Eh after hating the new clan lrms on my kitfox for various reasons I decided that slapping one on my summoners for a purely backup weapon while I close to srm distance was a good idea and it was and it is just evil and I love it. People dont usually expect to turn a corner or a hill looking for the source of those lrms to find 4x srm6 greeting them.
Also If people wanna cry about how hard lrms are to avoid you should tell them to go drive that barn door also known as the Awesome.
LRMs arnt overpowered. But they DO need their impulse lowered. One LRM rocks you three times harder than an AC20, and clan LRMs keep hitting you one at a time. It makes absolutely no sense for LRM impulse to be three times higher than an AC20 shot. They also need their cooldown increased and In exchange their damage should be increased. Artemis also needs to be buffed because its pretty useless.
1) lower LRM impulse from its absurd 0.3 to something more reasonable like 0.1
2) increase LRM cooldown by 50% and increase LRM damage by 50% (dps remains the same)
3) give artemis a +X% crit bonus for missiles to make it worth 1 ton/crit per launcher (artemis should be like a targeting computer for missiles).
My spider hides under the wheelchair ramps at HPG. Light pilots FTW!
I hate it when they do that
Tbh atm I'd just be happy if the warning was removed. Then at least I'd be able to use them at long range without the target going "Oh, LRM's are coming" *steps behind cover*
Well, it's pure logic. This would allow each weapon to find its place in the game.
Wait... I'm starting to think you are an idiot...
You can't have weapons with a place until you have a game.
What we have is team Solaris - so that skews things so horribly that balancing mechs and their roles (not to mention weapons) is a never ending story.
I have one battlemaster, 2 ER large lasers, 2 Large Lasers, 2 Large pulse lasers. I've topped the damage charts a few times with it, and skewered more than a few side torsos at considerable range (when I'm not getting the **** blown out of me by 2 Cgauss and 2CERPPC direwolves - which is precisely the sort of **** people like me warned about with the clans and why weapon mechanics needed to differ from the autocannon).
On the other hand - my other battlemaster, with 2 LRM 15s and 2 LRM 10s (total of 50 missiles) is mediocre in terms of damage compared to my other builds. Granted, I have not equipped TAG or Artemis (partly because I'm still working on optimizing the build) - but I prefer to live, so I don't stand out in the open very often to try and maintain LOS through the entire flight (and the 5CAC5 direwolf often makes 'peeking' at medium range more costly than any LRM volley could possibly offset).
Now, my Catapult does pretty good with twin LRM20 and Artemis (with TAG) - but that's all she's got. And I still end up firing without TAG or Artemis bonuses, most of the time.
Now, if we go according to MWO's reasoning, so far, each 'cell' is 30 meters. Therefor the LRM should have a minimum range of 6 cells, or 180 meters. Sarna only gives values for the end value of "Long Range" at 21 cells - or 630 meters. I am going to guess that there's a book out there with "extreme" range for LRMs listed above 21 cells and probably coming to about 32 cells which they round to 1000 meters.
Now, if we want to extend the minimum range of LRMs to 270 meters - I would just argue that we treat all LRM launchers as if they are the Extended variety - and therefor we are looking at 300 meter minimum range and 1320 meter maximum range.
Of course - the way that LRMs work is that only half of the missiles properly arm if fired within their minimum range.
While we're at it - SRMs should also guide to their target. They should require a lock and should guide to their target. The only difference between them and streaks is that streaks only fire the missiles that successfully lock (which, in battletech, means that none of the missiles are wasted).
The problem is that MWO stuck to the old "Everything is an autocannon" tradition of battletech. The only weapon that saw any innovation in terms of mechanics was the laser. The PPC is an energy autocannon. Missiles are slow, guided LBX autocannons that require a lot of looking at the target.
No one actually thought about giving the use of each weapon an 'experience' of its own.
A PPC should be a charge-and-release weapon, with a slight (0.3 second) burn time.
Why? Because it gives the autocannons their own role. It also naturally decouples their mechanics from weapons like the gauss rifle. Thinking ahead (a vital thing to do in development) - it gives an inherent role for the PPC capacitor. Hold down the button to charge, release to fire. Varying charge commitments yield varying damage (up to the maximum).
This also gives you other options. If a PPC's heat is 10 - then you can generate 5 heat during the, say, 3 seconds required to fully charge it. Or - you can simply say that for every PPC charging, 1.6 points of heat are generated per second. This means that holding a charge comes with a cost. Firing produces 5/charge heat.
Of course - reworking the heat system as I've described would put an end to most of the heat problems. But that's another discussion.
Similarly - LRMs and SRMs should have their own 'style.' I argue that LRMs should also follow the "hold and release" model. When you attempt to lock onto a target, you hold down the fire button to signal the missiles in the battery to begin locking (this is when any missile doors would open). Every 1/10th of a second (or perhaps every 1/5th), each missile has a certain percentage chance to acquire a lock based on various conditions - range, presence of Artemis, TAG, NARC, LOS, ECM, etc. So long as sensor contact is maintained, the missiles can be fired without having to re-lock (perhaps some equipment or mechanic could cause a loss of lock over time under certain conditions). If contact is lost - then the 'roll' has to start over again.
