383 replies to this topic

[Corvus Antaka]

I think it is good to see the Machine Gun getting a buff. Now it'll actually be worth taking.

Hopefully PGI doesnt over do it.

see "ECM"

or "LRM"

[MechFrog1]

Franklen Avignon, on 12 December 2012 - 03:59 PM, said:

If you are going to say that, then you need to be clear that you are saying that everything written in BT canon about machine guns up to this point as been wrong. They have always been described as smaller caliber anti-infantry weapons. I can understand them being changed for game balance, but it should not be done while denying every single written piece of lore about them.

Wow, you're going to have to just get over it. MWO isn't going to be exactly like the tabletop game. Why aren't you screaming about every other weapon in this game firing more often and doing more damage?

[Orzorn]

Franklen Avignon, on 12 December 2012 - 04:03 PM, said:

I guess if we ignore that the firing rate of the machine gun is only about 50 times faster than a medium laser, your math holds up.

His math was wrong because he didn't do it over 10 seconds, which is where the differences are obvious:
A medium laser will do 12.5 damage. 2 machine guns will do 8 damage.

However, it gets worse when you compare it to an weapon that actually (as a system) weighs less:
A small laser will do 10 damage in 10 seconds. A machine gun will do 4 damage, but we must account for the ton of ammo that makes it weight 1.5 tons total. You might say that we'd have to account for a heat sink for the small laser, but engine heat sinks make that point mostly moot if we aren't talking about weapons in vacuums.

[Gabrielpendragon]

Orzorn, on 12 December 2012 - 03:40 PM, said:

Anyone attempting to defend the current sorry state of machine guns with some sort of "realism" is delusional. The table top rules run directly contrary to that line of thought:
A machine gun does 2 damage per round for no heat.

Cause a machine gun only fires one round in ten seconds?

Even given a crit buff the damage is still meaningless against internals. The machine gun needs to be hitting for about .2 per shot to be the same as TT damage values. With the damage increase that other weapons got the MG should be doing about .4 per shot so its also doubled like most other weapons. This would put it at 4 dps like the AC/2 and the damage is supposed to be comparable to the ac2 without the range or heat or weight.

[Alex Iglesias]

Orzorn, on 12 December 2012 - 03:56 PM, said:

Isn't armor in Battletech ablative anyways? Machine guns would, realistically (if we wanted to go down that road for the billionth time), hurt the armor just as easily as any other system.

very true BT armor is ablative, IIRC it's been fluffed somewhere that the ablative nature of the armor is what let's it stop dead cold stuff like ac20 rounds and gauss slugs with a relatively thin amount of material, since it's shearing nature helps redirect the energy or some similar technobabble . But that ablative nature that let's it stop the big guns also gets set off by the smaller guns. Making it considerably different than the modern approach of armor which is fairly all or nothing.

However as it's a 500kg weapon, i'm less inclined to believe it's a big weapon firing infantry grade calibers really fast, as you can easily get a minigun to do that for far less weight, and more likely firing stuff in the anti-material range of calibers

However this is just how i imagine and justify it in my own head.

[Elkarlo]

One of the biggest Autocannons today is an Oerlinkton 35mm gun... weighting 450kg...
somewhere i saw this weight somehow...

Btw
1 Ton= 2000 Bullets would putt each bullet into the 400g-450g range.
Which would be the weight of a 20mm Bullet...

Edited by Elkarlo, 12 December 2012 - 04:27 PM.

[Orzorn]

Franklen Avignon, on 12 December 2012 - 04:10 PM, said:

AGAIN, I don't mind a damage buff in any way.

You have to admit, though, 1.6 is actually pretty close to 2. While still below, they are pretty close to the actual damage profile of the weapon.

To remain exactly in line with the TT damage compared to the boost the small laser got (3.33 times), the machine gun would need to do 0.066 damage per round, to make for 6.66 damager per 10 seconds. That would make the machine gun do exactly 2/3rds the damage of the small laser over a ten second period. That would resemble exactly the same damage ratio as the table top.

However, machine guns also need more ammo per ton. At 2000 rounds per ton, with even 0.066 damage per round, they have a total damage potential of 132. The total potential damage in the TT was 400 damage. This is obviously a large disparity. To have the same potential damage per ton (keep in mind that autocannons actually get MORE ammo per ton than the TT currently), they would need 6060.606 (repeating) rounds per ton.

