383 replies to this topic

[Sifright]

Joseph Mallan, on 13 December 2012 - 05:32 AM, said:

Two words:
Golden bee-bee!

Plavis please note the description of said weapon:
Not a machine gun.

You realize the Gau-8 Gattling cannon weighs less than a battle tech machine gun right? :\

If you are picturing a 50cal machine gun for the MG in battle tech you are barmy.

[Plavis]

AMS, antimissile system you think its a cannon?

well this is a real AMS by todays standard

http://en.wikipedia....Goalkeeper_CIWS

[Monsoon]

Pyrrho, on 12 December 2012 - 01:23 PM, said:

Perhaps you are just afraid of the soon to be OP Cicada 3C? <-- this is sarcasm.

Sarcasm aside, 4 MG should equal the damage output of a Large Laser, without any of the heat problems attached to the energy weapon.

Everything has been stated as OP in this game at some point, it would seem the MG and the 3C are due their turns.

[Kobura]

What exactly is a "machinegun"

It has as much definition as "assault rifle" or "battle rifle"

(Yes I'm a gun nut)

Do you know what the definition of a "cannon" is, by chance?... :> And don't you parrot an uninformed news or Wikipedia article at me.

So the "Machinegun" can't be called an "AC.04", does that make it less legitimately a cannon? The ACs are technically machineguns

[Monsoon]

Erasus Magnus, on 13 December 2012 - 02:16 AM, said:

phew...my 4 slots ballistic cicada would love that.

I already run mine with them, sure they're currently underpowered, but they have great Dakka, Dakka!

Sifright, on 13 December 2012 - 05:41 AM, said:

You realize the Gau-8 Gattling cannon weighs less than a battle tech machine gun right? :\

If you are picturing a 50cal machine gun for the MG in battle tech you are barmy.

Actually they weight about the same, the Gun assembly of the Gau-8 is ~ 1/2 ton as well. Which is why every time a MG thread like this pops-up, I make a comparison to the Avenger Cannon.

[AlexWildeagle]

hmmmm......

cannon - hurls projectile of various sizes through the air using propellant.
Machinegun - hurls projectiles of various sizes through the air using propellant

one is more man portable then the other.

[J4ckInthebox]

Quote

one is more man portable then the other.

What about hand cannons?

[stjobe]

Kobura, on 13 December 2012 - 05:55 AM, said:

And don't you parrot an uninformed news or Wikipedia article at me.

Just because you said that I went and looked at the wikipedia page for Machine gun, and found this little gem:

Quote

Machine guns are generally categorized as submachine guns, machine guns, or autocannons.

Oh my. Autocannons are machine guns too

Edited by stjobe, 13 December 2012 - 06:08 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Sifright, on 13 December 2012 - 05:41 AM, said:

You realize the Gau-8 Gattling cannon weighs less than a battle tech machine gun right? :\

If you are picturing a 50cal machine gun for the MG in battle tech you are barmy.

You realize The creators of the game wanted to avoid fractional accounting as much as possible? So 0.5 was the smallest they went til Clans brought 0.25 MGs into the mix and jacked up the simple system. Did you know that in the Boxed set Mechs could not over allocate armor?

Which is to say you could not put 10.5 tons of armor on a Hunchback cause the total points of armor exceeded the max armor by like 1-3 points. It was around the 3055 TRO that the DEVs changed their minds on the rule and MGs and Small lasers became less prevalent.

[Sifright]

Joseph Mallan, on 13 December 2012 - 06:06 AM, said:

You realize The creators of the game wanted to avoid fractional accounting as much as possible? So 0.5 was the smallest they went til Clans brought 0.25 MGs into the mix and jacked up the simple system. Did you know that in the Boxed set Mechs could not over allocate armor?

Which is to say you could not put 10.5 tons of armor on a Hunchback cause the total points of armor exceeded the max armor by like 1-3 points. It was around the 3055 TRO that the DEVs changed their minds on the rule and MGs and Small lasers became less prevalent.

I don't see what relevance this has to making weapons in a game that is really only tangentally related to table top rules at this point actually effective for their weight and slot bracket.

[Plavis]

buttom line, i approve MG boost.

and yes i have been running my cicada whit 4 MG and a flamer, it did boost my dps i would be getting 255 dmg on end game summary ussaly, and was veryeffective agines light mechs like jenners back befor the ECM and SSRM nurf, all my cicadas are masterd i dosnt use them enymore.

