298 replies to this topic

[Novawrecker]

stjobe, on 07 February 2013 - 08:38 AM, said:

Yes. You're quite right, four MGs at 1.2 DPS would be close to medium laser damage.

FOUR MGs would be close to a SINGLE medium laser.

At triple the weight, the need to constantly keep it on-target, ammo dependency, the risk of ammo explosion, and shorter range.

I'm sorry, I can't really do anything but shake my head in astonishment at anyone claiming that's overpowered.

The problem isn't that, at your proposed damage increase, it does very close to a medium laser in damage, it is that is does this damage every second for 0 heat. It would have already suprassed sustained med laser damage. Heck, at those figures it surpases Gauss damage and puts it 0.8 damage shy from matching an AC20's damage. All that from a mere 3 tons (counted at least 1 ton of ammo)

Still don't see the bigger puzzle?

Edited by Novawrecker, 07 February 2013 - 11:09 AM.

[stjobe]

Joseph Mallan, on 07 February 2013 - 10:15 AM, said:

St.jobe, It is the Small AC. making the MG 0.8 with no heat... no I don't roll with it. the .66(.7) DPS makes it as weak as it should be compared to the small laser.

As I've argued repeatedly elsewhere, 0.66 DPS makes it much, much weaker than it should be compared to the Small Laser.

[Corvus Antaka]

pffft. real world. You know your piloting a mech right?

[stjobe]

Novawrecker, on 07 February 2013 - 10:54 AM, said:

The problem isn't that it does very close to a medium laser in damage, it is that is does this damage every second for 0 heat. It would already suprass sustained med laser damage, heck at those figures it surpases Gauss damage and puts it 0.8 damage shy from matching an AC20's damage. All that from a mere 3 tons (counted at least 1 ton of ammo)

Still don't see the bigger puzzle?

Here's the bigger picture:

Take four Small Lasers.
Fire them for 10 seconds.
Observe them doing 48 damage.

Scratch your head and wonder why you're so worried about a MG doing that amount of damage with ammo dependency, risk of ammo explosion, worse range, and a need to be on-target for 100% of those 10 seconds as opposed to the Small Laser which only needs to be on-target for 3 seconds out of the 10.

[Corbon Zackery]

The MG in Battletech is about the size of a 50 cal mg. Its used for infantry suppression and urban combat. You have to understand that at 750 meters you lose a lot of velocity and the bullets spread out to a point that one or 2 rounds are not going to do any dmg to a 25ton to 100 ton mech.

At 90m your getting a tight enough patteren to do some dmg. I could shoot a M1A1 with a 50cal all day but its not going to drop a mech.

Battletech tabletop
3 hex range
2 points of dmg weapon

Mechwarrior online doesn't give you the whole picture of the battletech game. In the table top game there are tanks, helo, infantry, APC, fixed emplacements, Long Tom artillery, areo space fighters, faster than monkey poop hovercraft.

The game just opens the door really.

So a spider with 4mg and a flamer is a awsome mech in urban combat were you have infantry on the 2nd floor of a building with laser rifles or SRM launchers.

[Novawrecker]

stjobe, on 07 February 2013 - 11:14 AM, said:

Here's the bigger picture:

Take four Small Lasers.
Fire them for 10 seconds.
Observe them doing 48 damage.

Scratch your head and wonder why you're so worried about a MG doing that amount of damage with ammo dependency, risk of ammo explosion, worse range, and a need to be on-target for 100% of those 10 seconds as opposed to the Small Laser which only needs to be on-target for 3 seconds out of the 10.

Except that small lasers have both a cooldown and heat generation to balance them out. Your triple-damaged increased MG does not. Scratch your head for a change and realize that triple damage is too much. I am not in disagreement with you that the MG does need a damage increase, but triple is too much and will be abused.

[John Norad]

"Effective Range: 800 meters"
Yes, against humans. What's the effective range against tanks?

Apart from that, pretty much all ranges in BT are scaled down to 1/10th to make it playable on a tabletop (you know, so that you don't need 100 map sheets and a small football field to play..).
It's a game ffs.
Why do people feel the need to argue over what's realistic in a game? I'd really like to have that much free time and no clue what to do with it.

