The Machine Gun Debate

In the past couple of weeks (or years) we have witnessed countless discussions about the Machine Gun and the issues with its behaviour.

Since the public servers mostly run InstaCTF, this is pretty much a topic that only concerns the (more) competitive community.

So let’s discuss what we like/dislike about the Machine Gun (abbr. mg) and how we could possibly make it better.

Note: The results of this debate will be presented to the developer(s). Feel free to leave a note with your opinion in #sauercom, query SauerCom, or drop a comment below.


Please consider the following suggestions when commenting:

  • No anonymous posts in serious discussions. Use your name to give your statement more value.
  • If you agree with someone, don’t be shy and give him a +1 comment. The comment section is spacious enough.
  • Stay on topic.

17 Comments

  1. Acuerta

    One issue that has reached a certain level of consensus among competitive players is the spread of the mg. The basic implementation of the weapon is that the spread is random and increases as the distance gets higher. This means that although your tracking aim may be perfect at times, the outcome will not necessarily reflect your skill. Sometimes you have perfect aim but don't hit anything

    Reply
    1. swatllama

      That doesn't tell me much. How much do you want it reduced by? Do you want that cone thing waffles suggested last night where it increases after a few shots? Are there any MG's in other games that are comparable to what you are thinking?

      Reply
    1. notas

      I was talking to waffles about a model that's somewhere in between the two you suggest, although i'm not sure how much recoil factors in. A spread that increases as the mouse is held down, but caps out relatively low – that way the MG can still be used like a lightning gun at close-midrange, with burst fire as an option for hitting farther away or more consistently. As with almost all

      Reply
    2. Vanquish

      Yeah it doesn't sound like recoil would be present in the type of system you're suggesting, which isn't necessarily a problem. Adaptive spread would be a nice way to balance things out – as I mentioned in my post, as long as you're able to control something it's not going to be detrimental to the gameplay (it's the randomness that fucks you over that we want to mitigate).

      Reply
  2. Ace

    Some numbers to compare:<br /><br />Maximum damage per second:<br /><br />Rifle – 67 DPS<br />Pistol – 70 DPS<br />Grenades – 140 DPS<br />Shotgun – 143 DPS<br />Rocket – 150 DPS<br />Machine Gun – 300 DPS<br /><br />Maximum damage from one ammo pickup:<br /><br />Rifle – 500 damage<br />Rockets – 600 damage<br />Machine Gun – 600 damage<br />Grenades – 700 damage<br />Pistol – 1050 damage<br />

    Reply
    1. Ace

      I think these numbers suggest that MG&#39;s reload time is a bigger issue than its damage. Decreasing the reload time from 0.1 seconds to 0.2 seconds would bring the MG&#39;s DPS down to 150, which still makes it the most consistently powerful weapon but not as obscenely overpowered. If you wanted to decrease or eliminate the spread (or change something else other than damage/reload time), I

      Reply
    2. notas

      I&#39;m addressing a well presented well thought out opinion with my quick thoughts, but i think its worth noting that sauer rockets have started to become refined enough to solve the midrange issue somewhat, at least in certain scenarios. Decreasing MG spread and damage is the second step to this solution, but i don&#39;t think we need to give it weird reload time – just lower its damage per

      Reply
    3. swatllama

      I like the idea of having 20 damage, but not the .2 second reload time. That would feel a lot different and easily make the mg underpowered by itself for midranged combat (as for close range, you could do combos you mentioned.<br /><br />Spawning with 1/3 max ammo is a fine choice, combats the high DPS well. Even with an altered MG that should be sufficient ammo for a good player to get a kill

      Reply
    4. Saiga

      I agree with notas and swat that increasing the reload time would be bad. Fast combos are my favorite thing about effic, and they would kind of be ruined by that change (granted I haven&#39;t played 1/20th the effic everyone else in this thread has).

      Reply
    5. ETERNALSOLSTICE

      Actually the first shot is instantaneous, so it take 1.5 sec to kill and opponent with a rifle, and 0.8 sec + time to rocket to hit a target to make a kill with rockets. Also rockets and rifles allow to make kind of free damage, e.g. you can shot and hide with it. So making 2-3 kills in row is normal for rockets/rifle. On the other had mg requires tracking, and very few can get 30% mg accuracy in

      Reply
  3. SauerCom

    Apparently there are some issues when it comes to commenting. The problems are not on our end, so no idea what&#39;s causing that.<br /><br />Commenting with Firefox does seem to work though.

    Reply
  4. Saiga

    Riot, the biggest e-sports company in the world, clearly believes that RNG is not a healthy gameplay mechanic. They have been systematically removing RNG from League of Legends, though have not yet been able to do so entirely. Therefore, reducing RNG in Sauerbraten would be inline with current trends in the industry.<br /><br />Reducing the spread and decreasing the damage would be effective at

    Reply
  5. Waffles

    Some very solid points made here so far. In my (limited) experience with game balance, I&#39;d like to see a fix implemented that would not eliminate spread, but make it far more controllable. <br /><br />To make the gun effective for it&#39;s intent, you could have the first few bullets (depending on the gun&#39;s damage) have very limited spread. After those first few bullets, spread would

    Reply
  6. ETERNALSOLSTICE

    Another comment, i&#39;ve tried to publish earlier motivated by lots of &quot;cool balancing&quot; ideas (which are ultimately very bad) in this tread.<br /><br />Well excluding randomness from the game is a good idea, but it is pointless to discuss only one mg. Nothing good can be done about mg without focusing on overal balance of the game, which also includes other weapons, movement physics

    Reply
  7. ETERNALSOLSTICE

    And actually there is an easy way to &quot;fix&quot; the mg without rebalancing anything. Is just making consistent mg damage weighted by the hit probability. So now every mg shot will be fair. The only drawback is mg knock back, which requires some fixes, like completely absent on low damage bullets and strong on high ones (and btw self knock back on the ground is not a very good thing). The

    Reply

Leave a Reply to notas Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published.