139 replies to this topic

[Davers]

Yeah, the 14/8/3 percentages are added to the regular chance of critting.

[Bhael Fire]

shintakie, on 20 February 2013 - 04:11 PM, said:

you have to hold on target the entire time you fire

Some people refer to that as "aiming."

Honestly I could care less if they buff the MG damage...it'll only make my mechs armed with them even more deadly. But in the meantime I will continue using them to gleefully harass, annoy, and gut exposed internals on any enemy mech I come across.

[Carrioncrows]

Bhael Fire, on 20 February 2013 - 04:19 PM, said:

Some people refer to that as "aiming."

Honestly I could care less if they buff the MG damage...it'll only make my mechs armed with them even more deadly. But in the meantime I will continue using them to gleefully harass, annoy, and gut exposed internals on any enemy mech I come across.

Gratz on the assist while others get the kill.

Or you could slap on some real weapons and help your team out.

Because that's basically what it boils down to. Being that guy that lost it for his team because he's doing circles around someone with machineguns while your team is getting slaughtered in the hopes of getting a component instead of just killing him.

Edited by Carrioncrows, 20 February 2013 - 04:24 PM.

[Caviel]

Bhael Fire, on 20 February 2013 - 04:19 PM, said:

Honestly I could care less if they buff the MG damage...it'll only make my mechs armed with them even more deadly. But in the meantime I will continue using them to gleefully harass, annoy, and gut exposed internals on any enemy mech I come across.

The point was made several times earlier, why take a weapon that does comparatively next to nothing to armor or internals and has better chances of destroying equipment, over any other weapon that can do all three? It's about making the enemy mech go away, not equipment on the enemy mech go away. I would still much rather have another heat sink, ton of ammo, armor, or weapon over carrying a flamer or MG on a mech.

[Azru]

Alright, I haven't served in the military nor have I fired a firearm in my life, but if we look at Battletech machine guns and look at the ammo. We can see that 200 rounds per ton would mean a 10 pound projectile minus the weight for propellant and case.

So yea....Machine guns fire a fairly large round.

[Team Leader]

Caviel, on 20 February 2013 - 04:32 PM, said:

The point was made several times earlier, why take a weapon that does comparatively next to nothing to armor or internals and has better chances of destroying equipment, over any other weapon that can do all three? It's about making the enemy mech go away, not equipment on the enemy mech go away. I would still much rather have another heat sink, ton of ammo, armor, or weapon over carrying a flamer or MG on a mech.

This is pretty much the best argument for a machine gun and flamer buff. There is no reason to take them. Ever. Flames don't raise a targets heat enough to matter at all, MGs don't do damage, and a small laser will take out internals faster.

Edited by Team Leader, 20 February 2013 - 05:08 PM.

[Carrioncrows]

I agree

[ElLocoMarko]

shintakie, on 20 February 2013 - 04:15 PM, said:

Your math is wrong.

Your point is right, but the math isn't.

Please be more specific.

[ElLocoMarko]

Davers, on 20 February 2013 - 04:18 PM, said:

Yeah, the 14/8/3 percentages are added to the regular chance of critting.

Quoters above. Please nuke the numbers and use ellipsis. We don't want misinformation out there that others might think is right.

http://mwomercs.com/...-a-brief-guide/

Ah... there it is "14% increased chance to crit once..."
So let's apply the 14% increase to the crit guide's base of 25%... If they were speaking in proper math terms that would be 25% + (0.14 * 25%) = 28.5%. They don't mean that because it would be trivial.
Let's just add 14% to 25% as Davers indicates above and Thontor indicates below.

So the new 1x/2x/3x crit rates are
39% 1x crit
22% 2x crit
6% 3x crit


So convert those single crits damages to DPS by multiplying by 10 (shots per second)...
33% chance of no crit - 0 DPS crit
39% chance of 5 DPS crit
22% chance of 10 DPS crit
6% chance of 15 DPS crit

So MG DPS versus "internal items" is 5.05 DPS.

That's MUCH BETTER.
The big unknown is if this DPS is applied to internal structure. My guess is no leaving that at 0.4 DPS.

Edited by ElLocoMarko, 21 February 2013 - 09:20 AM.

