339 replies to this topic

[Budor]

Joseph Mallan, on 11 January 2013 - 05:13 AM, said:

The Gauss only does 20 points of damage. There is a huge difference. A ton of MG ammo theoretically at 200 damage explosions could destroy an Atlas's entire internal structure. A Gauss explosion cannot. I don't know if the MMO follows TT for Ammo explosion effects but a ton of MG ammo (at 200 damage) in your Mechs leg would destroy the leg, then the side torso, then the center torso. That is a lot of repair. That is what I am reminding folk of. Remember the Nerf when asking for Buffs. They must balance. Gauss Rifle (Buff) Heavy hitting hammer at all ranges no heat. (Nerf) Blows up when the enemy looks at it cross eyed! Balance.

http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/#ammo_types

1t of LRM ammo explodes for 288 already, last time i played theres tons of people that have 3x LRM launchers + 1 TAG and the rest filled with ammo on assault chassi. Zero ***** are given.

Edited by Budor, 11 January 2013 - 05:34 AM.

[AlexWildeagle]

Joseph Mallan, on 11 January 2013 - 05:24 AM, said:

Yes. For those who forget to use it.
A costly mistake.

Just read my sig

Or you could just put all your ammo in your head and CT....problem solved

[Joseph Mallan]

Budor, on 11 January 2013 - 05:33 AM, said:

http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/#ammo_types

1t of LRM ammo explodes for 288 already, last time i played theres tons of people that have 3x LRM launchers + 1 TAG and the rest filled with ammo on assault chassi. Zero ***** are given.

You know I do forget about the missile damage buff! Heck I carry SRM Ammo.
Touche'. However the initial point was that with the damage output increase, will come the bad side, and it needs to be accepted. The argument was never to meant to stop the MG buff but to keep the whole picture in focus not just the roses.

Thanks for the poke in the ribs

Alex Wildeagle, on 11 January 2013 - 05:39 AM, said:

Or you could just put all your ammo in your head and CT....problem solved

Dude Ammo and CT bad combo!

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 11 January 2013 - 06:22 AM.

[Hou]

/agree with the suggestion that MG's get a tripled rate of fire. With the mechanics of shooting and weapon hardpoint system that we have they need 3x the damage before they're anything other than a stupid joke that needs to be removed. If they become a mounting choice that possesses some meaning other than trolling your own team for mounting them, having actual ammo concerns is a fair tradeoff for not having heat concerns.

[Joseph Mallan]

Increasing RoF may be a good compromise. you won't do more damage, but you would do it faster. That is an interesting suggestion.

[Hou]

I would go so far as to say they need to do that tripled RoF damage to armor as well, rather than just some gamey application to exposed externals. Nerfing the damage falloff range beyond thier 90 meter optimum to be very short would leave them as a niche short range only small balistic augmentation to firepower in a limited tonnage and heat situation where you can't just macro the trigger down for half the match. It would be vastly superior to thier current implementation, from what I can tell, in every respect.

Edited by Hou, 11 January 2013 - 07:26 AM.

[Boogie Man]

Joseph Mallan, on 11 January 2013 - 06:46 AM, said:

Increasing RoF may be a good compromise. you won't do more damage, but you would do it faster. That is an interesting suggestion.

That is a horrible idea. The gun already fires 10 rounds a second, and 30 rounds a second is only going to put more strain on the server cpu and netcode. Also firing faster will not increase damage potential per ton of ammo which right now is really really low at 80 damage vs. 150 damage for most auto cannons.

[Hou]

Boogie Man, on 11 January 2013 - 07:27 AM, said:

That is a horrible idea. The gun already fires 10 rounds a second, and 30 rounds a second is only going to put more strain on the server cpu and netcode. Also firing faster will not increase damage potential per ton of ammo which right now is really really low at 80 damage vs. 150 damage for most auto cannons.

You don't need to actually make the game shoot 30 packets of damage a second to implement a functional RoF increase. Make the gun shoot the same 10 packets a second, make those packets deal .12 damage instead of .04 and make each shot consume 3 rounds of ammunition. Viola!

Damage potential per ammo ton could indeed be lower than other balistics, the gun is a lot smaller(you aren't neglecting to calculate the weight of the weapon into your damage per loadout ton in mounting auctocannons, are you?) and doesn't make heat, that could be an acceptable tradeoff leaving MGs as a viable low investment weapon option that does something and has some application rather than just wasting ~2 tons and occasionally exploding on you.