[MustrumRidcully]

Novawrecker, on 07 February 2013 - 11:25 AM, said:

Except that small lasers have both a cooldown and heat generation to balance them out. Your triple-damaged increased MG does not. Scratch your head for a change and realize that triple damage is too much. I am not in disagreement with you that the MG does need a damage increase, but triple is too much and will be abused.

You know how much damage a Small Laser does in 7 seconds?
0 Seconds: Fire for 0.75 seconds: 3 damage.
0.75 Seconds: Cooldown 2.25 seconds:
3 Second: Fire for 0.75 seconds for another 3 damage, total of 6.
3.75: COoldown for 2.25 seconds:
6 seconds: Fire for 0.75 second for another 3 damage, total of 9 damage.
6.75 seconds: Cooldown for 2.25 seconds.
Final Damage after 7 seconds: 9 damage.

A theoretical 1 DPS MG in the same time would deal 0.61 damage.
0 seconds: Deal 0.1 damage, then cooldown for 0.1 seconds: Total Damage 0.1
0.1 seconds: Deal 0.1 damage, then cooldown for 0.1 seconds: TOtal Damage 0.2
0.2 seconds: Deal 0.1 damage, then cooldown for 0.1 seconds: TOtal Damage 0.3
...
6 seconds: Deal 0.1 damage, thne cooldown: Total 6.1 damage.

Despite both weapons having the same DPS, over a short time perod, the small laser still managed to inflict 50 % more damage.

SO you really need to engineer a situation where you fire for something like 15 seconds continously at the same target for the MG to actually deliver the same damage as the small laser.

Every 3 second window in which neither weapons fire, the MG will lose any of its DPS advantage.


You can see the same problem on al arger scale as well. The AC/2 has an impressive DPS of 4. THe Gauss Rifle only has a DPS of 3.75.
But after 5 seconds, who has dealt the most damage? The Gauss RIfle will have fired 2 shots, for a total of 30 damage. The AC/2 in the same time will have fired 11 shots, for a total of 22 damage. Despite the Gauss Rifle actually having the lower DPS, it has dealt more damage than the AC/2 over the same timeframe - its secret advantage being that it deals all its damage up front.

I think sometimes it might be better to use DPS over 10 seconds or something like that as a comparison value for weapons. Because you rarely will be able to fire non-stop for 20 or 30 seconds. 10 seconds is already a good figure, in that time, someone can have already done a torso twist, or moved out of your firing arc.

[Sifright]

Novawrecker, on 07 February 2013 - 11:25 AM, said:

Except that small lasers have both a cooldown and heat generation to balance them out. Your triple-damaged increased MG does not. Scratch your head for a change and realize that triple damage is too much. I am not in disagreement with you that the MG does need a damage increase, but triple is too much and will be abused.

no you are wrong.

The small laser does all its damage in a quick burst.

The MG requires you to hold on target.

everything else you have said is rubbish.

[Karl Split]

hahahahah

No

[Gaan Cathal]

Corbon Zackery, on 07 February 2013 - 11:22 AM, said:

The MG in Battletech is about the size of a 50 cal mg.

And here go the RL comparisons again ... you are wrong. It is a half-ton 20mm rotary 'machine' gun according to the examples on Sarna. A Vulcan or GAU is a half-ton 20mm rotary autocannon. Under modern definitions, before anyone brings this up, the BT 'machine gun' would be classified as an autocannon since the rounds exceed 12mm in caliber.

Now enough with the ******* RL comparisons, especially when they're wrong.

Novawrecker, on 07 February 2013 - 11:25 AM, said:

Except that small lasers have both a cooldown and heat generation to balance them out. Your triple-damaged increased MG does not. Scratch your head for a change and realize that triple damage is too much. I am not in disagreement with you that the MG does need a damage increase, but triple is too much and will be abused.

A cooldown means that the damage is concentrated into a short burst in between each cooldown. That is an advantage. And heat generation ~ ammo dependancy as long as they re-balance the ammo/ton appropriately (which it would need).

