dropping in a game with 23 other people who, if there was an animation for it, would tea bag the hell out of every enemy they kill. Every weapon should matter. Plain and simple.

[N0MAD]

Why would you expect an MG to be useful against an armored vehicle? really why? and if so why not have a magic wand? its about as realistic as having an MG be useful against armor.

[FupDup]

DaZur, on 14 November 2016 - 05:50 PM, said:

No offense but I've never understood the inference that machine guns should be anything more than crit seeking nuisance weapon against mechs.

Understanding in fluff and lore, MGs were anti-personnel weapons and were used sparingly at best against anything else.

I know.. I know... this is MWO and it's a wasted weapon. I just can't abide it being buffed into anything more than it is. Due to the ROF it's impossible balance this weapon with anything more than what is.

If you wanna talk about source material, I'm pretty sure that every single rulebook with weapon stats (i.e. TechManual, etc.) list Machine Guns as dealing exactly 2 points of damage to standard targets (including mechs).

2 points isn't exactly a lot, but it will still make a dent in any mech.

[Weaselball]

N0MAD, on 14 November 2016 - 05:53 PM, said:

Why would you expect an MG to be useful against an armored vehicle? really why? and if so why not have a magic wand? its about as realistic as having an MG be useful against armor.

See above post. But if you're looking for some sort of "realism" answer here, in a game where we pilot 100 ton bipedal machines with googly eyes painted on them across an asteroid moon shooting lasers at each other... then I don't know what to tell you.

[Lyoto Machida]

Perhaps they lost the ability to buff MGs?

Sorry...it's all I could come up with. Everything else is just pure speculation, since they won't tell us much.

[Tristan Winter]

I honestly have no idea.

But when EmpyreaL (?) used the SDR-5K in the world championship, I'm pretty sure Paul felt vindicated in believing that MGs have been perfectly balanced this whole time.

[Weaselball]

FupDup, on 14 November 2016 - 05:54 PM, said:

If you wanna talk about source material, I'm pretty sure that every single rulebook with weapon stats (i.e. TechManual, etc.) list Machine Guns as dealing exactly 2 points of damage to standard targets (including mechs).

2 points isn't exactly a lot, but it will still make a dent in any mech.

It's the exact same damage as an Autocannon-2. I know YOU know this Fup, and I know I know this. But for SOME reason many people don't get that concept.

In the tabletop game, at 1 hex away, an Autocannon 2 and a single machine gun deal the same, exact, damage, per, second... or, rather, the same exact damage per 10 seconds. I guess it's hard to know how much damage per second each gun does in the table top because it isn't a stat that is tracked. It is one that PGI had to sort of guestimate at when making a real-time-shooter instead of a turn based game. It's my assertion that they got that number wrong with the machine gun.

[FupDup]

N0MAD, on 14 November 2016 - 05:53 PM, said:

Why would you expect an MG to be useful against an armored vehicle? really why? and if so why not have a magic wand? its about as realistic as having an MG be useful against armor.

A few reasons:

1. This "Machine Gun" is a really huge one. It weighs 500 kilograms, or 1102.3 pounds in the American system.

2. It might not even be technically a "Machine Gun" since one of the lore manufacturers is designated as 20mm. The weapon was poorly named. They might as well have called it the Mini Autocannon or something.

3. They might have developed more effective ammo since this game is more than one thousand years in the future.

4. The armor used by mechs and other vehicles is fundamentally different than real-life year 2016 vehicle armor. Battletech armor is ablative, meaning that it is specifically designed to explode outwards when impacted hard enough. Mech-sized MGs can probably have an easier time flaking off the outer layers of ablative armor than penetrating through conventional armor. BT armor is weaker against low-damage attacks in exchange for being much tougher against high-damage attacks like the Gauss Rifle.

5. Because there are so many other unrealistic things in the BT universe that are far worse than this one.

Weaselball, on 14 November 2016 - 05:59 PM, said:

It's the exact same damage as an Autocannon-2. I know YOU know this Fup, and I know I know this. But for SOME reason many people don't get that concept.

In the tabletop game, at 1 hex away, an Autocannon 2 and a single machine gun deal the same, exact, damage, per, second... or, rather, the same exact damage per 10 seconds. I guess it's hard to know how much damage per second each gun does in the table top because it isn't a stat that is tracked. It is one that PGI had to sort of guestimate at when making a real-time-shooter instead of a turn based game. It's my assertion that they got that number wrong with the machine gun.

Based on past Ask The Devs sessions, I think that their issue is just misinterpretation of the game rules (like some of the people in this thread).

To be fair, buffing MGs to the current DPS of the AC/2 (2.78) would be kind of ridiculous. Those 5.5 extra tons should account for something.

However, Em Gees should certainly be a bit more lethal than they are now. I'd also like for that annoying cone of fire spread to be removed...

Edited by FupDup, 14 November 2016 - 06:03 PM.

[Navid A1]

Mcgral18, on 14 November 2016 - 05:47 PM, said:

You know what the reasoning for their last nerf was?

They "fixed" hitreg, so they had to reduce their damage 20%

I prefer PGI not to mention the reason behind their actions.
They'll look better if they don't.
That is how nonsensical their "reasons" are sometimes.

At least when they don't, you can give them the benefit of doubt.... but no... they just have to put it in full display.

[Jingseng]

Because a mech is a 20+ TON nuclear powered mountain of military grade armored metal. And this is not call of duty.

10,000 lbs. of steel. vs. .50cal hmg.

I mean what, it's like asking why snipers didn't just take out all the tank pilots in ww2 by shooting straight through the tank.

[Weaselball]

FupDup, on 14 November 2016 - 06:02 PM, said:

To be fair, buffing MGs to the current DPS of the AC/2 (2.78) would be kind of ridiculous. Those 5.5 extra tons should account for something.

However, Em Gees should certainly be a bit more lethal than they are now. I'd also like for that annoying cone of fire spread to be removed...

Oh 100% agree. We don't need to kill off the AC2 as a weapon. Still. I find it difficult to fathom why a change like a 50% increase in its damage-per-shell ratio is something that has evaded the radar of the developers for such a long stretch of time.

[FupDup]

Jingseng, on 14 November 2016 - 06:04 PM, said:

10,000 lbs. of steel. vs. .50cal hmg.

Do you have any source that says that the Battletech mech-mounted MG is 50 caliber?

The BT MG is 500 kilos in mass, while the M2 Browning is 58 kilos when fully decked out. Where do those 442 extra kilos go?

Edited by FupDup, 14 November 2016 - 06:07 PM.

[Weaselball]

Jingseng, on 14 November 2016 - 06:04 PM, said:

Because a mech is a 20+ TON nuclear powered mountain of military grade armored metal. And this is not call of duty.

10,000 lbs. of steel. vs. .50cal hmg.

I mean what, it's like asking why snipers didn't just take out all the tank pilots in ww2 by shooting straight through the tank.

I think Fup already fielded this one pretty nicely, but good effort in the argument.