339 replies to this topic

[Voridan Atreides]

Tickdoff Tank, on 09 January 2013 - 01:14 PM, said:

The MG gets a BONUS to killing infantry, but the basic functionality of the weapon allows it to do damage to a mech, damage that is comparable to other weapons that DO NOT get a bonus against infantry, therefore the MG is effective against mechs.

Just because it gets an infantry bonus and has comparable damage to other weak weapons does not make it effective against mechs...that logic is seriously flawed. How can it be effective when it does such little damage to other mechs? Are small lasers effective? Not really.....with me I'd rather use that ballistic/energy hardpoint on something way more worthwhile then a little MG and small laser. Now IF the devs ever do release infantry, yeah I might consider a machine gun....depending on the bonus. But right now with big giant stompy mechs? Forget about it. Like I told the other guy I was arguing with. You can use your MG against me...but I'll laugh when you do such little damage and I alpha strike you out of existence. Its fine....keep it in the game...put it on your mech.....I never said that the MG needs to be taken away. I just said that It is not an effective weapon against giant walking tanks. So therefore make it effective by bringing in somthing where it can come into play...like infantry.

Quote

.......the reduced firepower means that Small Lasers are not usually used on heavier combat devices such as 'Mechs or tanks.

Funny....because the small laser does even more damage then the MG.

Edited by Voridan Atreides, 09 January 2013 - 02:19 PM.

[Xyroc]

not even reading most of these posts but I have been using a STOCK raven 4x here recently just to get the xp on it and I will tell you right now I have enjoyed the MGs cirts if I open up any armor Im taking weps offline very quickly. Only thing I think is the MGs should get a greater range but eh they seems pretty close to where they should be dmg wise. Its like taking a soldier with a Assault rifle vs a tank and saying the solder should be able to do some real dmg ... ( exaggerated just a little bit but just a little )

Edited by Beliall, 09 January 2013 - 02:16 PM.

[Joseph Mallan]

I have never quite understood that myself Beliall. MGs have a great range... but someone once explained that the ballistic velocity may not be enough past 90 M.

[Voridan Atreides]

Beliall, on 09 January 2013 - 02:15 PM, said:

Its like taking a soldier with a Assault rifle vs a tank and saying the solder should be able to do some real dmg ... ( exaggerated just a little bit but just a little )

No I think that is a very good analogy.

[Xyroc]

Well its funny some Corp mates and I where just talking about the range before I saw this post ... rifles can fire well past 100 yards or 90 m and given the size the the MGs on the mechs and the amount of powder that would have to be in the bullet I dont see how they couldnt either. Thats unless the barrel was designs so poorly the force created wasnt focused behind the bullet

Edited by Beliall, 09 January 2013 - 02:28 PM.

[Thunder Lips Express]

i hope i can find a use for them, they just look so cool to use

[Red squirrel]

Keeping in mind that you have twice as much armor as internals....It means the first 2/3 of the battle MGs will be useless.
It's a pitty and I completely can not understand why (since this is a beta isn't it) a damage buff to the MGs wasn't tested.

Especially since there is no light weight ballistic weapon (AC2 at least 8 tons considering ammo)
There is an SSRM2, LRM5, smal and med las all <= 2tons.
Damn give the MG some love!

[Kristov Kerensky]

Beliall, on 09 January 2013 - 02:25 PM, said:

Well its funny some Corp mates and I where just talking about the range before I saw this post ... rifles can fire well past 100 yards or 90 m and given the size the the MGs on the mechs and the amount of powder that would have to be in the bullet I dont see how they couldnt either. Thats unless the barrel was designs so poorly the force created wasnt focused behind the bullet

Ranges in BTech have nothing to do with how powerful a weapon should be, they have to do with how you can fit it on a map in your house on a single table, nothing more, nothing less. BTech used hex maps, each hex was Xm, so you could fit a fairly good sized map on a single standard dining room table. Now, if you give the weapons their real world ranges(which we do know what they should be for in some cases), you'd need a rather larger table..say...100m x 100m for starters.

Now, YOU may be rich enough to afford a house where you could fit a 100x100m table, but the vast majority of the PnP gamers back in the 80s weren't that rich, so FASA decided to make the ranges very short so the maps would fit on the average table. After all, they wanted to make some money off the game and if it could only be played by people who had 100x100m tables, well..I mean really, how many customers would they have had?

