339 replies to this topic

[stjobe]

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

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.

3x RoF increase is in effect the 3x damage increase I argue for in my OP. The only difference is that it cuts down ammo faster, reducing the time needed to empty one ton from 200 seconds (3 min, 20 seconds) to 67 seconds (1 min, 7 seconds). In all other aspects it is what I proposed in my OP.

I can live with that.

Edit: And of course that it generates 30 crit chances per second instead of 10 - but then again those crits will still be meaningless and do nothing but light up the "critical hit" warning.

Edited by stjobe, 11 January 2013 - 09:29 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

MustrumRidcully, on 11 January 2013 - 09:06 AM, said:

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.

Yeah...I know, that argument got put to bed quite succinctly a couple pages ago.

[Boogie Man]

I can't because the damage potential per ton of ammo is still too low. Don't forget they doubled armor values so damage potential of ammo per ton is even more important now.

Also this talk that 3x damage would be too strong is quite laughable because 3x damage is still only 1.2 dps which is a far cry from an AC2 at 4 dps.

[Hou]

shintakie, on 11 January 2013 - 09:26 AM, said:

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...

I'm not really disagreeing with you here, I think MG need to be much better than they are, dps roughly in line with that of a small laser. There is the concern, however, of making them too good a backup weapon considering the mounting cost. If you have a random extra half ton and hardpoint a small laser is an o.k. choice to mount as additional firepower. I wouldn't call the heat negligible tho. If you are running heat already from other sources 2 heat per shot is a full second of cooling power with 20 effective heatsinks. If you are riding the heat line in an Atlas there is actually a choice on whether or not to fire your secondaries or save your heat dissipation for say, your AC20/missiles. That concern does not exist with MGs if you have mounted them as backups. Cursor in the general direction of an enemy somewhere close to range? Hold trigger. Want to be able to do that anyways? Maybe eat an extra ton of ammo in loadout if you've mounted 2 or 3 of the little buggers.

Edited by Hou, 11 January 2013 - 10:15 AM.

[shintakie]

Hou, on 11 January 2013 - 10:13 AM, said:

I'm not really disagreeing with you here, I think MG need to be much better than they are, dps roughly in line with that of a small laser. There is the concern, however, of making them too good a backup weapon considering the mounting cost. If you have a random extra half ton and hardpoint a small laser is an o.k. choice to mount as additional firepower. I wouldn't call the heat negligible tho. If you are running heat already from other sources 2 heat per shot is a full second of cooling power with 20 effective heatsinks. If you are riding the heat line in an Atlas there is actually a choice on whether or not to fire your secondaries or save your heat dissipation for say, your AC20/missiles. That concern does not exist with MGs if you have mounted them as backups. Cursor in the general direction of an enemy somewhere close to range? Hold trigger. Want to be able to do that anyways? Maybe eat an extra ton of ammo in loadout if you've mounted 2 or 3 of the little buggers.

Really the only mechs where that would be a concern would be lights with ballistics, Cicadas with ballistics, and the K2. Most other mechs have much better uses for their ballistic slot than shovin in a MG and in the aforementioned mechs cases I dont really so it becomin too large of a problem. At most you have to worry about these mechs gettin some "free" damage, but most of those mechs could use a little free damage anyway.

[Hou]

shintakie, on 11 January 2013 - 12:30 PM, said:

Really the only mechs where that would be a concern would be lights with ballistics, Cicadas with ballistics, and the K2. Most other mechs have much better uses for their ballistic slot than shovin in a MG and in the aforementioned mechs cases I dont really so it becomin too large of a problem. At most you have to worry about these mechs gettin some "free" damage, but most of those mechs could use a little free damage anyway.

True, but bear in mind a few differences in loadout options can make a variant flat superior to other options rather than different from them. Stalkers have this problem, some of the variants aren't merely different - they're flat worse, which is bad. One raven variant has this problem.