The issue with that, however, is that it would take 10.1 minutes of constant firing with a single machine gun to get rid of a single ton. With 4 machine guns, that goes to 2.525 minutes of constant firing. This would effectively make more than one ton of machine gun ammo totally useless, so it might be prudent to only increase the ammo per ton by a small amount, or just leave it alone. The damage of the gun itself is the really large issue, anyways.

[stjobe]

Personally, I hope they just buff the damage of the MG to be 1 DPS. That'd make it a real, viable weapon that can fill the role as low-end ballistics while still having short range and ammo dependency as drawbacks.

The most ballistic hard points a 'mech in MWO has is 4 (CDA-3C and CTF-4X). If they want to use those hard points to boat MGs, they at least should get something out of it, and 4 DPS with a max range of 90m isn't really terrifying, is it?

I fear they won't buff it that much though, and the thought of it being useless even after the buff saddens me greatly.

[Orzorn]

Gabrielpendragon, on 12 December 2012 - 04:16 PM, said:

Cause a machine gun only fires one round in ten seconds?

In the tabletop, yes, it does.

Like I said in one of my other posts, the ammo amount is just like that for ease of gameplay. You don't want to have to carry ten thousand rounds and subtract 200 every (gameplay) round. Never make numbers bigger (See: Yu-Gi-Oh!) when you can make them smaller (magic the gathering).

Edited by Orzorn, 12 December 2012 - 04:25 PM.

[Scarlett Avignon]

Alex Iglesias, on 12 December 2012 - 04:16 PM, said:

However as it's a 500kg weapon, i'm less inclined to believe it's a big weapon firing infantry grade calibers really fast, as you can easily get a minigun to do that for far less weight, and more likely firing stuff in the anti-material range of calibers

However this is just how i imagine and justify it in my own head.

Well, most canon sources that mention the caliber of machine guns states either .50 in or 20mm.

You have issue with a 500 kg gun that shoots 20mm bullets, but not a 30mm anti-tank gatling gun that has a range of 90 meters?

[stjobe]

Thontor, on 12 December 2012 - 04:24 PM, said:

1 DPS is equal to a small laser.. a bit much IMO.. the MG did do less damage than a small laser in TT

0.6667 DPS would put it right where it needs to be

The MG in TT did as much damage as an AC/2. The AC/2 currently has a DPS of 4, with a range of 720m.
I don't see why a weapon with 90m range can't have 1 DPS. Yes, it's equal to a small laser. It also weighs three times as much and can explode and kill your 'mech.

[Scarlett Avignon]

Orzorn, on 12 December 2012 - 04:24 PM, said:

In the tabletop, yes, it does.

Like I said in one of my other posts, the ammo amount is just like that for ease of gameplay. You don't want to have to carry ten thousand rounds and subtract 200 every (gameplay) round. Never make numbers bigger (See: Yu-Gi-Oh!) when you can make them smaller (magic the gathering).

I think it's pretty safe to say that they simplified machine gun rules for ease of play. I'm more inclined to think that single shot in ten seconds represents a volley of fire from the gun and not a single, 5kg bullet. Otherwise, you have to believe that, in TT, your AMS fires a single, 83.33kg round that shoots down a single missile.

[Alex Iglesias]

Franklen Avignon, on 12 December 2012 - 04:28 PM, said:

Well, most canon sources that mention the caliber of machine guns states either .50 in or 20mm. You have issue with a 500 kg gun that shoots 20mm bullets, but not a 30mm anti-tank gatling gun that has a range of 90 meters?

i specifically said i believe they are firing in the anti material range. that is 50 cal and up, with a bit more emphasis on up.

I just don't believe they are firing in the 5 to 7mm range like some LMG or GMG or minigun

[Scarlett Avignon]

stjobe, on 12 December 2012 - 04:32 PM, said:

The MG in TT did as much damage as an AC/2. The AC/2 currently has a DPS of 4, with a range of 720m.
I don't see why a weapon with 90m range can't have 1 DPS. Yes, it's equal to a small laser. It also weighs three times as much and can explode and kill your 'mech.

Obviously they don't follow the same DPS ratios in MWO that they do in TT. So, what are we doing? Ignoring TT damage ratios or holding them to it? You guys have argued for both.

[Gabrielpendragon]

I dont understand why the MG only fires 90 meters...Maybe it is shooting 20mm ball rounds? Even then its only firing a bit shy of a football field...
and .4 dps is far short of the 4 dps of the ac2 which the MG is supposed to do the same damage as. The MG to be even close to where it should be needs to be about ten times as powerful.

