97 replies to this topic

[Sjorpha]

LMGs are fine as they are I think, Heavy and normal mgs needs a buff though.

[Judah Malganis]

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Come on man, there's no need for exaggeration and lies.

First, you completely disregard the value of a 0 heat weapon with sustained DPS. Yeah, it's not going to be a weapon that makes up the main portion of your build, but it would be a great companion weapon if you have the slots for it and fight in such a way some added DPS would be useful. In fact, without the crit portion then MGs would have to be buffed with more ammunition per ton at the least.

Please notice that I fully recognize that removing the crit portion would require some buffing to compensate.

My logic isn't simply that "it's popular so it needs nerfing", stop with that lie. What I am saying is that a brand new weapon is being used by a large portion of the mechs on the field despite the fact so many people are here on the forums saying "but they are so bad in X, and Y, and Z circumstances". Because a weapon truly that hard to use and that inefficient isn't going to see an explosion in use. Typically weapons that are OP get FotM status so people can abuse the hell out of them before they are nerfed.

And I do mean multiple mechs on the field, not just Myst Lynx. I was seeing Myst Lynx, Urbies, Bushwackers, Arctic Cheetahs, and Kit Fox all running around stacking multiple LMGs. LMGs were present as a support weapon on many heavy and assualt mechs as well.

Stop with the lie about nerfing out of existence. There is a problem and it needs fixed. Balance requires give and take and I fully understand MGs would have to gain something in return for losing the ability to crit.

As I said, deflection so you don't have to actually stay on task.


Here's a question though. How much critical damage does an LMG do at 200m in .5 sec? In 1 sec? 3xLMGs... 8xLMGs. Why not just simply look at the numbers regarding how much critical damage is being done.

Firstly, I'm neither lying nor exaggerating. You said they should remove the crit bonus and crit damage from mgs and increase their ammo as a "buff". You're solution to a weapon with zero burst, requiring extended time on a target, is to INCREASE its time-on-target requirement. That is not an exaggeration or a lie. You said that. You also said that MGs shouldn't work, because they're supposed to be anti-infantry weapons. Not my words, yours. No exaggerations, no lies.

Also, why on God's Green Earth would I bring a 0.8 dps LMG or a 1.0 dps MG plus ammo when for the lowest weight requirement of the weapon plus ammo (0.5 tons of ammo), I can bring 2 small lasers, or a medium laser, or a small pulse laser, all of which give me better options in terms of time-on target, burst dps, raw damage, and/or range? After they drop MGs to pure low-end DPS weapons am I supposed to bring them to the fight for "complementary flavor text purposes"? I bet you wouldn't, so don't expect others to do what you won't do. Again, not an exaggeration or a lie. Pure numbers.

I am not deflecting. I have read your case. I'm presenting you with numbers like weapon weight, dmg, dps, time to rear core on mechs, ways that it can be mitigated, and all your responses have basically been "Don't care. MGs should be crap". I even suggested that they nerf all of them down to hmg crit/crit dmg levels, but not good enough. They have to be nerfed so hard that they are no longer viable in order for you to be happy, all because you have only 10 armor on the back of your Catapult, and you don't intend to change it. I was looking over my mechs earlier and I noticed that for my heavier heavies and assaults, I carry about 15-19 armor in each back section, and it's been that way since before any of this, because I don't fancy myself a great pilot, and have always feared light backstabs, which is maybe why even though I get ganked by an mg boat every so often, I usually survive to chase it off, kill it, or until my buddies arrive for an assist. Maybe that's the lesson here. The days of clunky mechs carrying single digit armor on their backs to maximize front armor is over and people are fighting it.

Edited by Judah Malganis, 25 August 2017 - 10:59 AM.

[Methanoid]

Sjorpha, on 25 August 2017 - 09:56 AM, said:

LMGs are fine as they are I think, Heavy and normal mgs needs a buff though.

maybe much higher damage with lower crit as the MG's get heavier, also the range on HMG's could do with being a bit more generous.

[C E Dwyer]

As usual it's part P.G.I part community that causes the problem.

P.G.I give lots of crit bonuses to a weapon that is virtually useless without them.

Community screams for piranha mech.

P.G.I. meet half way and provide a way for six or seven hard points for MG's on lights.

This causes the other wise useless weapon to rip apart open mechs in seconds.

