96 replies to this topic

[MPhoenix]

In a previous thread it was stated that Machine Guns are not similar to current MGs like the Ma Deuce, M60, etc. but more akin to big SOBs like the Vulcan 2mm cannon and the GAU-8/A which is why they can do so much damage.

This presents a question. Both of these weapons, and by inference if mech MGs are similar, are essentially rotary cannons similar to although not on the scale of RACs.
Both the Vulcan and the GAU-8/A are only fired in short bursts due to overheating issues and in earlier versions of the GAU incidents of jamming.

Why do MWO MGs not overheat or jam? The 'smaller' versions of them (Vulcan and GAU) have these issues as do the 'bigger' versions in game (RACs) so if in game MGs are using a similar rotary action it seems they should too.

Just out of curiosity I fired 8,000 rounds out of the MGs on my Urbie and 8,000 rounds out of the MGs on my Viper both on Tourmilne Desert. In both cases there were zero jams (of course) and the heat scale never moved from 0%.

I doubt the concept is that they are enormous versions of belt fed MGs mainly because those are single barrel weapons and at the rate of fire in game there would be dripping molten metal down the front of a mech. Although visually they are depicted as single barreled weapons.

So what exactly are they and what mechanism makes them immune to heat and jamming?

[pattonesque]

they don't overheat or jam because it would make them suck in this video game

that's the mechanism

[MPhoenix]

In other words you have no idea at all. Okay.

I'm curious as to the mechanism for curiosity's sake, kind of like trying to reason out the mechanics, chemistry and physics behind a PPC.

Yes, it's not real but if we wanted to make it real what kind of energy would we need, how would you make a cohesive ball of energy combined with matter and how would you accurately propel it over great distances.

[ScrapIron Prime]

MPhoenix, on 25 January 2022 - 07:33 PM, said:

I'm curious as to the mechanism for curiosity's sake, kind of like trying to reason out the mechanics, chemistry and physics behind a PPC.

Yes, it's not real but if we wanted to make it real what kind of energy would we need, how would you make a cohesive ball of energy combined with matter and how would you accurately propel it over great distances.

The PPC has a bit more technobabble behind it to back it up. From Sarna:

The Particle Projector Cannon (or PPC) is an energy weapon, firing a concentrated stream of protons or ions at a target with damage resulting from both thermal and kinetic energy.^[4] Despite being an energy weapon, it does produce recoil. The lethality of the weapon rivals that of higher-caliber autocannons; just three shots from a PPC will vaporize nearly two tons of standard military-grade armor.^[5] Targets hit by multiple, simultaneous PPCs can also suffer electrical side-effects, such as overloaded computer systems or targeting sensors.^[6] The ion beam also extends to much farther ranges than autocannon fire

So its protons. Therefore its done with magnets. Its been described as a lightning bolt, a small shock wave, or an "energy charge". That last one is presumably what we're using in MWO because they wanted an energy weapon that didn't energy like the other energies. or something.

[Meep Meep]

MPhoenix, on 25 January 2022 - 07:33 PM, said:

In other words you have no idea at all. Okay.

I'm curious as to the mechanism for curiosity's sake, kind of like trying to reason out the mechanics, chemistry and physics behind a PPC.

Yes, it's not real but if we wanted to make it real what kind of energy would we need, how would you make a cohesive ball of energy combined with matter and how would you accurately propel it over great distances.

MG in this game have no relation to battletech mg in that in bt they are mainly an anti infantry/light vehicle weapon not really meant for use against other mechs except on open components since they do critical bonus damage to exposed structure but jack all to armor. In mwo they are kinda a short ranged rac that doesn't spin up or jam or produce heat and only are effective when boated though a couple of them can certainly farm crits on open components. I'm still waiting for mg arrays for bigger mechs.

[ScrapIron Prime]

Meep Meep, on 25 January 2022 - 07:43 PM, said:

MG in this game have no relation to battletech mg in that in bt they are mainly an anti infantry/light vehicle weapon not really meant for use against other mechs except on open components since they do critical bonus damage to exposed structure but jack all to armor.

Whatchoo talkin' about Willis... er, uh... Meep Meep. In Battletech, a machine gun does 2 points to armor, one less than a small laser does. Yes, it does 2d6 points to infantry, so to them its worth its weight in gold, but it still does armor damage.

[Meep Meep]

ScrapIron Prime, on 25 January 2022 - 07:45 PM, said:

Whatchoo talkin' about Willis... er, uh... Meep Meep. In Battletech, a machine gun does 2 points to armor, one less than a small laser does. Yes, it does 2d6 points to infantry, so to them its worth its weight in gold, but it still does armor damage.

