358 replies to this topic

[Yankee77]

MustrumRidcully, on 22 March 2013 - 04:13 AM, said:

But aren't you comparing the wrong extremes? He equipped LRMs, ammo and heat sinks on his mech.
This will shrink down the number of weapons you mention here a lot, if you also bring the reasonable amounts of ammo and sinks into it.
50 tons of PPCs - isn't that basically what we have with those Hex-PPC Stalkers. 42 tons and 8 Double Heat Sinks are about 50 tons. That's still not an instant-pop mech, and it seems to have more heat issues than his LRM mech.
50 tons of AC/20 are pretty much 3 AC/20, no heat sinks,a nd 2 tons of ammo. ANd the same alpha as the 6 PPCs

The key difference between the LRM and the PPCs and AC/20 is that the latter will be "kinda" pin-point damage, while the LRM also spreads a lot of its damage. That is clearly a drawback, because you want to core the enemy mech, not see his hit locations light up in pretty orange tones. But those LRMs have the perk that they can get over some cover, have a good range, and home to their target, meaning you don't need to worry about lead time and the like.

I will have to actually get into the game and play some more to figure out if I think the LRMneeds to be a bit stronger. But I wouldn't consider it as outrageous weak as, say, an MG or Flamer...

Those are good points, particularly the comparison to the 5 PPCs (or 6 PPCs to better match the tonnage). Given this the performance is more comparable.

That said, I do not think that the fact that LRMs "can get over some cover, have a good range, and home to their target" should be considered an advantage requiring lowered effectiveness, because at the same time LRMs have FAR MORE counters than any other weapons (ECM, very slow flight time, a missiles incoming warning, and AMS).

I'd say those 2 sets of factors cancel each other out, what's left is the actual results.

And to be fair, looking at your comparison,I do not think LRMs are useless, or anywhere near that bad. In my opinion they were nerfed a BIT too much, but last night I felt they were quite effective. I run with 2 PPCs and 25 LRM tubes with artemis and TAG, and I felt my LRMs were just as useful.

A small buff might be nice, but this is a temporary situation of course.

Thank you.

[Demos]

Natanael Cormac, on 22 March 2013 - 03:12 AM, said:

In the interests of keping this short, I'll try to be as succinct as possible.

1: LRMs are weird and need to be fixed

2: The OP is still WRONG

3: Your ascertion that 100 missiles should be enough to kill a Cataphract is flawed

4: You guys can argue about the finer points of what "SUPPORT" means all day if you like, but what it comes down to is that LRMs are not a precision weapon.

5: You are not a sniper, you are a long-range shotgun. Deal with it.

6: Yes, other weapons do have to worry about cover and the environment. Not to mention they have to worry about range.

7: Projectile speed, restructuring missile points, balancing ecm, and recalibrating missile dispersion are all factors that could balancing LRMs (as well as SRMs) that are not just + or - damage.

Well said!

IMO the damage is just fine for LRM now.
What they now need is the possibility to lock even versus ECM covered targets (with a longer lock-on time) and maybe a slightly higher velocity.

Why should the LRM a suck-or-shine weapon. Make them viable in 8v8 with changes as described above and let some PUGS and Newbies live... or at least survive one salvo

[VagGR]

wait a few seconds and then click your right mouse button again...that should do it..happy?

[MustrumRidcully]

StalaggtIKE, on 22 March 2013 - 04:25 AM, said:

Thing is, they're not. I think everyone just forgot that he just shot 100 missiles! So if a person brings a reasonable amount of missiles, say 2xLRM15, they'er not going to be doing squat. Simple fact, LRM currently are not worth their weight. All this is doing is encouraging missile boating, because that's the only way to get any results out of them.

No, 2 LRM15 would be doing about 1/3, not "squat". 1/3rd of a 70 ton mech's center torso armour isn't bad. 2-3 PPCs might do the same thing. Would you consider 2-3 PPC hits also "squat"?