Weapon now either stays stupidly op on certain builds that can field large amounts of hard points or they nerf it and make having a pair of MG's next to worthless.


Question is who was the most stupid, the community for crying out for builds they knew would break the game, or P.G.I for putting a few hundred dollars before a balanced game.

[Y E O N N E]

Cathy, on 25 August 2017 - 10:17 AM, said:

Weapon now either stays stupidly op on certain builds that can field large amounts of hard points or they nerf it and make having a pair of MG's next to worthless.

That's a Clan-unique issue, since that's the only faction that can mass devastating firepower like that either because of tonnage or hardpoint count. TBQH, PGI needs to stop treating the Clan and IS versions of a weapon the same. They don't do that for lasers, missiles, or larger ballistics, why do they do it for MGs? Just because one needs nerfed, does not mean the opposite number needs nerfed, too (e.g. nerfing the isSPL with the cSPL was wholly and completely unnecessary).

That being said, we are talking about a build that is not terribly useful for the first third to half of the match and are providing two otherwise mediocre chassis (SHC, MLX) with a unique and useful role. There are lots of trade-offs you have to make to use it, the most pronounced of which is being very squishy.

[C E Dwyer]

Yeonne Greene, on 25 August 2017 - 10:31 AM, said:

That's a Clan-unique issue, since that's the only faction that can mass devastating firepower like that either because of tonnage or hardpoint count. TBQH, PGI needs to stop treating the Clan and IS versions of a weapon the same. They don't do that for lasers, missiles, or larger ballistics, why do they do it for MGs? Just because one needs nerfed, does not mean the opposite number needs nerfed, too (e.g. nerfing the isSPL with the cSPL was wholly and completely unnecessary).

That being said, we are talking about a build that is not terribly useful for the first third to half of the match and are providing two otherwise mediocre chassis (SHC, MLX) with a unique and useful role. There are lots of trade-offs you have to make to use it, the most pronounced of which is being very squishy.

Oh I see your point, and it's valid, but it's better to have it slightly nerfed now than to have a screaming fit like the six PPC stalker, of Dragon slayer Poptart, which will happen from past experience, and see it nerfed into oblivion for three years.

[roboPrancer]

The lmg is a new weapon that has never been properly balanced, since mgs are mostly overlooked when it comes to serious builds.

But now that we have clan lights that can easily boat tons of them, it's apparent that they need another balance pass. That's it.

*I'm testing the mlx-g right now, and it's kinda ridiculous what it can do at mid ranges

Edited by roboPrancer, 25 August 2017 - 11:06 AM.

[Judah Malganis]

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Oh I see your point, and it's valid, but it's better to have it slightly nerfed now than to have a screaming fit like the six PPC stalker, of Dragon slayer Poptart, which will happen from past experience, and see it nerfed into oblivion for three years.

I've recommended that LMGs and MGs share the same (lower) crit/crit dmg bonus of HMGs. That might be a good starting point. Removing the bonuses and keeping their low base DPS is a bad idea, because they become too weak. Removing the bonuses and upping the DPS is bad as well. You still get a high crit frequency due to it being 10 hits/second per MG, and if people complain that they rip internals fast, imagine how worse the complaints would be if they ripped armor faster on top of that...

Edited by Judah Malganis, 25 August 2017 - 11:09 AM.

[Ruar]

Judah Malganis, on 25 August 2017 - 11:08 AM, said:

I've recommended that LMGs and MGs share the same (lower) crit/crit dmg bonus of HMGs. That might be a good starting point. Removing the bonuses and keeping their low base DPS is a bad idea, because they become too weak. Removing the bonuses and upping the DPS is bad as well. You still get a high crit frequency due to it being 10 hits/second per MG, and if people complain that they rip internals fast, imagine how worse the complaints would be if they ripped armor faster on top of that...

Or leave the damage numbers alone and just add ammo making the use of the MG family more of a niche like SSRMs, NARC, MRMs, and flamers.

Just because there is a fancy new weapon doesn't mean it needs to be a jack-of-all-trades, used by everyone kind of thing. It could have very narrow role that fits a few builds. The only reason we are seeing so many MG builds right now is because MGs are OP.

[Koniving]

Jun Watarase, on 23 August 2017 - 03:47 PM, said:

This is not a "MGs are OP" thread.

