339 replies to this topic

[Joseph Mallan]

Tickdoff Tank, on 10 January 2013 - 12:54 PM, said:

Yes, I am more than willing to pay for the MG ammo explosion, I already do that with all the AC ammo I carry. I run a Cataphract with 6 tons of AC 10 ammo, carrying 2 tons of MG ammo will be a non-issue for the mechs that need it. And the devs have already said that the MG is an anti-mech weapon that needs a buf, a dev even posted in this thread about it. The only question remaining is exactly *how* the MG will be buffed. I know the dev listed what they are planning, but I still agree with the OP, the propsed MG buff does not seem like it will be enough, but I am willing to give them a chance before I complain about a change that is not even in yet.

Cool. At least you accept the negatives with the positives some won't.

[Trauglodyte]

Concerning ammo explosions, in TT and in MWO, I typically only take one type of weapon that requires ammo and I sling that single ton of ammo under my seat in the lone cockpit location. If I take a headshot critical and it hits the ammo, good for the person that shot me cause that's a 1 in a million shot (figuratively).

Anyway, back to the discussion. I'm not so much concerned about them turning the MG into a crit weapon IF they boost the overall damage on crits vs raising the rates. The only thing that does concern me is this:

AC/2: 2 damage w/ 75 shots per ton of ammo = 150 potential damage per ton of ammo
AC/5: 5 damage w/ 30 shots per ton of ammo = 150 potential damage per ton of ammo
AC/10: 10 damage w/ 15 shots per ton of ammo = 150 potential damage per ton of ammo
AC/20: 20 damage w/ 7 shots per ton of ammo = 140 potential damage per ton of ammo (screwed cause of rounding)
Gauss: 15 damage w/ 10 shots per ton of ammo = 150 potential damage per ton of ammo

MG: 0.04 damage w/ 2000 shots per ton of ammo = 80 potential damage per ton of ammo

So, based on the above, AutoCannons and Gauss adhere to a "as near as possible" 150 damage per ton BUT the MG gets hosed on this and only gets half of that. Furthermore, we get the following:

AC/2: 2 damage w/ a 0.5s cool down = 4 dps
AC/5: 5 damage w/ a 1.7s cool down = 2.9 dps
AC/10: 10 damage w/ a 2.5s cool down = 4 dps
AC/20: 20 damage w/ a 4s cool down = 5 dps
Gauss: 15 damage w/ a 4s cool down = 3.75 dps

MG: 0.04 damage w/ no cool down = 0.4 dps

Again, AutoCannons and Gauss get a "as near as possible" 4 dps per weapon (the AC/5 gets screwed here but that gets "balanced" by the UAC/5) while the MG gets 1/10th of that. On top of that, each of the heavy ballistic weapons puts all of their damage in one spot per shot while the MG has to spray it all over the place, thus reducing overall damage effectiveness.

Now, I don't want to get into the debate of anti-mech vs anti-infantry or cannon vs machinegun. But, would someone kindly tell me why the ONLY light ballistic weapon gets completely hosed here? Doing nothing but bumping the damage to 0.075 per shot would still keep it as an awful anti-mech weapon but would at least keep it in line with the equally light Small Laser DPS AND would put it in the same class as the ACs/Gauss in terms of damage per ton of ammo.

[Novawrecker]

Trauglodyte, on 10 January 2013 - 02:31 PM, said:

Again, AutoCannons and Gauss get a "as near as possible" 4 dps per weapon (the AC/5 gets screwed here but that gets "balanced" by the UAC/5) while the MG gets 1/10th of that. On top of that, each of the heavy ballistic weapons puts all of their damage in one spot per shot while the MG has to spray it all over the place, thus reducing overall damage effectiveness.

Yes, because having a weapon with 0 cool down and weighing only .5 tons doing 4DPS is uber balanced. Might as well have them heal your damage as it deals damage to the opponent. or better yet - For each MG fired a cake miraculously appears in your cockpit! (Devs! I really want this one, purdy pwease!!)

Don't expect the MG to be anywhere near as effective as an AC, or even a small laser w/output to damage a mech, for a mere .5 tons. Is the MG weak against mechs? YES! They're supposed to be, it's a friggin MG for Pete's sake. Does the MG need a buff? Possibly, albeit a very minor one.