[Sifright]

MustrumRidcully, on 22 March 2013 - 04:13 AM, said:

But aren't you comparing the wrong extremes? He equipped LRMs, ammo and heat sinks on his mech.
This will shrink down the number of weapons you mention here a lot, if you also bring the reasonable amounts of ammo and sinks into it.
50 tons of PPCs - isn't that basically what we have with those Hex-PPC Stalkers. 42 tons and 8 Double Heat Sinks are about 50 tons. That's still not an instant-pop mech, and it seems to have more heat issues than his LRM mech.
50 tons of AC/20 are pretty much 3 AC/20, no heat sinks,a nd 2 tons of ammo. ANd the same alpha as the 6 PPCs

The key difference between the LRM and the PPCs and AC/20 is that the latter will be "kinda" pin-point damage, while the LRM also spreads a lot of its damage. That is clearly a drawback, because you want to core the enemy mech, not see his hit locations light up in pretty orange tones. But those LRMs have the perk that they can get over some cover, have a good range, and home to their target, meaning you don't need to worry about lead time and the like.

I will have to actually get into the game and play some more to figure out if I think the LRMneeds to be a bit stronger. But I wouldn't consider it as outrageous weak as, say, an MG or Flamer...

Oh to be sure lrms are still a stronger option than mgs or flamers.

it would take extreme amount of work to make lrms worse than those.

the big problem with lrms for me has always been the current nature of the weapon system.

it oscilates between being to good or being rubbish when ever they edit anything due to the mechanics behind it for a splash weapon(Hits in a cone) to be good it has to do more damage (overall) than a pin point weapon of similar range and tonnage.

The problem is getting that number right is incredibly difficult.

Lrms can't be used to cut a mechs side torso off with precision for instance, where as I could easily do that with lasers or ballistics, not really sure how to solve the issue because it is a fundamental problem with how LRMS and SSRMS work.

I almost always prefer direct fire control over my weapon systems due to this.

At least with standard SRMS I am capable of choosing to aim for weak spots with lrms its entirely incidental.

[MustrumRidcully]

One thing that occured to me - their current problem is that LRMs all go for the CT. So they want to focus more on splash and less on pin-point damage.

But don't they already have a solution for it? Aren't Streaks supposedly going for the joints of mechs now instead of all for the torso? Or is that also part of the bug, that this doesn't work anymore?

I mean, if it worked, that would be the solution to make LRMs work without splash and with higher individual missile damage.

---

In general I agree that I just can't get to like the missile mechanics. You just don't have control over them. They are basically the only weapon system that could work like the table top system, where hit locations are random and you have no control over where your shot goes (barring special gear and situations.) That's a bad mixture.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 22 March 2013 - 04:44 AM.

[wuselfuzz]

Siliconwolf, on 21 March 2013 - 08:43 PM, said:

Eh, the people that complain about LRMs being op are of the "Ahhh! I'm playin pew pew lazor robotz and I get hitted from something I can't see!" variety. Balance to them is just sitting in an open field, trading fire with another player in a kind of long-range 'rock 'em, sock 'em robots' match. Suitable for extremely young children because the rules are easy, but not really the kind of gameplay that I paid money for.

Sure. Sitting in the open field.

Yesterday evening, it was more like this, when playing my HBK-4G or my CDA-3M:

You hop from cover to cover. More often than not heat view is turned on, always looking for heat signatures. To avoid snipers (and scouting in the CDA). Unfortunately, you might get engaged by a brawler. In a medium mech, you can't affort to stand still. You've got to move _somewhere_ not to get killed. Sometimes, it's a trade off to move from your cover to another cover, getting in sight of those snipers. You eventually get hit from a sniper or two, often hitting you hard, but not instantly killing you, still leaving a chance to get back to team mates or getting into cover.

Then, you notice an LRM swarm coming your way. Game over. Nothing, absolutely nothing you can do about this. Yeah, if I'm far away from enemies, it's often possible to hide behind cover. But if you're chased, you either can stop behind cover (and be killed by those chasing you) or run further (and be killed by LRMs).

