Hey guys, so I am sure this isn't the first post you have seen about machine guns. To give my overall opinion machine guns are... meh. They have been a fun experiment with my ER LL 4xMG Cicada 3C build but after that I felt that they do not have the punch or that ability to be competitive weapons (in my opinion). However, I have been thinking about a simple way making Machine guns, as a class of weapon, effective in games. Simply put don't change the weapon, change the ammo it carries. Different machine gun ammo could be introduced that provide the player with different ways of utilizing their guns dependent on the situations they plan on using them. Armor Piercing-20mm bullets, slower fire rate, and generates heat but does actual damage to a mechs armor. Ammo weight 1 tons= 1000 rounds Hollow Point- they fragment as they hit the target, higher fire rate, generates some heat (very little by comparison to AP bullets) weight, has a high chance of creating critical damage to a component, 1 ton=2000 rounds Incendiary Ammo- creates heat on the enemy mech (more on exposed armor), moderate rate of fire, generates moderate heat, 1 ton=1500 rounds Standard Ammo- Standard bullets, no heat, highest rate of fire. 1 ton=4000 rounds, Since these are the most basic rounds I would consider giving the player some weight by giving more ammo per ton. Essentially, you are going to pick the ammo you think would best serve the situation you plan on using the weapon. One ammo type per mech, so no mixing and matching ammo. Obviously balance will be somewhat of an issue, but this might be a very simple solution. Just some random musings. I would love to hear some constructive comments on this idea.
well, typically in lore the MG is used as an anti-personnel weapon, not anti-mech weapon. I think they r trying to stick to that but still have the gun in the game. even realistically, a 20mm cannon is very powerful, but not against something as armored as a mech, hence using it to destroy internal components. although later on, there are versions of light/heavy MGs that can and will destroy mechs.
just as a info-bomb, the Bradley(American Troop Transport) comes with a 25mm chain gun. And that thing can easily take out MBT's at 2000meters. However, I like the MG in MWO. They disable weapons very quickly; an AC20 not under armor will go down with about 3 seconds from a MG; as compared to 2 LL shots in the same spot. And they generate no heat, which makes them good for still hitting mechs while you cool off. I would ~however~ like to see different ammo types, simply to add more to the game, but to also keep it more in line with TT. oh, and the in game MG is a .50 BMG round. So the current damage done to mechs is fine with me.
A bigger info bomb. The MG was used for Anti-Mech as well. Hence why it had the same damage as an AC/2, except for little range and no heat. In MW3 it did just that, even the same DPS, because they knew that the MG damaged Mechs from lore and it was awesome to use: b2ZKfHRv0Ao And the MG in MWO or Battle Tech is not a .50 round (the gun itself weighs half a ton, that's almost twice as much as a Gau Cannon). It is a 20-30mm (20x102mm) round, and the gun itself is larger than a man. A man-sized .50 caliber in Battle Tech is this gun, used by Battle Tech infantry and Battle Armor: [img alt=File:Support Machine Gun - TR3026.jpg height=131 width=799]http://www.sarna.net/wiki/images/thumb/6/67/Support_Machine_Gun_-_TR3026.jpg/799px-Support_Machine_Gun_-_TR3026.jpg[/img] As opposed to the huge half ton monster machine guns on Mechs: [img alt=Fileiranha.jpg height=428 width=250]http://www.sarna.net/wiki/images/1/1e/Piranha.jpg[/img]
The Machine Gun is powerful... you just have to know when. Granted, while there is armour it does jackshit and my 3C Cicada, with ERPPC, even loses against a Spider with two MPLas... (that's when the LPLas would be better than the ERPPC, when you fight other lights) HOWEVER, many a shoulder, arm or leg has been claimed by my 4 Machine Guns once the armour was removed. Your job is not to duke out damage... your job is it to crit seek the internals. As such, a MG on a light might actually be a bit less effective unless you are actively escorting heavies and jump out when the brawl is going. But as a tertiary weapon/crit seeker on a Heavy or even an Assault (Misery maybe or with the Gauss on a Highlander), it will be nasty.
Crit Seeking is largely irrelevant and everyone knows it, especially when I can just out right kill things with even Small Lasers all the way up to AC/20's, and a Dev's girlfriend made it up most likely. "Honey, you should put some crit seeking in for your MG, it'll be so cool!" There is a huge discussion already over at the MWO forums. The MW3 MG was superior in that it was directly based on the Battle Tech MG, like its supposed to be. In the end the MWO iteration of the MG currently hurts Mechs that need low tonnage Ballistics in the way a small Mech with only energy hard points can rely on medium or small lasers. There is also some things that people might not be aware of: - The current programmed MG in MWO acts like a laser, even though it is 'using' ammunition, in that as soon as you start firing the Mech doll will start flashing before the bullets reach the target. The bullet animation is actually like a laser in disguise that is always on when holding the trigger, but with a huge cone of fire and severely reduced damage (hence why its so spread out).
Wow great to see some good replies with information! I should have put this as a precursor that my only experience with Battletech Universe besides MWO is Mechwarrior 3 and Mechassualt so please forgive me if my idea does not fall fully in line with the fluff of the game. Secondly, there have been several comments referring the 20mm. Again this was just a random musing, I know little, if anything about actual weapons so forgive my inaccuracies. Clearly I over exaggerated the caliber which may have led to some confusion. Thirdly, again I must clarify, that I am only musing as to how to make machine guns a more viable and perhaps more tactical option in MWO. These are only ideas and spit balling so only take them as such. However, I want to say that my out look in reworking the machine gun is to make it useful in more realistic builds and settings. I don't really consider a 6xMG build on a Jagermech to be a realistic build for most people. More or less I would like to see machine guns useful as a pair, something that seems to be a common theme on many of the new Inner Sphere mechs to be released in October with the Overlord Package. With that, while I have seen some evidence that people feel that the current machine gun is fine, I am open to hearing others ideas. So if someone has some interesting ideas to throw around please extrapolate.
ok...just for clarity here, the 20mm bullet is one of the biggest calibers we make. It's considered a cannon round and also has explosive rounds and anti-armor rounds as well (even an armor piercing-incendiary). This caliber is largely considered exclusively for tanks/planes/ships/vehicles/buildings and the like as the round is so big it's overkill for any human target. Yes this is exactly what type of "machine gun" that is needed to take down a mech or any other highly armored target. Personally, i just figured mechs had better types and quality of armor in the future than what we have now. Also, just for an idea in size, the .50 caliber round is considered the biggest round people use in any basic firearm(shotgun,rifle,handgun) and are still pretty rare at that due to huge size and huge recoil after firing. Also the .50 is equivalent to the 13mm caliber so we can see that its lacking a whole 7mm in size here.basically, The 20mm is damn near twice the size of the largest caliber we can hand fire. M61 Vulcan: 20×102mm (PGU-28/B) M197 Gatling gun: 20×102mm M39 cannon: 20×102mm these are just a few examples of what guns use a 20mm caliber. If you have seen the first predator movie, the giant mini-gun the guy uses in the jungle is just a smaller version of these.