When launched, all locked LRMs fly as if given mid-course updates toward the target, before activating terminal guidance at 300 meters to the target, homing with lead-pursuit guidance to various 'bones' of the mech (like streaks). If the target is illuminated by TAG when the missiles activate terminal guidance, missiles would more selectively hit the section illuminated by the TAG laser.
Unlocked missiles would simply fly to the position of the target when it was fired on. After launch, status of lock/unlock does not change - meaning missiles are 'fire and forget.'
Why would you do this? It makes using LRMs more an experience of acquiring the lock rather than a process of firing at red boxes. 1/4 of your missiles might simply fly into empty ground if you try and fire at empty boxes - or it might take 8 seconds to lock 95% of your missiles on a target at 800 meters that you can't see. It front-loads the experience, allowing you to acquire the lock, fire, and get the hell out of Dodge.
Similarly, SRMs would begin attempts to lock on the nearest target with LOS automatically. The strength of the lock would be indicated by a growling noise (think Sidewinder) - or whatever battletechy noise people want to come up with. Firing the SRMs fires all missiles with locked missiles guiding to the target using lead-pursuit guidance. Unlocked missiles would simply scatter and fail to arm.
Why?
All of this gives Streaks their natural role. Both Streak SRMs and Streak LRMs. In streak missiles - only locked missiles fire. This makes missile batteries much more efficient and also makes firing at otherwise wasteful targets less of a waste (you just have to wait for the battery to reload - and perhaps a module would allow Streaks to suspend reloading to lock with unfired missiles).
It also gives support weapons like TAG and NARC their more natural role, as well.
For an example of how missiles -should- guide:
Weapons like autocannons and gauss rifles are balanced by the concept of building an actual game.
An AC40 jaeger is going to excel at Solaris - because the match has a defined number of opponents in a confined location.
Insert a persistent server with potentially over a hundred players (think ARMA) with evolving, real-time battlefield objectives - and your ballistic-heavy mechs, while powerful, are not the terrors of the battlefield they once were. A light lance can break from a fight they can't win, return to base for repairs and to re-arm, then go off to harass the field artillery that is causing problems along an evolving front (would be pretty neat if the support calls had to actually come from an asset that had to be protected).
Now your mechs and weapons have roles that can be fulfilled by the players. Since killing battlemechs is only part of the overall picture - mechs that are not necessarily designed to kill other battlemechs can still be gratifying for even competitive players to pilot.
Further, in a persistent battlefield, there are more natural opportunities for people to pay for things aside from 'new content.' It also adds a place for repair and rearm.
The reason why many Free to Play games fail is that they rely too heavily on new content or other developer-heavy actions. Paying simply isn't part of the enjoyable experience.
Once you have all of the mechs, all of the modules, and everything maxed out in experience... what is there to do?
Drop. Explode. Repeat.
Oh - look - more mechs I can pay a healthy chunk of my monthly salary for, or just wait and use the hideous amount of Cbills and general experience to get what I want.
If PGI wanted to take time to develop a time consuming content release (rather than just release some new artwork and call it a clan invasion) - their revenues would fall off a cliff, since they are completely reliant upon people purchasing new content for their monetizing model, and there's no 'place' for cbills to go once earned. The wealthiest players have -nothing- to do with their in-game currency except for spam consumables.
A persistent battlefield changes that.
You can pay for another player's repairs because it helps the team. You can pay to call in support - or even hire a 'lone wolf' to aid in completing an objective. There are opportunities to create things like the 'money bomb' idea in the video - which would help in building a community that enjoys spending both time and money on the game.
But that's the problem - PGI doesn't really have a game. They have the alpha for the MechWarrior reboot that has been fanaggled into something akin to a Zynga game.
It looks as though you are running your TAG continously. Thats a very bad mistake. You should only use it when you have a target otherwise it will just give your position away and get you killed.
Now, if we go according to MWO's reasoning, so far, each 'cell' is 30 meters. Therefor the LRM should have a minimum range of 6 cells, or 180 meters. Sarna only gives values for the end value of "Long Range" at 21 cells - or 630 meters. I am going to guess that there's a book out there with "extreme" range for LRMs listed above 21 cells and probably coming to about 32 cells which they round to 1000 meters.
LRMs arnt overpowered. But they DO need their impulse lowered. One LRM rocks you three times harder than an AC20, and clan LRMs keep hitting you one at a time. It makes absolutely no sense for LRM impulse to be three times higher than an AC20 shot. They also need their cooldown increased and In exchange their damage should be increased. Artemis also needs to be buffed because its pretty useless.
1) lower LRM impulse from its absurd 0.3 to something more reasonable like 0.1
2) increase LRM cooldown by 50% and increase LRM damage by 50% (dps remains the same)
3) give artemis a +X% crit bonus for missiles to make it worth 1 ton/crit per launcher (artemis should be like a targeting computer for missiles).
Hell no jack up the impulse on the ballistics I wanna see bodies rock as they hit the floor
Hell no jack up the impulse on the ballistics I wanna see bodies rock as they hit the floor
um no. ballistics used to have high impulse and the game was unplayable. they lowered it for a reason. and they need to lower lrm impulse for the same reason.
3
This topic is locked
Sahrang, on 19 July 2014 - 03:54 AM, said:
