194 replies to this topic

[Demuder]

Aim64C, on 02 June 2013 - 02:34 PM, said:

http://mwomercs.com/...lrm-chronicles/

Numerous volunteers and examples in a few of my games.

Watch as 40 LRMs turn their armor from yellow to yellow-orange. Their yellow-orange armor to orange-yellow... their orange-yellow armor to a sort of orange color... and that sort of orange color to a darker orange... we eventually hit red and yellow internals. Then watch as yet another salvo reduces their yellow internals to off-yellow internals.

I watched the videos. What I saw, correct me if I am wrong, is you taking a lot of shots, about 50% of them with you losing LoS and/or tracking before the missiles land. From the "succesful" 50% that we do see that land on the mech, either because you have kept LoS or because you didn't lose tracking, we see the LRMs flash over half their mech armor. All the while, with a healthy buffer of friendlies between you and the target and nothing more than stray snapshots against you - except the fourth video where you get hunted and killed straight up. Six matches, an average of 300 dmg. Apart from 2 matches, you end up totaly unscathed. I am not critisizing your gameplay, probably it is excellent for a missiles heavy boat, I don't know because I never actually tried it. I don't think I could do it better than you. Also, you happen to be the no1 or no2 dmg dealer in your team, except for Alpine. Please, correct me if I am wrong at what I saw.

Assuming that you were queued with teamates and opponents or equal average ELO/skill, you ended up in the top ten percentile - both teams.

Please, explain how you draw the conclusion that LRMs are not useful or on par with the weapons all your teamates were using.

Also please provide an estimate on how much more dmg that weapon should give you, considering you ended up 4 out of 6 matches with very few battlescars to show and on top of the damage ladder ?

Would you be satisfied if the target simply burst into flames when the first salvo lands ? Or would you be sastisfied if you were ultimately the first damage dealer in your team with double the score from the second player ? Would then LRM be on par with any other weapon ? Please excuse my sarcasm, but I did spend time watching those videos and these are the numbers I saw - pretty clear to me and I don't understand the reason why I had to watch them just to transfer them here.

And please don't attribute your damage to those 2 med lasers you occasionaly fire, we have all fired medium lasers and we know exactly how much damage they do.

Levi Porphyrogenitus, on 02 June 2013 - 02:43 PM, said:

Not true. Movement, even a little bit of it, is a huge mitigating factor when receiving LRM fire. Stationary targets will melt right quick even with current UP LRMs, since the damage winds up almost exclusively on the CT. Add 50kph or more of movement and suddenly the damage starts getting spread out a bit. It still preferentially dings the CT, but it's no longer almost exclusive, and that makes a huge difference. Higher speeds make for less missile concentration (and fewer overall missile hits, too).

Your point about cover isn't a great one, either. A direct-fire weapon will not be fired when the target is exposed and then fail to hit because the target moved behind cover while the projectile was in flight. Only LRMs (and to a lesser extent Streaks) have to deal with clean shots that become bad ones. Sure, the Target Decay module helps, especially at short ranges (for the shorter transit time), but hit-scan lasers and very-high-velocity PPCs, Gauss, and light ACs don't encounter the issue at all (unless you're wall hacking and don't know that terrain is in the way).

But I think that we agree totaly and completely.

When the target moves, you have a smaller average of succesful direct fire weapon dmg because you miss entirely, or your beam half misses and does not do pinpoint damage or you simply hit an undamaged component other than the one you targeted. I believe that is what you refer to as "spread damage". Totaly on par with missiles (slightly worse actually because you might get 0 damage) from what you describe. Why should missile fire be different/better ?

As for a cover, true, a "covered" target would never be shot at. They would definately, unequivocaly take 0 dmg. However, with LRMs there is a chance that even 1 of them hits. As far as I am concerned, 1,9 > 0. Which is better ?
Even tacticaly, a target behind cover will never even move under threat of direct fire, they will however give up their spot because of indirect (spotter) fire. Which is better ? Or are you talking about wasted ammo ? Because I have spectated (after dieing) as many an LRM boat without ammo, as an AC or Gauss mech that were firing with their secondary lasers. If we are talking about PPCs, they are being looked into so that they can be brought on par with other weapons - but I don't want to believe that we are talking about that.

Edited by dimstog, 02 June 2013 - 04:12 PM.

[Daeonwolf]

I've been reading these posts about LRMs for a while now and I've come to realize something: people don't know enough about the original game this was based off of to truely understand the use and purpse of LRMS.

LRMs were never intended to be 'kill' weapons. They're extreme range, saturation weapons that soften targets with little to no worry about getting damanged in return. Before guass cannons and ER PPCs, nothing could touch an LRM launcher at long range. However, there were game mechanics in place that balanced that, specifically the missle hit chart. Just because you 'hit' with the weapon didn't mean you hit with every missle. In fact, you basically had about a 12% chance of hitting with all the missles (a roll of 11 or 12 on 2d6) and on average you'd hit with 50-60%. So your LRM20 would on average do 10-12 damage per hit.

