106 replies to this topic

[Dudeman3k]

Ghostrider0067, on 01 December 2012 - 01:30 PM, said:

I don't agree with it because MGs and ACs are different in terms of caliber and for the reasons I stated previously: ACs should do more damage than any machine gun as the projectile is far larger, fired from a larger weapon (and a longer barrel), and fired at much higher velocity.

Forgive me for injecting some realism into what clearly isn't, but I guess it's of no matter since some people can't do the same. Shame on me.

Dont mean put you down, but I see what you mean, and the caliber doesn't calculate for "DPS"

in one click an AC/2 does 2 DMG in that one specific spot!
in 3 seconds of holding the fire down with the MG "caliber" you get 2 DMG (If you can hold it in that one place for three seconds that is)

SO you will still get your higher caliber DMG output, becuase in MG terms, in order to match the AC/2 you would need 3 seconds of precise aim..... but the bottom line is they need to make the DPS the same.

and if it makes you feel better, the light laser, in hindsight, does more DMG than the AC/2

you can take a sledge hammer to a brick and brake it in one swoop, or take a craftsman hammer and strike it 3 times and get the same result.... it just takes a little more time. see what i mean?

Edited by Dudeman3k, 01 December 2012 - 01:42 PM.

[BlackBeltJones]

Wouldn't it help if machine guns could destroy missiles?

[Selfish]

Posting again, since people missed it when it was clearly stated on the second page.

http://mwomercs.com/...apon-balancing/

MG's are getting a damage boost. It was stated over a month ago that's its going to be part of the weapon balance sweeps.

[Ghostrider0067]

Dudeman3k, on 01 December 2012 - 01:36 PM, said:

Dont mean put you down, but I see what you mean, but the caliber doesn't calculate for "DPS"

in one click an AC/2 does 2 DMG in that one specific spot!
in 3 seconds of holding the fire down with the MG "caliber" you get 2 DMG (If you can hold it in that one place for three seconds that is)

SO you will still get your higher caliber DMG output, becuase in MG terms, in order to match the AC/2 you would need 3 seconds of precise aim..... but the bottom line is they need to make the DPS the same.

No offense taken. I'm glad you understand my point, but the devs didn't code the game to work as I've mentioned reflecting more realism... and that's a shame. Truth be told, I think the damage on the AC/2 is low. That's the problem with trying to use TT values and bridge them into a non-TT game.

[Asatruer]

Ghostrider0067, on 01 December 2012 - 01:52 PM, said:

No offense taken. I'm glad you understand my point, but the devs didn't code the game to work as I've mentioned reflecting more realism... and that's a shame. Truth be told, I think the damage on the AC/2 is low. That's the problem with trying to use TT values and bridge them into a non-TT game.

You think the AC/2s 4 damage per second output is too low?
The AC/10 has a DPS of 4, and the AC/5 has a DPS of just under 3.
Why should a weapon that is smaller (critical spaces) and lighter (tons) be as good if not better than the other ACs?

Edited by Asatruer, 01 December 2012 - 01:59 PM.

[Ghostrider0067]

Asatruer, on 01 December 2012 - 01:58 PM, said:

You think the AC/2s 4 damage per second output is too low?
The AC/10 has a DPS of 4, and the AC/5 has a DPS of just under 3.
Why should a weapon that is smaller (critical spaces) and lighter (tons) be as good if not better than the other ACs?

If the one should be increased, so should the others as you would expect. I suppse people won't agree with that, but that's my opinion and it's just that.

[Asatruer]

Ghostrider0067, on 01 December 2012 - 02:08 PM, said:

If the one should be increased, so should the others as you would expect. I suppse people won't agree with that, but that's my opinion and it's just that.

If you increase the AC/5 you have to increase the UAC/5.
If you increase the AC/10 you have to increase the LB 10-X (which it really needs, but that is a different issue), but also the PPC, AC/20, and the Gauss.

Or... you could just lower the AC/2 back down below the AC/5 where it should be.