Edited by Novawrecker, 10 January 2013 - 02:42 PM.

[Miles Naismith]

My lancemate uses MGs as my Stalker's personal massager

[Trauglodyte]

Novawrecker, on 10 January 2013 - 02:39 PM, said:

Yes, because having a weapon with 0 cool down and weighing only .5 tons doing 4DPS is uber balanced. Might as well have them heal your damage as it deals damage to the opponent. or better yet - For each MG fired a cake miraculously appears in your cockpit! (Devs! I really want this one, purdy pwease!!)

Don't expect the MG to be anywhere near as effective as an AC, or even a small laser w/output to damage a mech, for a mere .5 tons. Is the MG weak against mechs? YES! They're supposed to be, it's a friggin MG for Pete's sake. Does the MG need a buff? Possibly, albeit a very minor one.

I love how people see/quote what they want to just to support an arguement without actually discussing the issue. Cause, you know, I TOTALLY asked for a 4 dps 0 heat weapon.

Trauglodyte, on 10 January 2013 - 02:31 PM, said:

Doing nothing but bumping the damage to 0.075 per shot would still keep it as an awful anti-mech weapon but would at least keep it in line with the equally light Small Laser DPS AND would put it in the same class as the ACs/Gauss in terms of damage per ton of ammo.

Edited by Trauglodyte, 10 January 2013 - 02:47 PM.

[Orzorn]

Novawrecker, on 10 January 2013 - 02:39 PM, said:

They're supposed to be

2 damage in the TT versus the 3 of the small says otherwise. If the small laser is effective in MWO, the machine gun should be slightly trailing it in power.

Even without using the TT, ballistics NEED a weapon that fills out low tonnage amounts. We have 6 ton and up weapons, but no low-tonnage weapon to call our own right now. Energy weapons have at least two (small and medium. I won't count the poorly balanced small pulse and flamer, nor the 2 ton medium pulse, as I consider that a bit too large to be lower-end).

Edited by Orzorn, 10 January 2013 - 02:48 PM.

[SpiralRazor]

In the basic rules, there were no infantry or light armor bro...

No, sorry, the MG was made to be used vs mechs, and is the ballistic alternative to the SL.


That is all, cant be argued.

[General Taskeen]

I think the other MG thread got to 29 pages or more... with the same circle of arguments. The people on one side realizing that this is a game, and that every weapon needs to be viable. While the others using real-world logic for a game based on Fictional Content. My favorite is also this one -> "Oh its anti-infantry, so keep it anti-infantry." Where is the "play as infantry" selection in this game? There isn't one.

[Joseph Mallan]

But it appears the DEVs will be siding with the Keeping it Anti-infantry crowd. We will have to see what happens after it is tweaked. It isn't nerfed or buffed IYAM.

[stjobe]

I don't want to put this on every page, but I'll do it if you make me:

This is not the place to discuss whether the MG should be in MWO or not; the MG is in MWO.
This is not the place to discuss whether the MG should be effective against 'mechs or not; the devs want to buff it, so it should.
This is not the place to discuss whether the MG is a machinegun or an autocannon, or whether it's 20mm or 7.62mm, or whether it is purely an anti-infantry weapon or just does more damage to infantry.

The devs are going to buff the MG. This is the place to discuss what that buff should be. I, for one, worry that they won't buff it enough to make it viable, and the dev post we've had back on page 5 seems to confirm my worries.

[Monky]

In addition to poor damage, MG's have another problem - due to bullet travel, you can either fire your MGs and have them all hit with full up-time, or fire your other weapons and have them hit and get a little up-time on your MG's.

Think about it like this, you have a large laser, an SRM6, and an MG on your imaginary mech. You can fire your large laser, then fire your SRM6, and get full damage out of both because you don't have to hold down the trigger and can account for the different aiming needs of two different weapons systems. Your MG however needs to be held on target (which typically means leading the target). This can work when using other ballistics, but you'll soon find they just aren't worth firing all the time even with damage buffs, which means a pure 10 second DPS on a dummy target will be drastically different than a real combat output for any build running anything other than ballistics.

