261 replies to this topic

[Thirdstar]

Targetloc, on 03 March 2013 - 09:44 AM, said:

But that's why we get crap fixes like bumping Large Laser damage up a hair, then realizing 2 patches later that Large Pulse Lasers also need a damage boost since they're doing the same as LL now... and then ending up dropping the heat on all LL anyways... and then dropping the heat on PPCs and AC20s....

Something the data modelling players had been telling them was the problem since closed beta, but they couldn't see it until months of usage statistics showed them that the majority of players weren't using those weapons.

But there's always baddies that use even the worst weapons (see LBX10) so usage statistics are fuzzy at best.

Data modelling lets you actually play with the variables and get a real understanding of where the problem is. BTW, it wasn't with every single weapon's individual heat values.

Don't get me started on that. I'm convinced that vast majority of forum posters aren't min-maxers and they tend to give incredibly subjective feedback believing that it's same thing as an objective evaluation.

[Ryebear]

The biggest problem for me is Flamers and MGs don't do real dmg, and there is no in game penalty to losing your engine to crits. That mean's with a cored CT you can't finish someone off with MGs, because even if you destroy the "engine" component, the player is fully functional and can just blast you in the face while you wait to kill him with a real gun.

Give engines higher than normal health, but make it an instant death if it gets destroyed.

[General Taskeen]

Go to 0:53 for 4 MG's legging a Madcat. Good stuff, ya know, when an MG does actual damage in a MW game. Notice how fast they go through 800 rounds of ammunition in just a couple seconds. Its balanced by incredibly short range, low ammo, and a cool down, but does actually decent damage (.2 per bullet, with 0.625 CD).

[PANZERBUNNY]

Back when knocking one leg off takes you out of the battle. So glad they stayed away from that in this.

Ryebear, on 03 March 2013 - 10:20 AM, said:

The biggest problem for me is Flamers and MGs don't do real dmg, and there is no in game penalty to losing your engine to crits. That mean's with a cored CT you can't finish someone off with MGs, because even if you destroy the "engine" component, the player is fully functional and can just blast you in the face while you wait to kill him with a real gun.

Give engines higher than normal health, but make it an instant death if it gets destroyed.

We can hope engine crits reduce your mechs speed and default heat sinks dramatically....in the future.

[Dark Baron]

Sifright, on 03 March 2013 - 09:23 AM, said:

Thats a fair point, compared to eve online this game isn't math heavy at all. Working in transversal to accuracy and everything else is just bluh with out spreadsheets to do it for you.

point still stands that many of the problems are obvious if you spend any time looking.



Dps is damage per second..


If it had a DPS of 1

it would be less than an AC/2 which has a dps of 4.

edit: also unnnghhhhh people not knowing what dps means should educate them selves as to what they are saying.... :|

MG does 0.04 damage a shot bumping that to 0.12 or 0.08 isn't going to suddenly make it magically beat out all the other weapon systems.

I know exactly what dps is tyvm. I didn't say if they increased it's dps to one, I said if they increased it's damage to one per round. I assumed you understood that since the MG fires off 10 rounds per second, increasing it's damage to one per round would give it a dps of 10. Sorry next time I'll try to break my post down into the minutest levels of stupid.

Edited by Dark Baron, 04 March 2013 - 01:50 AM.

[aptest]

Bitslizer, on 14 January 2013 - 02:22 PM, said:

its not general damage buff, its big damage buff when you land a critical hit only.

FYI if MWO follow TT, there's a 41.67% chance of landing 1 or more critical hit on any internal hits

however unlike TT, MWO components have HP and the HP must be reduce to 0 via critical hit before the component is destroy

that's actually the main issue.

MGs may be able to damage a component through critting, but they don't do enough damage to actually bring the component down.

a single MG round does 0.5 damage to components (separate from it's 0.04 damage per round to internal structure). with 10 shots per second and a 39%/28%/6% chance to deal 1/2/3 crits, it will hit a component approx 3.9+2.8*2+6*3=27.5 times, dealing 13.75 damage per second, evenly divided across all damagable crit slots.

this sounds good in theory, but in practice an opponent may:
1. not have destructible components in the injured spot.
2. you don't get enough time on target to do a full second's worth of damage
3. have multiple items in that section and the damage is divided in such a way that components don't take enough focused damage to be destroyed.

these three issues combined mitigate so much damage that the idea of a MG as a coup de grace "crit seeker" weapon cannot be reliably used. The idea can still work if the MG gets the damage buff done to structure, rather than just to criticals

[Sephlock]

Give flamers a chance to cause ammo cookoff and give MGs a chance to get through armor crits (say they're using special ammo or something ).

Yes, that might be too powerful, but they deserve their day in the sun after all this time.

[Sifright]

Dark Baron, on 04 March 2013 - 01:44 AM, said:

I know exactly what dps is tyvm. I didn't say if they increased it's dps to one, I said if they increased it's damage to one per round. I assumed you understood that since the MG fires off 10 rounds per second, increasing it's damage to one per round would give it a dps of 10. Sorry next time I'll try to break my post down into the minutest levels of stupid.

