Cyborgs cry to Assault Gun

[Attack]

Assault Gun appear to be way too good at killing cyborgs. By way too much it is at least double the fire power of Heavy Machinegun! It is so good that it is listed as an overpowered weapon in low oil maps under the official guide at http://betaguide.wz2100.net/weapons.php. Aren't convinced that Assault Gun is at least twice as good as Heavy Machinegun? I will do a bit of math to prove that this weapon needs to be nerfed.

Example #1
Lets assume it is currently 18:16 game time and everyone is perfect on their research based on http://betaguide.wz2100.net/Research.php. 18:16 is where Dense Composite Alloys Mk2 is researched and close to the 17:13 Assault Gun research time. Machineguns will be upgraded with Hyper Rapid Chaingun 14:40 upgrade and Tungsten-Tipped MG Bullets Mk2 17:57. Cyborgs will be upgraded with Cyborg Dense Composite Alloys Mk2 16:44.

Assault Gun: 47.5 damage, 277.5 rate of fire.
Heavy Machinegun: 42.5 damage, 158.6 rate of fire
Machinegunner: 925 health, 30 kinetic armor

Time for Assault Gun to destroy Machinegunner = 4.8 seconds
Time for Heavy Machinegun to destory Machinegunner = 10.4 seconds
How much better is Assault Gun over Heavy Machinegun = 2.14 times better! More than twice as good

Example #2
It gets even more unfair if the player did not focus on machine gun damage upgrades. Lets say they only research up to APDSB MG Bullets Mk3 10:13.

Assault Gun: 38 damage, 277.5 rate of fire.
Heavy Machinegun: 34 damage, 158.6 rate of fire

Time for Assault Gun to destroy Machinegunner = 7.4 seconds
Time for Heavy Machinegun to destory Machinegunner = 16.7 seconds
How much better is Assault Gun over Heavy Machinegun = 2.25 times better! Assault Gun is even stronger with less damage upgrades when compared to Heavy Machinegun.

My point is that Assault has more than twice the damage of Heavy Machinegun for only $50 more. A power spike of this big is huge against a player using cyborgs. It is a very good idea to stop making cyborgs once someone reaches Assault Gun. Perhaps Assault Gun is too strong at counter cyborgs and needs a nerf? Heavy machineguns were pretty good at killing cyborgs, but Assault Gun is on a totally different level of insanely good.

[Berg]

Learn to counter the assault guns cyborg are too strong in other cases its called balance.
Find the balance.

[Tzeentch]

Working out with calculations is important and gives less biased views. Can others verify these calcs? Important to consider other weapons around this point in time, for example how does cannon tech compare as if you went the cannon route does this follow the same patterns? Debate about MG balance has been discussed a few times and requires expert level input who understands the greatest overview of WZ.

"It is so good that it is listed as an overpowered weapon in low oil maps under the official guide at http://betaguide.wz2100.net/weapons.php" - why only the MG in low oil and not others? This would indicate imba to me + the versatility of MG even shooting air.

[Attack]

The cannon line doesn't have quite a big power spike from one weapon to another. If we compare HPV Cannon to Heavy Cannon, the damage increase is not as significant. Even the rocket line upgrade from Lancet -> Tank Killer does not have the huge power spike of Assault Guns although it comes pretty close.

Assuming Dense Composite Alloys Mk2 18:16, APFSDS Cannon Rounds Mk3 17:22, and Cannon Autoloader Mk2 15:44 versus a Heavy Machingun Python Halftracks with 2438 HP and 50 kinetic armor.

HPV: 44 dps, 55 seconds to destroy enemy tank.
Heavy Cannon: 61.5 dps, 40 seconds to destroy enemy tank.
Heavy Cannon is 1.40 times better damage than HPV Cannon for $75 more.

Lets see the rocket line at Dense Composite Alloys Mk3 21:56, HESH Rocket Warhead 20:29, and Rocket Autoloader Mk3 15:15 versus the same target. Heavy Machinegun Halftracks will have 2730 HP and 56 kinetic armor.

Lancer: 61 dps, 40 seconds to destroy enemy tank.
Tank Killer: 100.8 dps, 24 seconds to destroy enemy tank.
Tank Killer is 1.48 times more dps than Lancet for $50 more

*We are ignoring the fact that Lancets and Tank Killers fire 2 shots at once. This will give them double the dps for the first hit and allow them to destroy targets faster.

