673 replies to this topic

[MN03]

I just shot 600 (!) LRMs at an Awesome standing in the open (Alpine peaks), both tagged and with Artemis at 700m range. It did not kill him, and yes, most of it hit. It was a beautiful stream of missiles pounding into him and it did not kill him. Please fix this fast. For now, I'm enjoying my AC/40 jager ^^

[Gopblin2]

Played A1 for a week.

Thoughts: Testing ground is broken. Looks like the patch didn't extend there, or something.

On testing ground, my missiles seem to do about twice the damage they do in actual matches.

For LRMs, the difference may be about the target moving (although honestly, how fast does an Atlas move? Yet it takes me 600+ missiles to kill an open Atlas in a match and only about 150 on the testing ground).
For SRMs, they clearly do less damage in the Testing Grounds - I can core most any mech under 65 tons in one salvo, that's flat out impossible in game.
A third possibility is that target dummies have little armor, but why would that be?

As for LRM damage - yeah, It's very broken. Just played a match where I was perched right above the enemy team with clear 600m shots, shot ~350 LRMs into an enemy Cat and ~650 LRMs into the enemy Atlas. Didn't kill either, didn't even get them in the red. If I had gauss or LL cat, would've killed them in one third of the time. Also, for some reason those LRMs I was dumping into the back of the atlas were mostly being spread across his front armor.

SRM and SSRM damage - it's OK on an A1 boat, but the nerfs made it less viable on anything else. Using 6 SRM6 with Artemis I can still do OK damage (although IMO a dual LL/dual UAC5 or AC20 cat is much more effective), but someone with 2 missile slots won't install Artemis, and without it SRMs are only effective at <90m range.

Best wishes,
Daniel.

[Shibas]

Gopblin2, on 31 March 2013 - 03:40 PM, said:

A third possibility is that target dummies have little armor, but why would that be?

There is your answer to most of your post. The mechs that are out in the testing grounds are trial mechs. They tend not to have max armor or reduced armor comparatively. The jagermech for instance has very little stock armor. So one reason that the damage difference is that, typically most people put max (or close to it) armor on their mech, where trial mechs do not.

[Aurien Titus]

I agree that missiles had gotten a little out of control, but this latest change is too far in the other direction. It went from "oh my god the missiles hurt" to "how cute, you brought missiles".

[Sifright]

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

The Hotfix

What it addresses:
The insane amount of damage missiles started doing including splash damage and something weird that caused said splash damage to spike through the roof.

How it used to work:

(Note: I'm going to use the term 'secondary component' below but you can read it as 'a component that did not get hit directly but is taking splash damage')

All missiles used to have a 4.0m splash damage radius that took into account the percentage of the volume of secondary components engulfed in the radius.

With the advent of smaller/tighter component groupings on the smaller Mechs, an issue arose where too much splash damage was being spread across those Mechs. Basically it turned into a hot mess.

What does the hotfix do?
A number of things. First off, it reduces the splash damage radius from 4.0m (for both LRM/SRM) to 1.8m (LRM) and 1.3m (SRM/SSRM). This obviously reduces the amount of splash damage caused to secondary components.

Any location directly hit by a missile takes the full damage. Any secondary component hit by the splash damage radius takes splash damage based on how far the location is from the center of the explosion.

We also added a scaling factor of 0.4 to the amount of damage done to secondary components. From the impact point to the outer radius of splash damage, this factor of 0.4 drops linearly to 0.0. This means that if somehow magically the point of impact is so close to the secondary component, the maximum damage it would take from splash is WEAPON DAMAGE * 0.4 (that is 40% of weapon damage).

But Paul, you said you'd REMOVE splash damage!!!!
I know I did, but here's the kicker and yet another part of the mystery of missile damage. We tried removing splash damage and it did exactly what you think it was going to do. Pinpoint on target damage. Cool right? Yes... but...

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.

Now our primary concern as to what is happening on the live servers is to curtail the incredibly high damage levels of missiles/explosions. To make the missile explosions/damage feel like they should and to keep the damage spread across a Mech, we kept the above mentioned splash damage work along with the following damage changes to missiles:

LRMs drop from 1.8 damage per missile to 0.7 damage per missile.
SRMs drop from 2.5 damage per missile to 1.5 damage per missile.

DO NOT HIT REPLY TO FREAKOUT YET!

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.


Missiles are STILL a very big threat to the target but just aren't doing these chart topping damage numbers.

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.


SERVER DOWNTIME: 4:00 PM PDT - 11 PM UDT
ESTIMATED DOWNTIME: 30 mins

question, how does the propensity for the guided ammo targeting CT have any rationale on balancing unguided SRMS in the same way?

[iminbagdad]

I'll throw this in again because i "Feel" it would be about right.

Bump LRM damage to 1 and increase missile speed by 25%.

More missiles will hit and will do at least a bit of damage.

Thats all

[Ey3cD34Dppl]

Damage of the LRMs should be at 1 damagepoint/missle, while the SRMs should make 2 damage/missle.