I presumed you were mistaking DPS for the damage it does per round because no one in the history of any where in the forum has asked for such a stupidly large buff.

you know that damage doesn't have to be a whole number right? I'm going to assume you know that which begs the question as to why the hell you think every one asking for the MG to be buffed would mean the minimum they could increment the damage up would be to 1 damage per round of mg fire when most people who have 'run the numbers' are asking for between 0.08 and 0.12 as the damage per shot?

Budor, i'm disappointed you liked his post given the patently obvious straw man argument he was bringing forth in his initial post. I figured it was for more likely and reasonable that he had a misunderstanding of DPS rather than just bringing up a pointless and asinine argument to obfuscate and derail the discussion.

[aniviron]

Not sure which atlases OP is fighting against, but sometimes those internals take as many shots to clean out as the armour did. Willing to at least try MGs.

[Cest7]

I'd like to see an engine being destroyed by crits resulting in death.

[MustrumRidcully]

Double the base damage of Flamers and Machine Guns.
Double their damage again against internal structure and internal components. Triple the Flamers damage against ammo.
That I'd try as a baseline.

I would be very, very careful with increasing the heat effect of Flamers in any other manner. This can get broken very quickly, if Flamers suddenly turn into a "lock-down" weapon. Crowd Control effects are the hardest to balance.
It might help if we had heat penalties. Then, if Flamers would raise the "base level" of heat, without potentially overheating your mech on their own, then Flamers would cause you constant heat penalites, but wouldn't lock you down. But MW:O treats heat more like renawable ammo than what Battletech heat is...

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 04 March 2013 - 04:51 AM.

[3rdworld]

Thus far they have shown no ability to balance the game.

It is unlikely weapons will ever be balanced unless they begin messing with weights. Which they will not do because of caring about stock designs for some asinine reason.

Edited by 3rdworld, 04 March 2013 - 06:07 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

3rdworld, on 04 March 2013 - 06:07 AM, said:

Thus far they have shown no ability to balance the game.

It is unlikely weapons will ever be balanced unless they begin messing with weights. Which they will not do because of caring about stock designs for some asinine reason.

I don't think you need to balance weapons by weight.

But you cannot balance them if you want to keep the weight but dare to change damage per shot of some weapons just because they got a number in their name. An AC/20 doesn't have to deal 20 damage per shot. If you find that difficult to accept, just rename it "Assault Auto-Cannon", and then give it the fire rare, damage per shot, heat per shot, ammo per ton and range to justify its weight.

[Henchman 24]

Insanity wolf says your analysis is full of assumption.

[3rdworld]

MustrumRidcully, on 04 March 2013 - 06:29 AM, said:

I don't think you need to balance weapons by weight.

But you cannot balance them if you want to keep the weight but dare to change damage per shot of some weapons just because they got a number in their name. An AC/20 doesn't have to deal 20 damage per shot. If you find that difficult to accept, just rename it "Assault Auto-Cannon", and then give it the fire rare, damage per shot, heat per shot, ammo per ton and range to justify its weight.

If you are going to change the name, dmg, heat, more or less everything about a weapon. Why not just lower the weight to make it better?

at 6 tons + ammo an AC/2 will likely never be used. But if you dropped the weight to say 2-3tons now you have an excellent backup weapon that can engage an enemy at any range, does decent dps, just lacks pure knockdown. not to mention you might actually see the ballistic lights with a weapon they can use effectively.

[Roland]

Or you could just buff the MG's damage to what it's supposed to be, and make IT useful.

The AC2 already has utility, especially in long range encounters. Light mechs are meant to carry MG's.. it's just that those MG's are supposed to actually do damage against mechs.

[Khobai]

MGs need to do .6-.7 dps to be equivalent to their tabletop counterparts.

[Roland]

Don't they need to do damage that's equivalent to an AC2 in order to be equivalent to their TT counterpart?

[Yokaiko]

Khobai, on 04 March 2013 - 07:15 AM, said:

MGs need to do .6-.7 dps to be equivalent to their tabletop counterparts.

Compared to a Tabletop AC2 (which it does the same damage) that would 4dps in MWO.

I think 1-1.25dps for 100% uptime would be just about right, that would make stacking machine guns a little less laughable. Mainly because lets face it the most you can hang on any mech is four. That would make mechs like the Spider, and the non-3L ravens a bit less of a joke. After that the ammo use/per ton can be played with.

Because somehow I wouldn't fear a x4 MG phract, even at 1.25dps per gun

[Corvus Antaka]

Jade Kitsune, on 14 January 2013 - 02:11 PM, said:

Paul's got an idea here to make MG/Flamers useful beyond their current non-useful position.

Just because you don't like the idea, doesn't mean it's not valid. I mean, frankly, this change would actually warrant me using build ideas that utilize MG's or Flamers as something of a "finisher" weapon, or something to use while cooling down on a hotter build.

There's plenty of options this brings up, is it the perfect solution? Far from it, but let's see where it goes before we knock it yeah?

Exactly. MG & flamer are both "filler" weapons. you take them alongside your big guns, so when the big guns are recycling your wrecking havoc on the enemy with other stuff. imho MG are working just great now, and flamers..well...wait and see