Heavy Cannon - 300 dmg, 12.5 rof
HPV Cannon - 175 dmg, 17.4 rof
Lancet - 289 dmg, 13.4 rof
Tank Killer - 495 dmg, 10.8 rof

========

Overview
Assault Gun upgrade = 2.1x more dps
Heavy Cannon upgrade = 1.40x more dps
Tank Killer upgrade = 1.48x more dps

Assault Gun upgrade is too powerful at killing cyborgs.

[NoQ]

Machineguns are, by design, good for killing cyborgs. Moreover, i don't think that ensuring viability of cyborg-only strategies would lead to better balance. However, there are two problems here: (1) large jump compared to hmg, which can be solved by adding some sort of twin-hmg; (2) too much overall power for timing, which can be solved by further nerfing, even though assault guns were already nerfed considerably throughout the recent rounds of rebalance.

[The Overlord]

I am not sure why you would still be using machinegunner cyborgs at 18 minutes unless you are using them as shields for your rocket or cannon tanks. Yes, assault guns are strong but that is necessary to be able to kill spam-able regular cyborgs. Low ROF that the later weapons have will not fair well against these low cost, low production time things, so there needs to be something to kill them besides another tree like mortars or vtol bombs. Super cyborgs with lancers and cannons are strong because they are more spam-able than tanks and have distance so you can kite the assault guns on tanks and kill them, but they are glass cannons. Therefore you need to use tanks in front of your cyborgs to block the assault gun fire. FYI, I didn't mention assault gun cyborgs because they are really weak.

The best mix of troops is cyborgs and tanks. Any other composition is based on other variables besides just ground troops (vtol bombs, mortars, and twin assault cannons make cyborgs useless as well). If you want to win with an all cyborg composition you will have to win the early game and kill your opponent fast before they get assault guns. This is very hard to do so you need a backup plan unless you are very confident. Basically you need to be able to adapt once your opponent figures out your strategy and starts countering it.

[Tzeentch]

Reading through you can't argue against the numbers and timing much. At the same time cyborg only for most of the game is not that viable, we expect machine guns to do well but not totally overpowering. We have twin machinegun, twin assault gun and twin assault cannon. Why not setup a twin hmg like you said? At the same time perhaps to begin with a slight nerf to the existing assault gun in some fashion (i.e. research time and cost increase, or modify weapon ROF or damage model)

we all know the right mixes and strats to get around this but we're just flat out talking about these comparative jumps between weapons

[bendib]

I cannot advocate nerfing assault gun. As a very heavy multiplayer guy of both low and high oil, there are many times when there are just too many borgs, and assault gun doesn't even cut it. Superborgs are a serious threat in multiplayer, cannon superborgs in particular. AG is helpful, because hmg is a joke to superborgs.

[Tzeentch]

some opposing views between those with more understanding than I probably have, I think arguments against need to be put same as or similar to how Attack has done heavily based off the maths (to avoid biased opinions based from intuition) which is based on limited info like guessing. Supercybrogs are very expensive at the same time even if harder to kill and slower to make. Without this you've got many possible scenarios to cover essentially making progress harder

[crab_]

Hello.
Just noticed this topic.
This topic should be moved to "balance" subforum (viewforum.php?f=42)

List of overpowered weapons is outdated, because it was made before last balance patch.
AG is strong weapon still.

Played recently. I had lost a match to a player who used pure mg. It was high-oil 1x1 map.
One of benefits of using AG is fast build time.
AG cyborgs also very good and they not require any additional research.


You know in real life AA guns can attack ground targets. I'd like to see hurricane/whirlwind as alternative anti-cyborg weapon

[Ldelandy]

Assault cannons are used similarly to cannons in T1, although, as assault weapons, they are better against cyborgs than their predecessors..

[CombRaider]

You know in real life AA guns can attack ground targets. I'd like to see hurricane/whirlwind as alternative anti-cyborg weapon

I'd like to see that too. I think they didn't make it possible to attack ground targets because it would have been too overpowered.

[ian231]

some opposing views between those with more understanding than I probably have, I think arguments against need to be put same as or similar to how Attack has done heavily based off the maths (to avoid biased opinions based from intuition) which is based on limited info like guessing. Supercybrogs are very expensive at the same time even if harder to kill and slower to make. Without this you've got many possible scenarios to cover essentially making progress harder

Machineguns are, by design, good for killing cyborgs. Moreover, i don't think that ensuring viability of cyborg-only strategies would lead to better balance. However, there are two problems here: (1) large jump compared to hmg, which can be solved by adding some sort of twin-hmg; (2) too much overall power for timing, which can be solved by further nerfing, even though assault guns were already nerfed considerably throughout the recent rounds of rebalance.