[Mahws]

Beliall, on 09 January 2013 - 02:15 PM, said:

not even reading most of these posts but I have been using a STOCK raven 4x here recently just to get the xp on it and I will tell you right now I have enjoyed the MGs cirts if I open up any armor Im taking weps offline very quickly. Only thing I think is the MGs should get a greater range but eh they seems pretty close to where they should be dmg wise. Its like taking a soldier with a Assault rifle vs a tank and saying the solder should be able to do some real dmg ... ( exaggerated just a little bit but just a little )

Hate to be the one to tell you, but that's all in your head. As confirmed by the devs MG's are currently one of the worst weapons in the game for critical hit damage. You're not doing anything with them.

As for the infantry with a rifle thing, sure, if the infantry were carrying around a one and a half tone weapon.

[Balsover]

Thomas Dziegielewski, on 09 January 2013 - 11:04 AM, said:

I'm starting work on it right now. Paul already mentioned in Command Chair.
http://mwomercs.com/...apon-balancing/

MG will become the first critical hit weapon. The LBX will get the same treatment as well.

It will be given a huge critical hit multiplier similar to what it does in TT rules.

So against armor the MachineGun will remain useless (but fun to use dammit!). But as soon as armor is gone and it starts tearing into 'flesh' it will be given a big critical hit damage multiplier.

It will literally rip apart the insides of a unprotected component.

Hope you like it.


Release Date : January 29th 2013 or so.

I don't have faith that this will turn out well.

If the machine gun is still useless against armor, how much damage is PGI planning to make the machine gun do to internals to make it worth carrying to begin with?

How has PGI's track record been with creating badly balanced weapons so far? Yeah....

[Mahws]

I foresee the exact same problem that they're currently dealing with for flamers. Make one flamer do enough heat to be worth taking and you make a nine flamer hunchback ridiculous, make nine flamers balanced and you make one flamer useless.

Except it applies doubly so to machine guns because of the ammo weight. If you can make taking 1.5 tonnes of machine gun + risk of ammo explosion worth taking, especially considering the near 0 damage it does to 2/3 of a mechs health at the current damage stat, by making it far more effective against internals, then you're setting yourself up for trouble.

1.5 = Effective
2.0 = Twice as effective
2.5 = Three times as effective
3.0 = Four times as effective

If 1.5 is worth taking, then 3.0 is far too effective, if 3.0 is worth taking then 1.5 is far too ineffective. It's impossible to get around if you're using a gimmick to balance the weapon. A simple damage buff solves the problem of the weapon being viable without the massive balancing headaches, I can see literally no reason not to chose that instead.

Edited by Mahws, 09 January 2013 - 04:51 PM.

[Utilyan]

Im a Cicada mg/flamer Pilot. My fave mech right now, I love machine guns. Most fun weapons.
You cannot buff MGs here is why. This is exactly what went down:


Once opon a time before anyone knew what a harpoint was, some upity, snooty, crowd pleasing, can't think for his damn self, elitist, whiner premade.............GOT HIS ***-HANDED to him by a pug ******* loaded with MGs and Flamers. There was no way he should have won, it was the most epic mech fight.

His butt got so whooped badly that it echos to this day through the whiners who still want to get rid of MGs and Flamers. (think about it.....why would a whiner who never touches a "useless weapon" be all out for getting rid of it? You never hear them say get rid of narc for example)

But the whiner premade was a child of a prominent battle tech gods, So the battletech gods cursed the Mechwarrior. Everything he touched was nerfed. So he only uses MGs and Flamers. And the BT-gods struck from memory and history the entire event.


Always remember MGs already got nerfed BEFORE you ever played. And if you look at the patch notes, for example patch before last........they are still being nerfed:

* HUD will no longer flicker unnaturally when shot with machine gun fire and flamers beyond a certain damage threshold


Leave MGs and Flamers alone, think of them as END GAME weapons when your tired of God-mode mechs.

The Mechwarrior begs you to drop subject, else the premey whiners will get the gods to remove the weapons completely.

[Cest7]

I think pushing its function toward a crit-seeker is a good idea.

