49 replies to this topic

[KursedVixen]

the tradeoff for AP gauss is mainly heat but also the ap gauss weights in a .50 tons most clan mg's aside from the heavy mg weight in at .25 tons so you need 2 mgs or light mgs, or one heavy mg on the clan side for one ap gauss. I've tried the 12 ap gauss warthog it runs hot.

The tradeoff for the magshot is similar but the magshot is two slots so it's a little more prohibitive but the same weight and heat same damage slightly faster fire rate... Is mg's(other than the heavy weight the same as the magshot but take only one slot. you actually save a ton by switching from is heavy mg to magshot but at the cost of slots.

I like it it gives lights a mini ac2 pretty much.

Edited by KursedVixen, 03 May 2024 - 01:31 PM.

[BLXKNTRR]

The trade off with magshot and ap gauss is their tiny barrels are emasculating and therefore avoided by most people

[1453 R]

An6ryMan69, on 01 May 2024 - 07:40 AM, said:

Advice from someone who is not in Tier 1 and so is probably more relevant to many players.

When you come across a dangerous light mech that you don't think you can handle, quickly put as many friendly mechs between you and the light as you can, call out to your team the location of the red light, and let the guys giving "Just shoot the light" advice, go ahead and deal with it themselves. Then move on to supporting your team by taking on bad guys you can kill.

Seriously.

I don't know how often it happens in Tier 1-2, but at lower tiers, besides being able to dance around slower single mechs highly effectively, a single light brawling it out with even a whole group of bigger mechs can create major problems for the bigger mechs, and we often see the last remaining red team mech, a flea or piranha or something, being set upon by 3-6 blue team mechs at the same time, and the little bugger can still be brutal to eventually kill, and may even get a kill or two itself, while being badly outnumbered.

For many Tier 3-5 players, the "Just shoot the light" advice is basically nonsense because if people were capable of doing that, they would not be posting here in the first place. Hence why there are sometimes strong responses to being told this.

That's like telling someone who is asking you financial advice to "Just be rich."

You may not be able to reliably land a decisive shot against light 'Mechs, but you can wing them. Lights have very little armor, chip damage adds up quick. You'll also never land a lucky decisive shot if you never shoot at the things and just assume every light 'Mech in MWO is an unkillable phantasm of inescapable murder.

Advice to "Just Shoot The Light" isn't advice telling people who can't aim to just aim better. It's telling people to stop flailing and shrieking and panicking like someone just set their butts on fire and to engage the light 'Mech the same way they'd engage any other 'Mech - aim, fire, and hope you do a better job than the other guy. Sometimes even if you clean miss, the demonstration that you're not going to spaz out and flail randomly like a tasered turkey is all it takes to convince a paranoid light jock to find better prey.

And frankly, if the light 'Mech can successfully and consistently stay out of your guns long enough to plink you to death, maybe he, I dunno...deserves the win? It's almost like playing a light 'Mech is supposed to be a viable option in this game or something.

Edited by 1453 R, 04 May 2024 - 04:33 AM.

[MechWarrior5782621]

martian, on 01 May 2024 - 12:00 AM, said:

Both weapons also have some downsides:

• Clan Anti-personnel Gauss Rifle weighs 0.5 ton, while the standard Clan Machine Gun weighs 0.25 ton. Where you would boat 10 Clan MGs, you can equip 5 APGRs only (for the same tonnage).
  
• Inner Sphere Magshot takes up two equipment slots, while the standard IS Machine Gun needs just one slot (for the same weight). If you add endo-steel construction, ferro-fibrous armor, double heat sinks, extralight engine shielding and other stuff, you can have a problem with finding enough room for boating Magshots.

And of course, the basic rule still stands: Just shoot that damned light!

• Both APGR and Mashot have the effective range of 270 metres.
  
• Many medium, heavy and assault 'Mechs are armed with weapons with range of 800+ metres and they sport massive - often pinpoint or hitscan - alpha strikes.
  
• And if everything fails, use Streak SRMs to annihilate those pesky light 'Mechs.

It's true that AP Gauss weighs more than regular cMG's - therefore it is not a strictly better weapon on every build. I do like it on some black lanner builds and mist lynx poptarts, but I don't think it's the right choice on something like a piranha.

Magshot is clearly superior to IS MG's overall, and the Crael is literally the only mech in the game that uses IS MG's effectively. Part of the reason for this is that IS MG's have always been weak, since there aren't a lot of mechs that can boat them, and they weigh twice as much as cMG's for some reason. The slots don't matter on lights - you're not going to need double heat sinks on a light mech with boated magshots (ok, maybe 1 or 2 just to get to the minimum required # of heat sinks).