Speed up the missle speed like suggested earlier by 25 % (for the LRMs) and include the SRMs into the defensive power of the AMS. I think this would make it work.

I don't think that anything else could make it better. Actually the LRMs are just a joke. I don't even carry an AMS around, because it is just not necessary anymore.

By the way: In the TT the damage values are just like stated above..

The only difference is that SRMs are spreading their damage all over the field while LRMs are usually cluster themselves in damage groups of 5. But this is up for the trajectory of the missles. So it is actually not part of the discussion.

0.7 and 1.5 damage per missle is just to low.

Please think about the buff like stated above to make LRMs and SRMs a viable option in the game.

Just my 2 cents for the discussion.

Cheers
Ey3

[Sheraf]

Missile damage back to before the latest patch is what about right, then buff the AMS instead.

[Ransack]

If we get stuck with this lower missile damage, please consider reducing the heat.

[Gopblin2]

Shibas, on 01 April 2013 - 08:04 AM, said:

There is your answer to most of your post. The mechs that are out in the testing grounds are trial mechs. They tend not to have max armor or reduced armor comparatively. The jagermech for instance has very little stock armor. So one reason that the damage difference is that, typically most people put max (or close to it) armor on their mech, where trial mechs do not.

May be partly true, but I checked with UAC/5 and Gauss rifles and the performance is very similar to what I get in combat (against stationary targets). Missiles, on the other hand, seem to do way more damage.

In other words, on the testing ground I need about 30 UAC5 rounds to kill an Atlas, or 150 LRMs. In combat, I need about 30 rounds to kill an Atlas, or 600 LRMs. Therefore, looks like the Testing Ground is bugged.

Best wishes,
Daniel.

[Hashashiyyin]

It feels right to me.

I've played a missile boat with 6 SRMs and feel the damage now is just about right.

If anything it still feels a little on the high side compared to energy and ballistic ordnance.

[Gopblin2]

Yeah, I agree SRM damage is OK. I wouldn't say it's anything stellar, as my SplatCat is much more limited than say my K2 with 2 Gauss and 4ML. But it's playable and fun.

LRM damage is totally broken though.

And SSRMs are broken because ECM is broken (how would you like a 1.5 ton module that would completely inactivate 2/3 of energy or ballistics weapons in game?), otherwise they would be fine.

Best wishes,
Daniel.

[Shibas]

Gopblin2, on 02 April 2013 - 08:14 AM, said:

May be partly true, but I checked with UAC/5 and Gauss rifles and the performance is very similar to what I get in combat (against stationary targets). Missiles, on the other hand, seem to do way more damage.

In other words, on the testing ground I need about 30 UAC5 rounds to kill an Atlas, or 150 LRMs. In combat, I need about 30 rounds to kill an Atlas, or 600 LRMs. Therefore, looks like the Testing Ground is bugged.

Best wishes,
Daniel.

There are so many variables though that could be causing that, armor, movement, terrain, ams (nearby ams), torso twisting, any one (or multiple) of those could cause the difference. I'm not saying it's not true, it's not a terrible idea to take a look at just to be sure.

Also, as I mentioned before, LRMs are not that terrible at the moment. With splash, LRMs are doing .98 and SRMs are doing 2.10. If this setup were to stay around for a while, I'd like to see LRMs going to .8 => 1.12 with splash damage. It would put it closer in line to damage with each other.

[Enigmos]

Both SRM and LBX-10 need 5-10% less spread.

[Turook]

Well I have now removed AMS from all my Mechs and pretty much well ignore missile fire now, I love it.

Since the patch my 4xLRM15 Artemis with TAG Awesome is doing less damage per match than my Hunchback with two LLasers and one MPulse Laser so it has gone into the cupboard with the rest of my LRM mechs. I actually get abused or ridiculed by many players if I show up on the battlefield with my Awesome.

[SpiralRazor]

stjobe, on 28 March 2013 - 12:21 AM, said:

Actually, listing 1.8 and having the actual damage be closer to 6 was what was effin' stupid.
Or listing 2.5 for SRMs and having the actual damage done be 12.9 per effin' missile was what was effin' stupid.

And since you apparently didn't read the OP, the missile code is BROKEN, and the current values are TEMPORARY. They WILL change.

Missiles still coding at .7....So where is your fix derptard? Sorry, but ive forgotten more about the mechanics of this game then youve ever known.

[Knechter]

Any news on a fix?

[Wendigo Vendetta]

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.

I sort of fear that the temporary nature of the fix is just as temporary as the temporary removal of knockdown...

[wanderer]

A "temporary" fix shouldn't effectively disable a weapon system or cause people to remove it's counter from their 'Mechs due to no longer requiring it for any reasonable purpose.

I'd be happy to simply see them scrap splash on LRMs altogether and simply tweak the damage back up a bit, then address the oddity that LRMs have in losing effectiveness as the target's movement speed increases.

[Sheraf]

Any date on the fix to make this fix temporary?