Heavy armor working as HEAVY armor

[CalenLoki]

"...but i think mguns definitely arent overpowered and fit nicely into the current gameplay..."

you're right, they aren't OP. But we don't want to just make them weaker, but to make them different, specialistic weapon. In my example (link) MG does same damage to unarmoured opponent (such as BA or internal structure) as AC 10, which is two sizes bigger.

"...also i dont think there should be any kind of unit that is invincible to some weapons fire for a lot of reasons..."

I nearly agree with that. only thing that is IMO wrong is word "weapon" which should be replaced with "unit". Difference between MWLL and other combined arms games is that you can load your mech with huge variety of guns, to be prepared against any enemy. That of course doesn't apply to boats, but if you decide to join strict R-P-S circle, it's your own wish. Also nobody force you to take specialistic weapons (like MG or Gauss) - you can take AC5, which isn't terribly bad against anything, but also isn't perfect counter.

About your pic: You just take wrong example - I wouldn't say anything against M61 Vulcan (20mm version, IMO biggest possible example of MG, or maybe even "Heavy MG"), but showing biggest possible Gatling canon as an example of MG wasn't good idea. M4 carbine and Browning M2 also are comparable - same 1 to 2 size ratio as M61 to GAU-8.

[(TLL)CapperDeluxe]

Just because a small weapon doesn't do as much damage as its larger cousins doesn't mean it can't make a few dents in the armor and eventually weaken it with enough sustained fire. These MGs for example aren't your typical small arms fire, but rather most likely at least 50 caliber armor piercing rounds which can threaten the armor on most vehicles in their weak spots pretty well I'd think.  But what do I know, or any of us know really, its just based on a board game which doesn't make this kind of distinction for smaller guns versus mech armors except for small arms infantry type weapons (which is why they typically get weapons designed for anti-armor).

[=KoS=Zeus]

Battlemech armor is ablative specifically to counter 1-shot kills from weapons like AC/20s, Gauss Rifles, and PPCs.

The philosophy is that if you are putting your royalty in a giant walking tank, you don't want it to die from the first PPC shot that hits square on the armor plate over the reactor.

Instead, you sacrifice invulnerability versus smaller weapons, for survivability against massive weapons. The result is a machine that can actually be hit by upwards of 10 150mm cannon shells and not instantly explode. The trade off is that an infantry platoon opening fire with their rifles can degrade your armor protection.

This is what makes Battletech different than Heavy Gear. In battletech you score lots of gratifying hits, all of which are working toward eliminating your opponent. In Heavy Gear you are trading shots, missing, or scoring glancing hits which bounce off the armor, and all it takes is a good shot to instantly explode the largest of targets.

Heavy Gear is more realistic, Battletech is more fun.

[MagicSquirrel07]

Battlemech armor is ablative specifically to counter 1-shot kills from weapons like AC/20s, Gauss Rifles, and PPCs.

The philosophy is that if you are putting your royalty in a giant walking tank, you don't want it to die from the first PPC shot that hits square on the armor plate over the reactor.

Instead, you sacrifice invulnerability versus smaller weapons, for survivability against massive weapons. The result is a machine that can actually be hit by upwards of 10 150mm cannon shells and not instantly explode. The trade off is that an infantry platoon opening fire with their rifles can degrade your armor protection.

This is what makes Battletech different than Heavy Gear. In battletech you score lots of gratifying hits, all of which are working toward eliminating your opponent. In Heavy Gear you are trading shots, missing, or scoring glancing hits which bounce off the armor, and all it takes is a good shot to instantly explode the largest of targets.

Heavy Gear is more realistic, Battletech is more fun.

There is a good post that I have been thinking about while reading this. 
At the end of the day it is a game, and hitting a mech in the foot will do damage to the entire leg.  If the game were totally realistic then one tiny round at extreme velocity fired at the reactor and the mech would go boom  (railgun anyone?)

On the point of if mechs should be immune to x weapon, doesn't the type of armour play a role in this?  Like for instance a machine gun can damage ferro fibrous armour but not reactive?

[(TLL)Siilk]

 From Sarna's Machine gun article:

The damage from a Machine Gun can be devastating to conventional infantry, but this class of weapon has a low damage rating against armored targets such as BattleMechs and Combat Vehicles, this class of weapon also has a very low range when used against armored targets.

 Now what about this: make a damage falloff for machine guns, like HGauss already has. Against lightly armored targets, like BA, aero and light vehicles, MGs would deal full damage at any range up to max. But when attacking armored targets(mechs, tanks), MGs would deal full damage at canon BT ranges for MG, that is 100m, and deal no damage after, say, 300m to aforementioned targets at all, with damage between 100m to 300m decreesing gradually.