I would say MG need to be buffed to 4x damage and then have a COOLDOWN phase like other weapons so that they can be actually used in a FIRING ROTATION. 2.5 second burst followed by 2.5 second downtime would be plenty, as it would allow firing a laser fire group and a missile fire group and then toggling back to ballistic fire group with little/no downtime.

Also, their sound needs to be reworked so they don't sound like cap-guns.

[Orzorn]

Monky, on 10 January 2013 - 03:29 PM, said:

In addition to poor damage, MG's have another problem - due to bullet travel, you can either fire your MGs and have them all hit with full up-time, or fire your other weapons and have them hit and get a little up-time on your MG's.

Think about it like this, you have a large laser, an SRM6, and an MG on your imaginary mech. You can fire your large laser, then fire your SRM6, and get full damage out of both because you don't have to hold down the trigger and can account for the different aiming needs of two different weapons systems. Your MG however needs to be held on target (which typically means leading the target). This can work when using other ballistics, but you'll soon find they just aren't worth firing all the time even with damage buffs, which means a pure 10 second DPS on a dummy target will be drastically different than a real combat output for any build running anything other than ballistics.

I would say MG need to be buffed to 4x damage and then have a COOLDOWN phase like other weapons so that they can be actually used in a FIRING ROTATION. 2.5 second burst followed by 2.5 second downtime would be plenty, as it would allow firing a laser fire group and a missile fire group and then toggling back to ballistic fire group with little/no downtime.

Also, their sound needs to be reworked so they don't sound like cap-guns.

Perhaps then the solution is to increase the bullet travel speed on the MG? Does anyone have a number for their current travel speed?

[Novawrecker]

Trauglodyte, on 10 January 2013 - 02:44 PM, said:

I love how people see/quote what they want to just to support an arguement without actually discussing the issue. Cause, you know, I TOTALLY asked for a 4 dps 0 heat weapon.

By the way you worded it, it sure looked like it for a moment. My appologies and respect if that wasn't the case.

However, buffing the MG in this game beyond .5 damage is borderline too much. It truely does not need it.

On another unrelated note: I was really looking forward toward the cake MG ... way to ruin it for me, Traug hehe

[Kirvesmies]

Few points about why MG needs the buff, and how it should be balanced.

First: Mechs are not primary anti-infantry units by default so it makes no sense to use weapons that both weigh it down and affect only infantry. Such as small caliber machine guns. Thus, they carry only weaponry that can be classed anti armor, even though some of it is rlatively light stuff. They face mostly other Mechs and vehicles, if there's infantry support against them it's usually not the main threat, if it was you'd more likely send in apc's, tanks or other fighting vehicles with infantry support than risk ambush with your precious Mechs for insignificant foe.

Second: In a Mech that has mostly weapons that fire one shot every few seconds, any gun that shoots multiple projectiles per second and capable of killing humans is going to be classed anti-infantry because everything else sucks at it. It doesn't mean it isn't designed to hurt mechs.

Third: MG should be balanced around having 2-3 of them in a build, not as individual performer. 4 is rare and 1 is kinda stupid, in my opinion. I'm fine with either good damage (well, comparable to small laser) or devastating crit damage. Basically, if it doesn't hurt armor, it better rip apart the innards in matter of seconds when grouped. In other words 5 seconds for single machine gun tops, preferably firing a group of 4 in unarmored spot should rip it off in a second or less. Because it's not some man portable baby gun, it's a half ton monster designed to kill metal behemoths that happens to be good against humans too. It should have slightly higher dps than small laser because concentrated damage is pretty much always better than something you need to keep firing all the time.

Fourth: Mechwarrior has always had ablative armor, meaning that you could break it with a stick if you hit long enough. It has no damage resistance against weapons like real life hard armor, maybe in tabletop there's weapons that hurt only infantry but MG isn't one of them. If you insist MG shouldn't hit armor, then start applying it to the feebler autocannons too... Atlas front armor isn't going to be pierced by ac 2, 5 or maybe even 10. Certainly not by some shotgun ac 10 lbx. Similarly small lasers would heat it up a bit but I doubt they pack enough punch to actually melt it off.

Fifth: weapon definitions change, if they think that a 30mm gun isn't really much of a cannon and decide to call it a machine gun since it has high rate of fire it's not that unbelieveable. In Mech setting it certainly is small gun, if AC's start at 100mm like someone mentioned earlier.

