673 replies to this topic

[Gus VAPOR Rice]

Restating what I wrote in a locked thread.

Imho the game becomes more cautious and strategic with heavy hitting LRM's.
More of a thinking mans shooter with more manuvering, sniping, supression and probing?

[iminbagdad]

Gus VAPOR Rice, on 24 March 2013 - 10:31 AM, said:

Restating what I wrote in a locked thread.

Imho the game becomes more cautious and strategic with heavy hitting LRM's.
More of a thinking mans shooter with more manuvering, sniping, supression and probing?

Eh, yes and no.

It becomes 4 stalkers/atlases LRM boats parking by the base lobbing rounds at whatever their 3L spotters see. Not so much a thinking mans game.

Yes there needs to be a balance so LRMs are useful, but for a while they were a bit much ( not just the bugged ones)

See what I said above and I think that would move towards the sweet spot.

+25% missile speed
Increase to 1 damage

[Wendigo Vendetta]

OK, well I have been playing around with LRMs since the hotfix. We were asked to get a feel for them in play rather than by the numbers that were posted.

Well, I have. Here is what I feel.

I feel that as an experienced player who has been testing for you since closed beta, these things are broken, and not in a good way.

I feel that I am usually the only person who bothers to field and fire them now... and that feels pretty lonely.

I feel that the damage is pathetic.

Despite the pathetic damage, I "feel" that there is an imbalanced plethora of hard and soft counters to the weapons.

I feel that lights are mediums are literally outrunning the main spread of my weapons.

I feel that the direct fire mode of the weapon is laugh riot alternative that netted me a whole 11 points of damage last game... and that is when I was entirely unmolested and allowed to fire at will until the rest of the team actually won the match.

I feel that direct fire weapons with no minimum range have a longer range than my humorously named "Long range missiles".

I feel that LRMs warn you that you are being targeted by the weapon... perhaps to ask you to take it easy on the other team because they are fielding weapon systems so hilariously weak.

I feel that the final solution to the LRM problem is to remove them from the game entirely... but since that is unlikely, perhaps they could try some of these fixes:

Slow the missile speed to half what it is currrently... missiles fired midway through the match should add an atmosperic ambiance to the game since they lack any mechanical impact.

Reverse the arc of fire. Missiles should arc downwards before arching upward towards the target. They are simply not effected enough by intervening terrain. This should solve that problem and entirely stop any chance of an indirect fire weapon striking targets in cover.

When direct fired at any mechs walking in the open under the 2 mile wide ECM blanket, the firing mech should immediately shut down and eject the pilot. This will give the pilot a better chance of impacting the game with his personal sidearm.

Halve the range and double the minimum range. I know a 140 meter window of fire still may be too much... it may have to be narrower, but I am willing to start with this before trying maybe 50 or even 20 meters.

Since actual damage is not the purpose of the LRM launcher, have LRMs that actually hit randomly change the paintjob on the target. This suggestion is admittedly questionable, since it may actually increase the win ratios of LRM users by causing rage quits on the enemy team.

With these few tweaks, we can avoid LRMs ever needing hotfixxes or dev time ever again and get on with the important task of hit detection problems with those terribly underused and weak balistic weapons.

[TOGSolid]

Marcus Tanner, on 24 March 2013 - 03:17 AM, said:

Please, do pay attention.

They were clear about what happened when they tried that.

No, LRMs and Streaks aren't the same thing in terms of programming. They *can* and *intend to* fix it, but it's not copy and paste.

1.) I realize that but it doesn't keep what I said from being what needs to happen anyway.
2.) I know coding is never cut and paste, but I'm just curious about what's so wonky with LRMs that's causing them to just always go for the CT without splash damage. Unless of course the missiles are just an illusion and it's really just a big slug with a certain amount of HP to it.

[Wendigo Vendetta]

Tesunie, on 24 March 2013 - 08:40 AM, said:

The point of my tale is, yes missiles are not suppose to be instant killers and should be best at suppression and support. It's nice to see them not killing someone in a couple hits. However, they shouldn't be able to just be ignored either.

This is part of the problem that the devs have no answer to ATM... how can a supression weapon supress target behavior in any way if the target need not fear it? Only things that can kill you will make you act to avoid them. If WW1 artillery fired pillows at their targets, then it would have been a very different war indeed...

