673 replies to this topic

[warp103]

Thontor, on 22 March 2013 - 04:40 AM, said:

A specialized LRM mech is ineffective now you say?

I don't use LRMs... I generally suck at them... I had to convert my brawler Atlas into a 2 ERLL 3 Art-LRM15 Atlas just to test these changes because I don't own any other mechs that would be good for specialized LRM support.

This is my 3rd match (launching solo)


If an inexperience LRM user like me can do that without TAG... I think LRMs are just fine.. And specialized LRM mechs still can do well.

Also... Kill count? Really? That's the measuring stick you use? I didn't get any kills in the above match and I consider it a pretty effective performance.

top score and again ZERO kills lol second time . what piont if you cannot kill a single mech. US mil would be pissed lol

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

I just did a quick Testing Grounds test in my LRM Stalker. I carry 2 aLRM 20s with plenty of ammo.

I one-shot the Jenner and the Commando. I two-shot the Cicada. I three-shot the Centurion, Atlas, and Catapult. The Awesome and Cataphract I attacked from the side, and the arm took the brunt of the first several volleys. Once the arm went, though, it took at most three more shots for either of them.

A couple caveats: the targets were stationary, and many of the stock builds are short on armor.

Here are my conclusions. First, LRMs do focus heavily on the center torso, even when approaching from directly to the flank of the target. Though the arm will intercept missiles, once that's gone the CT gets cored in short order. Second, three volleys (120 Artemis IV LRMs) was enough to tear right through an Atlas (and the stock AS7-D has close enough to max frontal armor that it should be one of the hardest targets in the game). Third, I finished up with around 300 missiles left, which suggests that LRMs still do plenty of damage per ton (if you hit with them).

When PGI is working on a permanent fix for LRMs, I think the number one priority needs to be for them to remove the center-torso focus of the terminal flight pattern. This makes them super deadly, even with drastically nerfed numbers. If anything, the CT, having more armor than any other part of the mech, ought to be damaged more slowly (as a percentage of total armor on the location). I was consistently seeing it absorb the bulk of the damage, even blowing up faster than already-damaged side-torsos when firing at a target from the flank (once the arm went down, the CT followed in short order despite being undamaged up to that point).

Aside from that, LRMs could probably use a slight damage boost combined with a slight scatter increase. Make them a bit more likely to hit, but with fewer total missiles. Let TAG and Artemis IV tighten grouping up again, TAG by a lesser amount (since it's cheap in terms of weight and space and since its benefits can be shared) and Artemis IV by a greater (since it costs far more in tonnage and space, and cannot share its benefits). Splash damage seemed pretty ok. Flight speed could probably use a bit of a boost, too, which would increase accuracy, especially against faster enemies, but that's very optional and would need testing.

[SgtKinCaiD]

The missile weapon were fine before the patch so put them back like it was and the problem is solved.

[Hayashi]

Ingame test results by stalking a LRMcat are: 60 Artemis LRMs reduce Atlas HP by 4%. Atlas max is about 608HP according to the armor panel. But we actually know armour is doubled, so its real HP is 1216. Damage dealt is thus 48.64 for 60 missiles. Or 0.81 per missile. Since that's higher than 0.7, the 0.11 must be from splash damage.

It doesn't seem very useful. =P

[Bobzilla]

If find it weird that they relase a mech which is balistic heavy, then nerf missles making balistics the highest DPS by far now.


Stop the nerf circle. Tweak, don't totaly nerf.

[Rattazustra]

The whole issue boils down to one of the oldest problems of game design: Competent balancing.

The problem with that is that most people have no grasp how that is done and tend to mix up the weirdest concepts. You see arguments made on the basis of gut feeling.

Reality has THE most profound weapon balancing of all. What a surprise. But how does this mystical real world do it? Simply put, each weapon has characteristics (range, cost, weight,...) and if these are in favour of using the weapon, it gets used. Simple as that. The better and the more flexible it can be used, the more it will be used. If it is pointless, compared to something else, people stop using it. As long as enough factors exist within the virtual environment, the easier balancing is. Removing ammo cost completely, for example, was a big mistake. It removed one of the main balancing factors we have in reality and such are hard to replace, if at all possible. Still, we have some left: Space, Weight and Firepower.