But wait, there's more! Unlike non-missle weapons, you didn't get to apply that damage all to one place. No, you would roll for each missle! (Some people would do it in groups of five, however). So your potental 10 points of damage could end up being 1 point of damage done over the whole mech, with a couple 2-pointers here and there. Where a Hunchback with it's A/C 20 could potentally 1 shot an Atlas with a head hit, and other mechs with A/C 10's or PPCs could do the same with a lucky crit hit.

SRMs weren't much better. Sure you did 2 points of damage per missile instead of the LRMs 1 point, but the number of missles are much smaller (SRM maxing out at 12 points potental (SRM6) damage to LRM's 20 points) and you still rolled on the missle table to see how many hit! Basically SRMs were the (highly inaccurate) shotgun of the mech world before the LB 10-X AC were around.

Okay, I'll back up a bit here and agree: Table top does not equal FPS mechanics. It's never going to be the same between them. That being said, I return to my original point: LRMs are not (nor should they ever be) killing weapons. An LRM boat *should* have to burn through a huge amount of it's ammo to make a pure missle kill. Their job is to soften up targets, (or distract them with trying to avoid the incomming damage) while their teammates move in for the kill.

[Sephlock]

http://mwomercs.com/...42#entry2410842

[MasterErrant]

would you all just shut up and listen to your selves ...
the Missile junkies say they are too weak. the AC/PPC snipers sya they are too strong... the brawlers hat long range weapons of any type. All of you are wrong. every weapon systemand fight style has it's place.

the devs f***ed up a basic mechanic ofthe game and don'twant to fix it./ Period. none of these weapons systems should be dominant they each have their place.
untill enough of us push PGI to fix the real problem it's gonna be a contimuing cycle of buff and nerf.

fixing the heat system will fix most of the gripes.

[Tennex]

Nice work. Lrms really aren't as bad as people like to make it sound.

People want it to be godly. And when the devs do that they QQ OP.

Side note: lrms tend to have higher damage done rating. But still can be weak because spread dmg. But consider u are topping the dmg chart, minus spread dmg, I would say lrms are a formidable weapon

Edited by Tennex, 02 June 2013 - 07:39 PM.

[Volthorne]

Tennex, on 02 June 2013 - 07:36 PM, said:

Nice work. Lrms really aren't as bad as people like to make it sound.

People want it to be godly. And when the devs do that they QQ OP.

Side note: lrms tend to have higher damage done rating. But still can be weak because spread dmg. But consider u are topping the dmg chart, minus spread dmg, I would say lrms are a formidable weapon

Great, Tennex showed up. Thread's over. Expect K-Town shortly.

Edited by Volthorne, 02 June 2013 - 08:59 PM.

[Ningyo]

Don't be mean, I am fairly new and do not know whether Tennex often starts flame wars or not, but in this case his comments were completely on topic and his sidenote was a good point some people often forget. Whereas your comment was only spiteful and rude (he may have done something in another forum to deserve it I have no clue, but please do not drag such issues around to other forums)

Thank you.

[Volthorne]

Ningyo, on 02 June 2013 - 09:56 PM, said:

Don't be mean, I am fairly new and do not know whether Tennex often starts flame wars or not, but in this case his comments were completely on topic and his sidenote was a good point some people often forget. Whereas your comment was only spiteful and rude (he may have done something in another forum to deserve it I have no clue, but please do not drag such issues around to other forums)

Thank you.

And yet for all he said - which was not much to begin with - none of it reflected the discussion in this topic. At best he's replying to the OP, 7 pages in.

Edited by Volthorne, 02 June 2013 - 10:45 PM.

[Aim64C]

dimstog, on 02 June 2013 - 04:06 PM, said:

I watched the videos. What I saw, correct me if I am wrong, is you taking a lot of shots, about 50% of them with you losing LoS and/or tracking before the missiles land. From the "succesful" 50% that we do see that land on the mech, either because you have kept LoS or because you didn't lose tracking, we see the LRMs flash over half their mech armor. All the while, with a healthy buffer of friendlies between you and the target and nothing more than stray snapshots against you - except the fourth video where you get hunted and killed straight up. Six matches, an average of 300 dmg. Apart from 2 matches, you end up totaly unscathed. I am not critisizing your gameplay, probably it is excellent for a missiles heavy boat, I don't know because I never actually tried it. I don't think I could do it better than you. Also, you happen to be the no1 or no2 dmg dealer in your team, except for Alpine. Please, correct me if I am wrong at what I saw.

You are not completely incorrect.

Here's the catch, though - points like these: http://www.youtube.c...7dQqTbP0#t=255s



[Edit: - those SHOULD be links to videos at a specific time... two were working as intended after submission - one was not]

[Edit Edit: Video number 2 should be starting at 152 seconds - or roughly 2:30 *sigh* .... sometimes, technology is a PITA ]

The second video, especially, is a key demonstration of how the role is broken.

4 months ago - those 400+ missiles I shot into that cluster **** of atlasses in the open would have changed how that battle went.

