33 replies to this topic

[ohtochooseaname]

Hansh0tfirst, on 15 January 2013 - 11:44 AM, said:

Are you starting to see where this is getting silly now?

If you're firing 4 SL's and have 20 DHS, you're generating 8 heat every 3 seconds (while dissipating 6-8 heat, depending)....it'll take you at least 2 minutes of constant firing to overheat. In that time, your burst damage will blow off his center torso long before he's even able to get all the armor off a single torso element. You can't "alpha" with an MG...it's sustained fire. Who's silly now? Heat neutrality is an almost worthless measure of a weapon, especially in a light, where you should be able to disengage, and where burst fire is godmode (ever had a UAC5 in a Cicada???).

[General Taskeen]

Hansh0tfirst, on 15 January 2013 - 08:13 AM, said:

A heat-neutral ballistic I could shoot all day with a ton of ammo that has the same weight, slot requirements and dps as a small laser?

As much as I'd love this for my RVN-4x, considering it takes roughly seven tons of (standard) heatsinks (not to mention as many critical slots) to make a small laser heat neutral, holy cow would that be OP.

It would not be OP, just think outside the box. And here's why. Other Mech titles got the MG/Flamer's perfectly balanced, that did reasonable damage. Mech Warrior 3 being a good example. First of all, people need to think of giving these weapons slight cool downs, and balance around that.

Quote

Reduce Ammo Per Ton to 200 or 400 or 600
Change Damage Per Bullet to 0.6 (or 0.8)
Change Cooldown to 0.3 (or 0.2)

(0.6 with 0.3 CD is 2DPS; 0.8 with 0.3 cool down is 2.66DPS) (0.8 / 0.3 is basically an MW3 MG in MWO, better approach since the DPS is more reflective if the bullet actually hits compared to a lazer+it would have cool down)
(0.6 with 0.2 CD is 3DPS; 0.8 with 0.2 cool down is 4DPS) (approaching over buff!)

For the Flamer:

Damage Per Flame (lul) to 2 (+5 Heat Transfer)
Heat Per Shot to 3
Range 90
Cool Down changed to 1 or 2 or 2.25
(or use similar damage/cooldown per MG + add heat transfer ability + heat per shot for the "continuous" flamethrower that cause massive heat build up, but still do something)

[Revo13]

Machine guns aren't meant to do damage, they are meant for critical hits.

WAKE UP NOOBS!

Sincerely,
Your Noob

[Hansh0tfirst]

ohtochooseaname, on 15 January 2013 - 03:12 PM, said:

If you're firing 4 SL's and have 20 DHS, you're generating 8 heat every 3 seconds (while dissipating 6-8 heat, depending)....it'll take you at least 2 minutes of constant firing to overheat. In that time, your burst damage will blow off his center torso long before he's even able to get all the armor off a single torso element. You can't "alpha" with an MG...it's sustained fire. Who's silly now? Heat neutrality is an almost worthless measure of a weapon, especially in a light, where you should be able to disengage, and where burst fire is godmode (ever had a UAC5 in a Cicada???).

You'd have to keep a target under your reticule (maintain "sustained fire") with a machine gun nearly the same duration (1.0 seconds) as you'd have to keep a small laser (0.75 seconds) in order to achieve the same effect. Furthermore, machine guns have no (ZERO) cooldown, whereas small lasers have a relatively significant one (2.25 seconds). So while you're waiting for your next shot, I'd keep shooting you. And I can afford to miss... a lot. I'd say at best it's a wash (and I think that's being quite generous).

As for designing a light mech with burst/alpha damage as a primary concern, I'm sure there will be differences in opinion, but personally I'd say you picked the wrong weight class for the job.

Lastly, regarding UAC5 equipped Cicadas... honestly I'm not sure I've ever had one hit me, presuming I'm piloting a comparably agile chassis (lol @ dogfighting with torso mounted weapons and no missile hardpoints).

[Hansh0tfirst]

ohtochooseaname, on 15 January 2013 - 02:53 PM, said:

I don't know about you, but as soon as my laser finishes firing, I'm free to...I dunno...get out of the way of the gauss rifle shooting at me without having to worry about where my reticle is facing...

All I have to worry about is staying on your six. As long as I can shoot you, but you can't shoot me (and your teammates can't shoot me either without shooting you first), everything else is gravy.

And in my not-so-humble experience, that tends to favor heat-efficient builds. Why? Because anything big/dumb/slow enough to be inable to shake me off its tail generally has a heck of a lot more armor than a puny light can demolish in a handful of lol 4 small laser "burst alphas".