Ive been using a ACH-E with 6x LMGs and 3 heavy medium lasers, and ive been surprised at how easy it is to burn through structure.

I just did a test in the testing grounds on frozen city. I went to the AS7-D and took a video to see how long it would take to burn through the rear CT structure.

The stock AS7-D has 28 rear CT armor and 62 CT structure. I used the lasers to do 30 damage to the rear armor then LMGs to finish the CT off. In theory, the LMGs would have to eat through 60 CT structure which should take them about 14.3 seconds.

According to the video I took however, it actually ate through the CT structure in about 6.5 seconds. I started with 4582 LMG ammo and the atlas died with 4198 ammo remaining. Thats 384 ammo used for 6 LMGs, a LMG uses 10 rounds per second, so about 6.4 seconds worth of ammo was used.

In short, the LMGs actually did more than twice the expected DPS against structure. How is this possible? I remember that you do extra damage to structure for critical hits, but i also remember it being a very minor bonus...something like 10% extra damage to structure on average for a LBX-20 or some such.

I did the same test with a LBX-20, making sure all the pellets hit the CT, and this time used 4 med pulse lasers to do precisely 28 damage to the rear CT armor. 2 shots dropped the CT structure to dark red, which is a lot more than 40/60 damage would suggest, but the bonus damage that the LBX had vs structure is way less than what the MGs had. If the LBX did double damage against structure like what the LMGs did, two shots would have cored the atlas, which it didnt.

Anyone wanna try do some testing of their own?

All jokes aside...
Each shot does 0.07 per second.
10 shots = 0.7 damage per second.
6 MGs is 4.2 damage per second.
This should take 14.3 seconds rounding up. That's if they did the same damage to armor. However FOR EVERY CRIT OBTAINED, 15% of the damage done by the crit is added to structure damage.
So if a single crit for a single bullet is obtained, 0.07 damage becomes 0.0805. This immediately cuts time to 60 damage to: 12.42 seconds assuming every shot is a crit.
There's over a 50% chance of a single crit per bullet. 6% chance of a triple crit, and some 26 (or so)% chance for a double (I don't remember the exact number).
Long and short, MGs have a high crit rate. Triple crit for a single bullet nets 0.1015 damage. Times that by ten and you get 1.015 per second if every bullet of a single LMG gets a triple crit.

With 6 LMGs, you have 6 rolls every 1/10th of a second, 60 rolls every second. Now imagine how many of those are single crits, double crits, and triple crits.

Keep in mind that by going over the "armor level" of the Atlas, you also tampered with your results since all weapons do 15% bonus damage to structure when you achieve crits.

[vibrant]

Jun Watarase, on 25 August 2017 - 03:17 AM, said:

Except that lights can strip off structure far faster than a heavy can. Especially since its hitscan and generates no heat. My ACH easily does far more damage vs structure than my heavies, which get focused fired very easily. I even legged an annihilator in a few seconds.

Posts like this irk me. It feels like so many players of heavy/assault mechs want lights to be useless. They themselves have very little armour. An airstrike can pretty much end them, one decent alpha from a heavy/assault can cripple them. A single alpha. They have less structure than a heavy, less armour than a heavy, can carry less weight than a heavy, intrinsically have a very low alpha than a heavy, and since rewards are based on damage done they earn less than a heavy... clan lights excelled with c-spls until they got nerfed, now they can benefit from MGs -- finally something that they can do well -- and pilots of heavier mechs refuse to adapt to it?

LMGs clearly need a bit of a tweak, HMGs a bit of a buff, but seriously... the light mechs gotta have something to be competitive, right? This game isn't TT. Given all of the above, given how lights are so much more fragile and higher risk than other weight classes, in an online arena shooter where all mechs should be roughly balanced (so that we don't ALL just play heavies/assaults), can't we let them have SOME benefit?

Edited by vibrant, 25 August 2017 - 03:35 PM.

[Judah Malganis]

Quote

Or leave the damage numbers alone and just add ammo making the use of the MG family more of a niche like SSRMs, NARC, MRMs, and flamers.

Just because there is a fancy new weapon doesn't mean it needs to be a jack-of-all-trades, used by everyone kind of thing. It could have very narrow role that fits a few builds. The only reason we are seeing so many MG builds right now is because MGs are OP.

