71 replies to this topic

[Thuzel]

Gregore, on 18 April 2013 - 06:39 AM, said:

So you're saying the LRM people need to learn to aim?

Bad troll is bad. But, for the sake of anyone who'd actually take you seriously...

From what I've seen, the typical accuracy among experienced LRM players is around 30 to 35%. Thontor's is actually the highest I've ever seen and it's still only 40%. I assume his figures include Artemis, TAG, and probably some fantastic skill.

There are a lot of reasons the accuracy is that low, all of which are also reasons that LRMs need to be improved to remain competitive.

First off, they're extremely slow. Flight time to a target only 500 meters away can be greater than 5 seconds, and the target gets a warning the entire time. During their absurdly long flight time, any number of things can cause LRMs to miss.
If the target moves behind cover, the missiles miss.
If the target goes into an ECM field, the missiles miss.
If the firing mech loses lock because he moves behind cover, the missiles miss.
If the firing mech loses lock because he's blanketed by an ECM field himself, the missiles miss.
If the target has respectable AMS cover, the missiles miss.
If the target is even moderately fast and runs away from the missiles, they miss.
If the target moves within the relatively huge minimum, they miss (They don't deal reduced damage, they deal NO damage).
It just goes on from there...

Everyone calls LRMs the noob weapon of MWO, but the truth is that they're anything but. LRMs are harder to use than just about any other weapon in the game. PPC's, Lasers, ACs, and all the others are mostly just point and click with a little bit of leading. LRMs actually take planning, work, and skill.

Mind you, I say all this as an advocate of LRMs, but as someone who only occasionally uses them now. I've included them in balanced builds throughout the life of MWO, but for the last few months I've found them to be so bad that they're almost completely untenable.

[Thuzel]

Jae Hyun Nakamura, on 18 April 2013 - 06:52 AM, said:

30-40% Accuracy with missiles and the demage they do is really close to BT TT.

You just succinctly described how much LRMs suck in MWO.

Yes, LRMs in MWO are fairly close to the way they played in TT. Unfortunately, no other weapon has that same limitation (with the exceptions of MGs and flamers, which are jokes right now). For example, Large Lasers taken from MWO would do 18 damage in TT. PPCs would do 30. The lowly AC2 would do 40.

Saying that "LRMs in MWO are as effective as they were in TT" is actually just an insult to LRMs.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Thuzel, on 18 April 2013 - 08:36 AM, said:

Bad troll is bad. But, for the sake of anyone who'd actually take you seriously...

From what I've seen, the typical accuracy among experienced LRM players is around 30 to 35%. Thontor's is actually the highest I've ever seen and it's still only 40%. I assume his figures include Artemis, TAG, and probably some fantastic skill.

There are a lot of reasons the accuracy is that low, all of which are also reasons that LRMs need to be improved to remain competitive.

First off, they're extremely slow. Flight time to a target only 500 meters away can be greater than 5 seconds, and the target gets a warning the entire time. During their absurdly long flight time, any number of things can cause LRMs to miss.
If the target moves behind cover, the missiles miss.
If the target goes into an ECM field, the missiles miss.
If the firing mech loses lock because he moves behind cover, the missiles miss.
If the firing mech loses lock because he's blanketed by an ECM field himself, the missiles miss.
If the target has respectable AMS cover, the missiles miss.
If the target is even moderately fast and runs away from the missiles, they miss.
If the target moves within the relatively huge minimum, they miss (They don't deal reduced damage, they deal NO damage).
It just goes on from there...

Everyone calls LRMs the noob weapon of MWO, but the truth is that they're anything but. LRMs are harder to use than just about any other weapon in the game. PPC's, Lasers, ACs, and all the others are mostly just point and click with a little bit of leading. LRMs actually take planning, work, and skill.

Mind you, I say all this as an advocate of LRMs, but as someone who only occasionally uses them now. I've included them in balanced builds throughout the life of MWO, but for the last few months I've found them to be so bad that they're almost completely untenable.

Nice post, very succinct.