For the LRM this means that there is absolutely no way around it being powerful when it is boated. Why? Because if it is not powerful when boated, it is useless whenever it is not boated. If 4x LRM15 do not rip up an enemy with a few salvos, mounting a single LRM15 is neigh useless and an LRM10 and LRM5 would even be completely ridiculous.

Building glass cannons out of at least average systems will always be powerful. It simply has to be. As soon as you nerf the specialized glass cannon, you nerf the system it uses beyond the point where it can be used by anyone else.

And where is the problem with LRM anyway? Sure, they were powerful. But they are completely useless below 180m, they weight a LOT, they need loads of ammo, they require reliable target lock and they can be defeated by concentrated AMS or ECM. They can also blow up your own mech through ammo explosion.

Most people just don't like the idea that one stupid mistake might get them ripped apart. This is the case when you get caught in the open by an enemy LRM boat. But guess what happens the other way around? If the LRM boat makes a stupid mistake and gets caught in close combat, it is toast. Just as much. A single Raven can ruin the day of an LRM stalker and mess up the whole offensive capacity long and sufficiently enough to score a victory.

If everything that can be used to some effect gets removed from the game, we will end up just marking enemy mech's location with weapons fire, then close in, dismount from the cockpit and attack them with deadly hand welders in a 30 minute contest of material density and welding expertise.

What the Jagermech patch did to LRMs was horrid, but the nerf now is just pointless and counter-productive.

[Filth Pig]

Specterr, on 22 March 2013 - 06:05 AM, said:

I like the changes, I think they got the "feel" of the damage right, hopefully when they re-tweak it later they can retain it.

Right now LRMs can't be ignored but they are not an instant death sentence anymore. They are great for soften up targets and providing indirect support to other mechs, and as far as I am concerned that is exactly what they should be there for.

SRM's damage also feels bang on, it takes a bit of the sting out of the splatcats and Raven-3L which is fine by me. I drive a Raven-3L but I actually prefer lasers to streaks, before I pretty much had to have 2xSSRM2 to remain competitive against other Ravens but since the last patch I've dropped a streak launcher in favour of more laser damage and its been fine.

Splatcats are suppose to "sting".. they have 6 SRM-6's on them.. Can I suggest you read the Battletech master books as to what an srm's role in battle is.. It is suppose to pack a punch, and if you can fit 6 srm6's on a mech then of course it is gonna sting.

What happened was everyone was complaining about splatcats being OP, when in reality yes, they were OP but that wasn't because srm's were OP... If you could fit 6 of anything on a mech (other than flamers/mg's) it would be quite OP. But should we nerf those weapons too because one mech happens to take advantage of it so well?

[Butane9000]

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

I'm going to ask you to help us test these values by FEEL. Not by playing SpreadsheetWarrior.

Probably the best comment in this entire thread.

Thank you for the fix. My only complaint is it wasn't out sooner.

Now if only you'd get on the little ECM problem.

Edited by Butane9000, 22 March 2013 - 06:41 AM.

[Fabian Wrede]

So now missllies will do less damage than in TT rules.Would had been enought to lower them to TT rules 1 pt for lrm and 2 pt for srm

[Mechteric]

Hayashi, on 22 March 2013 - 06:27 AM, said:

Ingame test results by stalking a LRMcat are: 60 Artemis LRMs reduce Atlas HP by 4%. Atlas max is about 608HP according to the armor panel. But we actually know armour is doubled, so its real HP is 1216. Damage dealt is thus 48.64 for 60 missiles. Or 0.81 per missile. Since that's higher than 0.7, the 0.11 must be from splash damage.

It doesn't seem very useful. =P

Actually the 608HP is already the double figure, in TT that would be 300'ish max armor. Also the % value is a bit misleading anyway since you can kill mechs even when they're at 60% armor by going through an appropriate torso location (with respect to XL or non-xl)

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 22 March 2013 - 06:51 AM.

