298 replies to this topic

[Sifright]

Novawrecker, on 11 February 2013 - 11:30 AM, said:

You're welcome, but don't call your "farting", your laughs. Down right embarassing

You are just so cute!

[Sayyid]

Maverick01, on 05 February 2013 - 06:44 PM, said:

Machine gun range should be changed to 750 meters. This would make the MG great for suppressive fire tactics (although an ammo consumption monster). Furthermore, I would argue the DPS needs to be "slightly" increased to make this weapon viable on the battlefield (yes, all weapons need to be viable in MWO). The developers are taking the wrong approach in balancing this weapon: http://mwomercs.com/...apon-balancing/

For comparison purposes, the light machine gun employed by the U.S. Military is as follows:

M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW)
Effective Range: 800 meters (point target)

Having been a SAW gunner in the army, I cant help but laugh at this post.

First of all the M249SAW is not the same as the MG on the Battlemechs in game. Second of all it wont even scratch the paint of a mech, its a .223 round not a 20mm round.

Just saying that your idea would be great if this were a game based on reality. Because it isnt you will have to except that the M249 SAW is just another infantry weapon in game and wouldnt do anything to a mech.

[Joseph Mallan]

Sayyid, on 11 February 2013 - 11:34 AM, said:

Having been a SAW gunner in the army, I cant help but laugh at this post.

First of all the M249SAW is not the same as the MG on the Battlemechs in game. Second of all it wont even scratch the paint of a mech, its a .223 round not a 20mm round.

Just saying that your idea would be great if this were a game based on reality. Because it isnt you will have to except that the M249 SAW is just another infantry weapon in game and wouldnt do anything to a mech.

Yeah its why I didn't use it as a reference either. Way to small to compare...

[stjobe]

Joseph Mallan, on 11 February 2013 - 11:19 AM, said:

Yes which is why a MG should get 0.8 damage per second with a 0.5 second cool down. Or however it would need to be back to being 2/3 as powerful as a Small Laser per turn. So for instance Small laser does 12 damage in one ten second turn a Machine gun should do 8 damage in one ten second turn. Both need to keep the "beam/stream" on target the same length of time with similar cool down. It's not that hard to balance the two guns!

Joe, why are you stuck on the MG needing to have 2/3rds of the damage of the Small Laser? If it's only because those were the BT values one might just as reasonably say it should have the same DPS as the AC/2 - i.e. 4 damage per second.

But that is patently absurd, of course, and from where I'm standing sticking to the "2/3rds of a Small Laser" is also absurd when the two weapons are so utterly different.

Instant-hit weapons like the other ballistics and the PPC can be compared DPS- and alpha-wise in an easy manner.
Beam-duration-plus-cooldown weapons like the lasers can be compared DPS- and alpha-wise in an easy manner.

But the MG (and flamer) with its continuous-fire mechanic cannot, because it must take that mechanic into account. The MG basically has no alpha. It's ridiculously small (0.04 damage), and the only way it does any damage at all is to point it at a target and keep it there for a long time.

Now even if we were to triple the MGs damage, it still would have a laughably small alpha (0.12 damage), but it would at least make it do some damage if kept on target for some time - however it would still take 15 seconds to do more damage than a single Small Laser.

My fear is that if you go strictly by your "2/3rds of a Small Laser" rule, the MG would end up seriously underpowered, and we would still have no light-weight ballistics option worth taking - and the SDR-5K, CDA-3C, and any other ballistics-dependent lights would still be useless.

That's why I'm arguing for giving it a higher DPS than a Small Laser - it has enough drawbacks that justifies that higher DPS, and real life (or at least real game-play) will more than likely make that higher DPS theoretical only.

[Joseph Mallan]

Novawrecker, on 11 February 2013 - 11:30 AM, said:

You're welcome, but don't call your "farting", your laughs. Down right embarassing

Not quite as embarrassing as having you supporting my side of the debate. Do try to be more mature, before you call someone else's posts embarrassing.

[Joseph Mallan]

stjobe, on 11 February 2013 - 11:38 AM, said:

Joe, why are you stuck on the MG needing to have 2/3rds of the damage of the Small Laser? If it's only because those were the BT values one might just as reasonably say it should have the same DPS as the AC/2 - i.e. 4 damage per second.

I'm trying to stay on topic but the AC2 is way to powerful a ballistic. But that's a different discussion. I compare Machine guns to the Small Laser because they are of equal size and should be of comparable power.