Edited by wuselfuzz, 22 March 2013 - 04:54 AM.

[StalaggtIKE]

MustrumRidcully, on 22 March 2013 - 04:39 AM, said:

No, 2 LRM15 would be doing about 1/3, not "squat". 1/3rd of a 70 ton mech's center torso armour isn't bad. 2-3 PPCs might do the same thing. Would you consider 2-3 PPC hits also "squat"?

By the numbers it should be doing 1/3 but it is clearly not. Did you not just watch the OP's "video"? My PPC boat is doing a heck of a lot more damage than 2xLRM15.

[StalaggtIKE]

wuselfuzz, on 22 March 2013 - 04:53 AM, said:

Sure. Sitting in the open field.

Yesterday evening, it was more like this, when playing my HBK-4G or my CDA-3M:

You hop from cover to cover. More often than not heat view is turned on, always looking for heat signatures. To avoid snipers (and scouting in the CDA). Unfortunately, you might get engaged by a brawler. In a medium mech, you can't affort to stand still. You've got to move _somewhere_ not to get killed. Sometimes, it's a trade off to move from your cover to another cover, getting in sight of those snipers. You eventually get hit from a sniper or two, often hitting you hard, but not instantly killing you, still leaving a chance to get back to team mates or getting into cover.

Then, you notice an LRM swarm coming your way. Game over. Nothing, absolutely nothing you can do about this. Yeah, if I'm far away from enemies, it's often possible to hide behind cover. But if you're chased, you either can stop behind cover (and be killed by those chasing you) or run further (and be killed by LRMs).

So, you're complaining because someone chased you from behind cover allowing for LRM fire to hit you? I guess you feel that 1 mech should be able to overcome teamwork.

[Esplodin]

My Spider 5K is sitting in the dusty corner of my mechbay polishing his machine guns laughing is bloody main gyro off.

[Yanlowen Cage]

Well, just my 2 cents.
Note that Tabletop and MW:O can not be the same but:

In tabletop if you fire and lrm20 at a mech and you get a hit, then you roll 2d6 and see how many missiles actually hit. On average about 12 (I believe) hit. (the rest spread too far). SO if you fired 5xlrm20 you would (on average) hit with about 60 missiles that would be placed into 5 point groups then rolled again for to determine the locations they hit. Unless you are lucky you will spread that damage all over the mech. there will be no extra "splash damage". So if you want to say that MW:O is not true to TT with missiles or hell anything then yes you are right. MW:O totally overpowers missiles. If a mech is standing still in MW:O and you launch five racks at him everything hits. or near everything. Heck even if you are moving at a not uber clip in the open you are getting whacked by a huge majority of missiles. So in all actuality if you wanted this game to be closer to TT and lore missiles would miss alot more and those that hit would do less damage. But this isn't TT or even close so what we got is ok. I guess

[MustrumRidcully]

StalaggtIKE, on 22 March 2013 - 05:01 AM, said:

So, you're complaining because someone chased you from behind cover allowing for LRM fire to hit you? I guess you feel that 1 mech should be able to overcome teamwork.

Without saying that this is exactly how things were: Leaving cover to react to another threat* should also not be an automatic death sentence.

*)oops, I originally wrote thread. Of course, if you read the messageboards while fighting in a MW:O match and leave cover because of that, you** deserve to die. And no, you don't get to see my K/D ratio.
**) That is more your mech and not you. [NotADeathThreat]

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 22 March 2013 - 05:17 AM.

[Leiska]

Itkovian, on 22 March 2013 - 04:30 AM, said:

That said, I do not think that the fact that LRMs "can get over some cover, have a good range, and home to their target" should be considered an advantage requiring lowered effectiveness, because at the same time LRMs have FAR MORE counters than any other weapons (ECM, very slow flight time, a missiles incoming warning, and AMS).