Now even at tripled damage, having the option of MGs isn't going to be as gamechanging as gauss rifles, a missing SRM6 slot, or the ability to mount ECM, but it's still a concern that should be balanced around. If MGs remain easy to mount, heat costless to fire, and hold enough ammo per ton to run the gun for well over minute without letting off the trigger they will probably need to forever be relegated to uselessness in impact. If, for example MGs were change to deal 0 damage past 90 meters and changed to run through ammo like water(rather than merely at 3x speed which still isn't particularly fast) they could actually be balanced around being effective as a weapon weapon. I personally would find it interesting, considering the limited amount of ballistic points the mechs we have available now sport, if they increased RoF by about 6x putting a MG at ~half the dps of an AC2 and making it a weapon you might conceivably consider mounting additional ammo for or designing partially around. That would probably be overkill compared to small lasers though, which is why 3x seems more reasonable.

[Utilyan]

Fat Samurai, on 10 January 2013 - 01:47 AM, said:

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

Well as is the weapons don't do much damage. I was sorta inspired by like games like Total War that make use of light calvary.

I got a cicada 3c 4mgs and a flamer. I put the biggest engine I could so its pretty fast 151 kph. Its fully armored. beagle, extended sensors and target info gather. Ill get that first contact.

The flamer is like a area effect taunt, when someone sees a flamer go off it can capture the attention of enemies and team mates tend to want to rescue the mech getting flamed.

The MGs max range is like 200m and you can pepper groups of enemies basicly to get attention. What I do a lot is chase down retreating mechs most the time they don't know its machine guns all they know is they are taking damage, the armor lighting up. If I succeed they give up the idea of retreating else they just keep retreating. Do alot of flanking. Hit and fades.

Kills happen when cycle through targets I spot a mech who is missing its armor (outline is gone so its just internals).

Against fresh mechs your can be crowd control, even tank, get the enemy to shoot at you instead of mates. If they ignore me they get a flamer to the face.

Looking at about 40-150 damage a fight. Very low damage.

Its got to be alright cause I get folks who say "damn that cicada" frequently.

Chasing ravens could be very fun, then running away when they figure you only got mgs.

On the negative side it also tends to survive so if its a losing battle you might get alot of dead team mates complaining about mgs. But sometimes it puts on a good show for them and gets alot of laughs.

[Squigles]

Joseph Mallan, on 11 January 2013 - 08:47 AM, said:

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.

In universe, there is no penetration unless you're using Tandem missiles (bleh). Armor is ablative, it's the same reason why scraping against the side of a building sends armor crashing to the ground in a cascade.

And on a MG's are anti-infantry weapons, it's the silliest thing ever stated. As I said in another post, you may as well claim Plasma Cannon's, Plasma Rifles, and Inferno SRM's are anti-infantry weapons because they're extremely effective when used against them.

No one claims the small laser is an anti-infantry weapon, so I'll use that as a base. BT 3025, looking for a low weight, close range, no heat solution to supplement my firepower at point blank range for when the game turns into "Battlekick".

I want to push about an extra 18 damage. So I look at small lasers, I need 6 of them to push that much damage. That's 3 tons of weapons, I also have to mate 6 tons of heat sinks to them to keep heat neutral. Total of 9 tons to push 18 damage with no heat with small lasers.

Machine Guns....I need 9 of them to push that much damage, 4.5T there. Throw in half a ton of ammo (more then enough for a normal TT game) and I've got 5T of equipment, to push the same damage, at the same range, with the same heat build-up. To bring it up to the equivelent of the small lasers tonnage investment I can add another half ton of ammo and 7 machine guns. So for the same tonnage investment I get 32 damage compared to the small lasers 18. The Machine Gun in BT is an anti-armor weapon, and is a stupendously good one at that. It also happens to be blisteringly punishing against infantry.

I can't stress enough that something being top of the class in dealing with infantry does NOT make it unsuited for another role that it excels in, that being one of the most punishing, armor shredding weapons in existence on the basis of tonnage investment. Just as being top of the class in mathematics does not make you a drooling moron when it comes time to write an essay.

[Joseph Mallan]

Dude, Chill. I was just throwing out an In universe explanation, if you don't like it you don't need to post a thesis for a response.

I will go on record that Infernos are a heat only weapon. Plasma Cannon/Rifle Only one does Mech scale damage the other is only a heat generator, so of the weapons listed only one does damage v Mechs the other two only affect the heat scale. Unless you are Battlearmor, PBI, Vehicles(TT vehicles die with heat!).

Nobody claims Small lasers as an Anti Infantry weapon because the TROs do not describe them as such. I haven't bought a TRO since the Sm Pulse Laser became more effective v Infantry than Machine Guns, So I am not savvy to a change in that description.