Counting cyclic rates an AC5, Medium Laser & LRM5 all had the same potential damage. Balance was obvious. Since the three weapons have different cyclic rates in the MMO balance was lost. (lets leave the damage increase of LRMs for a different discussion though). TT had balance because at the end of a turn the weapons did the same amount of damage. The 10s did 10 damge per turn, 5s did 5 damage per turn. The damage was balanced, here we have AC2's throwing as much damage per turn as an AC20!

making the question fair StJobe, Why does the machine Gun need to do more damage than that?

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 11 February 2013 - 12:14 PM.

[Joseph Mallan]

stjobe, on 11 February 2013 - 11:38 AM, said:

Joe, why are you stuck on the MG needing to have 2/3rds of the damage of the Small Laser? If it's only because those were the BT values one might just as reasonably say it should have the same DPS as the AC/2 - i.e. 4 damage per second.

But that is patently absurd, of course, and from where I'm standing sticking to the "2/3rds of a Small Laser" is also absurd when the two weapons are so utterly different.

Instant-hit weapons like the other ballistics and the PPC can be compared DPS- and alpha-wise in an easy manner.
Beam-duration-plus-cooldown weapons like the lasers can be compared DPS- and alpha-wise in an easy manner.

But the MG (and flamer) with its continuous-fire mechanic cannot, because it must take that mechanic into account. The MG basically has no alpha. It's ridiculously small (0.04 damage), and the only way it does any damage at all is to point it at a target and keep it there for a long time.

Which is why i can see a 0.8 DpS with the same cool down time of a Small Laser or even a AC2. 20 bursts at 0.8 per bursts=16 damage per turn and since its a spray weapon would still need to stay on target for the full burst. Like a beam weapon.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 11 February 2013 - 12:12 PM.

[stjobe]

Joseph Mallan, on 11 February 2013 - 12:05 PM, said:

making the question fair StJobe, Why does the machine Gun need to do more damage than that?

Turnabout's fair.

We're looking at weapons here that's mostly of interest to light 'mechs - heavier 'mechs have lots more options when it comes to weapons, but light 'mechs don't. Especially not light 'mechs with ballistic hardpoints.

All the other weapon types - lasers, short range missiles, long range missiles - have a light-weight option; some even have more than one. When I talk about light-weight option here, I'm not really talking about classes but weight. Something that can reasonably be put on a light 'mech and be useful. In my mind, that's an individual weapon system under roughly five tons.

With that - admittedly arbitrary - limit, let's look at what weapon systems there are:
Energy: Small Laser, Small Pulse Laser, Medium Laser, Medium Pulse Laser, Large Laser.
Missiles: SRM-2, SSRM-2, SRM-4, SRM-6, LRM-5
Ballistic: MG.

See the difference? There IS no light-weight ballistics option in the game. Yet the MG has always been - and as someone who's played BT for as long as you have, you should know this - the MG has always been a favoured light 'mech weapon. Simply because in BT it did as much damage as an AC/2, or almost as much as a Small Laser.

So that's primarily why I want it to be a viable weapon. Now on to why I believe it needs to have a higher DPS than 2/3rds of the Small Laser: Because that number is theoretical.

The MG has a number of drawbacks the Small Laser does not have:
1. It needs ammo. Without ammo, it's dead weight. When the ammo runs out, it's dead weight. A Small Laser is never dead weight.
2. The ammo comes with the risk of catastrophic system damage in case it gets hit and explodes.
3. It needs to be held on-target for 100% of the time to achieve its DPS, whereas the Small Laser only needs to be held on-target for 25% of the time (0.75s beam duration) to achieve its DPS.

Point 3 there is the main reason I'm convinced the MG will not be overpowered even if its DPS is 20% more than a Small Laser - you still need to hold it on-target four times as long to get there, and I don't foresee many situations where you'll be able to do that; at least not many situations where it would matter.

I'm pretty sure that no larger 'mechs would drop their ACs for MGs if it got buffed to triple current damage, but it would make them viable weapons for the light 'mechs.

Edited by stjobe, 11 February 2013 - 12:34 PM.

[Huntsman]

- the machine gun is a DPS weapon, not a burst damage weapon. Weapons that are for long range tend to benefit more from burst damage for obvious reasons. Therefore extending the range of a (very low damage) DPS weapon is of very little value

- a "slight" damage buff is NOT what is called for. The machine gun needs a DRAMATIC kick in the pants.