[SuMMoN]

damage and hit ratio ive no problem with, its the amount of ammo they can carry that gets me. its like there is a little missle factory making them. because I think everyone can agree there would be nowhere to put that many units. let alone explosives......

[King Arthur IV]

neviu, on 17 April 2013 - 02:00 PM, said:

replace face with kim jun un "missles i buff them"

[Sheraf]

Ravingdork, on 17 April 2013 - 01:18 PM, said:

Haha. Just kidding.

Seriously though, since the April patch, it seems like I'm seeing an abundance of missiles again. And they're working.

I had an entire team get ahnihilated by missile vollies in at least one game, and in several others they did a great job of stripping armor and keeping enemies wary.

Did something change? Either in the mechanics or in the community? They just don't seem as useless as they once did.

That team must be terribly bad to be annihilate by missile

[Victor Morson]

Alistair Winter, on 17 April 2013 - 02:56 PM, said:

I've had a lot of success with LRMs, especially after the patch. I don't know if it's a coincidence, but I don't think they need any buffs right now. They're working fine for me.

That just means you have low ELO, and are facing low ELO people who don't know better than to stand around and let you rain LRMs on their head.

[Vrekgar]

The missiles have not changed, People changed.

When the meta shifted away from missiles being good at all, people stopped worrying about them.

The few times ive run missiles its like a turkey shoot, but the damage isnt from the missiles, its from the other weapons your running. People have just stopped caring when being shot by them. They are running out into the open and completely oblivious to the threat, even minimal as it is.

There is a reason why every single mech in the game has an AMS mount, and the current lackluster state of missiles does not represent that reason.

Your going to have a humungous tide of people screaming bloody murder when they try and fix them in May. Too many have forgotten how to deal with them, too many have never had to learn how to deal with them, and too many just plain dont want to deal with them because its not what THEY think is fun.

LRM's kept the sniping honest. It allowed you to expend ammunition against the stupid and the careless to give your brawlers a chance to close. Beyond the bugs and serious flaws in the missile code they have been wiggling around tweaking them for a long time. Im hopefull the extra time spent on fixing them has been spent devising an entirely new system for their use because the old way was too devisive and lacked the fundamentals of skill, that you the player influence the effectiveness of your weapons, not just the relative lack of skill of your opponent.

[Jae Hyun Nakamura]

But if you double the amount of damage a rocket can do LRM will be totally overpowered. The speed truelly is too slow, maybe 30% more would do. If you speed up rocket fly time and/or cooldown time the LRM can be perfect and hopefully make most players happy.
But in my opinion the LRM's do fine. I sometimes can play with some of my friends (2h a week) and what i see is if somebody can hol a target for me longer than 3-4 seconds and the LRM is Artemis supported, i have a chance to drop 2-3 shots of LRM with a acceptable amount of damage. In PUG games i sometimes see no chance for this. Best example is the Atlas. I like to have LRM's equipped on this mech, but sometimes i drop only 3 shots in a PUG game and most of it at 300-500 meters before the enemy is in AC range. (Most of the time this enemy is fighting me 1v1) But if we are grouped LRM's work well for me.

[Marric]

I have to weigh in on this subject. I use missiles and I have killed and been killed by missiles. They are the only in-direct fire mech portable weapon. As long as I have another mech targeting someone I can effectively use missiles. I have killed medium mechs with missiles alone. Sure it takes a lot, but they do work.

So for those saying missiles do not work, I will gladly go at it with you one on one with my Highlander that shoots 20 missiles at a time with a UAC5 and LPL for backup.

Nerf this

[Victor Morson]

Marric, on 18 April 2013 - 12:23 PM, said:

I have to weigh in on this subject. I use missiles and I have killed and been killed by missiles. They are the only in-direct fire mech portable weapon. As long as I have another mech targeting someone I can effectively use missiles. I have killed medium mechs with missiles alone. Sure it takes a lot, but they do work.

So for those saying missiles do not work, I will gladly go at it with you one on one with my Highlander that shoots 20 missiles at a time with a UAC5 and LPL for backup.

Nerf this

Alright. Let's do this.

I am tired of people telling their stories about their configs being awesome because it can do damage to PUGs and that it's OK if your massive, 11 ton gun can hurt a medium 'mech.

So let's work this out. Are you with a unit that can help us a sync drop / observe this? I'll send my best Highlander pilot (or whatever other 'mech you want to mount LRMs on) and we can youtube the results for all to see. Maybe we can use the video in every "LRMs suck!" thread from here out because at this point, I think an effective demonstration is required.

I'll say, what, best of 3? Or let's just do all 3 regardless, I want to hammer the point that your build is terrible and so are LRMs so far into the indisputable that the mere link of this video will address anyone claiming their LRMs are special again, until they are fixed.

Edited by Victor Morson, 18 April 2013 - 12:47 PM.

[Victor Morson]

Jae Hyun Nakamura, on 18 April 2013 - 06:52 AM, said:

Last page VICTOR MORSON said LRM's are 'mech-knockdown-machines.

They are. At this point in the timeline, the Catapult C1 is one of the most devastating burst damage heavies out there.

Jae Hyun Nakamura, on 18 April 2013 - 06:52 AM, said:

Dear Victor,
I have seen the many posts you have and were wondering how you can fi d the time to play TT and more important to me is what ki d of TT you are playing.

Both simplified rules and Maxtech. I haven't gotten to play much in a long time. Before MW:O came out we were holding weekly games via Megamek, and before that, we've played quite a bit. Most experience in TT is over the course of years.

Jae Hyun Nakamura, on 18 April 2013 - 06:52 AM, said:

As long as i remember (from my 3025 two weeks ago and all the not countable games of BT TT before) LRM's need a roll of 2D6 on a hit table where you need at least 8+ on the roll to get more than 50% of your missiles on an opponent mech.

There are a number of different tiers of LRM rules; typically that's about right though, with standard missile rules.

Jae Hyun Nakamura, on 18 April 2013 - 06:52 AM, said:

Even Artemis gives you a +2 Bonus on missile table, but it's still a +6 roll to get 50% possible damage. All LRM Damage was spread over your opponent i steps of five damage+the rest. It means: for every fi e point of damage you must make a roll on hit location table. ...a lot of dice rolls, don't you think?

It's a ton of dice rolls, but with the 5-point rule enabled, that's like a medium laser to every location hit (for a maximum of 4 medium laser hits on an LRM/20).

That's not bad firepower for long distances.

Jae Hyun Nakamura, on 18 April 2013 - 06:52 AM, said:

My favorite LRM boat is the Naginata, but to be a mech-knockdown-machine it needs support in a C3 network with a spider for better to-hit modifiers. LRM's can be devastating...but they must hit.

30-40% Accuracy with missiles and the demage they do is really close to BT TT.

That's where you're wrong; missiles typically hit for about half their power or just under, but they hit very often as long as you are not in minimum range.

A Catapult C1 that's staying in medium-short (not minimum) can easily deliver over 20 damage per salvo, if both launchers hit - if it chimes in any medium lasers, it's far over the threshold.

If you have a couple LRM 'mechs like that in your lance, the odds of them delivering well over 40 damage and knocking down huge assault 'mechs (and wrecking them in the process) is incredibly high. If you figure in all the extra stuff - TAG, Artemis, etc. - it gets even worse.

Plus on TT, TACs exist (no, I'm NOT asking for them in MW:O) and LRMs are TAC finding machines; esp. if you're using the individual-missile rule, which turns it's (hit - lol, it censored that) more into an LBX, and LRMs are great for getting multiple-attempts to set them off with every shot.

Jae Hyun Nakamura, on 18 April 2013 - 06:52 AM, said:

Go get your books, maps and sheets and play a little 3050 game with 4 mechs per side and take at least one LRMer. You will see what you can do with a LRM boat (i bet 30-40%)

The difference is while a lot of the missiles miss per salvo, the actual salvos will hit far higher than 40% (if you have a decent gunner and are playing smart, anyway). If in MW:O the problem was missiles getting lost after impact - not just missing entirely - so that 25-50% of an LRM salvo is hitting a target consistently, they would be a far, far better weapon.

Edited by Victor Morson, 18 April 2013 - 01:16 PM.