I understand your points, but the DEVs have decided that MGs are not a good anti Mech Weapon and have made this quite clear. They will be a interesting crit seeker!

I have to ask when has a MG ever been "The most punishing, armor shredding weapon in existence."

2 MG (1 ton) is 4 points of damage
1 Medium laser (1 ton) is 5 points of damage. Or 4 ML for 20 damage + 2 additional heat sinks (12 total) for weapons that can begin shooting your MG equipped Mech at 3X the range of the MGs.
2 Small Lasers (1 ton) is 6 points of damage. 6 SM Lasers (18 damage) 0 extra sinks 3 tons.

Before you begin with sinks, you get 10 free with your engine.so sinks cost 0 weight. Medium lasers start to do damage at three times the distance and can continue to do so while the MG is impotent.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 11 January 2013 - 02:50 PM.

[Novawrecker]

Squigles, on 10 January 2013 - 05:41 PM, said:

The MWO MG is rediculously "under-powered". As the OP said, a 300% increase in damage is in order, and also serves to bring the damage per ton of ammo back into it's proper range.

hmm .. 300% increase in damage. So that would mean it would do 1.2 dmg per second, each MG. Low and behold here comes the Piranah, which carries 12 MGs, at your proposed 1.2 dmg/sec. That's 0.6 dmg shy of Gauss damage ... every second for 0 heat. Is it sinking in yet?

And lets not get started when omni-mechs make their appearances carrying anywhere from 8 - 13+ tons of modular space.

300% flat increase is the absolute worst idea possible

Edited by Novawrecker, 11 January 2013 - 03:01 PM.

[stjobe]

Novawrecker, on 11 January 2013 - 02:59 PM, said:

hmm .. 300% increase in damage. So that would mean it would do 1.2 dmg per second, each MG. Low and behold here comes the Piranah, which carries 12 MGs, at your proposed 1.2 dmg/sec. That's 0.6 dmg shy of Gauss damage ... every second for 0 heat. Is it sinking in yet?

And lets not get started when omni-mechs make their appearances carrying anywhere from 8 - 13+ tons of modular space.

300% flat increase is the absolute worst idea possible

The Piranha is arguably a broken 'mech design even in TT. It does more damage with its MGs than an AC/20 (24 vs 20), and mounts a couple of ER Medium Lasers and a ER Small Laser just to rub it in.

No 'mech currently in MWO (or AFAIK planned to be in MWO) can boat more than four MGs.

Balancing the MG around the ability to boat 12 of them is ridiculous when those facts are taken into account.

Edited by stjobe, 11 January 2013 - 03:33 PM.

[Novawrecker]

stjobe, on 11 January 2013 - 03:32 PM, said:

Balancing the MG around the ability to boat 12 of them is ridiculous when those facts are taken into account.

And Omni-mechs? Which pretty much ignore the concept of hardpoints. What's stoping any of them mounting 10 tons worth and just go on a slaying spree? Just because some might find it absurd to mount 12 or more MGs will not stop players of taking advantage of it if a rediculous buff like 300% damage increase is given to MGs.

No one is thinking long or future term.

Edited by Novawrecker, 11 January 2013 - 03:41 PM.

[Trauglodyte]

The big thing about balancing the MG is the DPS increase per each additional MG in regards to DPS vs HPS. But, you could argue that for each additional MG further limits the damage uptime due to thinning out ammo. On the other hand, due to the minimal damage caused by an ammo explosion on a full ton of ammo in MWO, stock piling ammo wouldn't be that bad.

There is a balance there that needs to be found but I'll be damned to say that just increasing damage against internals is the way to go. Could they not do both within a balance?

[stjobe]

Novawrecker, on 11 January 2013 - 03:36 PM, said:

And Omni-mechs? Which pretty much ignore the concept of hardpoints. What's stoping any of them mounting 10 tons worth and just go on a slaying spree? Just because some might find it absurd to mount 12 or more MGs will not stop players of taking advantage of it if a rediculous buff like 300% damage increase is given to MGs.

No one is thinking long or future term.

Currently, hardpoints are stopping it. No 'mech in MWO can boat more than four MGs. Most 'mechs with ballistic hardpoints have only one or two, and only lights would even consider using their limited ballistic hardpoints on an MG - everyone else would just mount one of the viable ballistic weapons.