Anyway, they're both good weapons but not broken imo.

[martian]

MechWarrior5782621, on 04 May 2024 - 04:52 AM, said:

It's true that AP Gauss weighs more than regular cMG's - therefore it is not a strictly better weapon on every build. I do like it on some black lanner builds and mist lynx poptarts, but I don't think it's the right choice on something like a piranha.

Magshot is clearly superior to IS MG's overall, and the Crael is literally the only mech in the game that uses IS MG's effectively. Part of the reason for this is that IS MG's have always been weak, since there aren't a lot of mechs that can boat them, and they weigh twice as much as cMG's for some reason. The slots don't matter on lights - you're not going to need double heat sinks on a light mech with boated magshots (ok, maybe 1 or 2 just to get to the minimum required # of heat sinks).

Anyway, they're both good weapons but not broken imo.

The situation has unfolded, just as I expected: For the first few days, everybody ran Magshots and APGRs left and right. But now? People keep them only on 'Mechs where such loadouts actually make sense.

Edited by martian, 04 May 2024 - 12:33 PM.

[Bassault]

Cauldron moment when they make poptarts, some of the most powerful and frustrating archetypes to go against, have more alpha and DPS

[Void Angel]

BLXKNTRR, on 03 May 2024 - 06:16 AM, said:

The solution to this problem is buffing the black knight, obviously

For this comment, I forgive you that entire thread. =D

[Void Angel]

MechWarrior5782621, on 04 May 2024 - 04:52 AM, said:

It's true that AP Gauss weighs more than regular cMG's - therefore it is not a strictly better weapon on every build. I do like it on some black lanner builds and mist lynx poptarts, but I don't think it's the right choice on something like a piranha.

Magshot is clearly superior to IS MG's overall, and the Crael is literally the only mech in the game that uses IS MG's effectively. Part of the reason for this is that IS MG's have always been weak, since there aren't a lot of mechs that can boat them, and they weigh twice as much as cMG's for some reason. The slots don't matter on lights - you're not going to need double heat sinks on a light mech with boated magshots (ok, maybe 1 or 2 just to get to the minimum required # of heat sinks).

Anyway, they're both good weapons but not broken imo.

Well, I don't know about MGs per se - the Crael uses HMGs to great effect, but I don't think it's the only one. My Locust 1V does well with HMGs and a laser; it's just hit-and-miss because I need to facetime the enemy, and that means I either need to isolate something slow or engage alongside teammates who are a bigger threat. It's hard to do in quickplay.

For my money, I've found that Magshots replace standard MGs pretty well, but in the Light chassis where they're most often used, the heat is non-trivial. If I'm mixing energy and ballistics on a smaller chassis, particularly with a RoF quirk, some kind of machine gun often supports that mix better than a Magshot - just because of the heat economy.

[KursedVixen]

Void Angel, on 05 May 2024 - 08:44 PM, said:

Well, I don't know about MGs per se - the Crael uses HMGs to great effect, but I don't think it's the only one. My Locust 1V does well with HMGs and a laser; it's just hit-and-miss because I need to facetime the enemy, and that means I either need to isolate something slow or engage alongside teammates who are a bigger threat. It's hard to do in quickplay.

For my money, I've found that Magshots replace standard MGs pretty well, but in the Light chassis where they're most often used, the heat is non-trivial. If I'm mixing energy and ballistics on a smaller chassis, particularly with a RoF quirk, some kind of machine gun often supports that mix better than a Magshot - just because of the heat economy.

defintly mechs will still benifit more from MG's than apgauss or magshot also magshot and ap gauss explode so that's another factor.

[Void Angel]

Explosion is rather incidental with Gauss weapons on Lights - it's like putting ammo in your head. The number of times you're going to take a headshot that penetrates your armor, and rolls a crit, and hits the ammo, and destroys the ammo, and the ammo explodes... it's a tiny fraction of the times that the same hit will just merk you in the cockpit for a headshot kill. Losing the entire component containing those MagS/APGs will hurt, but by the time you're open armor, you're usually dead the next time they hit that spot anyway.

It's still a concern, but the space (for magshots) and heat are much more limiting. In general, I'd expect AP Gauss to be a better replacer across the board, while Magshot's comparison depends heavily on whether the 'mech has RoF quirks. Heat will usually be more of a problem for Inner Sphere Lights as well, because of Clan DHS's space efficiency, but that can go out the window if you're trying to pair APGs with Heavy lasers or something.