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I've been looking at Machine Guns lately (because they're equipped on my griefer Mech) and decided to make each bullet do 500 damage. Ok.. seriously I'm looking into either a very slight damage increase or to make them crit at a higher rate with a crit damage boost. What does that mean? When you blow off the armor on a component on an enemy Mech, every shot done to internals from a machine gun has a chance of doing much higher damage than normal. I'll be working with the engineers on this and will update you as we progress on this.
source: http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__1591483
I'm seriously worried about this, because the MG will not become a viable weapon by either "a very slight damage increase" or "crit at a higher rate with a crit damage boost". It needs a substantial damage boost, even in conjunction with a crit boost.
Let's start with where we are now: The MG does 0.04 damage per round, 10 rounds per second, for a total of 0.4 DPS. This means it takes 2.5 seconds to do 1 damage, and 25 seconds to do 10 damage. Crit-wise, it has the same crit chance as any other weapon, but it only does 0.04 damage per crit, so it would take 25 seconds of non-stop critting to destroy a single component. If every crit was three hits (a 3% chance per shot) and they all hit the same component, it would still take 8.3 seconds to destroy that component.
Clearly the MG is underpowered and needs a buff, and it's good that the devs see it that way too. However, this buff needs to be huge, not "very slight". It needs to be on the order of a 300% damage increase.
Here's why: Compare the MG to the Small Laser. The Small Laser does 3 damage over a beam duration of 0.75, and has a recycle time of 2.25 seconds, giving it a DPS of 1.0.
The MG, with its continuous-fire mechanism, does 0.4 DPS. Let's say we buff this to 1.2 DPS, a 300% increase, by increasing the damage per round from 0.04 to 0.12. Would this make the MG overpowered?
The answer is no. To understand why, we need to look a bit at how different weapons deliver their damage:
Instant-hit weapons like ballistics or PPCs deliver their damage all at once, and then recycles for a long period. This means that to do your full damage you need only to keep the weapon on-target for an instant as you press the trigger. There is no partial damage with instant-hit weapons.
Beam weapons like lasers deliver their damage over a short period of time, and then recycles for a long period. This means that to do all your damage you need to keep the weapon on-target for the beam duration, but not for the recycle.
Now the continuous-fire weapons like the MG deliver their damage in a constant stream. This means that to do all your damage you need to keep the weapon on-target for as long as it takes. Any time not on-target is lost damage (as opposed to the other weapons where you can go off-target for the whole recycle duration without losing any damage).
What does this mean for the hypothetical 1.2 DPS MG? Let's again compare it to the Small Laser. In 0.75 seconds, the Small Laser delivers 3 damage. In the same 0.75 seconds, the 1.2 DPS MG delivers 0.9 damage, a full two-thirds less than the laser.
Over ten seconds, the Small Laser will deliver 12 damage in four beams with a total of 3 seconds duration. In 3 seconds, the hypothetical 1.2 DPS MG would deliver 3.6 damage. Only if you can hold it on-target for the full 10 seconds would you do as much damage as the Small Laser.
I don't think it's overpowered to have the MG do as much damage as a Small Laser over 10 seconds.
Now let's have a look at that crit increase. A "higher [crit] rate with a crit damage boost" is what they're looking at, so let's look at a huge boost to that; let's make the MG crit 100% of the time, and always do three hits (which is normally a 3% chance per hit). So 100% crit rate and 3x damage boost.
With a buff that huge, it would still take (10 / 0.04 * 10 * 3 ) = 8.3 seconds of continuosly hitting the same location and the same component to destroy that single component. That's not really enough to make the MG viable, is it?
With the hypothetical 1.2 DPS MG and the above crit buff, the time taken to destroy a single component would become (10 / 0.12 * 10 * 3) = 2.8 seconds.
So you see, not even with a 300% damage increase, a 100% crit rate buff, and always doing three hits per crit would the MG be overpowered. It would, however, become a viable back-up weapon, and the crit-seeking weapon it is sometimes referred to as.
In closing I must plead to the developers to not underbuff the MG. As the above shows, the MG needs a substantial damage boost to make it even comparable to the Small Laser - and even with that substantial boost, it still won't do as much damage as the Small Laser unless you can hold it on target for prolonged periods of time.
Oh, and to the "'mechs shouldn't mount MGs" and "MGs are anti-infantry weapons" crowd: In Battletech, the MG does exactly as much damage to a 'mech as an AC/2 - a 4 DPS weapon in MWO. In TRO:2750, fully a fifth of the 'mechs mount MGs. So let's try to refrain from the discussion on whether MGs should even be in MWO or not; they are in-game so they should be a viable choice. At the moment they aren't, and I fear that with a too small buff they still won't be.
Edited by stjobe, 09 January 2013 - 07:37 AM.