QFT

I haven't played with LRMs in a while and also didn't touch them during the Jager patch, so I can't treally comment on their effectiveness right now, however, these arguments about being support weapons or fire and forget easy mode are all rubbish.

First of all, the concept of support mechs doesn't make sense in MWO. The scenarios where you can fire at an enemy with LRMs but not with "primary weapons" are extremely rare. Drops are also not in any way limited by weapon types, so bringing a less devastating option is never a good idea.

Secondly, it is much easier to land shots with direct fire weapons than with LRMs simply because the travel time is insanely long and you need to maintain target lock the whole time. In most games LRM boat damage is very heavily focused to a few moments during the round where you got to fire against helpless targets out in the open. Most of the match consists of you trying to find a reliable lock and not firing at all, so the few good shots you get have to count. You can also forget about other people targeting for you. Hoping your team mate can maintain target long enough for your missiles to reach their target is futile, essentially never works and isn't worth the lost ammo.

Thirdly, LRMs aren't the super long range weapon many people make them out to be. They do nothing beyond 1km while many ballistics and energy weapons are partially effective far past that, but even if their max range was 2km, it wouldn't make much of a difference because missiles fired that far almost never find their target. When I played my LRM stalker I usually didn't even bother firing past 700m, because unless the target was nowhere near cover it'd simply never get hit. My 4x ERPPC Stalker on the other hand snipes just fine up to its max range of 1.6km.

Having said that, my new Jagermech did get badly hurt every time it was hit by LRM volleys, and LRMs were probably a little ridiculous during the patch. However, even then I didn't have much trouble with LRM boats simply because I know how to play against them. Despite the large numbers of LRMs being fielded I rarely took any LRM damage because there is cover almost everywhere and I'd often manage to sneak up on the boats and pick them apart from within minimum range.

Edited by Leiska, 22 March 2013 - 05:34 AM.

[AvatarofWhat]

I love how I can just stand around getting lrm'ed and really not care anymore. Unless the mech is some ridiculous unviable build like the OPs I can charge an lrm boat w/ 2 lrm-15s from 6-700 meters in a heavy mech straight in the open and survive to kill them close range. No tactics, no cover needed. Excellent.

Used to have to play around LRM boats sort of like how I have to play around ppc/gauss snipers. Now if I bother to sneak in behind cover the enemy will be dead before I get there. excellent!

I almost never use lrm's but I can clearly see how worthless they are now. Must suck to like those weapons. Not a lot of options for missile hardpoints...

[StalaggtIKE]

MustrumRidcully, on 22 March 2013 - 05:10 AM, said:

Without saying that this is exactly how things were: Leaving cover to react to another threat* should also not be an automatic death sentence.

That's the thing, two patches ago leaving cover wasn't a death sentence. That wasn't even the case when LRM had ridiculous splash damage, a couple of nights ago. I find it a bit silly for someone to expect survival while being focused fired on.

Don't get me wrong I definitely prefer what we have now to the uber nukes from a couple of nights ago. However, it was nice seeing LRM actually being useful without having to boat them. I think the problem is, some people expect LRM to function as a primary weapon, while others expect LRM to be balanced around these boats.

Edited by StalaggtIKE, 22 March 2013 - 05:37 AM.

[Komtur]

One important thing for me is:
I don't want to have Mechs, that can kill a Mech with one shot.

I want a real fight over some minutes.
I want tactics.
I want seek and hide.
I want a match that will need 10 minutes or more to win. Not starting every 3 minutes a new match.
I want to get hit and have a chance to defend and perhaps to win the fight.

One shot killing is stupid.
The new patch is a way in the right direction.

Edited by Komtur, 22 March 2013 - 05:29 AM.

[BillyM]

The comparison I would like to make for the OP is what damage he did to you in the exact same time-frame.

...bringing his full armament to bear, he scratched your armor to yellow while you effectively removed him from the match (destroyed 3of5 weapons and nearly cored). You are using this as an arguement for LRM's being underpowered?