Edited by Asatruer, 01 December 2012 - 02:20 PM.

[Zerbob]

The way I see it, the Machine Gun should be fitting into two roles in MW:O. First and foremost it should be a counter Light 'Mech weapon. Spraying bullets at those fast targets means you don't have to be perfectly accurate to do damage, instead utilizing a "spray and pray" mentality. If you fill the air with enough bullets, some will hit, it's a matter of probability. Secondly they should be used by smaller 'Mechs to fill the holes in an enemy's armour with bullets to shred their internals. This again would fit well with 'Mechs such as the CDA-3C or the RVN-4X. This increases their capacity as harass 'Mechs, using their increased speed to get behind larger 'Mechs to their weak rear armour.

HOWEVER, MG's should NOT do lots of damage to a target in an armoured location. By no means do we want to see CDA-3C's or CTF-4X's fitting lots of MG's and clearing through an Atlas's core.

TL;DR - MG's should be counter light, and do good damage to internals, but not be overly effective against still armoured targets.

[Ghostrider0067]

Asatruer, on 01 December 2012 - 02:19 PM, said:

Or... you could just lower the AC/2 back down below the AC/5 where it should be.

Or, you could decrease the DPS of the machine guns and leave it at that. Unless they institute infantry to widen the scope of the game (to round it out, if you will), machine guns have little to no purpose as I see them. They simply don't do enough damage to be worth the trouble unless you're using them on light mechs or for the sake of trolling. Even then, it's iffy.

[Asatruer]

Zerbob, on 01 December 2012 - 02:32 PM, said:

TL;DR - MG's should be counter light, and do good damage to internals, but not be overly effective against still armoured targets.

I have never understood this MGs should be better at critical hits mentality.
Why should the MG be better at damaging internals than a Small Laser, or an AC/2?

[Wolfways]

BlackSquirrel, on 01 December 2012 - 09:47 AM, said:

This... For ***** sake the MG's were for other things in the BT universe not mech warfare. Same with flamers mostly anti infantry.

I never really understood why they included them in this game...

That's actually wrong.

From Sarna:
"The Machine Gun is the quintessential anti-infantry weapon, issuing a stream of bullets at a high rate of fire to cut down opposing soldiers. Vehicular-scale machine guns mounted on BattleMechs can lay low entire platoons in just a few passes thanks to their high rate of fire, though they are more commonly found on Combat Vehicles and ProtoMechs.^[3] These weapons are much heavier than those typically carried by infantry, but can be used by them when placed on a static mount, where they are called Support Machine Guns.^[4] Battle Armor can also carry machine guns, typically upgraded versions of infantry-support weapons, which can rival their larger vehicular-scale cousins."

There are different sized MG's. Vehicles and mechs carry the big ones.

stjobe, on 01 December 2012 - 10:05 AM, said:

They did as much damage as an AC/2 in TT - and AC/2s seem rather popular in MWO.
So up their damage so they do 2 DPS and hey presto - useful anti-mech weapon.

Just for the record, they do 0.4 DPS at the moment. (And I must say I have absolutely no idea why the devs thought this would be a good number).

I agree with this. Make them a very short ranged AC2 (without the cockpit bouncing)

[Asatruer]

Ghostrider0067, on 01 December 2012 - 02:35 PM, said:

Or, you could decrease the DPS of the machine guns and leave it at that. Unless they institute infantry to widen the scope of the game (to round it out, if you will), machine guns have little to no purpose as I see them. They simply don't do enough damage to be worth the trouble unless you're using them on light mechs or for the sake of trolling. Even then, it's iffy.

People already find it useless with its current DPS of 0.4, and you want to decrease it?

Lets just be clear about this, the MG in BattleTech was not an anti-infantry weapon, despite what the fluff on Sarna says.
There were no infantry in BattleTech when the MG was added to BattleTech. It is a weapon the creators of BattleTech designed to shoot at mechs, and it did so with nearly as much damage as the Small Laser, and exactly as much damage as the AC/2.