- The prospect of improved critical fuctionality is of limited value, particularly to mech variants on the lower end of the tonnage spectrum that have mostly ballistic hardpoints. Extra crits only come into play after the armor of the target is gone, and that is of little use if you don't have the firepower to remove that armor in the first place. Even when you do, how useful is it really to any mech to get a higher crit chance after the target is already half dead?

The devs are really overcomplicating the machine gun. It needs a huge damage increase, and nothing else. Not more range, or a better crit chance. Just give it more damage output; alot more damage output. I just don't get why making the weapon DPS viable is such a problem for them. Are they stuck on the "machine guns are for killing infantry" thing, as if we're playing TT? Did they somehow forget that their game has a hardpoint system so nobody is going to be boating 16 machine guns? Even if they did want to mess with a crit system for the gun, why in all these months have they not just upped the damage as a temporary fix in the interem? That isn't the kind of thing that takes much effort on their part, or is likely to break the game engine, requiring tons of playtesting. I'm really very supportive of this game, but machine guns are the one thing that makes me throw a few "WTF??" at the devs.

Edited by Huntsman, 11 February 2013 - 01:39 PM.

[Oppresor]

I think the main problem with the machine gun array isn't range, but ammunition type. The way to making it a useful weapon is to change the ammo to APDU, something that would actually cause damage, a chainsaw effect. I live in hope that the developers will do something like this, because the machine gun deserves to be so much more than it is at the moment.

I am currently running a machine gun array in tandem with my LBX10 Scattershot for close quarter combat. I think the two weapons complement each other but as above, it would be nice if the machine gun array did a bit more than act as a moral booster.

[Utilyan]

I'm pretty sure the devs are smart about this. If we had a noticable buff that people are wanting, I think it would quickly turn into a whining issue. I think they know this.

My favorite mech right now is a cicada 3c 4mgs and flamer.

With just the buff vs unarmored I think is going to push me from being annoying to dangerous. Do you realley want me to be dangerous?

[Sifright]

Utilyan, on 11 February 2013 - 01:50 PM, said:

I'm pretty sure the devs are smart about this. If we had a noticable buff that people are wanting, I think it would quickly turn into a whining issue. I think they know this.

My favorite mech right now is a cicada 3c 4mgs and flamer.

With just the buff vs unarmored I think is going to push me from being annoying to dangerous. Do you realley want me to be dangerous?

You aren't going to be dangerous.

Even worse you are allowing the enemy team to have a real medium mech. one that can do more than 1.2dps.

Pubs like you who run these builds are why i find pugging to be such a nightmare

edit:

hell you aren't even annoying, if i see a mech with a load out like yours in game currently I chuckle and choose a target that can actually do anything.

Edited by Sifright, 11 February 2013 - 01:58 PM.

[Huntsman]

Sifright, on 11 February 2013 - 01:55 PM, said:

You aren't going to be dangerous.

Even worse you are allowing the enemy team to have a real medium mech. one that can do more than 1.2dps.

Pubs like you who run these builds are why i find pugging to be such a nightmare

edit:

hell you aren't even annoying, if i see a mech with a load out like yours in game currently I chuckle and choose a target that can actually do anything.

Beat me to it. Larger text to accentuate my feelings on the matter.

Edited by Huntsman, 11 February 2013 - 02:01 PM.

[Novawrecker]

Sifright, on 11 February 2013 - 11:34 AM, said:

You are just so cute!

HEY! I thought we said we're keeping that between the two of us! Keep that up Mr, and you're cut off

Joseph Mallan, on 11 February 2013 - 11:42 AM, said:

Not quite as embarrassing as having you supporting my side of the debate. Do try to be more mature, before you call someone else's posts embarrassing.

You were posting?

Edited by Novawrecker, 11 February 2013 - 02:02 PM.

[Sifright]

Huntsman, on 11 February 2013 - 01:59 PM, said:

[/b]

Beat me to it. Larger text to accentuate my feelings on the matter.

I find it to be more problematic to have a player like that on my own team.

Mainly because they have a tendancy to stand right up close to the mech im trying to blast and block my shot :\

[Joseph Mallan]

stjobe, on 11 February 2013 - 12:33 PM, said:

Turnabout's fair.

We're looking at weapons here that's mostly of interest to light 'mechs - heavier 'mechs have lots more options when it comes to weapons, but light 'mechs don't. Especially not light 'mechs with ballistic hardpoints.

All the other weapon types - lasers, short range missiles, long range missiles - have a light-weight option; some even have more than one. When I talk about light-weight option here, I'm not really talking about classes but weight. Something that can reasonably be put on a light 'mech and be useful. In my mind, that's an individual weapon system under roughly five tons.

