67 replies to this topic

[Fate 6]

I've got to say, I think the damage on LRMs and SRMs feels about right at this point. They strip armor and don't instantly destroy exposed sections of your mech.

Unfortunately I think they strip armor a bit too well (this is bug related, but I just want to be clear that it shouldn't just stay similar to what it is now). That is, you can't torso twist to spread damage effectively (mostly relevant vs LRMs), because the splash hits everything. This is particularly unfortunate for mechs like Dragons that run XL engines.

[Oni Ralas]

Damage per ton/per heat is still off. This was a quick fix, they will be increased to previous levels (like 2 patches ago) and be pretty ballanced.

Some will cry "but it's a support weapon!" - there is no such thing in the current itteration of the mechanics. Support weapons is a crutch word to describe things that, according to some, shouldn't hit very hard (ie: does not fit with their play style). In reallity, a support weapon is down right *destructive*, but requires coordination and infrastructure. LRM's may be "easy mode" in some eyes due to the lock'n'fire mechanics - but the fact that the entire volley's damage must hit to be effective, with so many factors (flight time, cover, mech speed, ecm, ams) that they are far harder to do *correctly* than most give credit for. As it stands now, there isn't much point taking them out if the damage is so low vs. all the other modifiers on the field.

[Noobzorz]

Oni Ralas, on 24 March 2013 - 07:25 AM, said:

Damage per ton/per heat is still off. This was a quick fix, they will be increased to previous levels (like 2 patches ago) and be pretty ballanced.

Some will cry "but it's a support weapon!" - there is no such thing in the current itteration of the mechanics. Support weapons is a crutch word to describe things that, according to some, shouldn't hit very hard (ie: does not fit with their play style). In reallity, a support weapon is down right *destructive*, but requires coordination and infrastructure. LRM's may be "easy mode" in some eyes due to the lock'n'fire mechanics - but the fact that the entire volley's damage must hit to be effective, with so many factors (flight time, cover, mech speed, ecm, ams) that they are far harder to do *correctly* than most give credit for. As it stands now, there isn't much point taking them out if the damage is so low vs. all the other modifiers on the field.

Damage per ton/heat is comparable to other weapons. Any buffs should be constrained to small ones. Presently missiles are effective tools in medium range brawls and good long range support weapons. Prior to that, they were also overpowered, but people hadn't discovered TAG yet.

[Henree]

Noobzorz, on 24 March 2013 - 07:27 AM, said:

Damage per ton/heat is comparable to other weapons. Any buffs should be constrained to small ones. Presently missiles are effective tools in medium range brawls and good long range support weapons. Prior to that, they were also overpowered, but people hadn't discovered TAG yet.

because it was not needed prior to ecm.

Howitzers are a support weapon.

Edited by Henri Schoots, 24 March 2013 - 07:31 AM.

[Kvalheim]

LRM's did feel a bit easy mode last week when I started, for something that requires basic prediction of flight path and a lock n' click mechanic, it was too simple to just fire a LOT and win. They just do a fair bit less damage than direct fire, but spread much further, so you're gradually wearing down the entire mech over time instead of hammering a single point

[Budor]

I really hope they dont buff them up to the level they were before the lermpocalypse. LRMs did to much damage prior to the patch on the 19th. Damage wise something inbetween now and how they worked prior to the 19th patch would be perfect.

They need to tone down ECM before overbuffing LRMs again.

Edited by Budor, 24 March 2013 - 07:33 AM.

[Captain Stiffy]

The real "problem" with LRM's that is actually not a problem is ARTEMIS.

Nobody uses them without ARTI and you'd be stupid to.

ARTEMIS does exactly what it's supposed to do but it also cores the **** out of people and makes them cry.

Edited by Captain Stiffy, 24 March 2013 - 07:41 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

I am against intelligent missiles. They will just cost us our jobs.
[/Missing the Point more ways than one]

I am not certian yet that missiles are in the right spot, but they might be closer than before.

I think it would be neater if the missile group would actualyl spread about the mech, with none or very little splash damage, and a bit higher damage per missile.

We'll see if that can be done... Or what will be done.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 24 March 2013 - 07:48 AM.

[Deamhan]

Being a support weapon does not mean they should do little damage. Since someone mention real world artillery, artillery is often employed as a battery. However, with a vehicle like the M270 MLRS, you can get a higher rate of fire with just one platform than you can employing a single howitzer.

These weapons don't just soften up enemy armor. They will outright destroy a tank with one or two hits. LRMs have always had killing potential and should always have killing potensial. What makes them a "support" weapon is the fact that they are long range and are capable of indirect fire. The missiles are slow moving and take enough time to reach their target for that target to get behind cover. They play into the support role by forcing the enemy to seek cover and make it difficult for them to engage without being hit back.

The problem is that if LRMs are too weak of a weapon, they will not effectly force an enemy to seek cover. By weakening them, you don't make them into a support weapon but rather you remove them from being a support weapon.

That is not to say that they should kill a mech with a single volley and the hot fix was needed but the hot fix should only be a band aid solution because what they did was go too far in the other direction. Although not by much. I think they are just slightly below TT values and bringing them up to TT values may be just enough to allow them to fill the role once again.

[Vrekgar]

Fate 6, on 24 March 2013 - 07:20 AM, said:

I've got to say, I think the damage on LRMs and SRMs feels about right at this point. They strip armor and don't instantly destroy exposed sections of your mech.

Unfortunately I think they strip armor a bit too well (this is bug related, but I just want to be clear that it shouldn't just stay similar to what it is now). That is, you can't torso twist to spread damage effectively (mostly relevant vs LRMs), because the splash hits everything. This is particularly unfortunate for mechs like Dragons that run XL engines.

[FunkyFritter]

I'd like to see a damage buff and a homing nerf. If lrms are supposed to be a support weapon they should be ideal for bombarding an area and hitting mechs that have slowed down for brawling or sniping. Anything faster than an assault should be able to avoid most of damage when they see it coming and are moving at top speed in the proper direction, but at the same time a hit should be very punishing if you're just standing there.

[Vrekgar]

FunkyFritter, on 24 March 2013 - 09:13 AM, said:

I'd like to see a damage buff and a homing nerf. If lrms are supposed to be a support weapon they should be ideal for bombarding an area and hitting mechs that have slowed down for brawling or sniping. Anything faster than an assault should be able to avoid most of damage when they see it coming and are moving at top speed in the proper direction, but at the same time a hit should be very punishing if you're just standing there.

Before tuesday, A hit WAS damaging but everyone still complained because it was "Too" damaging.

You have a generation of players who are coddled and spoiled little brats who whine that it was always someone else who was at fault. Its always something else.

It doesnt matter that LRMS have had a loud klaxon blaring in your cockpit, Betty warning you, and a giant flashing red warning right on screen. It doesnt matter that at "Long" range it takes 8+seconds of flight for a single shot to cross the distance. None of that matters, because they are just noskill support weapons that shouldnt hit any of these cod generation hipsters.

The hotfix is a flat nerf because they whined enough. Yes there was a bug but the developers could not fix it. So the devs just decided to flat nerf them until they "get around" to making them a weapon people will want to use if ever.

Look at ECM. People have been whining about that for ages because it needs balance, but its the Devs darling baby so they wont even touch it. They said 3 months ago they were going to have a blog about it up "Shortly." We are still waiting.

[Oni Ralas]

Noobzorz, on 24 March 2013 - 07:27 AM, said:

Damage per ton/heat is comparable to other weapons. Any buffs should be constrained to small ones. Presently missiles are effective tools in medium range brawls and good long range support weapons. Prior to that, they were also overpowered, but people hadn't discovered TAG yet.

It's not at the moment. Damage per ton is a max of 126® for LRM. This is accounting for 100% strike rate at .7dpu. Of course, at no time does this ever equate to real world, as lock loss, ams, ecm, random barriers, etc all will reduce the total value per ton.

Now unlike other weapons, the damage delivery rate is deturmined by the consumption rate per volley (ie: the size of the launcher). The largest single weapon consumer is the LRM20, capable of doing 14 unmodified damage to a target. For this 14dmg, you consume 11 tons of weight, 4.75 of reload time and 6 heat.

An AC20 will deliver 20damage unmitigated, with 16t of weight 4 second reload time and 6 heat. There is no variable consumption rate for an AC20, so its a locked 140dmg/ton of ammo. Due to the reload time and simmilar heat, a single AC20 will out pace an LRM quickly.

LRM: 2.94dps (est)
AC: 5 (est)

Even factoring out a miss, the LRM is outpaced heavily. Now it's not that bad right? ~40% higher dmg from the AC? Well currently the .7dmg number is a bit optimistic. All in all, direct fire weapons will *severely* outpace any lock weapon in the current enviroment when modifiers are taken into account.


tl;dr: LRM's don't need a hulk buff like they were. They need just a tad more to make them competitive again, or some other buff to increase the sheer amount of steel that can be thrown down range (CD or flight times).

[MustrumRidcully]

Vrekgar, on 24 March 2013 - 09:25 AM, said:

Before tuesday, A hit WAS damaging but everyone still complained because it was "Too" damaging.

You have a generation of players who are coddled and spoiled little brats who whine that it was always someone else who was at fault. Its always something else.

You mean like players that say that missiles are now too weak because they can'T get the kills they were used to.

