I started recording my matches not too long ago so I could go back and watch them to try and learn from my mistakes. I should have died so many times in this match, that I can't even begin to explain it. Just watch....and feel free to laugh at my misery.

I've been seeing a few instances in River City and Forest Colony where missiles do zero damage when the target is in the water. I know that missiles explode on the surface of the water doing no damage, but I see at least half or more of my volleys striking the mech well above water line, but still cause no damage.

This is only with SRMs as far as I can tell LRMs seem to work fine (probably because of their angle of attack).

Anyone else have this problem?

Dmitri

TL;DR Here are some suggestions on making all mech upgrades worth the cost. Sorry I can't shorten it more than that.

Ok, so I've been doing some thinking (dangerous I know) about the upgrades and "advanced" weapons offered in MWO. While there are some that are obvious improvements over standard equipment; a good portion of them really don't offer much of a benefit over the standard version. I'll try to explain as best as I can and offer my suggestions below.

Ferro Fibrous Armor - Let's face it, it's a terrible upgrade. You have to have 8 tons of armor before it even saves you a ton which means that only heavy and assaults will get any real benefit from it. Sadly the heavies and assaults need all the space they can get for weapons, ammo, and heatsinks so it's basically worthless. Why not allow mechs equipped with Ferro-Fibrous to mount 12% more maximum armor than their tonnage would normally allow. This would give it much more appeal for the price tag and could off set the space requirement draw back. Obviously 12% is just a starter figure and balance may have to dictate change.

Endo-Steel Structure - It's awesome! No real change needed here.

Double Heatsinks - While they are great for light and medium chassis, the heavies and assaults (the ones that likely need them) don't really use them because of the triple space requirement. I know the heat dissipation was dropped down to 1.4 for balance purposes, but this number means the big boys still have to mount a ridiculous number of them to really make a difference in their heat generation. I would propose bumping them up to at least 1.5 or 1.6 and then track the numbers to see what effect this might have on builds and gameplay.

Artemis IV FCS - It's a pretty decent system. The extra ton and critical space per launcher is kinda excessive in my opinion, but the effect on missile grouping is highly effective. I don't think it really needs a change.

LB10-X Autocannon - It's the redheaded stepchild of the autocannons. While it does weigh less than the standard AC/10 it lacks the punch of it's predecessor. One obvious improvement would be to allow switching between ammo types. I believe this may be planned already, but considering the major the price tag of the LB-X I think the cluster munitions need to be brought in line with the other spread weapons and increase the damage per cluster pellet to 1.3 or 1.4.

Ultra AC/5 - It's decent, but what military would use a weapon that jams 25% of the time? Phil from NGNG actually voiced a great idea for changing the jamming effect. His idea was to give the weapon a 'heat bar' that would fill while the weapon was double firing and decrease while it isn't. This makes the jamming more of a skill based mechanic than a random effect that seems to pop up at the worst possible times. I also think a toggle switch to change between double fire and standard mode might be a good idea as well since even when I'm trying not to double fire the weapon still jams because I held the fire button for a millisecond too long.

Streak SRMs - Now is where everyone probably starts to hate me. Streaks don't really need much of a change in my opinion. They are an obvious upgrade to normal SRMs since they always hit and only require a short time to lock on to a target. Perhaps their cycle time could be increased to lower DPS, but nerfs should be a separate discussion entirely. What I would propose is allowing Streaks to be switched between homing and dumb fire mode so they can still be used while under ECM. This would keep the weapons system from becoming dead weight while a pilot is under an ECM bubble (I know the Streakapult pilots would have loved this feature).

ER Energy Weapons - I think with the heat balancing last patch that the ER laser and PPC are shaping up as decent weapon systems. I still think the heat might be a touch too high, but it's nothing good heat management can't fix

NARC Pods - Oh god do these need some love to be useful. They take as much space as an SRM 6 and only hold 6 shots per ton. At the very least they need to work through ECM bubbles and have their duration increased to at least 30 seconds. Ideally they should also hold at least 12 shots per ton and last until the location they are attached to is destroyed. Then their might be a reason to put NARC on a mech.

Guardian ECM - Here comes the hate again. I don't think ECM is as incredibly OP as everyone seems to think, but it does need some changes. Maybe increasing heat generation of mechs running in disrupt mode or removing the counter function completely and giving it to the.....

Beagle Active Probe - Seriously, the Beagle was the counter to ECM in TT so why not give that a try here? You could say the counter range is only 120 meters so ECM mechs still have a 60 meter "sweet spot" they can stay in if they're good enough to keep the enemy in the bubble. I can't recall if the Beagle reduces lock on times, but that might also be something worth looking in to as well.


Whew! That was a lot of words. Thanks for making it to the end. Fight on Mechwarriors!

So I put together a build for my Commando and decided to see what would happen if I upgraded to double heat sinks. Low and behold the heat efficiency shot up to an ungodly level even after it removed the three heat sinks I currently had. So then I go to save the configuration and a message pops up saying that I need to have 3 heatsinks to run the mech.

Really? Why do I have to waste 10% of my mech's weight on equipment that I don't need. It seems a little absurd.

Automatic heat dissipation should already be built in to the engine itself so wouldn't it be better to just raise the tonnage of the engine by 3 tons and remove the heat sink requirement. This would make those of us who use 3rd party sites to theorycraft our mechs before we pay for them much happier in the long run as we wouldn't have factor in whatever nebulous restrictions are tied to our engine.

Dmitri

Quick question. Does AMS work against short range missiles? I'm pretty sure they do in the TT game and SRMs seem to trigger the AMS system, but I never see them actually destroy any missiles.

I'm kinda curious as to how an AMS would affect a Streak or SRM 6 boat. If AMS doesn't work against SRMs, they really should. That little fix would have probably stopped the tsunami of whining about Streakapults/Streakmandos/Streakwhatevers that happened not all that long ago.

Anyone got an answer?