Why are shield damage numbers higher than neutral damage numbers on the proposed example?

Neither do you apparently or you'd know the Laser Rifle can and have done since Chromosome lock down entire sections of certain maps and kill anything that moves through it.

Oops, I appear to have dropped a spreadsheet on this post.

Have a look. Feel free to cry.

Bear in mind DPS numbers assume zero-loss DPS from dispersion in all cases.

[Then you could safely nerf the current hmg, and maybe heavy defence a bit, safe in the knowledge that heavies also have a long range anti infantry option. Assaults having the ability to compete in built up area combat wouldn't be unfair on heavies, as heavies would have a long range option as well.

To reply to rattati and the others who brought up valid points about heavies, K/S, reps, and logis.

I agree that heavy CQC dominance needs to be adressed. I dont think nerfing the HMG is the way to go about it. Its been modified in several hotfixes, and this hasn't stopped it from being a dominant CQC killer.

After all, CQC is their role, even if you nerf the HMG to 20m range, it will still devastate anybody who gets close. CQC in PC being the way it is, those fights are not happening at 40-50m out, they are happening in and around letters at 20m or less, where the most vicious fights take place. In CQC between the shotgun scouts, remotes, and the heavys, theres very little room for the assaults to fit in.

The minmatar assault is one of the few that can stick and move with the scouts which IMO explains its rise, and the Viziam Scrambler can charge single shot most scouts, can also explain why its use is disproportionatley higher in PC compared to the Pubs.

Another poster here brought up the point, that if its not the HMG, it will be bricked sentinels with the same logis on their butts, using the hardest hitting light weapons.

I ask any members of the hardcore PC community whether you see more heavy spam on the wide open maps or in the closed in city socket maps. Only two PCs that i have been in were in open maps, thats where dropships/scouts were dominant.

Compared to normal skirm, heavies sit on points there as well, but most of the fighting occurs in between points trying to cut off marauding bands of scouts and assaults.

Domination is point defense heavy heaven.

Ambush on open maps heavies get eaten alive. In CQC maps, they eat everybody else alive.

I'll point out that the problem isn't the sentinels - get a bricked Sentinel ak.0 by himself and he's meat - slow, big hitbox, poor regen.

Put him with a Logistics mk.0 and suddenly he's capable of eating you right up. And all your friends.

The HMG K/S is also too high, which is why we are acting on it, if it wasn't, we wouldn't.

No-one ever got a kill with an Amarr commando.

So I have a serious question, and this is not intended to come off in a snide tone.

But in over six months, there have been no less than five serious, well thought threads on addressing HMG dominance in CQC. There has not been a single dev response, nor any indication that these threads have even been reviewed.

In fact there has never been a non-trolling dev response in any similar thread in two years that I have read.

Why?

Further, Sentinels/heavies have been proven more problematic than worthwhile in a balance perspective, so the answer has been "make them even MORE CQC. More of the same thing that has never worked should work now, right?"

Why are Heavies not being repurposed to dedicated AV and area denial?

Area denial is not room by room brawling. Area denial is what you post at the door/gate to keep people OUT of the rooms in the first place.

Sentinel suit's advantages and disatvantages are TEXTBOOK examples of open-ground, area suppression parameters. But they are being crammed into close quarters.

Why?

The only answer anyone has EVER provided is "heavies are cqc." This is a non-answer that holds as much validity as when I say "because :reasons:"

There is no vision for the heavy suit. They were originally billed as the go-to suits for AV and area denial. What we have is a CQC brawler that performs poorly in an AV capacity compared to lighter, more agile AV options (swarms).

So instead of doing more of the same thing, why do we not separate the role of the heavy, which should be a support platform that assists an assault squad, from the assault, which should be the go-to suit for attacking in CQC?

Have you considered that the HMG is simply in massive usage due to the fact that PC map design heavily favors it because every PC battle is a cargo hub where they are the strongest? Heavies on, say, a production facility, typically get wrecked because they are being peppered from everywhere in the open and can't fire back.

As far as pub data would go, its another simple reason. Most people play Domination, where a bunch of people are typically concentrated in one area around a single objective. That is the definition of HMG heaven.

So it seems to me that the weapon itself isn't problematic. Rather, your maps and your overall design around them is problematic. It also doesn't help that current game mechanics allow the fatmen to spawn right next to the action, where again they are strongest. Extreme force projection for a unit who's largest downside is a lack of mobility is simply a bad game design choice. It wasn't your choice, of course, but there it is.

Gimp the HMG any further however, and you're going to have a suit that only does as much appliable damage as one of the rifles but with no mobility, crippled scans, no ability to chase down an enemy, can't be used to really damage enemies behind partial cover unlike rifles, etc etc etc.