Edited by Kirvesmies, 10 January 2013 - 04:48 PM.

[Novawrecker]

Orzorn, on 10 January 2013 - 02:46 PM, said:

2 damage in the TT versus the 3 of the small says otherwise.

As much as this game bases itself off the table top ... it is NOT the tabletop itself and many mechanics were altered to fit the online parameters. If this game was turned based, I would completely agree with you, however it is not.

Making the MG more powerful in this game will bring numerous unbalances especially when we start seeing mechs with redonkulous numbers of ballistic hardpoints (Piranah anyone?).

Edited by Novawrecker, 10 January 2013 - 04:48 PM.

[Barghest Whelp]

Novawrecker, on 10 January 2013 - 02:39 PM, said:

Yes, because having a weapon with 0 cool down and weighing only .5 tons doing 4DPS is uber balanced. Might as well have them heal your damage as it deals damage to the opponent. or better yet - For each MG fired a cake miraculously appears in your cockpit! (Devs! I really want this one, purdy pwease!!)

Don't expect the MG to be anywhere near as effective as an AC, or even a small laser w/output to damage a mech, for a mere .5 tons. Is the MG weak against mechs? YES! They're supposed to be, it's a friggin MG for Pete's sake. Does the MG need a buff? Possibly, albeit a very minor one.

This guy has a point. I never really thought about it that way. Before this post I couldn't care less about mg's. Now, I want them to stay the way they are.

[Novawrecker]

Barghest Whelp, on 10 January 2013 - 04:52 PM, said:

This guy has a point. I never really thought about it that way. Before this post I couldn't care less about mg's. Now, I want them to stay the way they are.

Don't get me wrong, I do think MGs need some love, but it is soo minor that it is not really high on the priority list. I just do not want to see it get such a buff that when mech like the Piranah, or omni-mechs, releases we're going to see Large laser damage every second into someone's back with 0 heat/cooldown.

Edited by Novawrecker, 10 January 2013 - 05:13 PM.

[Craftyman]

can we stop bringing the irrelevant tabletop canon argument into the discussion please? it makes no sense AT ALL not to buff this weapon. It even damages mechs MORE over LESS time on tabletop so the tabletop-canon argument is self defeating. If you're arguing from the fluff perspective (as in HIGHLY SUBJECTIVE LORE) you do not have a logical argument, you have a purely emotional one with no factual basis.



Counter point to "dey are anti infuntree wapon":

• i'm pretty sure that the MG is SO BAD that IF infantry DID EXIST (HYPOTHETICALLY they could each have 2hp and there is 50 of them it would take an MG 5 seconds to kill ONE GUY) exist in this game it would be awful versus them too. It is literally that frickin' bad.

Edited by Craftyman, 10 January 2013 - 05:18 PM.

[Trauglodyte]

Orzorn, on 10 January 2013 - 04:19 PM, said:

Perhaps then the solution is to increase the bullet travel speed on the MG? Does anyone have a number for their current travel speed?

MGs and AMS have a velocity of 100m/s

I think everyone is alright with the weapon being somewhat subpar. Though, for the life of me, I don't know why the MG and the Flamer are relegated to obscurity when the Small Laser is still acceptable. For all of the arguements, we should just delete the Small Pulse Laser too because it weighs more than the Small Laser, does the same damage, has the same range, but costs 1 more heat to fire.

I guess that I just don't get why the Devs want the MG to turn into a "finisher" weapon. This pretty much hoses anyone that wants to pilot a Flea, Spider (ballistic variant), or the Cicada 3C. Honestly, it is really more of a point of erron on PGI's part for adding so many ballistic points to Light and pseudo Light mechs. Had the CDA-3C been designed with 3 energy and 2 ballistic, it wouldn't be a problem. But the Flea and Spider are screwed if they Devs don't get their act together on the Machine Gun.

Edited by Trauglodyte, 10 January 2013 - 05:24 PM.

[One Medic Army]

Just going to point this out: the MG in Batletech/MechWarrior is not a .50 caliber MG. It's 20mm.

Furthermore, to anyone who says it's fine as-is, or needs only a minor buff:
When was the last time you played a Raven 4X, Hunchback 4G, or Cicada 3C.

Edited by One Medic Army, 10 January 2013 - 05:25 PM.