181 replies to this topic

[Y E O N N E]

Jackal Noble, on 22 July 2018 - 12:00 PM, said:

2 Large pulse and your flavor of MGs on the JAG-DD. friggin nasty.

Nah, too weak for how big of a target it is. I can do that with an Arrow (though the Arrow is even nastier if you sub in a RAC/5 for one of the MGs and drop your lasers to a trio of MedLas...whooo, 20 DPS!).

My DD runs the big version of that, with two RAC/5 and 4x LMGs and two ERML...that, or I'm doing 3 UAC/2 with 3x LMG.

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 22 July 2018 - 12:08 PM.

[Judah Malganis]

Quote

2 Large pulse and your flavor of MGs on the JAG-DD. friggin nasty

I used to run mine with 2 LB10s, 4MGs and 2 Med Pulse. Awesome can opener and late-game component eater.

Edited by Judah Malganis, 22 July 2018 - 12:07 PM.

[Jackal Noble]

It's just that I've witnessed it do some serious work. Ya I love the Arrow.

[Viking Yelling]

Judah Malganis, on 22 July 2018 - 11:27 AM, said:

There is such a misconception regarding the idea of MGs as an anti-infantry weapon, it's ridiculous. In BT lore, MGs, micro/small pulse lasers, flamers, and SRMs all have the benefit of being anti-infantry weapons. From the point of view of game mechanics, that implies they do BONUS dmg when used against infantry. Never does it imply or state that they are weak vs mech armor. In fact, SARNA entries explicitly state that MGs are effective vs mech armor, and their stats reflect that standard MGs do as much damage as an AC2, but at a much shorter range. Their ammo count ensures they are the highest dmg per ammo ton ballistic weapon in the game. PGI did us a service with current MG stats. HMGs currently do about half the DPS a standard MG should if they were faithful to TT rules. Imagine if they did AC2 DPS in-game.

Fair point, but sarna stats only indicate that they deal 2 damage, not the time frame. Ive read on the forums that damage turns in the original were delt of 10 second time frames. Dont know much about that though, and i havent found anything to confirm or deny this.
In terms of MWO, if this ia the actual case for the machine guns, why do they have hightened crit chance?

Maybe, again, the problem with the piranha is its hitboxes and its hardpoints.
Or maybe its critical slots? The piranha uses MG arrays which simply say they take up 1 crit slot. This could be interpreted as one slot for the array + the slots for the guns.

Edited by Viking Yelling, 22 July 2018 - 12:12 PM.

[Damnedtroll]

The only thing that are bad is the leg humping... maybe put collision damage different for each class when you have collision

like assault vs assault = 1 damage each
Assault vs heavy = 1 damage for the assault and 2 for the heavy
Assault vs Medium = 1 vs 3
Assault vs light = 1 for the heavy vs 4 for the light
Heavy vs medium 1 vs 2...
etc.

It would make humping more dangerous.

[Vonbach]

Viking Yelling, on 22 July 2018 - 12:08 PM, said:

Fair point, but sarna stats only indicate that they deal 2 damage, not the time frame. Ive read on the forums that damage turns in the original were delt of 10 second time frames. Dont know much about that though, and i havent found anything to confirm or deny this.
In terms of MWO, if this ia the actual case for the machine guns, why do they have hightened crit chance?

Maybe, again, the problem with the piranha is its hitboxes and its hardpoints.
Or maybe its critical slots? The piranha uses MG arrays which simply say they take up 1 crit slot. This could be interpreted as one slot for the array + the slots for the guns.

Its an easy problem to fix either nerf MG's to oblivion or make the Piranha the size of the arctic cheeter.
The Piranha never should've been added to the game.

[Viking Yelling]

Vonbach, on 22 July 2018 - 12:18 PM, said:

Its an easy problem to fix either nerf MG's to oblivion or make the Piranha the size of the arctic cheeter.
The Piranha never should've been added to the game.