We are not saying that the MG in MWO should have the AC/2's 4DPS (and I am in fact saying that the AC/2 should not have the 4DPS), but what we are saying is that the MG should be at least almost as good as the Small Laser, if not exactly as good.

Wolfways, on 01 December 2012 - 02:44 PM, said:

I agree with this. Make them a very short ranged AC2 (without the cockpit bouncing)

4DPS for half a ton and no heat? No, just no...
Cicadas would rule the battlefield.

Edited by Asatruer, 01 December 2012 - 02:49 PM.

[Ghostrider0067]

Asatruer, on 01 December 2012 - 02:39 PM, said:

I have never understood this MGs should be better at critical hits mentality.
Why should the MG be better at damaging internals than a Small Laser, or an AC/2?

Agreed. They shouldn't.

Wolfways, on 01 December 2012 - 02:42 PM, said:

There are different sized MG's. Vehicles and mechs carry the big ones.

While that may be so, one has to wonder at what caliber said MGs would be. The largest currently in use today are ~30mm, and that's used on the A-10. While this game is a thousand plus years into the future, you still have to ask the question on what purpose MGs serve given the leaps and bounds in weapon technologies as evidenced in a battlemech. On a ground vehicle, a 20mm-30mm MG could make sense.. but on a 'mech? Why bother?

[LordBraxton]

Wolfways, on 01 December 2012 - 02:44 PM, said:

That's actually wrong.

From Sarna:
"The Machine Gun is the quintessential anti-infantry weapon, issuing a stream of bullets at a high rate of fire to cut down opposing soldiers. Vehicular-scale machine guns mounted on BattleMechs can lay low entire platoons in just a few passes thanks to their high rate of fire, though they are more commonly found on Combat Vehicles and ProtoMechs.^[3] These weapons are much heavier than those typically carried by infantry, but can be used by them when placed on a static mount, where they are called Support Machine Guns.^[4] Battle Armor can also carry machine guns, typically upgraded versions of infantry-support weapons, which can rival their larger vehicular-scale cousins."

There are different sized MG's. Vehicles and mechs carry the big ones.


I agree with this. Make them a very short ranged AC2 (without the cockpit bouncing)

Making them a short ranged AC2 will make them way too strong for their weight, because double armor means its a lot easier to get up close in MWO than it is in the table top.

Doubling their damage to 0.8dps would be a safe start, you might find thats enough, especially since they are 0 heat and you can pack a ton of them. Better to start with smaller increases rather than drastic changes

[Ghostrider0067]

Asatruer, on 01 December 2012 - 02:45 PM, said:

People already find it useless with its current DPS of 0.4, and you want to decrease it?

Fine. Increase it to an even 1 DPS and let's call it good.

Asatruer, on 01 December 2012 - 02:45 PM, said:

Lets just be clear about this, the MG in BattleTech was not an anti-infantry weapon, despite what the fluff on Sarna says.

Then why were there aircraft, land vehicles, and drop ships in the early Technical Readouts? What was their purpose? If this was going to be solely about mech-on-mech combat, why bother with the fluff? Obviously the game evolved to include them and make use of them at some point, but to not call them an anti-infantry weapon when there were obviously other vehicles and personnel in the mix is... silly.

[Thomas Covenant]

There was this rumour about MWO that carried over from the TT, that machine guns in this game were the best way to get critical hits stripped armour spots, and wether or not there is much or any truth to that, I think that pushing that more into the spotlight would give MG a fitting role.

[Asatruer]

Ghostrider0067, on 01 December 2012 - 02:53 PM, said:

Then why were there aircraft, land vehicles, and drop ships in the early Technical Readouts? What was their purpose? If this was going to be solely about mech-on-mech combat, why bother with the fluff? Obviously the game evolved to include them and make use of them at some point, but to not call them an anti-infantry weapon when there were obviously other vehicles and personnel in the mix is... silly.