I didn't say they did no damage just not enough to make them a threat to a fresh mech because you only get a tiny amount of ammo per ton like around 200 or so where you get thousands in this game. I guess my point is that in battletech you don't really try to strip armor with mg where in mwo a mech with 6~12 mg can strip armor pretty well. They are most useful in melee combat since you can use mg along with a melee attack unlike larger weapons and they can produce heat if you overdrive them. But here they are simply another projectile weapon.

[ScrapIron Prime]

Meep Meep, on 25 January 2022 - 07:55 PM, said:

I didn't say they did no damage just not enough to make them a threat to a fresh mech because you only get a tiny amount of ammo per ton like around 200 or so where you get thousands in this game. I guess my point is that in battletech you don't really try to strip armor with mg where in mwo a mech with 6~12 mg can strip armor pretty well. They are most useful in melee combat since you can use mg along with a melee attack unlike larger weapons and they can produce heat if you overdrive them. But here they are simply another projectile weapon.

Yeahbut... 200 ammo in Battletech means you can fire 200 times. 200 combat turns worth of ammo. Even divided among 4 machine guns, that's enough ammo for a 50 turn game... which never happens. I've never seen a game go longer than 20 turns.

[Meep Meep]

ScrapIron Prime, on 25 January 2022 - 07:59 PM, said:

Yeahbut... 200 ammo in Battletech means you can fire 200 times. 200 combat turns worth of ammo. Even divided among 4 machine guns, that's enough ammo for a 50 turn game... which never happens. I've never seen a game go longer than 20 turns.

But do you use them the same way in bt as you do here as an armor stripper then critical farmer?

edit; and to fully answer the op's last question the reason they work the way they do in mwo is thats what they settled on for a mg mechanic in a real time shooter vs the tabletop. Good lord the early days were a constant war between the lore elites and the fps monkeys on balance and lrm took ages to finally get in line. Iirc mg did produce heat once upon a time but it was brief and was taken out.

Edited by Meep Meep, 25 January 2022 - 08:18 PM.

[ScrapIron Prime]

Meep Meep, on 25 January 2022 - 08:05 PM, said:

But do you use them the same way in bt as you do here as an armor stripper then critical farmer?

Not really, SRM's and LBX are the real crit farmers, each missile and pellet goes on a separate hit location. You barely use MG's at all, not because of the damage, but because of the range. To have a decent hit chance, you essentially have to be in melee, and over 3 hexes away (90m) your hit chance is impossible. Nobody boats small or micro lasers or MG's in tabletop for this reason.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

MPhoenix, on 25 January 2022 - 07:02 PM, said:

In a previous thread it was stated that Machine Guns are not similar to current MGs like the Ma Deuce, M60, etc. but more akin to big SOBs like the Vulcan 2mm cannon and the GAU-8/A which is why they can do so much damage.

This presents a question. Both of these weapons, and by inference if mech MGs are similar, are essentially rotary cannons similar to although not on the scale of RACs.
Both the Vulcan and the GAU-8/A are only fired in short bursts due to overheating issues and in earlier versions of the GAU incidents of jamming.

Why do MWO MGs not overheat or jam? The 'smaller' versions of them (Vulcan and GAU) have these issues as do the 'bigger' versions in game (RACs) so if in game MGs are using a similar rotary action it seems they should too.

Just out of curiosity I fired 8,000 rounds out of the MGs on my Urbie and 8,000 rounds out of the MGs on my Viper both on Tourmilne Desert. In both cases there were zero jams (of course) and the heat scale never moved from 0%.

I doubt the concept is that they are enormous versions of belt fed MGs mainly because those are single barrel weapons and at the rate of fire in game there would be dripping molten metal down the front of a mech. Although visually they are depicted as single barreled weapons.

So what exactly are they and what mechanism makes them immune to heat and jamming?

its the Video game adaption of a Table top game with real abstract and in many way inlogical Rules, nonsense (unguided Missles in Spacefights) ,so here MGs not jams and in the BT Table Top Game the MGs only a Weapon against light Vehicles and Infantry and so in MWO useless Tonnage when not find other Ways to bring it in.,so here the MGs make critical interne damage.Its a Little more realistic as Star Trek or Star wars,not more

Edited by MW Waldorf Statler, 25 January 2022 - 09:10 PM.

[Saved By The Bell]

It wasnt any jams in old parts of game: 2, 3, 4. Too weak weapon.

[w0qj]

A Cauldron member, and a top MWO Comp player, DATA, said this very recently:

Machine Gun is like a laser, it does damage over time, and like a laser you do not need to lead your aim vs the moving target.
Also, neither Cooldown nor Velocity Skill Nodes work on MG; it does not improve MG.
Only the "Machine_Gun_ROF [Rate_Of_Fire]" mech quirk improves MG performance.