[Viper69]

Trying to figure out what that saw would do to a battlemech or any armored vehicle at 750m for that matter. Dont bring real life into a game because I have found it confuses the heck out of you. Otherwise we should have rear view cameras and other nifty things that we dont have a thousand years from now but have currently.

[stjobe]

Novawrecker, on 07 February 2013 - 11:25 AM, said:

Except that small lasers have both a cooldown and heat generation to balance them out. Your triple-damaged increased MG does not. Scratch your head for a change and realize that triple damage is too much. I am not in disagreement with you that the MG does need a damage increase, but triple is too much and will be abused.

I don't see what the cooldown of the SL has to do with anything, except giving the 'mech using them a chance to torso-twist to spread incoming damage, or maneouvre for a better firing position - something the MG-using 'mech cannot do without losing DPS.

Heat generation, yeah, that is a difference. I think the drawbacks the MG has already compensates for that: It needs ammo, runs the risk of ammo explosions, has a shorter range, and needs to be on-target 100% of the time to do its full DPS.

[Joseph Mallan]

stjobe, on 07 February 2013 - 11:14 AM, said:

Here's the bigger picture:

Take four Small Lasers.
Fire them for 10 seconds.
Observe them doing 48 damage.

Scratch your head and wonder why you're so worried about a MG doing that amount of damage with ammo dependency, risk of ammo explosion, worse range, and a need to be on-target for 100% of those 10 seconds as opposed to the Small Laser which only needs to be on-target for 3 seconds out of the 10.

The mistake here is the MG doesn't have a cool down. Machine guns do get hot, But if you fire it properly it won't as they get used in the MMO right now, The Machine gun's barrel would Melt, So give it the same cool down a small laser has, keeping the 2 0.5 ton weapons balanced.

[Gaan Cathal]

Joseph Mallan, on 07 February 2013 - 11:53 AM, said:

The mistake here is the MG doesn't have a cool down. Machine guns do get hot, But if you fire it properly it won't as they get used in the MMO right now, The Machine gun's barrel would Melt, So give it the same cool down a small laser has, keeping the 2 0.5 ton weapons balanced.

On a fluff level, I imagine that's why they're rotary. From an ingame perspective the cooldown on an SLAS is actually an advantage. With a 0.75s beam and a 2.25s cooldown an SLAS only needs to be on-target 25% of the time to do full damage. That's much easier than keeping on-target 100% of the time to do full damage, and allows for defensive torso-twisting.

That said, I wouldn't particularly object to a 'burst' MG if it was deemed a necessary compromise.

[stjobe]

Joseph Mallan, on 07 February 2013 - 11:53 AM, said:

The mistake here is the MG doesn't have a cool down. [weird RL comparison removed] So give it the same cool down a small laser has, keeping the 2 0.5 ton weapons balanced.

Are you proposing to
1. Make the MG fire in 0.75 second burst
2. With a 2.25 second cooldown between bursts
3. Doing 2 damage per burst
4. Still having 0 heat and 2000 ammo/ton
5. And a 90m effective range?

I could live with that, although I don't think it'll ever happen.

[Jakob Knight]

MGs in Battletech are similar to the coaxial MG mounts in modern tanks that are designed against infantry overruning the tank and for unarmored targets where a use of anti-vehicle weapons would be a waste of ammo.

These weapons are not effective against armored vehicles (which is why you have anti-armor weapons on a tank), though they can cause some surface damage if applied long enough.

In MWO, MGs should do absolutely no damage whatsoever to even the lightest armored 'mech (as even a 20-ton 'mech is better armored than most armored vehicles), but the capability for doing damage was included as a nod to the fact that 'Machine Gun' in Battletech covers the range of ballistic automatic weapons reaching from light support arms up to .50 calibur miniguns with armor-penetrating rounds (the level it becomes an Autocannon). Of course, the damage from such weapons in Battletech were set on the basis of that weapon being fired for the same length of time that a PPC (or the longest-recycling weapon in the game) would take to reload for firing.