[AdamBaines]

Shumabot, on 21 March 2013 - 02:57 PM, said:

Didn't the commando come out like six months ago, and is the most directly affected by splash? Why is this being addressed more than half a year later?

Seriously????? That's what you took from this post? Really?????

[Karl Streiger]

The splash damage was meant to simulate a LRM volley spread over the complete mech?
Could lesser missiles and more damage per missile simulate the same effect?

[Nincompoopery]

This hack is nothing but terrible. What the hell is a "support system"? It means you're too weak to be able to kill anything, but you can maybe weaken someone enough (e.g take off their paint) for somebody with a real weapon, meaning PPC or gauss, to get the kill. What? You like getting kills, and the Cbills that go with it? Hey chump! That's not the "role" of mechs with missiles! Your true role is to distract the enemies light and medium mechs, so all the heavies and assaults with the real weapons can have uninterrupted fun.

This whole thing is a load of crap. What you guys are going to get is nothing but whole teams of assaults with gauss and/or PPC. If you torch the viability of lighter mechs, what the hell is their purpose? Scouting? That's crap. If you can't carry your own weight in the killing field, this game is going to devolve into eight assaults on each team.

[Silvar]

My opinion about current missiles.

Lrms feel little bit low damage wise now (i would raise the damage to 0.8 - 0.9) splash seems about right

Srms feel allmost right (increase to damage 1.6 would be perfect) Splash is good


And while you change things just remove that ECM from atlas ECM should be only for light and medium mechs... (balance would be better that way)

Edited by Silvar, 22 March 2013 - 08:09 AM.

[MADSix]

I was able to run 1 match in my AWS-8R last night 4x ALRM-15 and TAG. Match was on the new map. I was unable to do anything useful for my team. I would line up a target and fire (with LOS and just out of TAG range). They would not seek cover and continue to engage our team. I ended with a pitiful amount of damage (under 200).

[Zyllos]

Thontor, on 22 March 2013 - 07:14 AM, said:

They are 0.7 PLUS splash damage. If the splash damage hits even just one additional component that is now 0.98 for LRMs and 2.1 for SRMs.

And the splash damage pretty much always hits at least one other component.. Usually more.

That is incorrect. The splash damage is a weighted value dependent on the distance from the center of impact. If a LRM hit and was 0.9m away from a secondary component, it deals 50% * 0.4 = 0.14 damage to the secondary component and 0.7 to the primary component.

If a LRM hits and the component is 1.8m (somehow magically right next to it, like Garth's example), it will deal 100% * 0.4 = 0.28 damage to the secondary component and 0.7 to the primary component.

At least, after reading it several times, that is how I read it.

***EDIT: Ya, here is my evidence:

Quote

From the impact point to the outer radius of splash damage, this factor of 0.4 drops linearly to 0.0.

This is why I am multiplying the value of the extra damage by a percentage on the secondary component because it linearly is reduced based on splash range and range to secondary component.***

***EDIT: Interestingly, the reason why splash damage is dealing MUCH more to small targets than larger targets is how these weighted values are and the closeness of their components.

Take the Commando for example, when a LRM hits the CT dead center, I would expect the distance to be roughly 0.5 to 0.7m (lets say 0.6m) to each side torso, this makes the LRM deal MUCH more damage that it is suppose to because then you get 0.7 damage to the primary component and ((1.8m - 0.6m) / 1.8m) * 0.4 * 0.7 = 0.187 to the secondary component. But since we are hitting a symmetrical target, we get 0.7 damage to the primary component, and two 0.187 damage to the secondary component. Thus, that LRM now has dealt 1.074, more than expected.

This is the reason why with 1.8 damage with linear splash at 1.0 weight (full), you get 1.8 to the primary component and ((4.0m - 0.6m) / 4.0m) * 1.0 * 1.8 = 1.53 damage for the secondary component. This leads to the LRM dealing 1.8 + (1.53 * 2) = 4.86! That a huge extra boost and is why they were broken before. And this is against small targets. Their boost would be smaller against larger targets, which makes them unfair in their damage against the target.