Damage is only half the story. It's what you can actually do with that damage. Most of the kills I get are 'parasitic' kills. I'm firing at a target that is being swarmed by my team, already, and just manage to contribute the missile that registers as the killing blow. The damage I'm actually causing the enemy is largely negligible. My individual presence does not create much of an impact on the game - and the way missiles are working - it currently can't.

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Assuming that you were queued with teamates and opponents or equal average ELO/skill, you ended up in the top ten percentile - both teams.

I was playing at around 4-7 in the morning for those matches, Central time (or something in that range). From the behavior of my opponents, it was likely a bit of an ELO mismatch. That - or because I've been away from the game for about 2 months, the way the system ranks ELO has dropped me back a ways. Also, I stopped playing my Catapults not long after ELO started kicking in - because LRMs got their nerf back to being paintballs and my Jenner was regularly out-gunning and out-killing my C1 and C4.

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Please, explain how you draw the conclusion that LRMs are not useful or on par with the weapons all your teamates were using.

http://www.youtube.c...oemOPUUQ#t=196s

You can see not only my salvos make full contact - but the salvos of another player, as well.

I would have been just as well contributing my medium laser banks to the sections my team's direct fire was hitting. Later - when that AC-'40' Jeager makes a run on our team - there's very little I can do about it. On a team an individual combat basis - I'm just there for show at the end of the match, mostly. My team would have performed nearly identically had I disconnected at the beginning of the match, in most cases. My presence and salvos were neglibile on the whole - because the 40 points of damage my salvos did to the mechs legs and arms don't ammount to useful when fire support is crucial.

You get big numbers at the end - and even get a few kills to make it look like you were doing something - but my Jenner would have cleaned house on that team in Frozen City. It would have made a greater impact on the course of the overall game, even though it is a light skirmisher as opposed to a fire support mech that houses of the inner-sphere invaded entire worlds to gain access to (the Catapult chassis was highly sought during the succession wars).

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Also please provide an estimate on how much more dmg that weapon should give you, considering you ended up 4 out of 6 matches with very few battlescars to show and on top of the damage ladder ?

1.3 points of damage. Minimum.

That's roughly a 45-50% boost.

Remember - back before Host State Rewind was in effect - it wasn't unusual to see an Atlas with 600 points of damage or higher if he was a good, contributing player. The reason is because his shots were hitting the mech - but not on target. He was hitting arms instead of side torsos - or whatever. Now, that's changed. Everyone's average damage has dropped, considerably, because they are on-point with their targetting.

5 months ago, before HSR - that AC40 jeager and I would have danced for a while before he gave up and legged me - because his shots would have been all over creation (not that you can take too many more of those to random body sections, but still).

Damage values for missiles dont need to go back up to 1.8 (I'd say 1.5 is the limits of what I'd implement) - there are just far more situations where you can fire missiles and hit, these days (though I do understand that Artemis is bugged at the moment and applies its bonus even when it shouldn't - so that might be a factor here, too). That said - when you do hit, at least with the way the mechs with larger tube counts work, you aren't actually doing that much damage to portions of the mech that matter.

Tightening the cluster will just re-introduce problems that we've had in the past. Increasing the per-missile damage by about 50% will put LRMs right about where they need to be - assuming they behave consistently across firing platforms.

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Would you be satisfied if the target simply burst into flames when the first salvo lands ? Or would you be sastisfied if you were ultimately the first damage dealer in your team with double the score from the second player ? Would then LRM be on par with any other weapon ? Please excuse my sarcasm, but I did spend time watching those videos and these are the numbers I saw - pretty clear to me and I don't understand the reason why I had to watch them just to transfer them here.

You didn't have to transfer them here - you could have posted there.

I made the topic separate because its purpose is not limited to this debate.

Anyway - if you notice - There are several instances where I've free reign over an Assault - like a Highlander or Atlas, and drop multiple missile salvos into it - 3+ - and its armor -might- be a proper orange color.

Sure - the damage numbers are high because all of the torso armor is orange - but for that to be comparable to the type of damage that other mechs are dealing (point shots to specific armor sections).

Let me ask you... you're being maneuvered into a corner by an enemy team with an Atlas providing its main leverage. Who would you rather have supporting you, at this point in time - an AC 2/5 Jeager, Cataphract, or a -fire support- mech like the Catapult?

If you live by the mantra that LRMs are for "softening up targets" - then you see no problem with LRMs as they are. You can maneuver well and rain missiles, rack up huge amounts of damage, and look pretty for the team. In a perfect little world where the enemy sits around and lets missiles rain on their head while a brawling line readies to charge through them - missiles are great.

In the real world - where you are firing in response to an active engagement - it's about how much damage you can bring to the parts that require it. LRMs are supposed to be imprecise in this manner - but as they are, at least from the Catapult's perspective, they are completely ineffective. You can't intervene as a fire support mech - which is precisely what your role is.

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And please don't attribute your damage to those 2 med lasers you occasionaly fire, we have all fired medium lasers and we know exactly how much damage they do.

You must really think I'm some kind of ******. Have you not read any of my posts that you've been replying to?

Edited by Aim64C, 03 June 2013 - 03:11 AM.