[arghmace]

Wendigo Vendetta, on 24 March 2013 - 10:52 AM, said:

Despite the pathetic damage, I "feel" that there is an imbalanced plethora of hard and soft counters to the weapons.

This.

1. You cannot shoot LRM's at ECM covered targets unless you can keep them tagged for about 10 seconds (2 secs to get lock, 8 secs for the missiles to travel to 800 meters for example).
2. You cannot shoot LRM's at all if there's an enemy ECM near you
3. You cannot shoot LRM's within 180m
4. You cannot hit light, medium or even heavy mechs with LRM's. Only assaults are clumsy enough that some missiles might actually hit them.

There are so many so huge downsides to LRM's that they need at least do crazy damage to balance them out. Don't wanna go the crazy dmg way? Ok, then address the 4 problems above.

[SixstringSamurai]

I hate to say this but honestly missiles themselves were not the problem. The A1 was the problem and they should of just removed it from the game. The nature of it's hard points limits it to SRMs or LRMs. It's a mech solely designed to boat. You don't see people saying the 4SP is over powered or the Cent 9-A. I haven't seen anyone mention the 4 missile Awesome or the Stalker because they had draw backs. The A1 has none for the amount of fire power it could deliver in a single punch and then run away. All you have to do is go back and look at all the arguments and data collecting to see it all goes back to the A1.

Now before you start throwing stones at me I do own a Mastered CPLT-A1 and yes I run the 6 SRM6 version because it's the most firepower per ton you can run. Instead of killing the punch of multiple mechs they should of just ditched the one. There's no way to balance the A1 without damaging the usability of other mechs. As I'm sure we can all see by the almost useless state of LRMs and the ammo problems you run into now with SRMs.

Edited by SixStringSamurai, 24 March 2013 - 11:45 AM.

[TOGSolid]

arghmace, on 24 March 2013 - 11:25 AM, said:

This.

1. You cannot shoot LRM's at ECM covered targets unless you can keep them tagged for about 10 seconds (2 secs to get lock, 8 secs for the missiles to travel to 800 meters for example).
2. You cannot shoot LRM's at all if there's an enemy ECM near you
3. You cannot shoot LRM's within 180m
4. You cannot hit light, medium or even heavy mechs with LRM's. Only assaults are clumsy enough that some missiles might actually hit them.

There are so many so huge downsides to LRM's that they need at least do crazy damage to balance them out. Don't wanna go the crazy dmg way? Ok, then address the 4 problems above.

Yup. #3 is a reasonable drawback (and one that disappears once Clan tech hits the scene) that I'm ok with but ECM just makes LRMs into way too much of a crapshoot. Either your mech will be useful or it'll be absolute dead weight. It's a binary on/off switch that makes taking LRMs at all far too risky and a generally bad choice. The only way to "balance" them in the current environment is to make each missile into a thermonuclear bomb so that one tiny window you get to do anything will let you make a difference.

ECM is not supposed to block missile locks at all so who the **** knows why PGI went and did that.

Edited by TOGSolid, 24 March 2013 - 12:07 PM.

[hercules1981]

SixStringSamurai, on 24 March 2013 - 11:44 AM, said:

I hate to say this but honestly missiles themselves were not the problem. The A1 was the problem and they should of just removed it from the game. The nature of it's hard points limits it to SRMs or LRMs. It's a mech solely designed to boat. You don't see people saying the 4SP is over powered or the Cent 9-A. I haven't seen anyone mention the 4 missile Awesome or the Stalker because they had draw backs. The A1 has none for the amount of fire power it could deliver in a single punch and then run away. All you have to do is go back and look at all the arguments and data collecting to see it all goes back to the A1.

Now before you start throwing stones at me I do own a Mastered CPLT-A1 and yes I run the 6 SRM6 version because it's the most firepower per ton you can run. Instead of killing the punch of multiple mechs they should of just ditched the one. There's no way to balance the A1 without damaging the usability of other mechs. As I'm sure we can all see by the almost useless state of LRMs and the ammo problems you run into now with SRMs.

