Mad Porthos, on 21 May 2013 - 04:36 PM, said:
Wow, talk about hyperbole and exaggeration. I guess I will have to be the devil's advocate here and address a few things I've seen from playing in the few hours since the patch. I'll also explain a few things I think are being missed by players of this game who have vested interests in thier own Flavors of the Month builds remaining popular and active, but not seeing the return of things that used to work well to disuade them.
I've had some experience in doing play testing and beta testing in a number of titles and mods over the years. One of those I was in a group in was the mod for the Desert Combat mod (0.8) of Battlefield 1942. I don't mean some Rommel warfare in tanks in North Africa, I mean the mod that made the game more or less "modern" warfare, before battlefield 2 came out, with abrahams tanks, apache and cobra gunships, russian tanks in Iraqi colors, missles, jets and expansive maps. It was alot of fun working with a few of the Modders and I enjoyed it. One of the things that some of the modellers and some of those working on the weapons mods and physics were doing was trying to get a little bit of realism into weapon behaviors and flight paths of missiles. In the end I think they failed miserably, but what they settled for was what was fun, not overly fatal. I was able to be involved in a bit of that and see some of what they did. One of the interesting research tools available even then a decade ago was Janes Defense, which publishes defense and weapons analysis journals, as well as videos and promotional things for the defense industry which is always trying to sell a new weapons system or other doo dad to the armed forces.
Some of those videos showed how modern day... actually obsolete at this point, lock on weapons worked, what level of agility they had and how persistent thier locks were, regardless of battlefield jamming, chaff, flares, flakk what have you. Some of them would put streaks to shame. And they move in an incredibly violent flash at that range, but still can do elbow turns, s turns, curlicues and the like in homing in on whatever their lock was established on.
As for indirect fire, with a spotter... even two decades ago, one could steer a missile down a corridor entrance to a bunker, or have it drop/burn straight down on top of a person or tank that was behind a building after burning in an upward arc to get velocity and height. There are weapons that are man portable that can be set to detonate after passing through a building, or reaching an EXACT distance in meters... after plowing through trees, grass and even masonry walls.
These standard arcs are good. Even the spotted arcs are realistic and good. They underline the usefulness of a real spotter, exactly what people want to encourage scouts and other mechs to do, using TAG etc. If the QQ about these missile burn vectors nerfs indirect fire to be even more direct than it is, all it does is take a few steps back from something that finally is positive about team work, using a spotter for effective INDIRECT fire.
To Recap :
- The current trajectories without spotting are fine, already stated and believed by Paul Inoyue and apparently others.
- Seems that the knee jerk reaction from players to change and the return of LRM effectiveness has been to misidentify the Spotter assisted steep arc in missile angle as being unfair or unbalanced and inappropriate, DESPITE it being the whole advantage of indirect fire and using a Spotter - and being entirely realistic, plausible and appropriate.
- Suggest you resist this knee jerk reaction to change spotter assisted missile vectors and pay attention to how scouts/lights/taggers are being used to assist the team in using LRMs for indirect fire, a long standing tactic and aspect of battletech/mechwarrior game play.
That's about all I've got for ya now. Yeah, I expect people to disagree, but had to say something.
- Madporthos
P.S.: Just noted something above, situation mentioned by another poster. Being hit behind a hill or building or tall wall as being something that never should happen. Well, just about any vehicle that runs in any way, in any temperature generates heat, even internal combustion engines. This heat goes generally straight up in the air, though it might trail off in the wind. It's called a heat plume. Missiles target such and ride it in to the hottest point, the vehicle. That's what should happen. Often. Repeatedly. Yes, this is a fantasy giant stompy tank game, very true. But it's a game where we are screaming around in walking fusion plants generating thousands of degrees of temperature that has to be expelled out into the environment around you... missles ain't blind, your enemy isn't either and thats what they are getting locks on, even with you behind cover, out of line of sight, behind the building, or wall. Or should be at least. Lord knows that's a level of detail that perhaps would be too much for general player base, but it's still not too much to say that having it as it is now shows a "resemblance" to reality, versimilitude. That's to be desired.
You are so right and so wrong at the same time. You are right, all those missile arcs are right or even not dangerous enaugh. You are right with all your argument. But you missed one point (the most important one).
MW:O is not a die hard military simulation, which only caters to perfectly build teams.
It lives and dies with the guys and gals who have the money to pay for all this luxury items in the cash shop. And those people are mostly randoms who want to have fun. They have no clue (mostly) of teamwork. They don't understand proper military tactics. They see flashy big machines with big guns and LRM's spoils there fun.
So PGI have to nerve them down. The classic BT board game was very well balanced (until clans emerged at least) but you can't translate this balance to MW:O, cause here you have human "teammembers" who do as they please and not as one expects or believes is useful.
Only my two cents
Welfur
18
I packed 4*LRM15 to my 5S, and had to install smallest XL-engine who doesn't need external DHS and strip away somewhat 2,5 tons of armor to get tonnage for having enough LRM-ammo, BAP, 2*AMS+ammo and 4*ML fitted in.
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