673 replies to this topic

[UberFubarius]

Rattazustra, on 22 March 2013 - 06:29 AM, said:

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.

Actually, you can.
The missile flight path can be modified to require all missiles to maintain a minimum distance from other missiles. In effect, the missiles per unit area of impact would roughly be the same. Boating more just "expand" the cloud of missiles, or if you want all missiles to concentrate in the same area, stagger their launches.

[Royalewithcheese]

Alwrath, on 22 March 2013 - 09:33 AM, said:

Playtested my medium mech brawlers extensively with this patch. You nerfed SRM's too much. We pay a price for being close range fighters, sometimes we got shot up and cored before we even make it close enough to put out our dmg. Now its pointless to play a medium mech brawler. My Cent 9-A and Trebuchet 7-M are steaming piles of crap now. I understand its a temporary fix and you will be hopefully changing the dmg again. I will be waiting for increased dmg on SRM's, because as of now, medium mech brawlers are dead.

This was my first worry, because to me it sounds like AC20 and UAC5 just jumped up a rank or two in the very short "weapons that are actually viable in a brawl" list. Atlas will be fine, Cataphract will be fine, whoever comes out on top between Jagerbomb and Boomcat will be fine, Jagermech in general will be fine. But those poor little dudes who can't afford the tonnage to put on a decent ballistic?

Edited by Royalewithcheese, 22 March 2013 - 09:38 AM.

[Signal27]

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

It is at these levels that missile combat falls back to a level that we AND the community felt was right for a long period of time before the badness appeared. I'm going to ask you to help us test these values by FEEL. Not by playing SpreadsheetWarrior.

For what it's worth, they feel right to me, Paul.

I seem to remember in the original tabletop BattleTech, that even successfully making a "hit" roll on the dice when shooting off an LRM was no guarantee that ALL the missiles hit. You had to roll on a separate table to see exactly how many missiles hit and most of the time only about half of them landed on target - and even then damage was spread out. This is a far cry from the 100% lock-on and hit mechanic we got now, but I feel you at least got the "spreading out" of the damage about right. And the missiles barrage itself feels about as effective as it did in tabletop, in terms of raw damage.

Edited by Signal27, 22 March 2013 - 09:40 AM.

[iminbagdad]

I don't know guys. I took my C1 out with 2 ALRM 20's and still did just fine with it. Can i one shot mechs? no but it feels better. I stopped using it while it was doing stupid damage.

I'll test some more but I like how they "feel" right now

[Catalinasgrace]

Ok, I have played most types of mechs here as I have 27 bays. I have had LRM's and SRM's along with lasers and ballistics... Anyone saying LRMs are just about right now is full of it. Anyone saying they are in their roll now is full of it... Why not just be honest and say you want Mechbrawler and you don't want to have to worry about having to take cover??? That is after all what you want, right? LRMs are NOT the end all be all target and kill people make them out to be... Something is seriously wrong now just as it was seriously wrong the past couple of days. Other people have tested what I say out as well and I'm right... I fired over 1000 LRMs at a targets in the open with tag and did less than 300 damage. A team mate was hitting a single target in the open with basically a LRM 70 and in three volleys did 33 damage... Ok lets say they are suppose to soften a target with a LRM 20 x2 Cat... Hitting them with 6-10 volleys of missiles shouldn't kill them or at least take an arm off? Lets go a little further, a stalker LRM boat with a setup of an LRM 60-80 shouldn't be able to kill a target? The math does not add up no matter how you look at it... People are once again NOT afraid of LRMs at all and AMS is a waste of tonage. Heck I was in a match in a Cat with 3 ML and 2 LRM 20s and I bet I took 400-500 LRMs to the face. Lasers and ballistics were what ended up killing me... So just be honest and say you don't want to have to deal with LRMs... I really only have 2 questions here for PGI. First how was this actually tested to "feel right" and second why wasn't there just a roll back to what they were before instead of a temp fix that is just a broke as they were when they could single shot a mech? I don't know exactly what is off here but there is most certainly something broke.