That said, I am a Hunchback 4sp / Centurion 9a/9d pilot. ...and I pulled my 9d's SRMs and mounted an autocannon for the first time last night. I know the feeling, and I know the pain, but I can't say for one second that they weren't too powerful.

Well done PGI.

--billyM

[stjobe]

Komtur, on 22 March 2013 - 04:13 AM, said:

Have a look to other weapons.
LRM 20, Damage: 14 (new), Cooldown: 4.74 seconds. So with 5 LRM 20 in 5 seconds the damage is 70

1. In 5 seconds you can fire two times, so that's 140 direct damage.
2. More importantly, you're conveniently ignoring splash damage, for another 30-90 damage per volley, or 60-180 for two.
3. Summing up, 5xLRM-20 in 5 seconds do 200-320 damage, a far cry from your 70.

[Mercules]

Nightcrept, on 21 March 2013 - 06:23 PM, said:

That's garbage. If pgi wants to make an effective mmo they aren't going to follow bt and or TT lore by the book. That stupidity you just quoted about support weapons is a good example.

Many of the complaints about MWO would have been solved by following TT rules, not kidding.

Mechs run too hot. That is because they kept certain numbers but then doubled or tripled the fire rate of weapons. They could have kept the amount of damage and heat a weapon does in a ten second TT turn and then divided it out among how many shots they gave that weapon over 10 seconds in MWO. It would have been more balanced

People alpha strike until they are on the verge of shutting down. The TT heat scale would slow people down and mess with targeting as their heat rose. Add something like that in and people will stop riding the line and we will see less Alpha heavy builds and boats.

ECM is too powerful. Well, yeah, because the didn't implement it according to TT rules nor are Streaks or LRMs, this all combines to make ECM do much more than it does in TT and so it's Crit/Tonnage is WAY off for what it does.

LRMs and SRMs are (depending on the week)too powerful/weak. Again because they are not implemented like TT. In TT they don't track their target and move slow but instead shoot out with course correction to hit their target and smash it. They can be fired indirectly but they still travel fairly fast. They track too much and move too slow in this game and that is half the issue. Either they miss a lot and so they need more damage to make up for it, or they hit every single time and they need to do a bit less, but the hit or miss is based off the target's intelligence and skill.

Don't get me started on convergence making 4 Medium Lasers more effective than 1 AC 20.

Sticking closer to TT would make for a more balanced game.

Nightcrept, on 21 March 2013 - 06:23 PM, said:

Unless you in a pre-made you aren't going to play a support role.
They might as well ermove the things if that is what they are thinking. Thank God they don't listen to the support role clowns.

Yes you will. I do it PUG style all the time. My Trebuchets are all support mechs Indirect to Direct Fire Support. I've done very well firing over an Atlas' shoulder or tagging ECM mechs for my and other's LRMs as well as so the team sees them.

Nightcrept, on 21 March 2013 - 06:23 PM, said:

No it's not. You guys wanting TT this and TT that are hilarious to listen to.
This is a MMO. TT and BT are not.

Ignorance is bliss, isn't it. You haven't experienced any of the Battletech MUDs/MUX/MUSHes/MOOs. I'll bet you haven't even heard of a little thing call MegaMek and MekWars where hundreds of players log into a MekWar server and play out certain eras of BT lore where the games they play against people also logged into the servers affect which planets their faction controls and what resources they have access to. There have been and still are BT MMOs out there and if CW for MWO works even half as well as it does for places like The Shack they will have a good game on their hand. It probably won't be.

[Roland]

MadPanda, on 21 March 2013 - 05:23 PM, said:

Where are you basing that 100 LRM's shouldn't cripple the target heavily or outright kill them?

Derp?

The fact that you only did 100 points of damage, spread over a whole mech.
That isn't remotely close to enough damage to kill a heavy mech. That mech is running, what, 400 some points of armor? And that doesn't include internal structure.

I mean, hell, the biggest issue I see with that example you posted is that the damage was way too focused on the CT. In reality, it should have just made all the armor orange, and not breached any of it.