Edited by Hou, 11 January 2013 - 07:53 AM.

[Deadoon]

Hou, on 11 January 2013 - 07:48 AM, said:

You don't need to actually make the game shoot 30 packets of damage a second to implement a functional RoF increase. Make the gun shoot the same 10 packets a second, make those packets deal .12 damage instead of .04 and make each shot consume 3 rounds of ammunition. Viola!

Damage potential per ammo ton could indeed be lower than other balistics, the gun is a lot smaller(you aren't neglecting to calculate the weight of the weapon into your damage per loadout ton in mounting auctocannons, are you?) and doesn't make heat, that could be an acceptable tradeoff leaving MGs as a viable low investment weapon option that does something and has some application rather than just wasting ~2 tons and occasionally exploding on you.

You are neglecting the fact that the machine gun doesn't even get the proper amount of ammo it is supposed to, by canon, it has 20,000 rounds of ammo per ton, 100 rounds per 5kg salvo. you fire out 1 salvo per turn.

Current Mwo machine gun
0.04 damage per shot, 10 shots per second, 2000 ammo per ton, damage potentialper ton of ammo 80, time to empty 1 ton of ammo, 200 seconds
True BT machine gun
0.02 damage per shot, 10 shots per second(inferred due to ammo used per 10 seconds),20000 ammo per ton, damage potential per ton of ammo 400, time to empty 1 ton of ammo, 2000 seconds

1/10 the time, 1/5 the potential and only 2x the dps.

I'd take a true bt machine gun over the one we got right now, mount 2 of them with 1/2 ton ammo allocation and toggle them on.

Edited by Deadoon, 11 January 2013 - 08:02 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Boogie Man, on 11 January 2013 - 07:27 AM, said:

That is a horrible idea. The gun already fires 10 rounds a second, and 30 rounds a second is only going to put more strain on the server cpu and netcode. Also firing faster will not increase damage potential per ton of ammo which right now is really really low at 80 damage vs. 150 damage for most auto cannons.

Wasn't looking at the hardware side of the issue. As for the rest to my knowledge ACs use DU ammunition and MGs use Standard Ball rounds. Show me something that says a MG is using DU ammo.

[Hou]

Joseph Mallan, on 11 January 2013 - 07:59 AM, said:

Wasn't looking at the hardware side of the issue. As for the rest to my knowledge ACs use DU ammunition and MGs use Standard Ball rounds. Show me something that says a MG is using DU ammo.

Bleh, who cares about the fluff, balance the darn thing so it isn't a glaring error in design and match the fluff to it, just like in every tabletop or fantasy/scifi game ever!

[Ryolacap]

They are an anti infantry weapon in a game with no infantry, about as much as they are a anti troll weapon, in a post with a ton of trolls....
Stop saying they are for infantry, it’s a pointless argument, they do damage to mechs, and there are rules to support this... in a game with only mechs the MG should be viable.
Yes, they are the quintessential anti infantry weapon, same as they were in WW1, a lot of bullets for long durations, it is unrelated to how they are used against mechs.

Edited by Ryolacap, 11 January 2013 - 08:20 AM.

[stjobe]

To everyone that keeps going on about the MG being an anti-infantry weapon; in Battletech, the MG was no worse an anti-'mech weapon than an AC/2, and 2/3rds as good as the Small Laser.

It's only in MWO that the MG is useless against 'mechs - and we have no infantry to be good against...

BattleTech:
AC/2: 2 damage/turn (0.2 DPS)
SL: 3 damage/turn (0.3 DPS)
MG: 2 damage/turn (0.2 DPS)

MWO:
AC/2: 2 damage/round, 2 rounds/second, 4 DPS
SL: 3 damage per beam, 0.75 beam duration, 2.25 recycle, 1 DPS
MG: 0.04 damage per round, 10 rounds/second, 0.4 DPS

Why? Why does the 6-ton AC/2 get a 20x damage increase compared to BT and the MG only a 2x?
Why does the SL get a 3.33 damage increase compared to BT and the MG only a 2x?
Why can't we have a low-end ballistic weapon worth mounting?

Why, as so many others have pointed out, do all the other ballistic weapons get 140-150 damage per ton of ammo and the MG only 80?

I still believe that the easiest and most fair way of buffing the MG is to increase its damage 3x - we would instantly get a viable low-weight alternative to the Small Laser.

For the record I'm fine with any ammo explosion drawbacks. Anyone fielding an ammo-dependant weapon should already know they're sitting on a powder-keg.