But lights can't do that, and they need something. I want that something to be the MG, and I want it to do damage on par with the Small Laser. The easiest way to achieve this is to triple the damage of the MG. While this puts it above the Small Laser in DPS, its firing mechanic will make it unlikely to achieve that DPS for any prolonged amount of time.

Battletech is full of lights with MGs as secondary weapons - and they do quite nice damage there. Why can't we have that here as well?

Omni-mechs will have to be balanced when they arrive in two years time, but since we have the non-canon hardpoints for IS 'mechs I'd say it's a fair chance Omni-mechs would have something similar to limit their reconfigurability. The Piranha can just be left out of the game, on account that it''s a broken design.

The thing is that a 300% damage increase isn't overpowered at 1-4 MGs. Just like Streaks aren't overpowered at 1-3 of them. But put six Streaks on a Catapult and it just might be. Boating is tricky for balancing, and one might argue that even boating nine Small Lasers on a HBK makes the Small Laser overpowered - it does deliver 27 damage rather pin-point.

Either way, the MG has been quite unfairly nerfed by MWO so far, and their current plan to make them into some kind of crit weapon is likely to keep them relegated to the sidelines as useless weight. Why take up weight with a "crit weapon" that you can't use until internals are exposed when you can just take another regular weapon instead that will be useful the whole match?

[Mahws]

Novawrecker, on 11 January 2013 - 03:36 PM, said:

And Omni-mechs? Which pretty much ignore the concept of hardpoints. What's stoping any of them mounting 10 tons worth and just go on a slaying spree? Just because some might find it absurd to mount 12 or more MGs will not stop players of taking advantage of it if a rediculous buff like 300% damage increase is given to MGs.

No one is thinking long or future term.

Let's take a step back and actually think about this. Omni-mechs don't have unlimited hard points, they just have their pick of what type of weapon to put in said hard point. Based on current hard point set ups 12 hard points on an assault omni mech seems like the upper limit. Which means you could equip twelve MGs with a DPS of around fifteen. A DPS that's sprayed over an entire mech instead of hitting one location. A DPS that only exists at point blank range. A DPS that comes at the cost of not being able to equip any other weapon.

Or, if you wanted a largely heat neutral Assault omni mech you could equip six medium lasers for the same tonnage, fill up all that extra space with clan double heat sinks and have better range, no ammo explosion risk and damage that hits a single location far more often, all at the same DPS. Or a non-cheesy build that has a mix of weapons at good DPS and is effective at most ranges.


Not really seeing the balance problem to be honest.

[Kinjry]

Let's just buff the MG based on the ammo per ton that all other ballistics weapons operate by.

All ballistic weapons deal 150 damage per ton, save the AC/20 which is 140 damage per ton of ammo.

The machine gun does 0.04 damage per shot, with 2000 shots, resulting in a pathetic 80 damage per ton.

By dividing 150 by 2000 we get 0.075 damage, multiplied by the fire rate of 10 per second we get 0.75 dps.

the AC/2 has the best DPS to weight ratio among the AC weapons, sitting a 4 to 6, which is 66.66% efficient.

The Machine gun is .75 to .5, which is also 66.66%, so for DPS to weight ratios, it's balanced with AC/2, all other AC weapons drop in efficiency, 5 = 36.75% 10 = 33.33% 20 = 35.71%

The AC/2 sports a 400% efficiency for DPS to slot ratios, so we'll break down the other AC weapons as well to give better reference.

AC/5 is 2.94 to 4 or 73.5%
AC/10 is 4 to 7 or 57.14%
AC/20 is 5 to 10 or 50%

The machine gun would be .75 to 1 or 75%, so closer to the AC/5, in line again.

So really, simply by using the same ammo per ton formula, we can balance most weapons out, the machine gun is still somewhat lack luster, but keep in mind it generates ZERO heat. Which means you can get almost 1 DPS for 1.5 tons, and zero heat.

it would arguably have a place on the battlefield just as small lasers do, considering it generates no heat.

I did not include the Gauss rifle since I wanted to show its ratios on their own.

15 * 10 = 150
3.75 to 7 or 53.57%
3.75 to 15 or 25%

So, statistically the Gauss rifle is not all that efficient for weight/slot usage. However it's incredibly low heat generation of 1 per shot more than makes up for this, just as I feel the machine guns heat generation of zero would make up for its .75 DPS.