Sorry, but this is a pretty much useless generalization that works either way. I wish bovine excrement like that would just stop.
Give me something more substantive than generic lamentations about the "whiner gamer generation".

---

Likewise, I would be careful with saying LRMs are merely "support" weapn. "Support Weapon" is a poorly defined term. Does it just mean "this weapon doesn't give us much damage by range and tonnage as a "real" weapon"?
I don't think that alone can be it, because that means support weapons are simply subpar weapons, just like Flamers or Machine Guns.

How do LRMs support and to what differences must that lead?
I think it should be something like this:

1) LRMs provide indirect fire. That is simply a benefit other weapons do not have. This necccessitates LRMs having a drawback in terms of damage by weight and range (e.g. for example an equally long range ballistic weapon would deal either more damage or be lighter - with weight consisting also of heat sink considerations and ammo considerations).
2) LRMs do not provide pin-point damage. You cannot aim individual missiles, and the missiles should be scattered over the enemy. This means LRMs are not so great for kill shots, and overall to compensate this drawback, the damage output should be somewhat higher (taking range and weight into consideration).

How these two factors interact together is now an important question to find out - how much worth is the indirect fire benefit? How much of a penalty is not being able to pin-point damage? Maybe this means LRMs deal too much damage now. MAybe it meals they need to deal more damage. Maybe we also need to adjust these advantages - how muich should the damage be scattered? How easy should indirect fire be?

If it was me, It hink I would like indirect fire to be more precise than it is now. I'd actually prepare a "fire & forget" model to what we have now. Get your lock, fire your missils, and they will hit. This would give them a very strong tactical role - but it also means that LRMs need to deal relatively low damage for their weight, and/or that the damage must be scattered accordingly.

I also think that ECM should primarily inhibit indirect fire, while still allowing direct-fire "locks", and that missiles should increase in precision when fired directly (and with Artemis, even more so) at a target in sight.

[kuangmk11]

I think they feel pretty good after the hotfix. They still do plenty of damage and keep people out of the open. The only builds that are suffering are mediums who cant boat launchers, They would be better served by SRM's anyway. The biggest tell is I don't feel guilty using them anymore.

[Oni Ralas]

MustrumRidcully, on 24 March 2013 - 09:45 AM, said:

You mean like players that say that missiles are now too weak because they can'T get the kills they were used to.

Sorry, but this is a pretty much useless generalization that works either way. I wish bovine excrement like that would just stop.
Give me something more substantive than generic lamentations about the "whiner gamer generation".

---

Likewise, I would be careful with saying LRMs are merely "support" weapn. "Support Weapon" is a poorly defined term. Does it just mean "this weapon doesn't give us much damage by range and tonnage as a "real" weapon"?
I don't think that alone can be it, because that means support weapons are simply subpar weapons, just like Flamers or Machine Guns.

How do LRMs support and to what differences must that lead?
I think it should be something like this:

1) LRMs provide indirect fire. That is simply a benefit other weapons do not have. This necccessitates LRMs having a drawback in terms of damage by weight and range (e.g. for example an equally long range ballistic weapon would deal either more damage or be lighter - with weight consisting also of heat sink considerations and ammo considerations).
2) LRMs do not provide pin-point damage. You cannot aim individual missiles, and the missiles should be scattered over the enemy. This means LRMs are not so great for kill shots, and overall to compensate this drawback, the damage output should be somewhat higher (taking range and weight into consideration).

How these two factors interact together is now an important question to find out - how much worth is the indirect fire benefit? How much of a penalty is not being able to pin-point damage? Maybe this means LRMs deal too much damage now. MAybe it meals they need to deal more damage. Maybe we also need to adjust these advantages - how muich should the damage be scattered? How easy should indirect fire be?

If it was me, It hink I would like indirect fire to be more precise than it is now. I'd actually prepare a "fire & forget" model to what we have now. Get your lock, fire your missils, and they will hit. This would give them a very strong tactical role - but it also means that LRMs need to deal relatively low damage for their weight, and/or that the damage must be scattered accordingly.

I also think that ECM should primarily inhibit indirect fire, while still allowing direct-fire "locks", and that missiles should increase in precision when fired directly (and with Artemis, even more so) at a target in sight.

LRM's don't IF, not in the correct mechanical usage anyway. IF relies on a form of forward observation to account for position caclulation. I still have to obtain a lock, hold a lock, and launch a weapon while maintaining the lock. it does not ignore cover, and is mitigated heavily through countermeasures. There is no different mechanically of me pushing R to aquire a target and a laser boat doing it. We both needed the LoS or sensors from someone else to know who is out there - the only different is that I can waste my tonage spewing missiles with the slim hope a small portion of my flock actually hits (at a whopping .7dmg each).