[SaJeel]

To all the people who say the Machine gun is an infantry killer: where are the infantry then? You do realize this is a game. Scince your love of battle tech is preventing you all from seeing the idiocy of keeping MGs as "infantry killers" ill use examples from other games.

Gears of War: Dom: "Marcus use this grenade, it cant kill locust but it does kill flufferduns!"
Marcus: "Whats a flufferdun?"
Dom: "Oh they dont exist but if they did this grenade would kill em. It was mentioned in a book tho"
Marcus:"and they dont work against locust?"
Dom:"Nope"
Marcus:"so its useless someone made a completely useless item... then why is it in the freaking game!"

IF you want i can provide more examples from other games. The basic idea tho is IF SOMETHING is useless why does it exist in a game?

[Joseph Mallan]

Would you like an In universe answer to your question StJobe? The difference between an AC2 and Machine guns is that the AC round is a Depleted Uranium shell. DU has a much higher armor penetration factor than a standard ball round. If the DEVs have chosen to not buff AP damage, that is likely their reason for keeping a MG impotent v armor. Then again I am just lobbing guesses here.

SaJeel, on 11 January 2013 - 08:41 AM, said:

To all the people who say the Machine gun is an infantry killer: where are the infantry then? You do realize this is a game. Scince your love of battle tech is preventing you all from seeing the idiocy of keeping MGs as "infantry killers" ill use examples from other games.

Gears of War: Dom: "Marcus use this grenade, it cant kill locust but it does kill flufferduns!"
Marcus: "Whats a flufferdun?"
Dom: "Oh they dont exist but if they did this grenade would kill em. It was mentioned in a book tho"
Marcus:"and they dont work against locust?"
Dom:"Nope"
Marcus:"so its useless someone made a completely useless item... then why is it in the freaking game!"

IF you want i can provide more examples from other games. The basic idea tho is IF SOMETHING is useless why does it exist in a game?

We didn't have PBI in TT till CityTech was marketed. Citytech and 3025 came out one year after The MechWarrior Boxset. Possible they had rules for PBI in the making and launched the Mechs with anti infantry in mind.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 11 January 2013 - 08:53 AM.

[ElLocoMarko]

Joseph Mallan, on 09 January 2013 - 06:24 AM, said:

In a turn of fire a MG should do no more damage than a AC2. That would balance a MG to it's TT long range equal. I personally think it is stupid to make the primarily anti infantry weapon into a true Mech scale weapon, but if you are going to buff it, make sure you keep it balanced to what is is intended to be. A very weak weapon.

The MG fills an important role. On lighter mechs with ballistic hardpoints it is often the only feasible weapon to mount because of the tonnage of the AC/2 and above. The glaring flaws are in the lights. The Cicada-3C has FOUR ballistic hard points. If you fill them with AC/2 that is 24 tons of gun with no ammo in a 40 ton mech. And AC/2 needs heat sinks...

Edited by ElLocoMarko, 11 January 2013 - 09:06 AM.

[Hou]

stjobe, on 11 January 2013 - 08:40 AM, said:

Why, as so many others have pointed out, do all the other ballistic weapons get 140-150 damage per ton of ammo and the MG only 80?

I still believe that the easiest and most fair way of buffing the MG is to increase its damage 3x - we would instantly get a viable low-weight alternative to the Small Laser.

For the record I'm fine with any ammo explosion drawbacks. Anyone fielding an ammo-dependant weapon should already know they're sitting on a powder-keg.

The problem with strictly increasing the damage 3-fold is that the weapon, just like the AC 2, needs to be balanced around this game. The AC2 needs a crapton of theoretical dps because of how the shooting/damagespread/heat mechanics work in MWO. MWO makes heat a bigger issue than the tabletop rules it operates "in the spirit of." When heat is a bigger issue, no-heat weapons have a strength to answer for. Since we aren't screwing around with the critspace/tonnage of items, maintaining the spirit of Battletec loadouts, the MG is a zero heat weapon that is also incredibly easy to mount - provided you have the hardpoints.

The way the MG is designed to compensate for the strengths of low critspace/tonnage/noheat at the moment is by doing pointlessly small amounts of damage. This is bad design as pointlessly small amounts of damage render a weapon pointless. So we give MGs a point - make them do some appreciable damage. Now, if the weapon is actually producing some damage now it still needs to have adequate drawbacks to compensate for the fact that it generates absolutely no heat and two of them take a pittance of 2 tons/3 critspaces to mount. Shorten the effective range past 90 meters, make it consume ammunition such that a player doesn't just toggle that 0 heat weapon on for the entire match. Make its use a situational choice. If we want a small weapon that has low loadout cost that is free of the concerns of running out of juice before doing enough damage then that already exists in the small laser. In order for the MG "choice" to be meaningful, it needs to be different enough that its selection is more than a function of "oh, this variant has a ballistic mount instead of an energy one."

