I understand the community for calling for a nerf about a Catapult doing a 90 damage alpha but in all honesty they were never really that hard to kill even in a light mech. Your medium lasers could snipe it from 570m well outside the Catapults kill zone. Take off the ears was the key or legging it as their legs are normally the storage for ammo and less armored to save weight. Even easier now with the new maps being barren large open areas making the FlakCat almost useless if it is out in the open. As for LRM boats they are easy if you stay behind cover and get within 180m or less, and only have a max range of 1000m. The damage I can understand being nerfed a bit, but PGI nerfed way too much. 50% really PGI? Come on now. I could understand bringing it down to say 1 damage for LRM and 2 for SRM, but 50% is way too much. That and the fact that you increased the tonnage penalty for Artemis to
6 tons and 6 slots.
Let's put this in perspective an SRM 6 max damage if you can actually group the missiles is 9 damage
most missiles miss even with a immobile target and Artemis unless under 80m. With a range of 270m max and weight of 3 tons not including 1 ton for ammo you are then at
4 tons for a
possible 9 damage max, ****** range as it is, and the same heat as a medium laser and a
4 second recycle time. This is also not to mention that even with a SRM 6 and 1 ton of ammo you only have
16.6 shots. So, going on from this a medium laser will do more damage concentrated, same heat, infinite ammo, a 3 second recycle time, and 400% less weight (1 ton compared to 4 tons). PGI effectively made the SRM 6 no more effective than a medium/small laser without Artemis. If all your missiles hit you still will only do the same damage as a large laser spread out, but at almost the same weight, 25% of the range, and limited ammo. Not to forget that there is even a delay before they are fired!
As for LRM's. Now say you have an LRM 20 without Artemis you can do a max of 14 damage spread out and without Artemis most will miss. With the restrictions we all know, and love (180m-1000m range) this and take in to account missile speed. If for example you are on the new arctic map, or dessert map you are very easily sniped by Gauss, AC/2, 5, 10, Ultra AC 5, ER Large laser, ER PPC, and PPC (This being the case even before the nerf I am not complaining about this).
So, at a weight of
10 tons plus ammo
1 ton you have only
9 shots before you are bingo on ammo. Add to the fact that if you have cover nearby for a skilled pilot no worries just hide for a second and take pot shots in between salvos doing the shimmy back and forth. That and if you have ECM, or near one it is virtually impossible to get a lock without someone on your team countering it (or TAG). Then to add insult to injury the fact that LRM's are not very accurate to begin with, and a LRM 20 has a recycle time of
4.75 seconds! With an LRM 15 is only 4.25 seconds but you still are only doing a max possible damage of 10.5 if all your missile hit and that is with them spread out over the enemy. So, with this in mind let's take a test drive. A LRM 20 with 1 ton of ammo and Artemis equals to
17 tons for just one and
27 tons for two... you can equate that to lasers if you like or auto-cannons with tonnage, damage, and slots.
PGI please fix the SRM and LRM problem by just enhancing there damage a bit. I am not asking to go to pre-nerf, and I am not asking to change the mechanics. However I am asking that you make the
LRM per missile 1 damage and
SRM per missile 2 damage. It is still a considerable cut down of the damage, but it will not make mechs such as the Catapult-A1 useless. Keep the Artemis at 6 tons and slots, keep the weight since it helps balance the game play out, but
just increase the damage output slightly. I understand the need of the other mechanics to prevent the missiles going all over powered. We the community just would like the missiles to actually still be worth getting mechs that are missile heavy for, and for them to be more useful on the battlefield. Thank you for your time. To the community and PGI.
-David
P.S. Sorry for the long post, but I felt it was needed.
Edited by Dr Monocle, 25 April 2013 - 08:50 AM.