[Yanlowen Cage]

Name dam Heat recycle range Max range Slots Tonnage Shots/ton
Lrm 20 18 6 4.75 180-1000 1000 5 crits 10 9
Guass 15 1 4.00 660 1980 7 crits 15 10
ERppc 10 11 4.00 810 1620 3 crits 7 infinite

First the lrm20. 6 heat. It has a min range of 180 meters (no damage below that). Max of 1000, PERIOD. It does 18 damage (if all missiles hit). Which they rarely do, do to terrain, speed, ams, loss of lock(due to ecm coverage or loss of LOS), or other considerations. It can be blocked by terrain, ECM, and loss of lock (requires lock almost all they way to target). It can be countered by AMS and speed(lights can often times out run missiles). takes up 5 crits. But most lrm boats would and normally do take ART4. So add a ton and a crit slot to each launcher equipped. Also most boats wil self TAG. Add another ton and a slot for the TAG. So over all 11 tons and 6 crits (+1 TAG) for a viable missile launcher. shots per to = 9. 3 tons (which may not be enough) gives you 27 volleys. so another 3 tons weight to you launcher in ammo and 3 more crits slots. Ammo explodes if critted doing upwards of 162 damage to self or more depending on ammo amount in location. If you wish to use CASE, add .5 tons more and another crit slot. cost 500,000 c-bills not including extras (tag, art4, case). recycle time 4.75 also a smart pilot would take Advanced target decay.

now the Guass rifle. 1 heat. No min range. max effective range 660 meters (15 damage) max effective range 1980 meters (with damage dropping to zero). (pinpoint and near instant). it can be blocked by terrian (with luck or skill) but not very well. No extra equipment required to make it function better. 10 shots per ton. 3 tons = 30 shots. Ammo does not explode (but the rifle does for 15 damage). So if you want +.5 ton and 1 crit for CASE(which I doubt anyone would run). Takes up 7 crits(possibly 8). recycle time 4.00

And lastly the ERppc. 11 heat. No min range. Max effective range 820 (10 damage) Max range 1620 (with damage dropping to zero.) Pinpoint and nearly instant. It can be blocked by terrain (with luck or speed) not likely. No extra equipment required to make it function better. Infinite ammo. Does not explode. No penalty for extreme high heat. takes 3 crits. Recycle time 4.00. A smart pilot will use coolant flush.

So the erppc and guss rifle have longer max ranges. little or no exploding components. are nearly instant to target (less likely to dodge). have no min range. require no extra equipment to operate at thier best. do not splash or partial damage targets and have no counter measures. The guass is heavy, but not overly so for it's range and damage production. The ERppc is hot, but not overly so for it's range and damage production. Also overheating does not damage a mech if you allow it to shut down. both the ERppc and the guass get more ammo per ton (10 and infinite). The direct fire weapons also have a faster recycle time.

As I see it comparing these heavy longe range weapons platforms side by side that the LRM20 is not an easy button nor is it overpowered. The opposite is true. The ERppc and the guass rifle are both incredible long ranged and have no counters. Plus do pinpoint damage. nor are they penalized for being used close in like the lrm.

Last paragraph was my opinion, buy everything stated above that is obversed fact or behavior in game. I could go on but if your dead set on believing lrms are OP or easy button this won't cahnge your mind.

[KickFeather]

Out of curiosity, I took a look at my Weapons Stat page to see what my LRM damage per hit was.

LRM 5 – 605 damage/ 656 hit = 0.92
LRM 10 – 4741 damage/5,108 hit = 0.92
LRM 15 – 24,203 damage/24, 828 hit = 0.97

Now admittedly the numbers for the LRM 15 will be skewed because I’ve been using those since before they even started posting stats, so they’ve been through the nerfs, the bugs, the buffs. But the LRM 5, I recently put in last week to see what they were like. Nonetheless even with the difference in use, there you see the damage is over 0.9/hit.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

KickFeather, on 03 June 2013 - 04:56 AM, said:

Out of curiosity, I took a look at my Weapons Stat page to see what my LRM damage per hit was.

LRM 5 – 605 damage/ 656 hit = 0.92
LRM 10 – 4741 damage/5,108 hit = 0.92
LRM 15 – 24,203 damage/24, 828 hit = 0.97

Now admittedly the numbers for the LRM 15 will be skewed because I’ve been using those since before they even started posting stats, so they’ve been through the nerfs, the bugs, the buffs. But the LRM 5, I recently put in last week to see what they were like. Nonetheless even with the difference in use, there you see the damage is over 0.9/hit.

Splash still exists, it's technically possible to splash even with a 5cm splash radius. So you'll see a bit of differentiation.

[Joseph Mallan]

Steel Claws, on 01 June 2013 - 08:06 PM, said:

The real question I would ask most of you is what do you think would be a fair amount of damage from an LRM? Is 5 damage from an LRM 5 good? That’s less than it does now. If you say yes then you would also think that 20 from an LRM 20 is also good - it is after all 4 x 5. Oh but wait - that means our original poster with his 4 LRM 20s will be doing 80 points of damage per salvo without ever having to see his opponent. You see the issue here. This is a very fine line to walk. Were you to make a 2 LRM 15 centurion very effective using LRMs alone - were does that leave a 4 LRM 15 Awesome?

