3 replies to this topic

[Texugo87]

I sat down and did a bit of math comparing machine guns, and Ac/2 (I won't bore you with the simple calc's I did unless someone wants to see them). As most of us know in TT the mg's and Ac/2 do the same amount of damage over a 10 second period. In Mwo the Ac has the potential to do 40 damage over 10s, where as the mg has the possibility of doing 4. Now I don't propose bringing the mg up to ac/2 lethality, what I thought would be appropriate would be to bring the mg up to around the damage over time level of a couple small lasers, 2 small lasers will do 20 damage over that period of time.

The solution I can up with was to increase the rate of fire of the the MG 5x, from 10 rounds/second to 50. this would allow the mg to do 20 damage over 10 seconds, same as 2 small lasers. Currently it would take a single MG 200 seconds to expend 1ton of ammo, the Ac/2 burns a ton of ammo in 37.5s of continuous fire, my proposed fire rate would expend it in 40 seconds. For one this is a more realistic rate of fire for a machine gun (sarna lists the MG as being 20mm, modern machine guns in that caliber generally do 50-75rps). This doesn't increase the overall damage per ton of ammo potential the MG has, which I think is actually pretty good considering it's light weight (ac currently does 150 damage per ton of ammo, mg does 80).

This would give us a viable weapon in the MG, with a unique mode of fire (firing continuously).

With the increased rate of fire an mg+1 ton ammo and 2 small lasers would be able to do the same damage over 10's; have the same range; and take up the same number of crits; the MG and ammo would weight .5 tons more, but wouldn't generate any heat so fewer heatsinks would be required; taking a crit to the ammo could blow you up, where the lasers are inert if destroyed; and the mg would run out of ammo after 40s of fire, while the lasers never run out of ammo.

Another interesting dynamic would be to limit the mg to 5s (or some other number, maybe 2.5) bursts, with a couple second cool down between bursts for "reload" of a belt of ammo or however you want to characterize it. Another thing that could be played with would be accuracy.

I think with this one change the MG would now have a place on the battlefield as, with unique elements to it, and with pros and cons that add another element in the overall rock, paper, scissors that mechwarrior should be. As the game sits right now, and mg's sit, they are pretty much useless except for being an annoying ****.

What do you think?

Fully disclosure: I have a Raven 4X, and really want the stock MG's to be viable!

[Kensaisama]

Dev's have mentioned that MG's will be getting a buff, exactly what that entails and the arcane forumlae they will use is a closed secret. So in essence we will have to wait and see.

[Texugo87]

Hi Kensaisama,

I'm aware they are being buffed, that's what prompted me to ask "what would I do to buff them?", and then throw my idea up on the forum.

[Kensaisama]

ahhh, guess I missed that point in your post.