Thus, if we were to translate it correctly, a MG in MWO should, over the course of time required for a PPC to fire and rearm, do 1/5th the damage of a PPC to a target, in total over constant firing during that time. How many times the MG would fire during this time would divide that damage down to how much damage it should do per shot/firing.

To illustrate, if it takes a PPC (doing 10 points of damage) 4 seconds to fire and then fully recharge, and a MG fires 20 times in that period of time, the damage a MG in MWO should do 10/5 = 2 points of damage, divided by 20, or 0.1 damage per shot. Any more than this, and MGs would be doing more damage than they should.

It is important to realize that MGs are anti-infantry weapons. Anyone who takes them on their battlemech is willingly trading off anti-armor capability for anti-infantry ability, and has no grounds to complain that these weapons are not doing any real damage to armored vehicles.

Finally, remember the ranges in Battletech are -effective- ranges. A MG might be able to throw a round many times past it's effective range, but that round has neglegible chance to hit -and- do more than dent the paint (the same way beam attenuation makes firing a laser past its effective range little better than shining a flashlight on the target) on a combat target.

IMHO, Machine Guns are fine where they are. That they have no place in a combat environment of MWO is the fault of those who decided to include them in the game and those who insist on installing weapons without a purpose in their mechs, not the weapon itself.

Edited by Jakob Knight, 07 February 2013 - 12:15 PM.

[Sifright]

Quote

Models

The Machine Gun is manufactured on the following planets:
Brand Planet Company
Gatling Gun 20mm Ares Quikscell Company
Gatling Gun 20mm Layover Quikscell Company
Gatling Gun 20mm Kalidasa Quikscell Company
Gatling Gun 20mm Gallery Quikscell Company
Armstrong MiniGun Ramora United Outworlders Corporation
Blackwell B75 Outreach Blackwell Heavy Industries
Bulldog Minigun Ingersoll Bulldog Enterprises
Bulldog Minigun Proserpina Bulldog Enterprises
Double-Gun New Avalon Achernar BattleMechs
Coventry Light Autogun Coventry Coventry Metal Works
GM MiniGun Salem General Motors

THE MWO MACHINE GUN IS NOT A .50 CAL.....

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

STOP USING DUMB REAL LIFE EXAMPLES THAT ARE NOT APPLICABLE AND HAVE NO BEARING ON THIS GAME.

Should not be used to justify terrible logic about weapons THAT MUST BE WORKABLE. THE GAME SUFFERS BECAUSE THEY AREN'T.

Edited by Sifright, 07 February 2013 - 12:18 PM.

[Fut]

MustrumRidcully, on 06 February 2013 - 03:18 AM, said:

In MW:O, if you want a crit-seeker weapon, you need to look at a weapon that deals 10 or more damage per hit. That means all Lasers and MGs are out, because they deliver damage in multiple, small packages, instead of one, single blow. PPCs, AC/10s, Gauss Rifles and AC/20s are the best crit-seekers. The next best might be the AC/5 and the Ultra AC/5 (as both have a chance to deal double damage per crit and thus reaching the requisite 10 damage for most components. And even if not - you only need to hit the same component twice to destroy the item, that's much better than needing to hit a component 5 times - AC/2 - or 250 times (MG) ).

Hard to argue with this.

[Gaan Cathal]

Jakob Knight, on 07 February 2013 - 12:12 PM, said:

To illustrate, if it takes a PPC (doing 10 points of damage) 4 seconds to fire and then fully recharge, and a MG fires 20 times in that period of time, the damage a MG in MWO should do 10/5 = 2 points of damage, divided by 20, or 0.1 damage per shot. Any more than this, and MGs would be doing more damage than they should.

Because every other gun in the game does the same damage relative to a PPC recycle as it does in TT?

Jakob Knight, on 07 February 2013 - 12:12 PM, said:

It is important to realize that MGs are anti-infantry weapons. Anyone who takes them on their battlemech is willingly trading off anti-armor capability for anti-infantry ability, and has no grounds to complain that these weapons are not doing any real damage to armored vehicles.

You're right, I'll just slot that 1 or 2 ton ballistic alternative in the ballistic hardpoints on my light me-

Oh wait, that's right.