They already ARE a niche weapon... they crit internals. Taking the bonuses off doesn't make them niche, it makes them worthless. Would you bring 8 x 0.7 dps weapons with no other purpose plus ammo on your mech knowing you could be better DPS and have burst with half the tonnage using other weapons? You act as if good players will put weapons in a mech just because they look cool and not because they serve some functional purpose.

And mgs are not jack-of-all-trades. Try stripping a fresh mech with them. Even on a fresh medium if would probably take an MLX-G 10-13 seconds of uninterrupted fire to completely destroy a section from 100% armor, longer for heavies and assaults.

Edited by Judah Malganis, 25 August 2017 - 04:02 PM.

[Ruar]

Judah Malganis, on 25 August 2017 - 03:55 PM, said:

They already ARE a niche weapon... they crit internals. Taking the bonuses off doesn't make them niche, it makes them worthless. Would you bring 8 x 0.7 dps weapons with no other purpose plus ammo on your mech knowing you could be better DPS and have burst with half the tonnage using other weapons? You act as if good players will put weapons in a mech just because they look cool and not because they serve some functional purpose.

And mgs are not jack-of-all-trades. Try stripping a fresh mech with them. Even on a fresh medium if would probably take an MLX-G 10-13 seconds of uninterrupted fire to completely destroy a section from 100% armor, longer for heavies and assaults.

This feels like a Dr Phil episode where he says "you say that, but in game usage says it's a lie". Seriously, if the weapons are as bad as you portray them why are about 40-50% of all mechs in the match using them?

[InfinityBall]

Ruar, on 25 August 2017 - 05:13 PM, said:

This feels like a Dr Phil episode where he says "you say that, but in game usage says it's a lie". Seriously, if the weapons are as bad as you portray them why are about 40-50% of all mechs in the match using them?

*checks forums*
*sees that half of threads are about most players being idiots*
*snickers at Ruar*

[Y E O N N E]

Ruar, on 25 August 2017 - 05:13 PM, said:

This feels like a Dr Phil episode where he says "you say that, but in game usage says it's a lie". Seriously, if the weapons are as bad as you portray them why are about 40-50% of all mechs in the match using them?

Why are far more than that using Medium and ER Medium Lasers?

[Judah Malganis]

Quote

This feels like a Dr Phil episode where he says "you say that, but in game usage says it's a lie". Seriously, if the weapons are as bad as you portray them why are about 40-50% of all mechs in the match using them

Again, you go with in-game usage as a yard stick for nerfs. If that were the case, a lot more weapons would need nerfing. I also never said that mgs are bad. I've admitted that they are absolutely great in the right situations, but so are a lot of other weapons, and most other weapons can be used to strip out fresh armor quickly with less face time, and alpha-capable weapons pinpoint their damage in a brawl far better than mgs an ever hope for, and it should be that way. Despite your misgivings, they're a lot more situational than most of the other weapons in-game.

I just got done playing 13 games. 1-2 machine gun lights in the team per game, 2 games had 3, one had zero. I saw 4 MLX-Gs total on our side. Can't really speak for the other team, though. I only saw one in one match and took it down after a nice brawl with my 6x ER SML Shard, and rear cored a few mechs here and there in the games as well, because mgs are not the only way to do that. I think people are just upset that lights have a new trick up their sleeve and strong lights are a no-no.

BTW, you've already called indirectly me a liar and an exaggerator, and now a Dr. Phil case. Maybe you ought to stick to facts and numbers, instead of back-handed name-calling. I've shown you numbers and well-reasoned arguments, and you jut disregard it all because you're on a 'if people like it, we need to nerf it so they stop using it altogether' kick. In a game where there are dozens of sites with spreadsheets, videos and commentary that help a player get deep into the meta, you have not made a single sound mathematical argument, other than 0 heat DPS (which is true) and the probable number of people using mgs currently. I agree that it's probably 30-40%, although other weapons are more common. So basically, nerf machine guns because feelings.

Edited by Judah Malganis, 25 August 2017 - 06:58 PM.

[Mcgral18]

Ruar, on 25 August 2017 - 02:57 PM, said:

Or leave the damage numbers alone and just add ammo making the use of the MG family more of a niche like SSRMs, NARC, MRMs, and flamers

You mean Terrible


Terrible is the word you're looking for

[Ngamok]

Like everything else in this game, it's not MGs that's the problem, it's boating them.