The weighted 0.4 value is a good start, but the splash mechanic just needs to go. It's making missiles deal more than they should in some situations and perform underwhelmingly in others due to low primary component damage. The way forward on fixing this should be controlling the flight pattern.

Edited by Zyllos, 22 March 2013 - 07:40 AM.

[Maxx Blue]

After playing last night, LRM's didn't feel too bad on either end of the 'transaction'. In fact, I still got ruined by LRM Stalkers twice when I got caught too far from cover. Of course, I don't really have any true LRM boats so I don't ususally LRM anyone to death in the first place, just soften them up or keep them in cover. SRM's felt noticably weaker. With three ASRM6's it took me between two and three tons of ammo to kill a Catapult. Admittedly he was doing a good job of turning and spreading the damage, but it took forever to actually drop him. I'm usually pretty decent at catching fast mechs with SRM volleys, but I was having noticably more trouble dropping Ravens and Cicada's with SRM fire as my primary damage. Didn't get to whomp on enough spiders or commandos to comment on them. I hadn't read the hotfix notes, but I could tell from playing that SRM's got nerfed. I didn't actually realize LRM's had as well.

Anyway, regarding splash damage (which I take it is proving difficult to balance) maybe trying to do some physical calculation about how far a missile is from each part of the mech's model and trying to figure out one number that works for all mech sizes isn't the right answer. I understand the desire to 'spread out' missile damage across components, but with the vast size differences in mechs you are either going to get missiles that hit every part of a commando, or only one part of an atlas creating widely variable damage outputs. Instead, maybe you could try having splash simply hit other locations that are connected to the one that was actually hit. So, for example, a missile hits a mech in the RT. The RT would get whatever the base missile damage is, and then splash damage could be applied to the CT and right arm, since they are the two locations 'connected' to the RT. That way, it doesn't matter how big or small a mech is, splash will affect them the same way by adding a lesser amount of damage to nearby parts.

As for how to actually apply splash, you could do it any number of ways:
- Have a fixed total amount of splash damage and divide it evenly over all connected locations. If you hit an arm, then all splash will go to the connected torso. If you hit the CT it gets spread out over head, torsos, and legs.
- Have a fixed per-location splash damage amount and apply it to any connected locations that get splashed. So, say splash is 0.2 damage, and you hit the RT. You would get 0.4 total splash from splashing the arm and CT. If you hit the arm, you only get 0.2 splash beacuse the only component connected to the arm is the side torso.
- Have a min/max value for per-location splash and generate a random number for each location connected to a hit to determine what percentage of max splash damage it takes.

There are lots of little ways you can play with dealing out the damage, but the heart of the suggestion is calculating which locations receive splash damage based on what they are connected to in the paper doll, not where a component exists in the 3D model. That should allow you to spread missile damage in a reliable and consistent way across all shapes and sizes of mechs.

Edited by Maxx Blue, 22 March 2013 - 07:33 AM.

[Thrasher688]

Thank you PGI. This feels better after playing for a few hours last night.

The LRM's still hurt some, and are good at softening up opponents, but the overall seams better.

... Now if the ECM could be slightly better.. That would be great.

I do enjoy playing, after over 25 years of BT under my belt. This is a bit better.

[Karl Streiger]

Ok...its total stupid...and i don't know if it is possible to make it.

But what does a LRM 20 from TT means....actually it means that you have not 20 missiles no you have virtually just 4 missiles.
While the last one that hit does variable damage.

For example your mech got a hit by 8 LRMs that means a single location got a hit by 5 the other location got a hit with a dmg of 3.

What if your LRM 20 did not fire 20 single missiles but 5 or 6 larger ones. Each missile look like 2, 3 or 4 missiles but they work in the background simple as a single on.

So you could achieve spread over the complete mech, without calculation every single warhead.

As said, stupid idea...but maybe so abstract and so stupid that only a nerdish spreadsheetwarrior is able to see

[Haniwa]

Bobzilla, on 22 March 2013 - 06:27 AM, said:

If find it weird that they relase a mech which is balistic heavy, then nerf missles making balistics the highest DPS by far now.


Stop the nerf circle. Tweak, don't totaly nerf.