[Kirvesmies]

Boating happens, get over it. Boating machineguns might be effective when fighting 10-150M ranges with constant line of fire. Imaginary 300% buffed mg with 12 hardpoints would achieve 14,4 dps if you hose the enemy continuously (using 120 bullets per second, going through a ton slightly under 17 seconds.

An A1 Catapult can boat SRM6 for 22,5 dps, often enough taking mechs down with 2-3 alphas (and then needing cooldown). Sure there is heat that matters, but generally speaking you don't want to be sitting in line of sight near enemy lines and hold the button down, it tends to be lethal to you. Similarly for a bit longer range, K2 with double ac20 and ml does 12,5 dps with decent sustainability, and very good damage focusing. Hunchback 4P can boat 9 ML with heat issues but very effectively anyway, dps 11,25 with decent range, good focusing and mobility. I'd say all of those are superior to any hittable target with machineguns, be it 12 or even 15. Unless they happen to be surprised within the 90 meter range by an unhurt mg mech, in which case they'd probably die if they were alone. I'm guessing same goes for Stalkers, since they get some real nasty alpha to go with decent sustainable damage.

Like has been said before, mg does damage to mechs and mech armor isn't treated like real armor to begin with or it would be actually penetrated by good hits instead of completely falling off (like in world of tanks), so I don't see why real life experience or logic has anything to do with this stuff. If you want dedicated anti-infantry guns, get a jeep or an apc, mechs use only guns that aren't dead weight when they go against enemies they are built to fight. Which isn't infantry.

On Piranha mech in general, it's pretty much a designed gamebreaker. It takes a gun that has two good things, zero heat and light weapon weight, counters its weaknesses of range and low individual damage by being really fast and having lots of them and it plays upon the game mechanic that ignores basic quality of armor which makes it so good, complete deflection. Yes, in real life shooting armored targets with guns that don't have the oomph to go straight through is usually pointless, just like waving a laser at it that needs several seconds to burn through the armor... but in mechwarrior universe it is not futile, because armor is peanutbutterium or something. In tabletop you could at least hit the Piranha with a gun and kill it, in MWO it's not going to happen because of lag and doubled armor.

Edited by Kirvesmies, 11 January 2013 - 05:38 PM.

[Novawrecker]

Mahws, on 11 January 2013 - 05:05 PM, said:

Let's take a step back and actually think about this. Omni-mechs don't have unlimited hard points, they just have their pick of what type of weapon to put in said hard point.

Not to change the focus onto omni-mechs, but you are not correct. If following the concept to suit, omni-mechs have no hardpoints, they just have tonnage to allocate to weapons. The advantage being they can mount what they want, in whatever quantities desired as long as if fits within the podweight allocated to it. Hence their advantage (amongst many others) over standard mechs.

Now, if (and ONLY IF) PGI decides to actually assign hardpoint restrictions onto Omni's, your point would have merit. This can go both ways pending on how PGI decides to handle Omni's and they pod allocation. However, as I mentioned above: "If following the concept to suit ....."

Just cause someone wants MGs to be that something lights have, doesn't merit it getting buffed to abusive levels. Does the MG need some love? Absolutely! Does it need that much love to (out)match Gauss, AC20, and what not? Hell the crap no

Edited by Novawrecker, 11 January 2013 - 05:48 PM.

[Mahws]

Why exactly would we assume that PGI are going to implement a ridiculous game breaking feature? The entire reason they added hard point restrictions to the current mech line up is to avoid ridiculous boating builds. If you honestly think that they're going to completely unrestrict the omnis then boating MG is the last thing you should be concerned about. Unrestricted SSRM boats comes to mind.

Omni mechs will be restricted in the number of weapons they can equip, just not the type. Anything else would be a disastrous, game breaking, pay2win farce.

[Vaneshi SnowCrash]

Perhaps instead of buffing MG's, Flamers and AC/2's they should... give us things those weapons are designed to shoot at. Which would be troops, tanks, aircraft and not Battlemech's.

A Mech should be able to stand there all damn day whilst under heavy MG fire, then get bored and wander off to do something more interesting.

Or have we hit the "Screw it, MechAssault it is" point?