People said PPCs were too weak and that they needed buffed - I said they were fine. They buffed them and look where we are today. Be very sure of what you ask for people because you probably won't like the result. I'd far rather error to the side of caution than start a whole new meta - or dig up an old one.

Again I would have to ask, just what are your expectations for this weapon? I see them used just fine in average quantities. In less than 20 or so - not so much but they still can serve a purpose, but when you can build a mech quite easily that can carry 80 with over 1000 reloads - do you really want 20 to be all that effective. Or if you’d rather – do you balance them for the guy putting an LRM 15 on his centurion or the guy putting 80 on his stalker. You have to balance them for the boater just like everyone wants to balance PPC based on boated use. They do damage and take off armor now, any more and they will be boated heavily again and that people isn’t very fun. I think they are closer to being spot on than many people think.

A fair amount is Somewhere between 60%-80% of the racks' full damage. If I shoot you with an AC20 I will do 20 damage if in range. Missiles on the other hand should have some fall out cause some missiles miss. So Say an LRM 20 should hit with ... 17-14 Missiles, LRM hits with 12-9 LRM 10 hit with 8-6 and LRM 5 hit with 4-3. Multiply by the damage per missile... Good support weapon. Respectable damage. Some folks will like em other won't. Balance achieve.

[Aim64C]

Daeonwolf, on 02 June 2013 - 04:42 PM, said:

I've been reading these posts about LRMs for a while now and I've come to realize something: people don't know enough about the original game this was based off of to truely understand the use and purpse of LRMS.

The purpose?

Weapons have one purpose once the decision has been made to use them. Remove the threat. Any weapon that cannot accomplish this reasonably is useless when one has the option of taking other weapons.

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LRMs were never intended to be 'kill' weapons. They're extreme range, saturation weapons that soften targets with little to no worry about getting damanged in return. Before guass cannons and ER PPCs, nothing could touch an LRM launcher at long range. However, there were game mechanics in place that balanced that, specifically the missle hit chart. Just because you 'hit' with the weapon didn't mean you hit with every missle. In fact, you basically had about a 12% chance of hitting with all the missles (a roll of 11 or 12 on 2d6) and on average you'd hit with 50-60%. So your LRM20 would on average do 10-12 damage per hit.

So a Catapult C4 ... and, correct me if I'm wrong... would be dealing an average of 20-24 damage per salvo, yes? With armor at 16 points per ton rather than 32, correct?

So a salvo from two LRM 20s would rip off nearly one and a half tons of armor on the average. Right?

Except... -every- weapon in the game behaved somewhat like missiles. You had a hit chance and unless you had a targetting computer - you couldn't target specific sections. You simply applied damage randomly.

You may have 2 ERPPCs - but that didn't guarantee that both of them were going to hit.

LRMs, in tabletop, could also not be countered by cover or breaking LOS. If it was in range and on the map, as I understand all the rules, you could blast it.

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But wait, there's more! Unlike non-missle weapons, you didn't get to apply that damage all to one place. No, you would roll for each missle! (Some people would do it in groups of five, however). So your potental 10 points of damage could end up being 1 point of damage done over the whole mech, with a couple 2-pointers here and there. Where a Hunchback with it's A/C 20 could potentally 1 shot an Atlas with a head hit, and other mechs with A/C 10's or PPCs could do the same with a lucky crit hit.

Still - you're saying that a weapon system that should rip off 3/4 tons of armor (1.5 tons of armor in a dual LRM20 configuration) per salvo on the average (in an environment where cover doesn't exist, mind you)... is a 'softening' weapon?

Sure - whenever the very next turn, you're going to light that guy up with gauss rifle and PPC rounds or hit him with a volley of lasers from two lights. You get in one volley - maybe two - and then the random hit rolls of weapons start blowing out internals on first contact.

That's not "softening." That's "cracking." You're busting a target wide open so that your allies can drop it in nothing flat. 10 seconds in tabletop (the standard turn) is usually 1-2 full weapon recycles (meaning 2-3 shots) for most weapons in this game. Further - weapons in TT were hit-on-turn, even missiles. They didn't have travel time. They didn't have obstacles. If you locked and fired - you rolled for hits with the missiles and then rolled for clusters of those that hit. They didn't take a full weapon recycle (or two) to travel to their target.

You were, in effect, busting targets wide open so that you could put them down fast and hard. You weren't chipping away armor. It was a hammer.

That is why, lore-wise, entire planetary invasions were staged to seize mechs like the Catapult - because it was a doomsday device on the battlefield that allowed small teams to put down much larger forces quickly and efficiently.

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SRMs weren't much better. Sure you did 2 points of damage per missile instead of the LRMs 1 point, but the number of missles are much smaller (SRM maxing out at 12 points potental (SRM6) damage to LRM's 20 points) and you still rolled on the missle table to see how many hit! Basically SRMs were the (highly inaccurate) shotgun of the mech world before the LB 10-X AC were around.

Well - guided shotguns, in a sense. That part was kind of ambiguous.