I can see from my text you quoted that I did not say completely what I intended, what I intended to say was that the MG was not only an Anti-Infantry weapon.
Since when are aircraft, land vehicles, and drop ships infantry?
Also, when BattleTech did evolve to include infantry, so did the MG. FASA gave the MG special anti-infantry rules, but they did so without decreasing the MG's anti-mech ability. To argue that the MG in MWO should be useless against Mechs because it is an anti-mech weapon is completely ridiculous, why not make the Small Laser and AC/2 useless against mech then?

Edited by Asatruer, 01 December 2012 - 03:06 PM.

[Ghostrider0067]

Asatruer, on 01 December 2012 - 03:03 PM, said:

Also, I can see from my text that I did not say completely what I intended, what I intended to say was that the MG was not only an Anti-Infantry weapon.
Since when are aircraft, land vehicles, and drop ships infantry?
Also, when BattleTech did evolve to include infantry, so did the MG. FASA gave the MG special anti-infantry rules, but they did so without decreasing the MG's anti-mech ability. To argue that the MG in MWO should be useless against Mechs because it is an anti-mech weapon is completely ridiculous, why not make the Small Laser and AC/2 useless against mech then?

Not only anti-personnel and anti-mech makes sense, but I would argue that the primary role of the MG is still anti-personnel and mechs secondary. Not decreasing the effectiveness of MGs versus infantry makes sense given the sheer size of a battlemech.

My point about the other stuff was that there wasn't much of a reason to include them if the focus was to be about mech-on-mech engagements; they were manned by personnel, but I don't recall any specific rules about them way back then. Not everyone can be a mechwarrior, you know.

[BlackSquirrel]

Wolfways, on 01 December 2012 - 02:44 PM, said:

That's actually wrong.

From Sarna:
"The Machine Gun is the quintessential anti-infantry weapon, issuing a stream of bullets at a high rate of fire to cut down opposing soldiers. Vehicular-scale machine guns mounted on BattleMechs can lay low entire platoons in just a few passes thanks to their high rate of fire, though they are more commonly found on Combat Vehicles and ProtoMechs.^[3] These weapons are much heavier than those typically carried by infantry, but can be used by them when placed on a static mount, where they are called Support Machine Guns.^[4] Battle Armor can also carry machine guns, typically upgraded versions of infantry-support weapons, which can rival their larger vehicular-scale cousins."

There are different sized MG's. Vehicles and mechs carry the big ones.


I agree with this. Make them a very short ranged AC2 (without the cockpit bouncing)

WTF are you talking about that made exactly my point... "The Machine Gun is the quintessential anti-infantry weapon, issuing a stream of bullets at a high rate of fire to cut down opposing soldiers."

And the last part just states that infantry in battle armor carry the larger versions that help kill more infantry. Or static emplacements... carry the larger versions. And yes in the TT mechs carried them to combat infantry which is exactly what was stated.

I'm not sure how that was missed in something you you quoted directly...

[Streeter]

BlackSquirrel, on 01 December 2012 - 07:45 PM, said:

WTF are you talking about that made exactly my point... "The Machine Gun is the quintessential anti-infantry weapon, issuing a stream of bullets at a high rate of fire to cut down opposing soldiers."

And the last part just states that infantry in battle armor carry the larger versions that help kill more infantry. Or static emplacements... carry the larger versions. And yes in the TT mechs carried them to combat infantry which is exactly what was stated.

I'm not sure how that was missed in something you you quoted directly...

TT is 2 damage, 2/3 of a small laser. they weigh the same as a small laser and have the same range. No heat but have to carry an annoying 1 ton of ammo.

They simply need to bump the DPS up to 2/3 of what a small laser is, you cant massively boat them and it would make them atleast slightly viable. At the moment they are just wasted space in the game.

There is no word of infantry in the game. and the weapons are supposed to do some damage to mechs, at the moment they are just a joke, good to hear PGI is going to give them a buff, they sorely need it.