1
People also complain a lot about tracking and indirect fire.
LRMs are hitting about 30% of the time even with the crazy tracking. They are also comically slow.
I have a few ideas that would put LRMs more in line with the LOS weapon they are in the TT and more of a skill weapon while getting rid of the crazy right angle turns.
The purpose of these changes would be to increase missles hit percentage to be on par with other weapons be it 50% like with ACs/PPCs or 90% like lasers while having more cases of missiles in the volley missing so a lot less full damage salvos.
First you lower the tracking of missiles, it looks silly and it adds to the "no skill" image so many people have of them. They would still self correct but not nearly as much.
Next, generate a parabolic arc when missiles are launched. Watching them follow the terrain is a little silly and again adds to the "no skill" image. The arc would be based on not hitting objects in between the players. If you have a straight line of sight shot to the guy the missiles would fly straight forward.
Next speed them up, I'd say by a factor of 5. Make them go 500m/s, maybe more. PPCs move 2000 m/s at the moment.
Next make Indirect firing of LRMs only track at the very beginning of their launch. You get a lock from someone else and the missiles track for the spot that guy was in when you fired them but do not self correct during flight. The reason it has to track at all is that we cannot currently target behind a hill. Making them dumbfire after launch preserves the ability to fire them indirectly but also allows people to move around the map instead of hiding in cover since it will be better to keep moving rather than hiding. Also, you wouldn't have to move far, just the width of a missile volley plus splash.
Allow them to be fired dumbfire with no target locked at all. This is the ultimate use of skill as you are firing without any guidance and anticipating where a target will be. For this you need to keep splash in the game (so you can hit near targets and still get some damage, same as you would with an AC). I'm not sure if PGI is still planning to totally remove splash but I don't think they should if they can fix it instead.
So what you have is fast moving, semi direct fire, very low tracking missiles that are best used in Line of Sight.
For instance:
#1 Direct Fire. If your target is in front of you with no obstruction you fire your missiles and they fly relatively fast straight at him. Their tracking ability is low so if he is moving it would help to generate more misses. Targets standing still would take much more damage.
#2 Partial Cover. If your target is standing behind a low building so you can see him they would have a higher arc to keep from plowing into the building but would also have to travel farther increasing the time it takes to get to him.
#3 Loss of LOS. If your target was in your line of sight but you lose line of sight they would smash into the obstacle in between you since they would be on a parabolic arc and not chasing people. However, they travel faster now so they have less time to hide (much as it's hard to hide from a PPC coming at you).
#4 Indirect fire. If you get targeting information from a team mate and fire your missiles they fly up at a high arc to clear whatever obstacles are in between the two of you. If you are close to a building or your target is close to cover they fly in an extremely high arc or just hit the building/obstacle. So now the travel time to the target spot is much higher since it has to fly a parabolic arc. The 1000m range of missiles could factor into this so too high an arc at too far away a target would result in missiles exploding before they reach the target spot.
The missiles do not track at all except for targeting the spot the target mech was in when you fired the missiles. However, they would get there faster than they currently do.
Artemis would only work in LOS like it does now meaning that all indirect fire would have a wider spread which would actually help indirect fire get some damage. Artemis would decrease the width of the missile volley to the size of a mech while the default spread could be bigger than a mech. You'd have to play with different variables to get the desired damage result.
Tag would increase the tracking of missiles making it useful for trying to catch faster mechs on the run but would not alter volley spread.
With these changes damage should be around 1 damage per missile as it is in the TT. People are reporting that that's where they are after the quick fix today though.
Another issue people have been complaining about is that even on a full miss on a light mech moving fast, with legs taking full damage now, light mechs are getting legged by misses. You might only enable splash from missiles on indirect shots which would solve this problem though there are probably other better solutions.
To balance the damage from this system I wouldn't touch damage, I would play with travel speed of the missiles, amount of tracking, and spread of the missiles. The spread of larger missiles systems could be wider than smaller systems helping smaller systems be more viable, also the spread could be bigger than a standard mechs size forcing the use of Artemis if you want to do fuller damage per volley. In this way, not having Artemis but having Tag would make it more likely that your volley would hit but because of the spread, it would not make as much difference in how many missiles would hit in that volley.
Also I think I would get rid of the Incoming Missile Warning. It's distracting, it's annoying, it panics new players. While getting hit by missiles would be a more common occurance, much like getting hit by PPCs or lasers, they would only be doing the 1 damage (or whatever, I just wouldn't use damage to balance the 15 damage a LRM20 is supposed to do, make the missiles actually miss instead) and not all the missiles would be hitting and since there is less tracking hopefully you won't see CTs getting cored. Luck might have more to do with the hit locations.
Please note that this would be a major nerf to indirect firing "from safety" as everyone always complains about.
What do you guys think?
Edited by Corwin Vickers, 04 April 2013 - 04:10 PM.