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Okay, I'll back up a bit here and agree: Table top does not equal FPS mechanics. It's never going to be the same between them. That being said, I return to my original point: LRMs are not (nor should they ever be) killing weapons. An LRM boat *should* have to burn through a huge amount of it's ammo to make a pure missle kill. Their job is to soften up targets, (or distract them with trying to avoid the incomming damage) while their teammates move in for the kill.

In what world does this work, really?

How many times have enemies allowed you to sit back and rain missiles on them until your brawling line is ready to engage?

Let's assume that in MWO - 90% of your missiles hit the target (because you're a TAG and Artemis beast) with 40 round salvos. That's 36 missiles. For practical purposes, we'll say 80% of those hit on the torso sections of a mech - 28.8 missiles. Exact spread will depend upon the model of the mech - but we'll assume it's relatively even on the average - that's 28.8 over three sections, or 9.6 missiles per section. At 0.9 points of damage - 8.64 points of damage on the average to the torso segments per 40 missile volley.

We can argue exact distributions all day - but the fact is that I'm assuming an implausible 90% hit ratio (which means the receiving pilot is doing something horribly wrong or just so bad out in the open he's boned no matter what is shooting at him).

Which means each salvo is roughly 6 medium lasers that kind of spread out over the torsos every 4.5 seconds (by time you unlock efficiencies) after a roughly 4-8 second flight time (hits beyond 700 meters are relatively rare on any map... even in today's world where people largely have forgotten missiles exist).

To put that into perspective - it would take roughly 3 salvos to burn through the armor of my Jenner - and 4th or 5th salvo to actually "do me in."

My catapult? Over 6 salvos - 240 missiles.

It takes two salvos to roughly equal the point damage of a single gauss rifle hit - almost 3 to touch on what the AC20 does in a fraction of a second.

You can't properly support your team with LRMs at this damage level. In the real world, support is called in -as- you engage. The reason you are support is that you can divide your attention across a much wider battle space than most other mechs and be a party focusing fire on a tough target to support your Hunchback that is in a tight spot.

What can you possibly do when you're dropping -maybe- 10 points of effective damage onto any given portion of a Highlander with something in the range of 60 points of armor on its side torsos?

You used to be able to do something about these scenarios. You had 'stopping power.' You could actually function as support.

This whole idea that you can sit back and "plink away" at your enemy to support your team is bollocks. It doesn't work.

It's a nice theory - and works if you have complete suppremacy and are merely wanting to preserve the life of your forces. But when your opponents are on roughly equal footing - you can't sit back and hammer their trenches with indirect fire. They shoot back. Usually with snipers.

And that's the reality. Snipers are a far superior support option at this point in time. Even if we nerfed the hell out of accuracy while jump-jetting and made heat penalties more severe - the fact remains that they are the only realistic support option available - because you can get the angle on an opponent harming your team - and swiftly deliver the kind of hits that are necessary to prevent an over-run or to make the difference for your team (because the two particular mechs on your team couldn't deal with an AC40 jeager blasting their face at 100 meters after they just got done brawling with an Atlas).

[Demuder]

Aim64C, on 03 June 2013 - 03:04 AM, said:

You are not completely incorrect.

.......

You must really think I'm some kind of ******. Have you not read any of my posts that you've been replying to?

I cut the quote so as not to create a mega quote of terror.

Mate, I think you got it backwards. The whole point, from what I've seen in the videos is that by the standards the game awards victory, you came in 1st or 2nd and 4 out of 6 kept your mech intact. It's as simple as that. Everything else, is subjective - not invalid - but simply subjective, it's what you think about it, and everyone thinks about it in a different way.

I don't want to sound dismissive, but what used to happen is besides the point. We care about what happens now and how we can affect things to become even better.

A few posts back, I would agree that LRMs might need a small damage boost. After the results from your videos, I believe they are spot on.

As to whether the damage is spread or not, whether the targets get cored or not, etc etc, it is a matter of weapon mechanics. I don't understand why you would want LRMs to apply damage like a Gauss or PPC and you insist on changing LRMs instead of simply changing your playstyle to a Gauss or PPC. There are weapons in the game that do what you want to do, why don't you use those ? The fact that you want to do with LRMs the same thing someone else does with a direct fire weapon doesn't make it a valid request. it would be rather detrimental to the gameplay of any game if all playstyles had the same, flat effect. If you believe that spread damage is inconsequential, you are dead wrong. It means that your direct fire teammate will blow up that side torso twice as easily. It's quite important and it's quite what support means in real warfare too.

In fact, if indirect weapons had the same effect with direct fire weapons, I see absolutely no reason why anyone would want to use direct fire weapons. So, it's simple, you want to core stuff ? Use direct fire weapons. You want to do as much damage - as evidenced - as direct fire weapons and instead provide a support role to the players using direct fire weapons ? Use LRMs.

What I would prefer as support is totally subjective, I would prefer LRMs since they wouldn't get in my way, some other players prefer wolfpacks or a remote sniper. Whatever fills your cup. As we have seen, they all work.