Dam man that is a real good point there now what if they did something instead of removing it just limit the engine size of it so it would be real slow like the k2 ac 20 load out think it only does like 50 kph mayb????? Would any1 really complain that much about it if it could only do 50kph it would b just that much easier to smash of the ears of it and call it a day so they at that point would really have to hide behind assaults and then pop out and shot, I wouldn't have a problem with that at all instead of it being able to run down almost any mech like it does now.

[Gus VAPOR Rice]

iminbagdad, on 24 March 2013 - 10:38 AM, said:

Eh, yes and no.

It becomes 4 stalkers/atlases LRM boats parking by the base lobbing rounds at whatever their 3L spotters see. Not so much a thinking mans game.

Yes there needs to be a balance so LRMs are useful, but for a while they were a bit much ( not just the bugged ones)

See what I said above and I think that would move towards the sweet spot.

+25% missile speed
Increase to 1 damage

There is a lot of issues with heavy hitting LRM's but I doubt that specific scenario though, except Team vs puggers. Imo the biggest problem with powerful LRM's is that they aggregates the effectiveness of ECM which is already a game winner. Another problem is the effect on newbies who innocently walks out in the open.


I'm comparing my experience (as a pugger) of the game pre and post hotfix. Now the brawlers just rush in, often making it a furball. Pre hotfix that was really dangerous so everyone had to hug cover, snipe and maneuver.
Imo more Mecha fun!


Still the game is to find the right balance and thats hard with current LRM's and ECM implementations

[Joe Kid]

Trebuchet 3C
LRM 15 x 2 Artemis
Tag
3 ML
7 Ton ammo
98 Damage
I guess i will play something else until LRM's are fixed

[darkkterror]

Joe Kid, on 24 March 2013 - 12:35 PM, said:

Trebuchet 3C
LRM 15 x 2 Artemis
Tag
3 ML
7 Ton ammo
98 Damage
I guess i will play something else until LRM's are fixed

I have a 3C with pretty much the exact same setup. I'm also not playing it at the moment. My Catapult C1 is benched as well since my K2 with ER PPCs and a Gauss Rifle provides much better long range support.

[Spades Kincaid]

arghmace, on 24 March 2013 - 11:25 AM, said:

This.

1. You cannot shoot LRM's at ECM covered targets unless you can keep them tagged for about 10 seconds (2 secs to get lock, 8 secs for the missiles to travel to 800 meters for example).
2. You cannot shoot LRM's at all if there's an enemy ECM near you
3. You cannot shoot LRM's within 180m
4. You cannot hit light, medium or even heavy mechs with LRM's. Only assaults are clumsy enough that some missiles might actually hit them.

There are so many so huge downsides to LRM's that they need at least do crazy damage to balance them out. Don't wanna go the crazy dmg way? Ok, then address the 4 problems above.

This, exactly.

If you want them to do TT type damage, then they have to be far more TT equivalently reliable to actually hit something with. They were only viable because they did crazy dmg when they did hit. That's a bad thing obviously.

The time from target aquisition > lock > launch > impact is way too long for that. Even without ECM. ECM just even further complicates it.

And nothing but the very fastest lights should be avoiding any significant LRM damage through pure movement alone.

In TT the primary balance to LRM's is #3. That's it. You can't pile on all those other hinderances atop of it (lock maintenance, flight time / ability to take cover after launch, terrible tracking of moving targets, ECM blocking....) and then think they are going to be anything but worthless at TT dmg values.

I understand there's a need to compensate for the chance to miss, for the need to aim other weapons (except streaks, who's limits are range and dmg power). It's been piled on way too thickly.

Especially with the absolute abundance of cover on most maps.

Hopefully, the changes to all those issues is what is being worked on to make LRM's worthwhile at more TT equivalent dmg values.

[stjobe]

iminbagdad, on 24 March 2013 - 10:17 AM, said:

After some more testing I want to reemphasize increasing missile flight speed. If they are going to hit softer then more should hit. I wouldn't be against increasing missile damage to 1. This won't make them easy mode weapons but would at least make an LRM 5 do some damage.

Incremental fix for a hot fix. Either or both

Flight speed +25%
Damage increase to 1

First off, what we have now is a TEMPORARY hotfix to stop the "every missile does damage to the head" bug that was introduced with the patch, AND the "every missile does mad amounts of splash damage" bug that got amplified with the bug-fix that fixed the "legs don't take proper amounts of damage" bug. So it is a TEMPORARY state of affairs while they make the real fix.