Finally, the MG 'bullets' you see while firing is just a visual effect; there are no MG bullets in MWO.

And yes, MG never jams.

Source: at 8min 50sec:

Edited by w0qj, 26 January 2022 - 12:18 AM.

[YueFei]

The whole Battletech setting is pretty nonsensical. It's just a thin veneer of technology over a feudal setting and it's not at all hard sci-fi. Once you start crunching the physics numbers, it all falls apart.

If you really must have some kind of "head-canon" reason that Battletech MGs run cold and never jam, well just consider that the IRL GAU-8 masses 281 kg, and with feed system and ammo masses a total of 1.8 metric tons, and Battletech MGs mass 500kg and a ton of MG ammo would make that 1.5 metric tons, so it's a weapon system that has comparable mass as the GAU-8. Let's just imagine that 1,000 years in the future, they've found a way to improve their equivalent of this, such that the weapon system itself dissipates all the locally-generated heat, and so it never heats up the mech firing them, the MG ammo and feed mechanism lubricates itself as it fires, etc.

Whatever helps with your suspension of disbelief...

But then once you start thinking about how the MGs in this game only have an optimal range of 130 meters and a max range of 260 meters... and compare that with IRL ballistics... your head will explode trying to reconcile that.

[Der Geisterbaer]

Meep Meep, on 25 January 2022 - 07:43 PM, said:

MG in this game have no relation to battletech mg in that in bt they are mainly an anti infantry/light vehicle weapon not really meant for use against other mechs except on open components since they do critical bonus damage to exposed structure but jack all to armor.

Although it has been said before I still feel the urge to say it again: You are absolutely wrong. BT machine guns are bonafide anti-mech weapons that deal the exact same damage as an AC2 or a singular SRM but also with increased damage against infantry and zero increased crit damage / crit chance against mechs / vehicles. And just like in MW:O they normally don't create heat and have comparatively low range. Their ammo count per ton is high enough to outlast the vast majority of games even in machine gun boats like the PIR-1.

So please stop spreading that "mainly anti-infantry" nonsense.

Meep Meep, on 25 January 2022 - 07:43 PM, said:

I'm still waiting for mg arrays for bigger mechs.

The purpose of BT machine gun arrays is to allow multiple machine guns to hit a single hit location instead of one hit location per machine gun. This happens in MW:O by default. Machine gun arrays in BT do not increase the number of carried machine guns either because BT has no actual hardpoint system. As such BT arrays actually reduce the total number of machine guns due to their own weight and the crit slot they are taking up.

Side note: The MLX-G and IIRC the FLE-19 should have arrays for their machine guns => M:WO actually gave those two mechs 1t of free tonnage and two free crit slots by not implementing arrays ... and both mechs need at least the tonnage desperately due to the actual ammo constraints and how weak machine guns in MW:O are when compared against their already not truly desirable BT counterparts.

Edited by Der Geisterbaer, 26 January 2022 - 01:38 AM.

[Curccu]

FUN THREAD!!!!

Talking about realism in game that is scifi, made by people that have no idea how how even real weapons work....
and clearly you are not gun person or military and do not have lot of knowledge of weapons.

MPhoenix, on 25 January 2022 - 07:02 PM, said:

In a previous thread it was stated that Machine Guns are not similar to current MGs like the Ma Deuce, M60, etc. but more akin to big SOBs like the Vulcan 2mm cannon and the GAU-8/A which is why they can do so much damage.

This presents a question. Both of these weapons, and by inference if mech MGs are similar, are essentially rotary cannons similar to although not on the scale of RACs.
Both the Vulcan and the GAU-8/A are only fired in short bursts due to overheating issues and in earlier versions of the GAU incidents of jamming.

Why do MWO MGs not overheat or jam? The 'smaller' versions of them (Vulcan and GAU) have these issues as do the 'bigger' versions in game (RACs) so if in game MGs are using a similar rotary action it seems they should too.

Just out of curiosity I fired 8,000 rounds out of the MGs on my Urbie and 8,000 rounds out of the MGs on my Viper both on Tourmilne Desert. In both cases there were zero jams (of course) and the heat scale never moved from 0%.

I doubt the concept is that they are enormous versions of belt fed MGs mainly because those are single barrel weapons and at the rate of fire in game there would be dripping molten metal down the front of a mech. Although visually they are depicted as single barreled weapons.

So what exactly are they and what mechanism makes them immune to heat and jamming?

