Are Machineguns really that big of a problem?

[WOPR]

I played this a ton back on my PS1 and recently found this version (love it by the way )
My friends and I were trying multiplayer and they were working on tanks (they love tanks) and I decided to go for machineguns because I enjoy the speed and reliability.
This said, the machineguns wrecked. Hard. Victory in 28 on a 1v1v1 match.

Mostly what I'm wondering is, what are the counters for machineguns early/mid game, we're still fairly new to the multiplayer/skirmish/updated version and I just don't want everyone else to quit in fear of game breaking "balance" issues.

(Or should I just tell them to suck it up, let go of their tank fetish, and build machineguns early instead of rushing light tank and getting no Mguns at all?)

EDIT: I've found a worse problem for them ;P Python/Hover/Inferno

[Berg]

If you killing them tell them to adapt or die after all MG is the first weapon you get.
What counters MG run up to them with flamers that will soon slow them down
This is early game strat.
You and you friend will adapt its part of learning the moves
Welcome back to warzone

[Rommel]

A good early counter to anything is flamer cyborgs as these guys have the speed to quickly catch the MG tanks and will kick their ass - you really need MG backing them up however. YOu should really produce mg tanks at the start or flamer tanks (not early cannons until medium or hyper velocity cannon) - the thing is that flamer tanks take longer to build and can get chewed up pretty bad by a retreating mg army.

Also not to forget rocket pod, these are pretty lethal to mg tanks with their range, couple these with flamer borgs and you should defeat an early mg army. The thing to remember is that rocket pod has some big failings as it is next to useless against borgs and defenses - Extremely vulnerable to borgs!

When they come along, lancers (Extremely vulnerable to borgs) are also a good counter as well as hyper velocity cannon, anything that can get you a range advantage, but you need to be careful because MG are really the fastest produced unit and the opponent can mass them up fast.

Adequate defense is also a requirement, mg bunkers even a lot of mg towers will chew up an early mg army pretty bad, but as the game progresses mg can be a danger to defenses that is why you should get mortar pits asap and build a lot of them - their range will hold off the opponents massed mg.

In the end it is my opinion that MG + Flamer borgs in the early game is pretty much the way to go, if the opponent is not using the same and does not have adequate defenses it's pretty much game over. Or maybe rocket pods + borg flamers, but rocket pods take a longer time to produce, borgs will waste them and they will not be able to hurt defenses.

Also something to take in to account with MG - you need to use their main advantage, ie fast production and not let the opponent have time to mass more powerful units, this means keeping up the attack to whittle down the opponent army so they can't get up numbers - especially true in regards to flamer tanks, if a mass of these come at you and push you back to your base you are pretty much done for...

[Iluvalar]

Yes, the machine guns are a bit stronger then planified due to accuracy problem right now.

However, there is a lot of factors for newcomers other than the choice of the weapon. The path you chose in the research tree can affect the outcome a lot.

Try to have your friends get Half tracks asap. tracks resist much more against machine guns. Also, reaching the armor upgrades (by going true the sensor line early) also improve the resistance the machine guns. Or to be exact, if you are too slow, you risk that the machine gun "pierce" the armor and start to do massive damage if you fail to maintain a decent armor. Which is quite plausible for new players. .

[crab_]

Or to be exact, if you are too slow, you risk that the machine gun "pierce" the armor and start to do massive damage if you fail to maintain a decent armor.

i just discovered - machineguns are ignoring armor actually (do 33% dmg). This happens in most cases except very early game.
They ignore armor because they do only 33% of damage (minimum damage). No matter what amount of armor your tanks have.

See Cobra body with 2 armor upgrades - 24 armor, viper - 16
HMG with 3 damage upgrades - 29 damage
HMG attacks viper-half-tracks = 29*0.6 - 16 = 1.4 (0.6 is 60% damage modifier to half-tracks)
After some point (after first or second armor upgrade) all machineguns just doing minimum 33% damage. That damage does not depend on armor.
So Machinegun ignore armor.

[Per]

Yep. In 3.2, you can mod the amount percentage of armour ignored, so you can experiment with that.

[Iluvalar]

Crab, exactly. But the first mg upgrades are researchable right away, while the armor upgrades are quite a long way..

it's easy to see an unupgraded viper shot by a quite upgraded hmg or tmg. At which point an upgrade that was supposed to buff from 160% to 190% the hmg (roughly 20% buff) could "pierce" trough and do massive unexpected damage against viper and could jump from 5 to 7 damage (40%) with the same upgrade.

[Alpha93]

When MG spam beats cannon spam there's something wrong.