Quote

You kill mechs and win games with burst damage, not sustained damage...

Actually, I do win games with sustained damage (and occasionally by capping points). Burst damage? I leave that to the Gausspults, Boomcats, and Assaults... you know, mechs that actually have the tonnage/hardpoints to support such nonsense.

I'll grant you this though... machine guns in their current implementation do stink. They're fun as hell, but still stink. I'd love to see them improved as much as the next guy. I'm just not sold beefing up their dmg to small laser levels (or higher, lol) is the best way to do it.

[Postumus]

Just got done reading through all the replies to my post, so I'll take a second to respond.

As for the discussion around whether a MG doing small laser damage would be "better" than a small laser, making the argument against the damage increase solely around the heat neutral weight doesn't make sense. First, you can't fire a machinegun forever, it takes ammo, so like ballistics or missile weapons it may impart you with a short term dps advantage if you rambo it, but the small laser is going to be last weapon firing.

Second, even though a machinegun so buffed had a better heat neutral weight, which I believe is moot, I still can't think of one build where it would make sense fitting more than 2 of them. Dragon 5N, MAYBE, if you wanted to use LL/PPC as the main wep instead of an AC. For all of the other variants that have a high number of ballistic slots, fitting multiple MGs would still be sub optimal, because heavy ballistics are the meat of the build for these mechs.

So unless the MG got buffed into the end all mini-AC of doom, all I'm talking about is making builds like the stock RVN-4X and K2 a little less suck, and giving ballistic users something to use in the sub 6-ton range in their customization.

[ohtochooseaname]

Hansh0tfirst, on 15 January 2013 - 04:52 PM, said:

You'd have to keep a target under your reticule (maintain "sustained fire") with a machine gun nearly the same duration (1.0 seconds) as you'd have to keep a small laser (0.75 seconds) in order to achieve the same effect. Furthermore, machine guns have no (ZERO) cooldown, whereas small lasers have a relatively significant one (2.25 seconds). So while you're waiting for your next shot, I'd keep shooting you. And I can afford to miss... a lot. I'd say at best it's a wash (and I think that's being quite generous).

As for designing a light mech with burst/alpha damage as a primary concern, I'm sure there will be differences in opinion, but personally I'd say you picked the wrong weight class for the job.

Lastly, regarding UAC5 equipped Cicadas... honestly I'm not sure I've ever had one hit me, presuming I'm piloting a comparably agile chassis (lol @ dogfighting with torso mounted weapons and no missile hardpoints).

First off...by DPS, I mean sustained DPS, not DPS while it's firing. Otherwise, yes, an MG with SL performance with no CD would be ridiculous. However, the DPS while firing for an MG with the same sustained DPS as a SL is 1/4 that of the SL. This is 2.5X the current value of the MG.

As far as the UAC5 in a Cicada, the idea is to blow out the back armor of medium+ mechs quickly. It's difficult to use in a dog fight due to netcode issues, but you get used to it (aka, leading by 4+lengths depending on lag, etc.). It's more about taking advantage of opportunities like them smacking into a wall or running alongside them as they run away. I've killed plenty of 3L's with my UAC5...just takes practice and a bit of luck. I tried replacing it with an AC2, but that thing is completely useless because you can't use its sustained ballistics fire with laser fire unless everyone stops moving.

[AlanEsh]

Postumus, on 15 January 2013 - 06:10 PM, said:

Just got done reading through all the replies to my post, so I'll take a second to respond.

As for the discussion around whether a MG doing small laser damage would be "better" than a small laser, making the argument against the damage increase solely around the heat neutral weight doesn't make sense. First, you can't fire a machinegun forever, it takes ammo, so like ballistics or missile weapons it may impart you with a short term dps advantage if you rambo it, but the small laser is going to be last weapon firing.

Second, even though a machinegun so buffed had a better heat neutral weight, which I believe is moot, I still can't think of one build where it would make sense fitting more than 2 of them. Dragon 5N, MAYBE, if you wanted to use LL/PPC as the main wep instead of an AC. For all of the other variants that have a high number of ballistic slots, fitting multiple MGs would still be sub optimal, because heavy ballistics are the meat of the build for these mechs.

So unless the MG got buffed into the end all mini-AC of doom, all I'm talking about is making builds like the stock RVN-4X and K2 a little less suck, and giving ballistic users something to use in the sub 6-ton range in their customization.

I just want my 4xMG Cicada to be slightly scary at some point in its life

[ohtochooseaname]

Hansh0tfirst, on 15 January 2013 - 05:33 PM, said:

All I have to worry about is staying on your six. As long as I can shoot you, but you can't shoot me (and your teammates can't shoot me either without shooting you first), everything else is gravy.