Now if I *could* IF the weapon - have a spider spot me a target and I just launch the LRM's in an arc patern which negated cover (or the vast majority of it) following the FO's path, then LRM's would be a game changer. That would be a barrage and would give real weight to the term support weapon.

Edited by Oni Ralas, 24 March 2013 - 10:08 AM.

[Galenit]

A mech with 4 ppcs have 28tons devoted to weapons and can kill a mech in 1 hit.
A mech with 28 tons weapons (2xalrm15, 8tons ammo, tag and 3xml) cant kill a mech in 1 hit. Even if he manages to hold tag on the enemy for the whole flight duration.
Whats easier? Point and click or holding a weapon on a moving target for 2-10 seconds?
Whats easier to dodge? A point and click hitscanweapon or a weapon that warns you and gives you up to 10 seconds to dodge?

Prepatch the damage was ok, punishing the stupid, rewarding you for holding tag on target the whole flight time exposing yourself to snipers and poptards . Maybe a buff to ams was needed.
After patch missiles were op.
But now they are near worthless.

To the op:
If you cant dodge missiles with a dragon when you get the warning its not the missiles that doing wrong ...

[80sGlamRockSensation David Bowie]

I'll just drop this right here....


http://mwomercs.com/...-and-heres-how/

[MustrumRidcully]

Galenit, on 24 March 2013 - 10:25 AM, said:

A mech with 4 ppcs have 28tons devoted to weapons and can kill a mech in 1 hit.
A mech with 28 tons weapons (2xalrm15, 8tons ammo, tag and 3xml) cant kill a mech in 1 hit. Even if he manages to hold tag on the enemy for the whole flight duration.

What mech can be killed with 40 damage? Even a Cicada can have 40 CT armour, and there are still 24 tons of internal structure to be broken through? Or do we only assume head shots here?
And you forgot to count heat sinks for both variations.

[Gaan Cathal]

Vrekgar, on 24 March 2013 - 09:25 AM, said:

Before tuesday, A hit WAS damaging but everyone still complained because it was "Too" damaging.

You have a generation of players who are coddled and spoiled little brats who whine that it was always someone else who was at fault. Its always something else.

It doesnt matter that LRMS have had a loud klaxon blaring in your cockpit, Betty warning you, and a giant flashing red warning right on screen. It doesnt matter that at "Long" range it takes 8+seconds of flight for a single shot to cross the distance. None of that matters, because they are just noskill support weapons that shouldnt hit any of these cod generation hipsters.

The hotfix is a flat nerf because they whined enough. Yes there was a bug but the developers could not fix it. So the devs just decided to flat nerf them until they "get around" to making them a weapon people will want to use if ever.

Look at ECM. People have been whining about that for ages because it needs balance, but its the Devs darling baby so they wont even touch it. They said 3 months ago they were going to have a blog about it up "Shortly." We are still waiting.

Honestly, if your petty foot-stamping and insult-throwing at no provocation is supposed to be represented of the "Old Skool" gamer, then you don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to claiming superiority over the "Kiddie Gamers".

Vrekgar, on 24 March 2013 - 09:25 AM, said:

The hotfix is a flat nerf because they whined enough. Yes there was a bug but the developers could not fix it. So the devs just decided to flat nerf them until they "get around" to making them a weapon people will want to use if ever.

That is spectacularly inaccurate, although whether intentionally or because of your persecution complex, I don't know. Yes, there was a bug in the Splash damage code (technically not a bug, but unintended behavior). It was a very serious one because it was causing a large swathe of weapons to do spectacular amounts more damage to certain chassis than others. SRMs were recorded doing ~1-1.5x or so damage to Atlai, and ~5-7x damage to Commandos. This was not a state that could be allowed to continue, so when the removal of Splash damage broke the missile pathing, they put it back in with nerfed values as a temporary fix to the situation until they put in a proper replacement for the splash code.

If, come April 2^nd, we've not heard anything further about it (it is of course possible developing the fix might take long, but they need to keep us informed of that) then by all means throw a tantrum. But right now you are throwing your toys out of the pram about something that has been explained to you. For someone who opens posts by dismissing an entire generation as 'spoiled brats', you really don't seem to have the patience or maturity to deal with the fact that everything can't be exactly as you want it right now.

MustrumRidcully, on 24 March 2013 - 10:44 AM, said:

What mech can be killed with 40 damage? Even a Cicada can have 40 CT armour, and there are still 24 tons of internal structure to be broken through? Or do we only assume head shots here?
And you forgot to count heat sinks for both variations.

A couple of the more obscure locations on light mechs will regularly run under 40 damage. Not that I hear many regular light mech pilots complaining on the rare occasions someone puts four PPCs through our rear side torsos. Probably because it's fine.