I think people are mostly trying to save MWO MGs are similar caliber than Gau-8 instead of gatling style weapon something like Russian Shipunov 2A42 which is single barrel 30mm belt fed MG basically (yeah real world definition is autocannon) has pretty similar rate of fire as MWO MGs (600 RPM instead of Gau-8 shoots 3900 RPM)

With firerates this games MGs shoot there is no reason to be multi barrels like vulcan/gatling/gau, mechs have heatsinks and those can handle little heat MGs produce so easily that it can be just ignored clearly.

And Gau-8 doesn't have any heat issues, they can dump whole ammo reserve at once no problem, but why would pilot dump all of it's ammo in 18 seconds without real added benefit? Ammo dumbing does wear it's barrels faster though.

If your Viper would have 8x Gau-8 "style mg" that 8000 would be gone in less than 16 seconds.

But personally I would love MWO MG's having 6,5 times higher ROF (and DPS ofc) oh the QQ of PIR-1 (Stock Atlas dies in less than 1,9 seconds if shot to FRONT CT by stock PIR-1)


For funzies check below video from timestamp, MG in the video shoots 450-500 RPM compared to 600 RPM in MWO so pretty close and is watercooled vs BT each mech has 10 heatsinks (if timestamping works if added like this, 10:24 if it doesn't)

Meep Meep, on 25 January 2022 - 07:43 PM, said:

MG in this game have no relation to battletech mg in that in bt they are mainly an anti infantry/light vehicle weapon not really meant for use against other mechs except on open components since they do critical bonus damage to exposed structure but jack all to armor. In mwo they are kinda a short ranged rac that doesn't spin up or jam or produce heat and only are effective when boated though a couple of them can certainly farm crits on open components. I'm still waiting for mg arrays for bigger mechs.

MG was added to battletech before infantry and vehicles?

[MW Waldorf Statler]

YueFei, on 25 January 2022 - 11:33 PM, said:

The whole Battletech setting is pretty nonsensical. It's just a thin veneer of technology over a feudal setting and it's not at all hard sci-fi. Once you start crunching the physics numbers, it all falls apart.

If you really must have some kind of "head-canon" reason that Battletech MGs run cold and never jam, well just consider that the IRL GAU-8 masses 281 kg, and with feed system and ammo masses a total of 1.8 metric tons, and Battletech MGs mass 500kg and a ton of MG ammo would make that 1.5 metric tons, so it's a weapon system that has comparable mass as the GAU-8. Let's just imagine that 1,000 years in the future, they've found a way to improve their equivalent of this, such that the weapon system itself dissipates all the locally-generated heat, and so it never heats up the mech firing them, the MG ammo and feed mechanism lubricates itself as it fires, etc.

Whatever helps with your suspension of disbelief...

But then once you start thinking about how the MGs in this game only have an optimal range of 130 meters and a max range of 260 meters... and compare that with IRL ballistics... your head will explode trying to reconcile that.

BT is more WK40k ithout Magic and Aliens.
Problems like the Missles , you never becomes 1000 LRM Missles (thats 50x the place of a Catapult Missle Launcher) in a Mech , or you can Build in BT Aerospace Fighters and navigate across the Stars and have lost the ability to build efficience Target Computer and better Missle Guidance Systems, you can only hit with Luck a 10m tall Mech with 60kmh in TT in 600m,and have Special Rules to hit 400kmh fast aerospacefighters.

Edited by MW Waldorf Statler, 26 January 2022 - 02:42 AM.

[Meep Meep]

Curccu, on 26 January 2022 - 02:16 AM, said:

MG was added to battletech before infantry and vehicles?

Dunno. I had an uncle who was into miniatures and he would play both battletech and ww2 games in his barn on a huge table so I had a vague sense of the rules but I watched more than I paid attention to the particulars. He would also mix it up and pit a few mechs and some battle tanks vs a ww2 mechanized battalion and that was fun as you could actually beat the mechs if you had the right tactics. I play this game because I like big stompy robot fights not because I want a strictly lore based battletech shooter.

[Der Geisterbaer]

Curccu, on 26 January 2022 - 02:16 AM, said:

MG was added to battletech before infantry and vehicles?

Machine guns indeed were part of the BT mech weapon arsenal way before FASA added infantry or other vehicles into the mix ... which makes that incorrect "mainly anti-infantry weapons" nonsense even more annoying.

[Meep Meep]

Der Geisterbaer, on 26 January 2022 - 03:25 AM, said:

Machine guns indeed were part of the BT mech weapon arsenal way before FASA added infantry or other vehicles into the mix ... which makes that incorrect "mainly anti-infantry weapons" nonsense even more annoying.

So you use mg in the tabletop all the time as an anti mech weapon?