[shintakie]

ElLocoMarko, on 21 February 2013 - 08:57 AM, said:

Quoters above. Please nuke the numbers and use ellipsis. We don't want misinformation out there that others might think is right.

http://mwomercs.com/...-a-brief-guide/

Ah... there it is "14% increased chance to crit once..."
So let's apply the 14% increase to the crit guide's base of 25%... If they were speaking in proper math terms that would be 25% + (0.14 * 25%) = 28.5%. They don't mean that because it would be trivial.
Let's just add 14% to 25% as Davers indicates above and Thontor indicates below.

So the new 1x/2x/3x crit rates are
39% 1x crit
22% 2x crit
6% 3x crit


So convert those single crits damages to DPS by multiplying by 10 (shots per second)...
33% chance of no crit - 0 DPS crit
39% chance of 5 DPS crit
22% chance of 10 DPS crit
6% chance of 15 DPS crit

So MG DPS versus "internal items" is 5.05 DPS.

That's MUCH BETTER.
The big unknown is if this DPS is applied to internal structure. My guess is no leaving that at 0.4 DPS.

Yep, definitely much better.

And yes, you're also right on the last point. Crits only apply to internal equipment, not to internal structure. With the abysmal normal damage of a MG you will almost 100% of the time (if you can keep on target long enough) wipe out every single piece of equipment in a unarmored section long before you can make that section go orange.

[MustrumRidcully]

Thontor, on 20 February 2013 - 02:03 PM, said:

Stop trying to use them as primary weapons.

And stop comparing them to energy weapons.

They are useful as a secondary or even tertiary weapon to sustain constant fire on exposed internals with no heat consequences... And possibly destroy components a few seconds earlier while your main guns are on cooldown.

Especially on mechs that have multiple ballistic hardpoints in the same location, like the HBK-4G for example.

Kinda hard to "take a medium laser instead" when you only have 3 energy hardpoints which are probably full, yet you likely have two unused ballistic hardpoints.


Also, I wouldn't be surprised if this was just a first step... It was definitely a necessary one, because a straight damage boost would have not been enough... They needed to increase its critical hit damage.

Let me put it in a radical way:
There are no generally primary, secondary or tertiary weapons. There are no primary and no support weapons.

There are only weapons that are worth their weight investment, and those that are not.

Later, when you decide how to allot your weight, crit slot and hard point allotment, then you get "primary" weapons. The weapons you spend the most weight on are your primary weapons.

If you had 12 ballistic slots, then an MG could be your "primary" weapon, because you spend all your weight on MGs and ammo for it. If this is not a viable option, then the weapon is not a viable option. And I am not talking about the magic of boating weapons here - it's just that most mechs are too heavy to consider 2 tons of investment as "primary" weaponry.

[Tyberius Kushrenada]

Ok, I have to ask. Why would MGs doing 2 damage over a 2 second sustained fire at a maximum of 90m be wrong? All the damage would not go to the same section of your target unless they were standing still, but over a short duration you would accually see the armor coming off. Not quickly, but this is a minor weapon. And if your target is standing still (over-heated) they could be a real threat to exposed internal structure. Granted the current "Crit-seeking" option would need to be reduced or removed.

The only other way I could see MGs work, as they are now, would be to give them a "Armor Piercing" ability to bypass armor. Again, the 90m range puts you in range of most Mechs brawling weapons. This leaves the MG user vulnerable to the targets allies.

For Flamers, it would be nice if they added twice the amount of heat that they generate for the user to the target. For example: 1 heat per 10 seconds for user would add 2 heat to the target. I really don't see Flamers as a damage dealing weapon, more of a counter to "High Heat" builds.

I am genuinely curious about the possibilities for MGs, Flamers.

As to LBX-10s, I love them as an armor stripper. I use them on faster Mechs that can circle slower enemies and pry their armor off. I also pair LBXs with SRMs for "shot-gunning" at close range.

Edited by Tyberius Kushrenada, 21 February 2013 - 01:10 PM.

[Roland]

Against a normal component with 10 health, it will take approximately 4 seconds of sustained fire on an unarmored component to generate the critical damage necessary to destroy that component.

And that is only the case if there is only ONE component in that section, and all critical damage hits that single component. If there are more components in the section, it will take even more time as the critical damage will spread over all of them.