I really don't think you are some sort of "asterisks", I am really sorry if I gave that impression in my post. I have to admit, it was a bit more aggressive than usual - and for that I apologize - because I couldn't believe what the whole fuss was about, but honestly, have no personal feelings against you. Quite the opposite, since putting up all those videos and replying does take a considerable amount of work.

[Kellea]

the damage tables only show that lrm still suck. yes, there are some better games but we're talking about a lrm-boat here (whatever some ppls thoughts on boating may be, until pgi restricts it, boats will be part of the game). if i compare the stats with my catapult k2-4ppc-boat i do quite regularly about 500-700 dmg per match. but it's a 65 ton mech against an 85 ton mech and far more heavy weaponry (in tons). and in addition, with my k2 i get the kills because lrm only pepper another mech. i don't say they should core it with one salvo but the huge amounts of ammo you need to use to bring down an enemy in addition to the tacitcal restriction of playing with lrm render lrm pretty useless atm (which is why they are going missing again on the battlefield after their short reviving beofre on of pgi's hot"fixes".).

[Aim64C]

dimstog, on 03 June 2013 - 09:46 AM, said:

I cut the quote so as not to create a mega quote of terror.

Mate, I think you got it backwards. The whole point, from what I've seen in the videos is that by the standards the game awards victory, you came in 1st or 2nd and 4 out of 6 kept your mech intact. It's as simple as that. Everything else, is subjective - not invalid - but simply subjective, it's what you think about it, and everyone thinks about it in a different way.

Negative.

There are numerous instances of literally no damage registering to an enemy mech being hit by over 100 missiles from two separate firing mechs.

We have direct visual confirmation - an 80% missile hit rate is a conservative estimate. That's 72 points of damage that should be distributed across those mechs... somewhere - much of it probable in the torso regions (so easily 15 points of damage to each of the torsos - 1.5 PPCs for comparison).

Whatever damage is showing at the end is not the damage that is being applied in the game.

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I don't want to sound dismissive, but what used to happen is besides the point. We care about what happens now and how we can affect things to become even better.

There's an idiom about not living your life looking in the rear-view mirror. At the same time - it's not wise to forget about the past.

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A few posts back, I would agree that LRMs might need a small damage boost. After the results from your videos, I believe they are spot on.

You are insane.

You would form an opinion from those videos, alone - without your own experience?

Go play as a Catapult in a C4. Then tell me missiles are balanced and where they should be. Your curiosity should be intrigued by such a video - not a determination being made... especially if you have no experience playing the role.

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As to whether the damage is spread or not, whether the targets get cored or not, etc etc, it is a matter of weapon mechanics. I don't understand why you would want LRMs to apply damage like a Gauss or PPC and you insist on changing LRMs instead of simply changing your playstyle to a Gauss or PPC. There are weapons in the game that do what you want to do, why don't you use those ?

4 missile criticals. 2 center-torso energy criticals.

Gee... Don't know.

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The fact that you want to do with LRMs the same thing someone else does with a direct fire weapon doesn't make it a valid request. it would be rather detrimental to the gameplay of any game if all playstyles had the same, flat effect. If you believe that spread damage is inconsequential, you are dead wrong. It means that your direct fire teammate will blow up that side torso twice as easily. It's quite important and it's quite what support means in real warfare too.

This is where you're not understanding, in the slightest, what I am saying.

You are support.

Your JOB is the support of your allies. As a support player - every time one of your team-mates dies, you should be thinking about what you could have done better. True - sometimes, it was just a bad situation that was beyond ability for you to do anything about. Other times - your buddy had a brain fart. Either way - your job is the assistance and protection of your allies.

How can you do that if they all get killed?

How are you supposed to intervene to help them -not- die if it takes 3-5x longer for you to accumulate effective damage on a target?

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In fact, if indirect weapons had the same effect with direct fire weapons, I see absolutely no reason why anyone would want to use direct fire weapons.

The fact that they have negligible travel time?

The fact that they give no warning?

The fact that -most- of them have no minimum range?

The fact that several of them can reach out beyond 1000 meters?

The fact that they are unaffected by ECM, AMS, and if you can see a mech - it's not going to run behind cover before your salvo hits?

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So, it's simple, you want to core stuff ? Use direct fire weapons. You want to do as much damage - as evidenced - as direct fire weapons and instead provide a support role to the players using direct fire weapons ? Use LRMs.

So... what you're saying is this:

If you want to kill something... use an AC10/20, PPC, Gauss Rifle, Laser bank, etc. You'll easily deal over 40 points of damage to a single armor section (assuming you know what you're doing) in a 10 second time-frame.

If you want to deal damage - play LRMs, where after 10 seconds have elapsed, you've managed to get one salvo on target (with a second on the way - assuming lock was held and the mech is not sprinting for cover) and deal 10 points of damage or so to the main 3 armor sections of concern (the torsos).

Hell - some mech designs can put 80 points of damage into that armor section before your 2nd salvo hits.

What's the point? What effect are you -really- contributing to the battle?

You're just there... scoring points, stealing kills (basically).

Just what do you think support is supposed to do?