With that - admittedly arbitrary - limit, let's look at what weapon systems there are:
Energy: Small Laser, Small Pulse Laser, Medium Laser, Medium Pulse Laser, Large Laser.
Missiles: SRM-2, SSRM-2, SRM-4, SRM-6, LRM-5
Ballistic: MG.

See the difference? There IS no light-weight ballistics option in the game. Yet the MG has always been - and as someone who's played BT for as long as you have, you should know this - the MG has always been a favoured light 'mech weapon. Simply because in BT it did as much damage as an AC/2, or almost as much as a Small Laser.

So that's primarily why I want it to be a viable weapon. Now on to why I believe it needs to have a higher DPS than 2/3rds of the Small Laser: Because that number is theoretical.

The MG has a number of drawbacks the Small Laser does not have:
1. It needs ammo. Without ammo, it's dead weight. When the ammo runs out, it's dead weight. A Small Laser is never dead weight.
2. The ammo comes with the risk of catastrophic system damage in case it gets hit and explodes.
3. It needs to be held on-target for 100% of the time to achieve its DPS, whereas the Small Laser only needs to be held on-target for 25% of the time (0.75s beam duration) to achieve its DPS.

Point 3 there is the main reason I'm convinced the MG will not be overpowered even if its DPS is 20% more than a Small Laser - you still need to hold it on-target four times as long to get there, and I don't foresee many situations where you'll be able to do that; at least not many situations where it would matter.

I'm pretty sure that no larger 'mechs would drop their ACs for MGs if it got buffed to triple current damage, but it would make them viable weapons for the light 'mechs.

Thank you for the well thought out answer!

The only point I will make is for 25 years of TT play, I never fielded a single MG. Even my Piranha had Small Lasers and Dubs.

I'm still of a mind that since a MG does damage over time, Giving it a 0.4 DpS boost(0.8 DpS) and something in the line of a AC2 cool down time(20 bursts per turn). Most Dakka fans would be happy. You are looking at 16 damage per turn from a 0.5 ton weapon. or 48 damage per turn for 3 MGs Thats 1.5 tons doing comparable damage to a 6 ton AC2!!!

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 11 February 2013 - 02:25 PM.

[ConnorSinclair]

Sayyid, on 11 February 2013 - 11:34 AM, said:

Having been a SAW gunner in the army, I cant help but laugh at this post.

First of all the M249SAW is not the same as the MG on the Battlemechs in game. Second of all it wont even scratch the paint of a mech, its a .223 round not a 20mm round.

Just saying that your idea would be great if this were a game based on reality. Because it isnt you will have to except that the M249 SAW is just another infantry weapon in game and wouldnt do anything to a mech.

>.223

>Not using the Beefier 7.62 with A131

Joseph Mallan, on 11 February 2013 - 05:53 AM, said:

A tantrum depends on what voice you read it with. One that is just calmly stating my point will change the tone you are perceiving.

in TT you also fire 1 of 2000 rounds with a machine gun per turn. I am looking at the machine gun as it is in the MMO not TT. The Machine gun in the MMO is only slightly under powered for its size and ammo per ton. Personally i am surprised the rounds are one pound a piece! But 2 26+ pound AC Shells should do significantly more damage than 10 1 pound bullets.

28 years of playing this game and you couldn't get the ancient rules right, go home old man.

[Joseph Mallan]

ConnorSinclair, on 11 February 2013 - 02:10 PM, said:

>.223

>Not using the Beefier 7.62 with A131




28 years of playing this game and you couldn't get the ancient rules right, go home old man.

Sorry the words are small and fuzzy... What are you trying to say?

a 50 cal would be my idea of what a Mech MG would be. so about 12.7x 99mm NATO

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 11 February 2013 - 02:22 PM.

[Sifright]

Joseph Mallan, on 11 February 2013 - 02:16 PM, said:

Sorry the words are small and fuzzy... What are you trying to say?

a 50 cal would be my idea of what a Mech MG would be. so about 12.7x 99mm NATO

but they specifically call the mg a 20MM auto cannon.

[Joseph Mallan]

Sifright, on 11 February 2013 - 02:28 PM, said:

but they specifically call the mg a 20MM auto cannon.

Who did? Where?
Machine Gun

TechManual calls the Machine Gun, "the quintessential Anti-Infantry Weapon".

And 20mm is where ACs begin in real life not MW or CBT.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 11 February 2013 - 03:03 PM.