I'm sure there are other ways of going about this, but the functional RoF increase of 3x is the best one I've seen so far. IMHO, of course.

Edited by Hou, 11 January 2013 - 09:05 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

I am not sure Joseph why you bring up the ammo explosion risk. A weapon that deals damage to the enemy and has the potential to deal 200 damage to me is still preferable toa weapon that is competely ineffective against the enemy.

What I don't get is the Devs obsession with their crit system. I believe they considerably overvalue its impact on the game. I think the only mechs that are significantly affected by crits are using Dual LB10-X ACs, Gauss Rifles or AC/20s. I have the impression that almost no other weapon gets destroyed by crits before the entire hit location isn't also destroyed.

It's probably a matter of statistics I a not willing to calculate by now, but think about it:
Internal Armour may top out at about 30 points or something like that? You have on average 3-4 items per hit location, most having about 10 hit points. To destroy one location, about 1/4 of the damage against internals must be focused on a single location to get it destroyed. How likely is that even? Especially if you consider that weapons like lasers spread their damage around over their beam duration, which basically has to mean that each damage packet might go to a different hit location.

So will MGs be there purely to destroy AC/20s and Gauss Rifles (The only weapons with enough crit slot requirements to significantly change the likelihood of being hit against them)?

[Darkaiser]

rgreat, on 09 January 2013 - 05:58 AM, said:

In BT rules MachineGun do same damage as AC2. Thats all.

This.

MGs in BT were always the 'joke' weapon. Minimal range, minimal damage, piles of ammo to esplode when it gets hit. My Cicada has 4 of them and I dash around like a crazed fighter pilot shooting them everywhere.

So increase their damage a bit but add a LOT to the Crit chance. After all, you have dozens to hundreds of bullets flying around inside your machine. That CAN'T be good...

[shintakie]

Hou, on 11 January 2013 - 09:00 AM, said:

The problem with strictly increasing the damage 3-fold is that the weapon, just like the AC 2, needs to be balanced around this game. The AC2 needs a crapton of theoretical dps because of how the shooting/damagespread/heat mechanics work in MWO. MWO makes heat a bigger issue than the tabletop rules it operates "in the spirit of." When heat is a bigger issue, no-heat weapons have a strength to answer for. Since we aren't screwing around with the critspace/tonnage of items, maintaining the spirit of Battletec loadouts, the MG is a zero heat weapon that is also incredibly easy to mount - provided you have the hardpoints.

The way the MG is designed to compensate for the strengths of low critspace/tonnage/noheat at the moment is by doing pointlessly small amounts of damage. This is bad design as pointlessly small amounts of damage render a weapon pointless. So we give MGs a point - make them do some appreciable damage. Now, if the weapon is actually producing some damage now it still needs to have adequate drawbacks to compensate for the fact that it generates absolutely no heat and two of them take a pittance of 2 tons/3 critspaces to mount. Shorten the effective range past 90 meters, make it consume ammunition such that a player doesn't just toggle that 0 heat weapon on for the entire match. Make its use a situational choice. If we want a small weapon that has low loadout cost that is free of the concerns of running out of juice before doing enough damage then that already exists in the small laser. In order for the MG "choice" to be meaningful, it needs to be different enough that its selection is more than a function of "oh, this variant has a ballistic mount instead of an energy one."

I'm sure there are other ways of going about this, but the functional RoF increase of 3x is the best one I've seen so far. IMHO, of course.

Its a low heat weapon that has awful bullet spread and, even with a large damage buff, requires a large amount of on target time to do a lot of damage.

How many more drawbacks does a MG need in order for people to get over the no heat argument?

Small lasers give off minimal heat to the point that heat is never ever a factor for it, can be boated insanely well, have the same effective range as a MG, do all their damage in a .75 second window, and mechs generally have more energy slots than ballistic slots. By your own argument the SL should be as effective as the MG is now, as in it should be absolute crap.

Edit - Im surprised crap isn't censored considerin what the random stuff that is censored here...

Edited by shintakie, 11 January 2013 - 09:27 AM.