Well, since there doesnt seem to be a reference scale, changing the mech size would make more sense when comparing some of the art for the mech. Nerfing MGs isnt an option. MGs are balanced on mechs with even 6 MG hardpoints(somewhat under preforming considering the twitchyness of close range combat). But as ive stated, even with a mech resize, its impossible to make global changes to MGs at this point in the game. Because any global buff will inevitably affect the piranha 12 fold, and any nerf is only going to be negated by the fact that the pirahna has 12+ mg hardpoints while all other mechs have 6 or less.

[Der Geisterbaer]

Viking Yelling, on 22 July 2018 - 12:08 PM, said:

Fair point, but sarna stats only indicate that they deal 2 damage, not the time frame. Ive read on the forums that damage turns in the original were delt of 10 second time frames.

Actually the time frame is utlimately of no concern. While the default assumption in TT is indeed that one combat turn - which includes sequentially handled movement and fire resolution - is about 10s the fact of the matter remains that a single machine gun in TT deals the same amount of damage as an AC2 in that time frame => In "canon" terms their "dps" is the same. Now, ...

Viking Yelling, on 22 July 2018 - 12:08 PM, said:

In terms of MWO, if this ia the actual case for the machine guns, why do they have hightened crit chance?

... in MWO machine guns and AC2s don't have the same "dps". The increased crit rates are a form of compensation.

Trust me, you wouldn't actually want to see a 12 machine gun PIR-1 with machine guns that share the ~2.7 dps an AC2 has in MWO:
People already complain about PIR-1s killing assaults within 3 seconds when attacking from behind with their current damage values. Now if people were honest they'd take a PIR-1 into Testing Grounds on Tourmaline and attack that Atlas which happens to be the closest target and then find that with a perfectly still standing PIR-1 against that also still standing Atlas it takes about 3 seconds of uninterrupted fire (including its three lasers - cHSML in most builds) to open that Atlas. Then another 2 to 3 seconds till the 2 med lasers are critted out and a total of 8 to 9 seconds before it actually dies to CT destruction.
Instead try to imagine a moving PIR-1 that does AC2 levels of damage per machine gun (=32.4 dps) from any side. It would still only take roughly 9 seconds to completely eat away armor plus structure on both legs of pretty much any assault and if such a PIR-1 were to hit from behind those 3 seconds to a CT kill would no longer be an exaggeration.

Edited by Der Geisterbaer, 22 July 2018 - 01:36 PM.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

I wish we could test a different take with weapons, using the original stats (doubled in the sense that the values occur over five seconds on time) to get a baseline and then getting them to how they are setup in MWO is what I'd test. I started with using actual modern tank cannons that are known as Rifles in the lore to get an idea of the Rounds per Minute, and treat the Autocannons as being able to fire much much faster with such rounds, over simply having rounds deal ludicrous damage like an AC/20 currently does available on every mech that mounts them.

And then weapons can see baseline boosts as needed (like giving back ridiculous DPS as the mentioned 2.78 AC/2s, or 5.00 DPS on AC/20s), not factoring the Skill Tree and Quirks, where there could be differences in what get quirked up further. For example, adding different quirks that could increase damage per round on a variant by variant and 8/8 omnipod setup. Such as a Quirk that allows an AC/20 on the HBK-4G to deal 4 damage per round at 5.00 DPS or adding back damage to deal 20 per round on the HBK-4G to match current performance, that could be select-able through the Weapon Skill Tree.

Edited by Nothing Whatsoever, 22 July 2018 - 03:56 PM.

[Youshallgofo]

4x SSRM6+medium mech = No more piranha. /thread.

[Viking Yelling]

Der Geisterbaer, on 22 July 2018 - 01:35 PM, said:

Actually the time frame is utlimately of no concern. While the default assumption in TT is indeed that one combat turn - which includes sequentially handled movement and fire resolution - is about 10s the fact of the matter remains that a single machine gun in TT deals the same amount of damage as an AC2 in that time frame => In "canon" terms their "dps" is the same. Now, ...



... in MWO machine guns and AC2s don't have the same "dps". The increased crit rates are a form of compensation.