[(TLL)Sky_walker]

First of all let me say most important thing:
"plz refer to google again" - google is not an authority in any thing other than calculating 1+1. Some websites in the Internet are, but google? Never. You can find every single lie in the world there.

Now, back on topic:
As of Killer-Bee's point - Siilk pointed out already what I wanted to say It works against armored targets at very low range.
By armored we mean - ALL kinds of armored targets, so including light mechs or APC. Actually IHMO if we plan to stick to BT universe than Mgun should not inflict any damage to other-than-BA targets above 1/4th of it's range (or whatever we assume as "very low" - 1/5th? 1/10th?). But still I wouldn't go so far as this would make it totally useless or battlefield when only target you can damage is the BA.

one tiny round at extreme velocity fired at the reactor and the mech would go boom  (railgun anyone?)

It's the Gauss

[Killer-Bee]

the damage dropoff idea like Siilk described it is a good idea that fits well into the mechwarrior game in my opinion.
+1
if it is possible to integrate something like this with the crysis engine of course

First of all let me say most important thing:
"plz refer to google again" - google is not an authority in any thing other than calculating 1+1. Some websites in the Internet are, but google? Never. You can find every single lie in the world there.

dont know what that is supposed to mean but the search site google is not a site that stores information. google is a search engine with which you can FIND sites that store information. sorting out the crap from the real facts is of course something you have to do by yourself
also mwll gauss is not a instakill weapon in every case

[(TLL)Siilk]

the damage dropoff idea like Siilk described it is a good idea that fits well into the mechwarrior game in my opinion.
+1
if it is possible to integrate something like this with the crysis engine of course

 Damage dropoff is already there. HGauss, anyone?

[Killer-Bee]

i know but is it also there for different types of vehicles that are in one category?
by which i ask if it is possible to make a distinction of damage for when you fire at a partisan or a demolisher pure armor damage whise with a reasonable amount of coding and/or adding serverstress.

[Nebfer]

Continuing with Zeus comments, Battletech armor is Ablative (for the most part), it's very good at stopping the really big hits, like the hypersonic Gauss rifles they use in universe. It stops these single shot high power rounds quite well, current day weapons would have difficulty harming B-tech armor (the M256 is roughly represented by the light rifle introduced in Tactical operations which dose zero damage to Mech scale armor). Furthermore a hypersonic (that's 1,700m/s or faster) Gauss slug has the KE of a 14 inch navel shell, I do not think any real life tank can survive one of thoughs rounds if hit one, but Assault Mechs can take three of them easily to the center torso with no internal damage (and then it returns to base and in 12 hours it's back to full armor). The down side to B-techs armor is that it seems to be some what weak when facing rapid fire weapons like "30mm" autocannons and "high mass and low velocity" impacts like what you get in melee. This is probably why AC-20s do more damage than Gauss Rifles despite the shear power of thoughs weapons.

For energy weapons well an IS large laser can melt/vaporize half a ton of this stuff... that's hundreds of megajoules (if not gigajoules).

In a way it works a bit like infantry armor, the ceramic insert can stop a AP round or two but if you drop it, it can brake and become useless (part of B-tech armor is a ceramic, CBN).

B-tech armor is strong stuff but it dose have some oddity's here and their that make it harder to figure out.

As for Battletech Machineguns for the most part the fluff says their 20mm cannons though a few other calibers do exist, notably 12.7mm and 30mm.

[(TLL)Sky_walker]

i know but is it also there for different types of vehicles that are in one category?
by which i ask if it is possible to make a distinction of damage for when you fire at a partisan or a demolisher pure armor damage whise with a reasonable amount of coding and/or adding serverstress.

I have no idea if it's possible but AFAIK no weapon have damage lowering against certain type of armor depending on the range. I guess this would require some small rework of whole damage system... only one of DEVs could tell more on this matter.

[Flyingdebris]

i know we'll probably never see it, but i'd love to see a differentiation between armor and internals.  though i'm guessing that just might kill performance

[Cujo]

what if you had the armor function in the same way as say an arm and so it falls off when damaged, exposing the internals, it wouldn't be perfect, if it's even possible, but you'd get that differentiation between the two.

[Flyingdebris]

thing is, i think that with the way splash damage works, any weapon that would have splash damage would probably damage the internals too.

[Aposiopesis]

thing is, i think that with the way splash damage works, any weapon that would have splash damage would probably damage the internals too.

So you mean things like LBX and SRMs and the like would have an advantage on finding crits like in CBT?