[truditu]

Catalinasgrace, on 22 March 2013 - 09:45 AM, said:

Ok, I have played most types of mechs here as I have 27 bays. I have had LRM's and SRM's along with lasers and ballistics... Anyone saying LRMs are just about right now is full of it. Anyone saying they are in their roll now is full of it... Why not just be honest and say you want Mechbrawler and you don't want to have to worry about having to take cover??? That is after all what you want, right? LRMs are NOT the end all be all target and kill people make them out to be... Something is seriously wrong now just as it was seriously wrong the past couple of days. Other people have tested what I say out as well and I'm right... I fired over 1000 LRMs at a targets in the open with tag and did less than 300 damage. A team mate was hitting a single target in the open with basically a LRM 70 and in three volleys did 33 damage... Ok lets say they are suppose to soften a target with a LRM 20 x2 Cat... Hitting them with 6-10 volleys of missiles shouldn't kill them or at least take an arm off? Lets go a little further, a stalker LRM boat with a setup of an LRM 60-80 shouldn't be able to kill a target? The math does not add up no matter how you look at it... People are once again NOT afraid of LRMs at all and AMS is a waste of tonage. Heck I was in a match in a Cat with 3 ML and 2 LRM 20s and I bet I took 400-500 LRMs to the face. Lasers and ballistics were what ended up killing me... So just be honest and say you don't want to have to deal with LRMs... I really only have 2 questions here for PGI. First how was this actually tested to "feel right" and second why wasn't there just a roll back to what they were before instead of a temp fix that is just a broke as they were when they could single shot a mech? I don't know exactly what is off here but there is most certainly something broke.

+1 Exactly what i found.

[Royalewithcheese]

First impressions: SRMs feel okay. They're excellent kneecappers because of the splash mechanics, but I dunno if this was intended or not. Personally I'm still more of a fan of making them do more damage and not splash, because IMO it's a lot harder to balance around fiddly little things like leg/head hitboxes. Got >1000 dmg in my DDC so apparently they're not exactly nerfed into the ground.

[Bobzilla]

Here's my problem, LRM's should be a support weapon. But it depends on your idea of support.

I liked the LRM's having the potential (nullifiied by ecm, cover, getting close) of doing lots of damage. It's the potential that kept peoples heads down and forced movements.

I don't feel a support weapon is something that kinda does some damage, but is completely useless in most situations. Why take it unless your going to boat it. Granted people will have to fill missile slots with something, but chasis that have no missile slots have become more valuable, especially those with ballistic hard points.

I guess i'm saying there's no point to take LRM's over any ballistic for range or support.

[UberFubarius]

Signal27, on 22 March 2013 - 09:38 AM, said:

For what it's worth, they feel right to me, Paul.

I seem to remember in the original tabletop BattleTech, that even successfully making a "hit" roll on the dice when shooting off an LRM was no guarantee that ALL the missiles hit. You had to roll on a separate table to see exactly how many missiles hit and most of the time only about half of them landed on target - and even then damage was spread out. This is a far cry from the 100% lock-on and hit mechanic we got now, but I feel you at least got the "spreading out" of the damage about right. And the missiles barrage itself feels about as effective as it did in tabletop, in terms of raw damage.

A few question.
Do LRM, in TT, suffer from a "hit" roll penalty when compared to say laser or ballistics (at long range)?
Because currently, the LRM's slow flight rate means that unless your opponent is an *****, the hit rate is close to 0%.

[Royalewithcheese]

Also, more backseat game design on my part:

Why not just make LRMs/SSRMs pick a random body part to target once they get within a certain range, and have Artemis change the grouping on this? That way you can have them spread out damage without having to worry about fiddly stuff with splash.

[Papaspud]

After playing about 25 games, the LRM damage "feels" about right. If you get caught out in the open, you will still get pounded. SRM's seemed OK to me, I run them on a jenner, I didn't really notice that they weren't doing as much damage. I thought SSRM's were still pretty strong, but not as bad as they were. Just my "gut feeling" so far.

[MisterPlanetarian]

LRM's with Artemis and Tag are still nasty. Boating 4x LRM 20 with no way of supporting them however is not, all is well.

I've still been owned by LRM boats but only those who properly support them, people packing 30-40 tubes with no artemis, target decay or tag should not expect a good support mech. It's like packing gauss with 2t of ammo, you will hit but your use is limited.