Secondly, while I do think the LRMs now are much better than they were before the patch (and of course what they were between patch and hotfix), I would advocate the following adjustments to them:

1, Remove splash damage completely, missile spread should take care of damage distribution, so
2. Fix missile spread so that it hits a 'mech-sized target at most ranges with a fair number of missiles (and not all CT!)
3. Then adjust damage upwards so they "feel" right - powerful but not overpowered. Probably a few fractions higher than now.
4. Only then have a look at flight speed. It could probably do with an increase (10s to max range is a long time), but not by much. They aren't direct-fire weapons, after all.

The goal is to make LRMs powerful but not overpowered. They should be as valid to take as any other weapon, but they should not completely determine the engagements as has been the case. It's a tricky balance, especially when you look at single launchers, but I believe small adjustments to damage and flight speed will do it - after the splash damage is gone and missile spread is working well.

Edited by stjobe, 24 March 2013 - 01:34 PM.

[Pinselborste]

way to balance lrms would be to set damage to 1.1, change ecm so it only increases lock time instead of being hiding a whole team and increase lrm speed by 25-35 %

[qki]

Spades Kincaid, on 24 March 2013 - 01:26 PM, said:

This, exactly.

If you want them to do TT type damage, then they have to be far more TT equivalently reliable to actually hit something with. They were only viable because they did crazy dmg when they did hit. That's a bad thing obviously.

The time from target aquisition > lock > launch > impact is way too long for that. Even without ECM. ECM just even further complicates it.

And nothing but the very fastest lights should be avoiding any significant LRM damage through pure movement alone.

In TT the primary balance to LRM's is #3. That's it. You can't pile on all those other hinderances atop of it (lock maintenance, flight time / ability to take cover after launch, terrible tracking of moving targets, ECM blocking....) and then think they are going to be anything but worthless at TT dmg values.

I understand there's a need to compensate for the chance to miss, for the need to aim other weapons (except streaks, who's limits are range and dmg power). It's been piled on way too thickly.

Especially with the absolute abundance of cover on most maps.

Hopefully, the changes to all those issues is what is being worked on to make LRM's worthwhile at more TT equivalent dmg values.

Have you given any thought to the crap you just posted? No, of course not...

So basically - because ECM does what it's supposed to do - mess with targetting - you think LRMs should be able to destroy anything in one or two salvos in the short time when you are able to get a lock - all to compensate for the simple fact that YOU forgot to bring another weapon.

Sereves you right for building a mech that relies on one angle of attack to do all it's damage. How about you send an ECM mech of your own to counter? Thought about that? Probably not - because "only mechs that boat one type of weapon and 1-2 shot anything are viable" How about bringing a DF weapon to go with all those LRMs?


And what about anything that does not have ECM? Following your "logic" - any mech that doesn't have ECM (and thus the ability to prevent some dork with 80 LRMs killing him in one salvo) is not a viable choice.


You sir, have absolutely no buisness posting any of your "expert" advice on these forums, ever again.

Edited by qki, 24 March 2013 - 01:55 PM.

[Nacon]

They need to fix the Ammo.

They do Internal damage much as it was before, unchanged.

[Ens]

Paul Inouye, on 21 March 2013 - 02:46 PM, said:

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THIS MESSAGE:
This is a TEMPORARY fix to quell the damage done by missiles at this time. We are fully investigating the damage model AND focusing on the grouping of missiles and will update as soon as we can on how any changes will be managed/implemented.

[Xyroc]

So After trying it over and over again on a 4SP 2xSRM6+Artemis, 3xML build I can say it Feels like Im not doing much ... I love this mech and have used it extensively since closed beta and if I do say so myself I am very proficient with the SRM6s on it. It has trouble beating down a 4xML 2xLRM 20 CPLT before taking a lot of damage from only the MLs. Now I can use up most of my 400 rounds in a match and only getting damage in the 300s. All in all yes we dont have to worry as much about the CPLT A1 so much any more but the rest of us non boaters are suffering.

[Zolaz]

The hotfix for missiles is about as good as the original problem. Way to nerf something so that it isnt worth playing. But, I guess I should expect that from PGI given how well they have done with missiles in the past.