This is, btw, exactly how I kill lights in my 3M. They're going for something big and slow, and trying to stay hugged up to their back torso. Easy kills with a little bit of burst. If the UAC5 fires 4 shots in a row, add one 4xSL volley, and you can kill almost any light if it all lands on the back torso....literally less than 2 seconds! If you're sitting there trying to do sustained damage, it's extremely risky. On the other hand, if you're circling, and hitting the same spot on each pass, that's much less risky and kills them almost as fast.

[Iacov]

i'm totally "pro-damage-increase"
0,04 is too low
give machine guns a salvo fire (i guess it was like that in MW4? perma fire, but in 5 or 10 shot bursts)
if it's a 5 shot salvo, give it 0,5 damage, that's 0,1 per single bullet...

machine guns should become a viable option besides shredding internals!

[ohtochooseaname]

I actually like the shredding internals part...I'd consider equipping one on a 3M with 4X ML if the internals shredding were at at least a 2.5X rate...prefer something like 4X. I'd like to see builds, where those with MG's have a useful function if someone takes out the armor, or if they equip an ERPPC to burn through one section of armor.

[Kergis Tsugan]

Point in fact, this game is based (as accurately as possible) on tabletop. According to the rules, the MG Array is supposed to do 2 damage per turn (as much as an AC2). But as we've all seen, sometimes the differences between tabletop and simulation need adjustment... like the heat generation/dissipation rates. I personally believe that MG's should be able, at the very least, to do about half the damage as what the tabletop says they are supposed to do, somewhere between 0.85 and 1.0 per cycle.

To those that say that MG's aren't supposed to do damage to mechs, I would refer you to the attached link http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Machine_Gun . The Machine Gun Array as listed could range anywhere from a .50cal to 20mm rotary cannons. By way of example I would refer you to http://en.wikipedia....Shipunov_GSh-23 . During the Cold War the Hind F was modified to fit a 23mm twin barrel cannon and a GSH-30k rotary cannon. These weapons made the Hind a serious threat to both infantry and armored assets alike. In fact battle doctrine at the time was to single out and destroy these aircraft because they were able to tear apart main battle tanks in a very short amount of time. If the M60A3 (50 Tons) or M1 Abrams (65 tons) had to fear these types of guns, so too should a 30 ton mech with spindly legs.

I've played the tabletop on and off since 1990 and have enjoyed the video games since MechWarrior 2's release in 1995. In each iteration of the game machineguns have been at the VERY least useable as an anti-mech weapon system. MG's are supposed to be either an anti-infantry piece OR provide supplementary fire in a pinch. These weapons should be able to contribute damage, not just make noise.

Edited by Kergis Tsugan, 16 January 2013 - 07:27 PM.

[Nankam]

The fact is that the low tonnage, multi ballistic slot mechs (Raven 4X, Cicada 3C, Spider 5K) are currently useless with the current state of machine guns. I agree that somewhere around small laser dps is where their damage should be at, only a little higher since unlike lasers they have to be constantly trained on target.

Edited by Nankam, 16 January 2013 - 07:42 PM.

[Postumus]

ohtochooseaname, on 16 January 2013 - 09:48 AM, said:

First off...by DPS, I mean sustained DPS, not DPS while it's firing. Otherwise, yes, an MG with SL performance with no CD would be ridiculous. However, the DPS while firing for an MG with the same sustained DPS as a SL is 1/4 that of the SL. This is 2.5X the current value of the MG.

This. Let me clarify my original intention and say that DPS in this case refers to damage per second, not damage per shot. So a buffed MG would do the same damage as a small laser shot spread over the period of the small laser firing and then cooling down.

Another possibility would be a machinegun array, multiple machineguns packaged together, with commensurate damage, ammo use and heat increases, or a "Heavy" machinegun, with increased damage, weight, and heat. The problem with a machinegun array is that while the damage from 2 or 3 machineguns is allright, .8 or 1.2 dps to the small laser's 1, the ammo consumption is insane, and the added weight from the ammo isn't worth it.

The best scenario would be single, buffed machineguns doing between .8 and 1.2 dps, and a Heavy MG doing between 1.6 and 2.4 dps with a weight of 1-2 tons and some small heat generation. This would make the machinegun and the variants that would benefit from it useful, and add low end ballistic weapons so that ballistics dont start at a heavy 6 tons.

Edited by Postumus, 17 January 2013 - 12:59 PM.