[UberFubarius]

Shadowpunisher, on 22 March 2013 - 09:18 AM, said:

You just forgot the splash damages

0.7+0.7*0.4=0.98
1.5+1.5*0.4=2.1
Damages when 1 secondary component is in the splash radius and take full damage.

And the splash radius of the SRMs is smaller .... so .... it's TT values !!!!!

I don't think in TT you can hide behind terrain AFTER a missile is fired to guarantee a miss.
I'm not THAT sure of TT rules. But I'm pretty sure that the defending mech cannot move AFTER the LRM missile fires

[Imp Mcsmackens]

The real issue here is trying to copy a system from tabletop to a fps directly. In TT you would pretty much never land all your missiles on target. Srm spread sort of simulates that till you get close but then falls apart. The system in TT was designed to be somewhat variable and never setup expecting everything would hit most of the time. LRM wise you're either moving fast enough to make them miss, getting cover, or eating the whole salvo. Not sure how to fix it really short of adding in more randomness to lrms. As an example from TT an lrm 15 would generally hit with 9 missiles on average (9 damage). Same was true of srms regardless of range. You hit or miss, then if you hit you would generally hit with half the missiles regardless of range. As it stands SRM are the best close weapon because you can put all the damage on target most of the time. You also would hit location each shot so you'd never be dropping 12 missiles into a side torso and crushing it the way you can in game. I don't know what the solution is sadly but I think if we're trying to balance around the source material something clever will need to be done to avoid either neutering missiles or making them a murder machine.

As an example a splatcat is far more threatening here than it really should be if you compare to TT. Even on a good shot you could expect 2 launchers to miss completely. The remaining 4 would typically land 12 missiles total. They would then get spread all over the mech at 2 damage per missile to a random location for each. Even on a shot where all 6 hit you're still only looking at 18 hits for 2 damage spread out randomly on a typical distribution of rolls. More importantly you would never put all that damage in one location.

Maybe it could be as simple as not allowing missiles to fire in an alpha? A second or so between shots and suddenly you're not just snapping off 24-36 srm into one location as you stagger past. Lrms kind of do this already with the tube limitation although fixing it so you can't use the same 15 tubes to chuck 30 missiles out of would make some sense. It's honestly kind of broken that an 8R awesome can Throw 60 lrms at someone in a single volley.

[UberFubarius]

Imp Mcsmackens, on 22 March 2013 - 10:09 AM, said:

Maybe it could be as simple as not allowing missiles to fire in an alpha? A second or so between shots and suddenly you're not just snapping off 24-36 srm into one location as you stagger past. Lrms kind of do this already with the tube limitation although fixing it so you can't use the same 15 tubes to chuck 30 missiles out of would make some sense. It's honestly kind of broken that an 8R awesome can Throw 60 lrms at someone in a single volley.

I suggested that in Suggestion forum. All missiles launcher on a mech (regardless of how many ML) will only fire in quarter second intervals.

[Osric Lancaster]

"Doing this exposed a problem with the grouping/clustering of missiles. We now have a high percentage of any incoming missile targeting the CT. This is BAD."

You know, LRMs aren't exactly a user aimed weapon anyway, is there a particular reason to not have the missiles roll a to-hit location instead of pile-driving the CT because " that's where the firing arc brings them down " ?

Edited by Osric Lancaster, 30 August 2013 - 05:14 PM.

[Henree]

lrms are on par with machine guns now.
the three catapults I have are utter crap now, the A1 is total crap actually.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Shadowpunisher, on 21 March 2013 - 02:53 PM, said:

Missiles returned to TT values !!!

Gonna edit my sig !

yay TT value missiles and double armor. This explains why I can walk through them and they wash off my mech like spring rains

[Xyroc]

quells the Boating "insane dmg" but removes any use from us just using 1 or 2 launchers .... oh great thx ...

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Beliall, on 22 March 2013 - 10:47 AM, said:

quells the Boating "insane dmg" but removes any use from us just using 1 or 2 launchers .... oh great thx ...

This is the fix for those balanced builds everyone wasnt complaining about. Now you have no choice but to boat.

Ive actually sold all my missiles and started boating lasers. They should just remove missiles and make the whiners happy

Edited by Mechwarrior Buddah, 22 March 2013 - 10:50 AM.