Overall, it'll be just a bad weapon. Imo, you need to revamp force projection. Then you're going to find fewer people willing to use the heavy suit as they would actually have to move through exposed areas at a slow pace before they get to be effective.

Ditch uplinks from the game, force people to use mobile CRU's. Put some actual tactical play back into the game rather than make it super-whack-a-mole with the uplinks.

Have you considered that the HMG is simply in massive usage due to the fact that PC map design heavily favors it because every PC battle is a cargo hub where they are the strongest?

As far as pub data would go, its another simple reason. Most people play Domination ...

So it seems to me that the weapon itself isn't problematic.

The concern at the time was how these changes would affect the Heavy/Logi blob. Looking at this data, that concern was well-founded. Imagine if the blob had unbeatable passive scans out to ~30 meters (instead of 10). That is what would've happened had Cat Merc and Zatara's proposal been passed without Rattati's intervention.

Yes, the Range Amp nerf rendered the module useless, but it was a necessary evil. We could fix Range Amps if we found a way to extend upon Middle and Outer Scan Rings while leaving the super-precise inner ring constant. That is, if we wanted to ... I distinctly recall being told that "360 Wallhacks" were OP.

I love this "we" versus "them" thing you got going, Adipem. It really comes off as ostracizing, like the "we" you refer to is somehow better than Cat Merc and Zatara, especially when you say "if their proposal had passed without Rattati's intervention". It's cheeky, to say the least.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say that the "we" in this case paints a pretty sure-fire picture of a collective of individuals who are pressing their own particular agenda, because that's kinda what it comes off as.

Take a second to set aside whatever arbitrary barrier "you guys" threw up to segregate yourselves and remember that this is still a community and all of our voices are responsible for any changes that happen in this game, please.

You would be one to say that the HMG "isn't problematic" despite being shown glaring evidence that it is...

there is absolutely ample reason to change/nerf the HMG.

My problem is this particular "solution" proposed has been done four times already, and all it did was shift the pendulum the other way.

So why not kick sentinels out of CQC and into the open where they can both excel, and be vulnerable to weapons that can kill them rapidly?

Still interested in the answer to this question.

Simple, I want the Gallente Assault Rifle to have a place

A question I also want answered. Historically and at the same time logically you don't create a heavily armoured unit with massive ordinance and force it into confined conditions.

Units like this typically excel as Breaking has said in open field positions, or in defensible position in overwatch.

An overwatching unit is one that has taken a position where it can clearly see the terrain ahead and around it to provide clear lines of fire.

Moreover having trawled through the thread I never found an answer to Sgt Kirk's outrage either. Why are you converting the Assault HMG into an AV autocannon? You know full well we already have a disproportionate number of Anti Armour AV forms and you want to add more?

A question I also want answered. Historically and at the same time logically you don't create a heavily armoured unit with massive ordinance and force it into confined conditions.

Units like this typically excel as Breaking has said in open field positions, or in defensible position in overwatch.

It's from the day before and then some.

Actually Historically speaking Heavy Armored Soldiers Trump Lightly armored Soldiers in CQC, but lighter armored people can skirmish harder.

Heavy Personal Armor came about due to close quarters combat after all.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with Sota pop. He said the same thing you just said and I asked:"So what am I, as an assault, supposed to do in a PC match? " his answer was" stay outside of the city or camp roofs". This is BS to me!

An assault is supposed to be assaulting points, not only outsider points. Jade you are a great PC sentinel, tell everyone here, what is the main force used to assault points in the city in any PC: assaults or sentinels?

Sentinels role should be to defend points but they ve been since 1.8 also the greatest pushing resource for every team.

But why are we even talking? Just take a look at the numbers!

I'm thinking more modern military....y'know guns and the like. You don't put massive fire power in the hands of a slow moving unit then force said unit into urban warfare.

What you did do was put that unit in the best available cover and have them rake enemy advances with gunfire. Machine-guns are most effective in areas where there is little or no cover for an enemy force to exploit whereas smaller and more compact weapons are useful in urban combat zones.

Rattati has an unhealthy fondness for using the ehp/dps hammer when finer tools are called for.

Was it once or twice that he tried tuning Heat to reign in the HMG?

That is what we did, During Vitamin the US would use M48s and M60s in urban environments, these tanks were small compared to the MBT of today but we would trounce them in hot urban environments with infantry support to provide Firepower and wall busting to take out entrenched snipers and machine guns nest.

You telling me if we had a man sized heavily armored suit of Powered Armour armed with a LMG we'd not use it for Urban Fighting in buildings and out of?

A Man Sized Tank that can move faster than normal men while holding normal weaponry would not be used for breach and clear?

The US Navy and Marines think otherwise.

Whoops not the M60 but the M103, I can't recall if any M60s were fielded in Vietnam other than bridgers and recavs.

Was it once or twice that he tried tuning Heat to reign in the HMG?