13 replies to this topic

[WolvesX]

Did you know that in TT an MG and a AC2 had the SAME damage?

I would love if the MG would like some kind of a AC2 with slighty less DPS but a max range of 90.

MG = 0.4 DPS
AC2 = 4 DPS

Edited by WolvesX, 27 January 2013 - 07:53 AM.

[Adridos]

So you want MGs to do the damage equal to that of a gauss rifle in a 0.5 ton manner?

[Xenosphobatic]

M A L I C E, on 27 January 2013 - 07:54 AM, said:

Perfectly balanced if it only does it out to 90m-180m.

Doubly so since it's spread damage and not point damage.

Nails it. The AC/2 has a range of up to 720m versus the MG's range of 90. So, you trade off extreme range for extremely low weight. Seems fair.

[Lukoi Banacek]

I vote no. Human accuracy, coordination and reflexes in this game would make this proposal op to the extreme imo. TT rules are a great point of departure but not a game building bible.

[Lukoi Banacek]

P.s. Im looking forward to seeing the crit buff the mg are allegedly receiving before the devs tinker with damage as well.

[Xenosphobatic]

M A L I C E, on 27 January 2013 - 07:59 AM, said:

AC2 actual reaches all the way out to 1600m.

SHHHHH!!!! Don't tell anyone!

[MuonNeutrino]

There are two problems with simply buffing MG damage by a factor of ten: the spider-5k and cicada-3c. I don't care *how* short of a range they have, no mech should ever had the ability to put out 16 DPS with zero heat for the investment of only 4 tons and 6 critical slots, especially if they also run at 120+ kph.

My own personal preference would be to double the base damage of machine guns, and then bend the timeline a bit to introduce MG arrays 18 years early. Looking at sarna, it looks like a MG array just adds a half ton to the MGs that make it up, so I'd set a MG array at 2 tons and 2 crit slots (give it a slight break on the crits because 3 is just too much). This gives MGs a dps of 0.8, which is still bad but only half as bad, and also fills a very big hole by introducing a worthwhile ballistic weapon in between the featherweight MG and the "lightweight"-only-in-comparison-to-its-bigger-siblings AC2. At 2.4 DPS and 90m range the MG array won't be displacing autocannons on heavier mechs which are limited more by hardpoints than tonnage, but it gives light and medium mechs that otherwise struggle to use their ballistic hardpoints something worthwhile to mount.

MGs might still be slightly weak, and MGAs slightly too strong, at those numbers. If so, for further tweaks I'd buff the range of MGs (but *not* MGAs), and give MGAs a relatively small but still noticeable heat buildup (~0.5 heat per second?).

[Dr Killinger]

Lukoi, on 27 January 2013 - 08:02 AM, said:

I vote no. Human accuracy, coordination and reflexes in this game would make this proposal op to the extreme imo. TT rules are a great point of departure but not a game building bible.

This man gets it. Someone will take 4 of them, and with accuracy way higher than in tabletop, the tabletop values will be totally overpowered. It's stupidly easy to get within 90m in this game.
TBH, I don't know why people want the machine gun to be some weapon of doom. "It's in the game" is not a good reason- every game has less-than-viable powers/weapons/units. We need them in the game because some stock loadouts have them, and beyond that, I think they need a minor buff, and I think it would be silly and broken to make them be on par (or anywhere near) a Gauss rifle.

Edited by Dr Killinger, 27 January 2013 - 08:37 AM.

[Xenosphobatic]

Dr Killinger, on 27 January 2013 - 08:37 AM, said:

I think it would be silly and broken to make them be on par (or anywhere near) a Gauss rifle.

No one is talking about making them a Gauss rifle replacement. This is more about having a viable, low weight ballistic weapon for mediums/lights. As they are now, they're more of a waste of half a ton than anything else. Throw something out there as an alternative. Someone suggested Machine Gun Arrays, at a higher weight than just regular machine guns, but less weight than the smallest autocannon. Throw some heat on that, and that'd be a great addition.

MuonNeutrino, on 27 January 2013 - 08:22 AM, said:

MGs might still be slightly weak, and MGAs slightly too strong, at those numbers. If so, for further tweaks I'd buff the range of MGs (but *not* MGAs), and give MGAs a relatively small but still noticeable heat buildup (~0.5 heat per second?).

I don't see a problem with having a heatscale on the regular Machine Guns, albeit less than say the AC2, if the damage is increased.

Edited by Xenosphobatic, 27 January 2013 - 08:44 AM.

[sycocys]

Machine guns are fairly useful in packs already if you just use them properly. Open up their outside layer with missiles and/or lasers and stack up some machine guns right into their internals now that your hot from power strikes. You'll rip right through them.

[Critical Fumble]

Funny point - 4 dps out of an MG is not at all the same thing as 4 dps out of an A/C 10.

Using an A/C 10 goes: Aim - fire - reload - repeat; taking extra time to aim reduces your dps, but not by much seeing as you have 2.5 seconds between shots. Meanwhile there is no appreciable reload of MGs, so to get close to max dps you have to be inside 90 meters and always have the target under your crosshairs. It could be too powerful, but ironically only against large, slow mechs. However, if the MG's dps is set to something fair for big, slow mechs, it will still be under powered against the small fast ones.

My only hope for a fair MG involves giving it a burst fire mechanic like a laser.

[MuonNeutrino]

sycocys, on 27 January 2013 - 08:49 AM, said:

Machine guns are fairly useful in packs already if you just use them properly. Open up their outside layer with missiles and/or lasers and stack up some machine guns right into their internals now that your hot from power strikes. You'll rip right through them.

No. This reflects a misunderstanding of how machine guns and critical hits work in this game. In TT a single crit from anything knocks out a component, but in MWO components have HP that must be depleted before the component is destroyed. At the moment everything has 10 HP, except engines (15) and gauss rifles (3). When hitting internals, a weapon can randomly crit once, twice, or three times, for its listed damage to a random component.. That means that even if a MG were to have a 100% crit rate, always critted 3 times, and always hit the same component (instead of a random one), it would still take 84 bullets, or 8.4 seconds of firing, to knock out just one component. Given that they don't crit 100%, don't always triple crit, and spread their crits over every component in the section, they're actually probably the worst weapon in the entire game at taking out components. And as far as regular internal structure damage goes, machine guns do the exact same anemic damage to it as they do to armor, so there's no advantage there.

[Critical Fumble]

MuonNeutrino, on 27 January 2013 - 09:06 AM, said:

No. This reflects a misunderstanding of how machine guns and critical hits work in this game. In TT a single crit from anything knocks out a component, but in MWO components have HP that must be depleted before the component is destroyed. At the moment everything has 10 HP, except engines (15) and gauss rifles (3). When hitting internals, a weapon can randomly crit once, twice, or three times, for its listed damage to a random component.. That means that even if a MG were to have a 100% crit rate, always critted 3 times, and always hit the same component (instead of a random one), it would still take 84 bullets, or 8.4 seconds of firing, to knock out just one component. Given that they don't crit 100%, don't always triple crit, and spread their crits over every component in the section, they're actually probably the worst weapon in the entire game at taking out components. And as far as regular internal structure damage goes, machine guns do the exact same anemic damage to it as they do to armor, so there's no advantage there.

Adding to that.

Calling them "crit seekers" because they cause a lot of hits and therefore have a higher chance of scoring crits does not make them unique. Laser weapons do basically the same thing, as their damage is spread over the beam duration in ~0.1 second intervals.

[General Taskeen]

And again I will drop this here for the useful MW3 MG that did damage:

http://www.youtube.c...2eiMsYh40#t=46s