Look at a RL situation:
Are you going to shoot a MG at a tank? No.
However I'd stick machine gun through a hatch and light up the crew.

MG damage Vs. armor is OK.
MG Vs. Internals need a boost

Edited by Cest7, 09 January 2013 - 06:29 PM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Thomas Dziegielewski, on 09 January 2013 - 11:04 AM, said:

I'm starting work on it right now. Paul already mentioned in Command Chair.
http://mwomercs.com/...apon-balancing/

MG will become the first critical hit weapon. The LBX will get the same treatment as well.

It will be given a huge critical hit multiplier similar to what it does in TT rules.

So against armor the MachineGun will remain useless (but fun to use dammit!). But as soon as armor is gone and it starts tearing into 'flesh' it will be given a big critical hit damage multiplier.

It will literally rip apart the insides of a unprotected component.

Hope you like it.

No. There is little point in equipping a crit weapon. The MG is still competing with weapons that deal 2 to 20 damage in one hit to a location, and can also kill the entire internal structure, making damaging components a moot point.

I would go so far and say - even if you make the MG instantly destroy a component, it's not worth the investment.

[Mahws]

Cest7, on 09 January 2013 - 06:29 PM, said:

Look at a RL situation:
Are you going to shoot a MG at a tank? No.
However I'd stick machine gun through a hatch and light up the crew.

Unless of course it's a Real Life^TM 1.5 tonne gun. In which case you mount it on a dedicated ground attack aircraft and destroy tanks with it. Comparing the 0.5 tonne + ammo MGs in battletech to a weapon carried around by soldiers in real life is like comparing the small laser to a laser pointer.

Edited by Mahws, 09 January 2013 - 11:51 PM.

[bantapoo]

imho there's no point having a weapon in the game that doesn't do ANY damage to armor.
fun comes from your guns denting your opponent armor, not from your guns bullet ricocheting all over the place in order to follow whatever rules.
please increase the damage done to armor so it does something.

[stjobe]

Thomas Dziegielewski, on 09 January 2013 - 11:04 AM, said:

MG will become the first critical hit weapon.

Crit-weapon, huh?

Who's going to mount that?

Assaults? First off, they wouldn't waste their ballistic slot on a MG when they could take an AC/20, Gauss Rifle, AC/10, or even LB-10X. Secondly, why take a crit weapon when they could just fire one of their big guns an additional time and destroy the location outright?

Heavies are in much the same situation as Assaults, they have the weight to mount "proper" ballistic weapons, and with those on board, a crit-weapon is pointless.

Mediums might choose to mount a crit-weapon instead of a big ballistic, but is it really plausible? When all is said and done, an AC/10 will destroy a component outright whether it crits or not.

No, the only ones the MG even makes sense for are lights with ballistic slots. They can't mount any of the big ballistic weapons because of weight, so for them a MG would be perfect. But not as a crit weapon that's "useless against armor" - who's going to remove that armour so their weapons become useful? They sure can't do it themselves when 50-80% of their hardpoints are ballistic.

In short, I beg you to reconsider; drop the whole idea of the MG as a crit weapon (wherever did that come from anyway?) and just buff its damage to make it a viable weapon in its own right.

If you want to make a crit weapon, use the LB-10X for that, but please don't sabotage the MG any further.

[Fat Samurai]

Utilyan, on 09 January 2013 - 06:06 PM, said:

Im a Cicada mg/flamer Pilot. My fave mech right now, I love machine guns. Most fun weapons.

Could you post the reasoning that you followed in order to end up with that build? I'm genuinely and unironically curious.

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

Thomas Dziegielewski, on 09 January 2013 - 11:04 AM, said:

So against armor the MachineGun will remain useless (but fun to use dammit!). But as soon as armor is gone and it starts tearing into 'flesh' it will be given a big critical hit damage multiplier.

[facepalm] Why do you want useless weapon in your game? [/facepalm]

OP's ideas to buff MGs are great, I'd also reduce ammo/ton to 1000, or maybe even to 700-800.
And I'd like to see pulse lasers work like "laser machineguns".

[ConnorSinclair]

They should start just making the MG into a Linked MG array.

Maybe at the level of 4 Mguns?