Trust me, you wouldn't actually want to see a 12 machine gun PIR-1 with machine guns that share the ~2.7 dps an AC2 has in MWO:
People already complain about PIR-1s killing assaults within 3 seconds when attacking from behind with their current damage values. Now if people were honest they'd take a PIR-1 into Testing Grounds on Tourmaline and attack that Atlas which happens to be the closest target and then find that with a perfectly still standing PIR-1 against that also still standing Atlas it takes about 3 seconds of uninterrupted fire (including its three lasers - cHSML in most builds) to open that Atlas. Then another 2 to 3 seconds till the 2 med lasers are critted out and a total of 8 to 9 seconds before it actually dies to CT destruction.
Instead try to imagine a moving PIR-1 that does AC2 levels of damage per machine gun (=32.4 dps) from any side. It would still only take roughly 9 seconds to completely eat away armor plus structure on both legs of pretty much any assault and if such a PIR-1 were to hit from behind those 3 seconds to a CT kill would no longer be an exaggeration.

Well weapon figures like cooldown, spread, laser duration, ect are all figurative numbers for MWO anyway. Saying that MGs lore wise would have the same damage per turn would be accurate. So yes, comparing them to MWO's DPS is different. However since cooldown and DPS is figurative in MWO with respect to lore, then that means that their is no direct comparison. Then lore mearly states that the MG will do 2 damage in a turn, not how long the bust would be.

In order ro determine the weapons lore dps a time frame would be needed.

Also, it was never the damage the MG delt that bothered me. My contenaion has been the absurd crit ability of this mech to aimply "stick" any mech without armor. A feature that is mostly random is now the literal game exploit of the pirahna. I think there are numerous chasis in the game that would love to see MG damage/rof buffs. That is now only possible through quirk bonuses since any buffs to MGs breaks the game.

[Judah Malganis]

Some have proposed a dmg increase with a crit decrease, but I don't think it's a good move. Complaints would switch from "my stuff got critted out fast" to "MGs chew through armor fast now". Maybe they can set MGs to have certain number of maximum crits per second, so whether a player has 2 MGs or 12 MGS on a mech, the number of crits per second a single mech using MGs can proc on a target flatlines, and after some point, extra MGs are there for essentially for DPS purposes only.

Edited by Judah Malganis, 22 July 2018 - 08:47 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Judah Malganis, on 22 July 2018 - 08:45 PM, said:

Some have proposed a dmg increase with a crit decrease, but I don't think it's a good move. Complaints would switch from "my stuff got critted out fast" to "MGs chew through armor fast now". Maybe they can set MGs to have certain number of maximum crits per second, so whether a player has 2 MGs or 12 MGS on a mech, the number of crits per second a single mech using MGs can proc on a target flatlines, and after some point, extra MGs are there for essentially for DPS purposes only.

People are already complaining about MGs chewing through armor.

Joke is on them, though, I can chew through their armor much faster with literally any other weapon system. That's sort of the issue: MGs require more risk in play than lasers, missiles, or ACs, but they are only really viable on 'Mechs that can bring more than 8 unless that 'Mech also has decent energy complements.

[Rusharn]

Having played the Osiris hero for the weekend, I found one of my primary duties was engaging Piranha's and it was a very fun experience. The Orisis with a maxed out survival tree, pressing 150kph, with 2 x mg, and 4 x er meds, is well suited to running down Piranha's. Their machine guns couldn't stay on me for long, so I took little damage, I seemed to turn tighter then most of the Piranha's allowing me to keep my weapons on target as we danced, and if they tried to break away the were dead, because then I got on their tail, and either legged them or cored them out from behind depending on how they turned their torso. If felt like aerial dog fighting in mechs. The Piranha's are a lot easier to hit then Flea's or Locusts.

I only real issue is the taller assault mech not being able to depress their weapons enough to engage them when their legs are being humped. If anything should happen I think all the mechs just need mobility boosts, and increases to torso movement range.

[Weeny Machine]

Viking Yelling, on 22 July 2018 - 10:56 AM, said:

I played a game with my arctic wolf. 5 srm 6, 4 srm 4. Ran up punched a timber wolf lost a lot of armor. In cover, all of a sudden a piranha lackidasically pops around the corner, turns on its 12 or so MGs and before I have time to even aim and fire every single weapon was critted put.