People who think that this is useful are mistaken.

[ElLocoMarko]

Of course if the MG gets what most people are asking for "real damage"... that could cause some unique variants to suddenly become useful, perhaps bordering on broken... the 4 ballistic spider.  
A 4 MG spider is currently 1.6 DPS against armor (really lame!)

If we said... well the MG is very short range, so boost it to be 4 DPS like an AC2...
Then you would have an infinitely maneuverable flying mech at 16 DPS with no heat.  It would pulverize all lights and engage and disengage heavies at will till it ran out of ammo.

A little boost.  Yeah, probably.  But not a big one.
Also, if engines eventually get health values then this spider is already 20.2 DPS versus your unarmored engine.  That would be kinda awesome.  I personally hope they never give engines health values because I die fast enough thank you.

But engine destructibility would have influenced me to "fill" extra ballistics hard points with MG on several previous mechs where I left them empty before and just added heat sinks.

Edited by ElLocoMarko, 21 February 2013 - 01:33 PM.

[Roland]

Quote

Then you would have an infinitely maneuverable flying mech at 16 DPS with no heat. It would pulverize all lights and engage and disengage heavies at will till it ran out of ammo.

You'd have a spider, that was able to do fairly limited, extremely spread out damage, at point blank range.

That does not sound OP to me.

[Zeh]

The other day my friend killed 2 Atlases with MG. Seen him kill 2 mechs since then with them as well. And that's out of only maybe 25 matches.

[FupDup]

ElLocoMarko, on 21 February 2013 - 01:17 PM, said:

If we said... well the MG is very short range, so boost it to be 4 DPS like an AC2...
Then you would have an infinitely maneuverable flying mech at 16 DPS with no heat. It would pulverize all lights and engage and disengage heavies at will till it ran out of ammo.

Maybe the 3L would have some competition.

...Note that I am a 3L pilot, the only other mechs I have used other than it are the 4X and 2X, which were only to master my 3L.

[Roland]

Zeh, on 21 February 2013 - 01:23 PM, said:

The other day my friend killed 2 Atlases with MG. Seen him kill 2 mechs since then with them as well. And that's out of only maybe 25 matches.

No dude, you didn't see your friend do this.

You may have seen your friend do the last bit of trivial damage to atlases using machine guns, after other real weapons were used to cripple them.

[Znail]

megoblocks, on 20 February 2013 - 01:35 PM, said:

Wow, you've got this totally wrong. First, for the lb10x, been using 2 of them on an Atlas DC and it's a big improvement.

As for mgs, you guys really should crunch the numbers & save those mgs for when a weak spot opens, and then maybe you'll see just how amazing of a gun it is for a half ton (plus ammo). Crunch the numbers, and with the new increased crit rate, you're looking at about 3 dps for a 1/2 ton, 1 slot gun. Take 2 (like I have on my Trench) and you've got 6 dps for 1 ton (2 if you count ammo). Nothing else compares to that per slot, per ton, and 0 heat. It's not my primary weapon at all (on my Trench, for example, I use 2 MLs and 2 SRM 6s to open them up) but once there's a weak spot, mgs really shine now.

Yiou failed math. It does a wooping 1.33 DPS against an unarmoured target. You failed to consider that while it can do a maximum of 1.5 damage a shot, so does it only have 6% chance of doing so. Thus 1 MGs are only slightly better against unarmoured targets then 1 SL and of course not even close against armour.

PS. I have to retract some earlier posts where I suggested that MG damage should be doubled, but I actually over valued the current damage. It is 0.04 and I thought it was 0.4. It is more like a ~20 times buff is what is needed.

[edit[ My math is a bit off, it is increased chances of critting, so I need to redo it, brb. Fixed.

Edited by Znail, 21 February 2013 - 01:35 PM.

[Splinters]

For MG's their usage is a little more specialized, but I think they have a place now in an organized group where big mechs can open holes and then have the light mechs come in and start critting them like crazy. That 4 MG spider now can make any mech with open torso's feel a bit more nervous.

With crit damage on MG's being up to 12.5x on internals, this is a great fill-in after a SRM volley or a Gauss round opens up a particular location.

-S