[Orzorn]

Franklen Avignon, on 12 December 2012 - 04:33 PM, said:

Otherwise, you have to believe that, in TT, your AMS fires a single, 83.33kg round that shoots down a single missile.

AMS shoots burly Steiner midgets who punch the missiles to death.

[Barden]

Since lasers don't do specific spot damage and they have little effect on lights(because the beam lasts several seconds) MGs need to be buffed to combat little "infantry" like mechs. The spray ability will enable ballistic centric mechs to combat little terds on the battlefield. This is reasoning for not only a buff in damage but, also, a buff in range. I can dream...

For those of you who are confused lasers in MW4 would hit 5 Damage on a light as long as your crosshairs are red. In MWO the damage is spread across 3 seconds or so and lights have a distinct advantage to run out on the main part of the damage.

MGs essentially should be a combatant against small targets...oh...duh light mechs!

[TheMadTypist]

Of course machine guns should receive a buff of this sort!

At the moment, Machine guns have exactly no role in the game. Every item in the game should have some purpose, be it either as a combat-effective weapon or a utility weapon, as otherwise you've wasted development time implementing a pointless system. Adding a bonus to critical hits for machine guns is a quick change that transforms a waste of tonnage into a minor-role utility weapon, not something you boat or rely on for 'mech killing but something you can still justify equipping, because there is a situation in the game where having that item would be advantageous. And, currently, nothing in the game fills this role.

Yes, other weapon systems are coming. But are we really going to see anything else that would share that role? Pretty much everything the clans bring in are damage-focused weapons. SSRMS, Ultra AC's, ER lasers, and similar all provide damage capability, not crit-seeking. Even LBX are currently serving a damage role in the current metagame, albeit in shotgun form. How could it hurt the game to make one minor change that increases the variety of viable builds on the field? And if some other weapon comes onto the field at some point in the future that cannot be reasonably made more powerful at crit-seeking than the MG (in which case they probably overdid the buff anyway) and that weapon relies on crit-seeking for it's usefulness, whoo, change a number and alter the role of the MG next patch. Just because there isn't an immediate justification in the TT for a change doesn't mean it wouldn't be beneficial to the game, and certainly wouldn't mean some sort of apocalyptic loss of all MW flavor just because one weapon performs ever so slightly differently. After all, it's not like the DOT and subsequent damage spread alteration to lasers caused any such thing.

Edited by TheMadTypist, 12 December 2012 - 04:43 PM.

[stjobe]

Gabrielpendragon, on 12 December 2012 - 04:36 PM, said:

I dont understand why the MG only fires 90 meters...Maybe it is shooting 20mm ball rounds? Even then its only firing a bit shy of a football field...

It's called "effective range". If you want to rationalize it, just say that at ranges over 90m the impact velocity has dropped sufficiently that it no longer ablates armour to any appreciable effect.

Gabrielpendragon, on 12 December 2012 - 04:36 PM, said:

and .4 dps is far short of the 4 dps of the ac2 which the MG is supposed to do the same damage as. The MG to be even close to where it should be needs to be about ten times as powerful.

The AC/2 is way overpowered compared to its TT version, to the point that it's arguably OP even in MWO.

An MG with 4 DPS would definitely be overpowered.

[Orzorn]

Gabrielpendragon, on 12 December 2012 - 04:36 PM, said:

I dont understand why the MG only fires 90 meters...Maybe it is shooting 20mm ball rounds? Even then its only firing a bit shy of a football field...
and .4 dps is far short of the 4 dps of the ac2 which the MG is supposed to do the same damage as. The MG to be even close to where it should be needs to be about ten times as powerful.

There's several weapons that are underpowered in one aspect or another in the TT but were never changed because that would require a retcon. FASA and later people seemed to prefer to just release a new weapon that took on the roles better, such as machine gun arrays.

Also, keep in mind that their ranges are also for ease of use. 90 meters is 3 hexes in the TT. Weapons in the TT had such limted ranges to prevent rather large looking miniatures from fighting on a hex that represented several football fields. They mostly chose the numbers for scale and ease of use (multiples of 30 for range, for instance).

That's part of why keeping to the TT is generally ridicluous in a real time environment. All that matters is the spirit of a weapon along with gameplay balance. I don't care if LRMs have the 600ish range from the TT, only that they feel like long range missiles, just like I don't care if the PPC has the exact numbers from the TT, so long as it feels like a hard hitting and fearsome weapon.