[Joseph Mallan]

The point is the BattleTech/MechWarrior Mech scale MG was made to be a space filler and or anti infantry weapon. It is as small as the game needed it to be. since the MMO is a part of the BattleTech Universe it does not need to comply with real world weights and Measures. to the point trying to stay true to TT the DEVs are keeping MGs in the realm of useless v Mechs cause frankly, that is how they are described in Canon builds throughout the fiction. Plus don't forget MG Ammo is the biggest bang for your Crit of all ammo. you really wanna make the gun do MORE damage per shot? That will increase the Damage per Crit also! So if YOU want a pop gun with sheet range and teh biggest explosive yield internally, by all means load up on em!!!

Just looked it up to compare...
Most AC damage is 150 points for a one ton explosion. and MG ammo is only 80 which is a nice change from TT.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 13 December 2012 - 06:26 AM.

[Pyrrho]

I love you all so much right now.

Last night, I refitted my Cicada 3C with an ER PPC and 4x MG. XL 320, DHS, ES...it was fun before but now it is just freaking exhilarating!

[Khobai]

Machine Gun just needs a 50% damage increase to be useful. Two machine guns would be roughly equal to a medium laser then which is about where it should be.

[Joseph Mallan]

Thontor, on 13 December 2012 - 06:33 AM, said:

in MWO, Autocannons generally have 150 damage potential per ton of ammo. The UAC/5 has 125, and the AC/20 has 140

The Machine Gun? Only 80

I would hardly call that "the biggest explosive yield internally"

To match most of the Autocannons at 150, each bullet would have to do 0.075 damage.. Or ammo per ton would have to be 3750.

To match TT's damage potential per ton of ammo of 400, with 2,000 rounds, Each bullet would have to do 0.2 damage, a 500% increase over what we have now.

I did go back and check prior to your post and yes I am actually happy that MG ammo is not the biggest boom in ammo here. But the point that a MG was for space filling and anti infantry work. If you don't like MGs (like myself) Pull em and apply more armor and sinks, like me. 27 years playing with Mechs both physical and digital and I think I used MGs 10 times. I have dumped MG ammo 3 times that, and avoided having them the rest of my gaming time. They are a PoS v Mechs and that is how they should stay. the only exception is the Piranha and it's only dangerous because it is fast and boats a whopping 12 MGs!

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 13 December 2012 - 07:00 AM.

[King Arthur IV]

Orzorn, on 12 December 2012 - 04:10 PM, said:

At half a ton for 200 rounds in the TT, that means that, roughly (not accounting for the weight of the bin), each round weighs 2.5 kilograms. 2.5 kilograms is 5.51156 pounds. A 30MM gau 8 armor piercing incendiary round, by comparison, is 15 ounces according to wikipedia.

Even if we assumed an insane HALF of the weight of the ammo was the bin, the rounds come out to weigh 1.25 kilograms, or 2.755778 pounds.

Not small rounds by any means of the word. In fact, these rounds would be gigantic.

Of course, that's just using the rules, which are strictly for balance purposes. Regardless, the machine gun likely be larger than a GAU 8 and fire even larger rounds.

if this guys math is right, we should be firing rounds minimum of this caliber.

[Critical Fumble]

General Taskeen, on 13 December 2012 - 02:07 AM, said:

A Micro Small Laser does 2 damage. Small Laser 3. ER Small Laser 3 (Clan 5). Not sure what you are suggesting, but the MG definitely needs to be redeveloped. The only reason people are suggesting to bring its damage value up is because every other weapon so far has the perceived 'balance' of retaining its TT damage value. It could be done, but the fire rate would have to be adjusted to make it work right, possibly a burst of bullets (4 bullets consumed in 1 shot, doing 2 damage for instance). Right now the damage of an MG bullet does 0.04 damage, which is pretty hilariously bad.

I'm agreeing with you, just changing the MG's DPS or damage per round would make it not function properly because of the way they implemented weapons. In the direct fire weapon family there are:

The click-BOOM! Weapons, like the AC/2-20, gauss rifle, SRM launchers, and the PPC; these require you to aim, then fire, and do their work while you line up another shot or duck into cover.

The single beep-fwoosh-BOOM! Weapon, the streak launcher. Track your target until you get a lock and then fire.

The laser weapons, which require you to target, fire, and then track your target for the beam's duration.