Piranhas are literal garbage to me. Its a mech that simply exploits the crit mechanic and should never have been added.
My proof is exactly in the implementation of the mech. MGs in lore are anti-infantry weapons. Most mechs only used 1-3 for close defense. MWO implemented them as a brawling defense in that they could disable enemies in close range. They then added the piranha that uses an anti-infantry weapon as a main weapon, with enough of them to literally equate 2 RAC-2s with more thab 10x the crit ability.

In the midst of PGI trying to "level power creep" they just broke damage per ton for light mechs. Now any balancing done to MGs will either have to be nerfs (making MGs even less of an option for mechs without the hardpoints for 12 MGs, there by removing them as a brawling weapon, IE, removing their purpose in the game for anything but 12+ mg piranhas), or buffing other mechs' MGs through quirks to have an efficency similar to 12+ MG piranhas. Nerfing piranha MG spam is pointless to the purpose of the mech and every mech having effectively 12 MGs is breaking.

So, when your mech was open everywhere....what do you think would have happened had a medium, heavy or assault done to you?
He would have ripped you a new one and wouldn't have "only" lost the weapons.

[Viking Yelling]

Bush Hopper, on 23 July 2018 - 08:50 AM, said:

So, when your mech was open everywhere....what do you think would have happened had a medium, heavy or assault done to you?
He would have ripped you a new one and wouldn't have "only" lost the weapons.

Actually I had yellow and red armor in places. The piranha literally applied it's MGs like a water hose and my armor and weapons were gone. Your challenge of "if it was a bigger mech" is a logical fallacy considering the topic. But it does point out that the Piranha with 12+ Mgs has a similar effective firepower to mech well above it's weight class because of it's critical hit capability. Thank you.

[Jman5]

Monkey Lover, on 20 July 2018 - 12:41 PM, said:

Crit system for lasers is just as bad. I can be 1000m+ away some er lasers at 99% of its max range will brush me and it will crit my weapons.

Crits need to be based on range and time on target.

Everyone is ignoring this post, but it's a huge reason why you are all getting insta-gutted by machine guns a lot of the times.

Machine guns have very short range and more often than not the guy shooting you is actually shooting you out of his optimum range. However it doesn't matter because Critical hits do 100% damage all the way out to max range.

The machine guns on my spider has 144 meters of optimum range and zero out at 288 meters. I can stand out at 287 meters and crit out weapons just as quickly than if I was face-hugging.

Make Crit damage drop off like damage does and the amount of times you get your mech gutted out of no-where will go down.

[Der Geisterbaer]

Viking Yelling, on 23 July 2018 - 10:02 AM, said:

But it does point out that the Piranha with 12+ Mgs has a similar effective firepower to mech well above it's weight class because of it's critical hit capability.

So your underlying stipulation there is that a light mech should not be able to compete with those higher weight classes ... which in turn begs the question: Why have light mechs in a game like this at all if they're not supposed to do that?

Viking Yelling, on 23 July 2018 - 10:02 AM, said:

Thank you.

I guess you shouldn't thank him there because it actually showed more of the hypocrisy behind the topic than supporting the claim that the PIR-1 is "over powered" (or your claim about a comparison to said larger mechs being a fallacy and then making such a comparison yourself).

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Jman5, on 23 July 2018 - 10:28 AM, said:

Everyone is ignoring this post, but it's a huge reason why you are all getting insta-gutted by machine guns a lot of the times.

Machine guns have very short range and more often than not the guy shooting you is actually shooting you out of his optimum range. However it doesn't matter because Critical hits do 100% damage all the way out to max range.

The machine guns on my spider has 144 meters of optimum range and zero out at 288 meters. I can stand out at 287 meters and crit out weapons just as quickly than if I was face-hugging.

Make Crit damage drop off like damage does and the amount of times you get your mech gutted out of no-where will go down.

Or we could get rid of criticals all together. The question you have to ask is what do they honestly add to the game other than an unfun experience when you lose half of your weapons in a single hit because 0.05 damage touched your internals and rolled a lucky crit?

[Judah Malganis]

Quote

Or we could get rid of criticals all together.

Then MGs would need a damage buff, and then player complaints will go from "I hate how MGs chew up weapons" to "Now they chew up armor too fast".

Edited by Judah Malganis, 23 July 2018 - 11:16 AM.