Novawrecker, on 06 February 2013 - 03:13 AM, said:
Ah this debate again ...
Reminder:
Small laser - 3 damage, 2 heat, 2.25 sec cooldown (balanced for a .5 ton weapon).
Unlike the MG which has 0 heat and virtually 0 cooldown. And you still want it to do more damage, or are you still blind to the making it broken by increasing it's damage with out changing it's coolddown/heat ratio?
The fact that they are increasing it's damage multiple when critting is more than sufficient.
A small laser does 3 damage over .75 seconds followed by a cooldown of 2.25 seconds.
An MG does .4 damage over 1 second with no cooldown.
Since short-range weapons are best used on fast mechs, and fast mechs do best with high burst damage loadouts the MG is completely worthless for damage.
I have been nearly cored through the rear in a cataphract, then chased around for a good 30seconds by a 4MG spider without being killed because the dmg is so pathetic, then I turned around and blasted him until he went away.
MGs are terrible because you need to hold them on target for longer to do less damage compared to small lasers. Even if MGs got a 3x damage buff (1.2dmg/second) you would still need to hold an MG on target for 2.5 seconds to do damage equivalent to a small laser on target for .75 seconds.
If you're using small lasers/MGs heat isn't an issue since (unless you're stoooooopid) you're doing it on a small fast mech, which has about 19-20 heatsinks (with DHS), and only 4-6 weapon hardpoints.