All of the above groups have a noticeable weapon cooldown; that while you can't fire them continuously, you only have to keep a target in your sights for as long as it takes to finish firing, letting you do full damage mechs that run away, as well as letting you strike and fade without doing less damage. You could argue that that is less true with the AC/2 and SSRM launchers, but there is some cooldown using an AC/2, and the SSRM has unerring accuracy after you get a lock.

Then there's the nutty uncle of the party, the MG, the only weapon that can sustain continuous fire, so long as it still has ammo. That "continuous fire" implementation is where the problems arise. Assuming that they changed the numbers so that the on-paper DPS of machine guns fell within reason of their TT model, the pilot would have to hold on target until its target was dead to achieve something close to that. With other direct fire weapons you fire once, and then you have a cooldown period to reposition, sip your coffee, do a barrel roll, or whatever, without having to keep your target lined up.

They could try to fix that by buffing MG damage so that it does damage comparable to a TT machine gun over a roughly one second interval. That would make it effectively on par with the small laser in terms of fighting fast mechs. However, it would also break it, as ~2 DPS would let you shred slower mechs that don't have the luxury of disengaging.

What I'm suggesting is that PGI needs to make MGs function more like the other weapon systems they've implemented if they want them both useful and balanced. My personal preference is to give them a charge meter like the static MGs in most FPS games have. Call it barrel heat, call it fire rate exceeding the mech's ability to reload it, but the weapon needs to function in bursts.

[General Taskeen]

Critical Fumble, on 13 December 2012 - 06:33 PM, said:

What I'm suggesting is that PGI needs to make MGs function more like the other weapon systems they've implemented if they want them both useful and balanced. My personal preference is to give them a charge meter like the static MGs in most FPS games have. Call it barrel heat, call it fire rate exceeding the mech's ability to reload it, but the weapon needs to function in bursts.

Indeed. I looked up the MW3 weapon stats for the MG:

Range 120m
Ammo Per Ton 200
Damage Per Bullet 0.2
Recycle/Cooldown Time 0.625

Each 'shot' with the MG consumes 4 bullets, so if your aim is steady and all the bullets hit, it does .8 damage, if you have 2 MG's you do about 1.6 damage, 4 MG's do about 3.2 damage. About 1 damage or less than half of its TT value. That's far more effective than the no cool down, 0.04 damage per bullet, MWO MG, which makes no sense.

I don't see why something similar to this wouldn't work for MWO, which also uses double armor. So, a simple idea would be to make the MG fire in bursts. Each pull of the trigger consumes 4 bullets, each doing 0.5 damage or more, with a recycle time (0.25, 0.5, or 0.625).

I was actually playing some MW3, before I posted this, to confirm that MG's are useful in that game. I legged a couple Light Mechs and thought, hmm, why can't MG's be more effective like this in MWO?

The Flamer, likewise being in the same boat as the MG in this game, is actually quite good in MW3 (Generates 2.5 heat buildup, does 5 damage and also generates 5 heat on the opposing Mech, with a 1 second cool down, but requires a LOT of heatsinks to boat multiple Flamers or fire continously)

Edited by General Taskeen, 14 December 2012 - 12:20 AM.

[Wolfways]

I don't care how MG's work as long as they're useful.
I'm using a K3 (x2 ERPPC's, x2 ML's, x2 MG's) so i currently have two working weapons

[Pr43T0r14N]

First and foremost, Franklen is a troll.

Secondly, I am going to feed the troll and explain why he is wrong. Mr. Avignon has been arguing against himself this entire time because he will not let go of the "anti-infantry, cant be good against armor.". He then goes on to say that he supports a flat damage buff, which would raise MGs effectiveness vs armor AND internals, whereas the crit chance/crit damage buff would only apply to internals and components. I do not support a flat damage buff because that does not make sense.

MG should be pathetically weak against armor, not so versus unarmored(exposed, weak, fragile) parts. A crit buff would give the MG a niche role, as stated before, making it only useful against open armor sections, possibly extremely so.

I am an example of this conundrum, being a DRG-5N pilot. I run max speed, max armor, 2ll, srm4 arty, and 3mg. The machine guns do not do anything, but I like them, and my damage per match still ranges pretty fairly between 150-600 depending on my luck and team. I've been using my MGs on this build since closed, and wont stop anytime soon because its my very favorite mech.

tl;dr. Franklen is messing with all of us, if not then he is simply incapable of understanding. We do not need to forget or remove weapons which are less than competitive, we need to make them so. OP is definitely an LRM boat who knows he doesn't run enough armor, so he wants to head off the threat of a close range component destroyer