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What I would prefer as support is totally subjective, I would prefer LRMs since they wouldn't get in my way, some other players prefer wolfpacks or a remote sniper. Whatever fills your cup. As we have seen, they all work.

Please, enlighten me on all the times an LRM player has actually supported your game in the past two weeks.

I remember one time in my Jenner. There was another C4 pilot on my team - he and I were on this Cataphract in Forest Colony out by where "kappa" normally spawns.

Several volleys of at least 30 missiles, each, slammed into this thing as I'm dancing around him. He's doing a good job of torso-twisting and keeping me from hitting the parts I want - but I distinctly recall at least four salvos out of several making -very- good connection.

Just... how many salvos should it take? The amount of damage he was doing was completely negligible. I would have killed that cataphract in about the same amount of time whether he helped, or not.

By the way - I out-damaged that C4 in my Jenner - yet the amount of damage it -should- have done by what I was seeing and by what the math says... should have been comparable to the amount of damage that I ended up with during the match - just in that cataphract (I often run about the 300 range for my Jenner - which is higher than it should be - I'm wasting too many of my laser shots on parts that don't matter).

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I really don't think you are some sort of "asterisks", I am really sorry if I gave that impression in my post. I have to admit, it was a bit more aggressive than usual - and for that I apologize - because I couldn't believe what the whole fuss was about, but honestly, have no personal feelings against you. Quite the opposite, since putting up all those videos and replying does take a considerable amount of work.

I apologize for being a bit... aggressive, here. But there's a quite frustrating disconnect between our perspectives.

I've been playing MechWarrior since Mech3 was as good as it got (granted, I was a kid at the time). I've played almost every role imaginable. I rolled into the "turrett battles" of Mech4 and cleaned house on a whole clan using a bushwacker. Apparently - you can Leg the **** out of Diashis with 2 LBX10s and a pack of SRMs. Spare for their Khan... He had a similar appreciation for LBXs and it was just next to impossible to hit his legs and dance out of his line of fire.

My perspective is a whole range of roles and from my own military experience.

I don't play to get big numbers at the end of a match. I play to kill things until I've found something that can give me pause... then learn to kill it. As a team or as an individual.

You can't do that with LRMs. In any capacity. Sure - you can get big numbers at the end of a match, and if you join a gang-bang, you can get a kill or two. But you're not really there.

You're seeing the numbers at the end of the match - but you're not actually seeing the game that is being played. 40 missiles... 22 tons of equipment... and what is my real effect on the battlefield? What am I really able to do?

Nothing that I can't do better with my Jenner. For comparison - within 10 seconds, I can deal 60 points of damage with my Jenner (to a single point if I'm close enough) using 6 tons of equipment and some supporting heatsinks (we'll say 12 tons, total). I can just about match... even out-pace my DPS in my Catapult with my Jenner using a fraction of the tonnage and in a chassis that can move nearly twice as fast.

Why don't I out-DPS it? Because, interestingly enough, when you apply 20 points of damage to the same general area of a mech consistently every 3 seconds or so, it tends to die pretty damned fast - and you have to find something else to shoot at that, preferably, can't shoot back.

My survivability is a testament to my experience and, on occasion, the lack of skill or oganization of my opponents. It's rarely ever because of the weapon system I am using (please, tell me how my selection of weapon is keeping me safe from my enemy's weapon selection). If I'm among the first to go - it's because I was foolish and opened myself up far too much.

[Volthorne]

dimstog, on 03 June 2013 - 09:46 AM, said:

In fact, if indirect weapons had the same effect with direct fire weapons, I see absolutely no reason why anyone would want to use direct fire weapons.

I would LOVE to hear the reasoning behind this. Please, tell me why indirect-fire weapons shouldn't be killing things, or making people run for cover. If a Demoman in TF2 start bouncing grenades around a corner you sure as hell run away (oh look, indirect-fire weapons being scary!). If I drop a claymore in <insert generic FPS here> and someone runs by and gets blown the hell up, that's ALSO indirect-fire in the form of traps. Or how about HALO? Grenades get kills all the time, or was there a patch recently that made them into spitballs? *goes to check the Fails of the Weak from this weekend* Nope, grenades are STILL killing people, and they count as indirect-fire.

Edited by Volthorne, 03 June 2013 - 11:53 AM.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Volthorne, on 03 June 2013 - 11:53 AM, said:

I would LOVE to hear the reasoning behind this. Please, tell me why indirect-fire weapons shouldn't be killing things, or making people run for cover. If a Demoman in TF2 start bouncing grenades around a corner you sure as hell run away (oh look, indirect-fire weapons being scary!). If I drop a claymore in <insert generic FPS here> and someone runs by and gets blown the hell up, that's ALSO indirect-fire in the form of traps. Or how about HALO? Grenades get kills all the time, or was there a patch recently that made them into spitballs? *goes to check the Fails of the Weak from this weekend* Nope, grenades are STILL killing people, and they count as indirect-fire.

I love when people make the "in-direct fire argument", in-direct fire is terrible. And the times when it does work is when you are using a dedicated spotter, which means it takes 2 people to do it.

On top of that, people always seem to ignore the fact that LRM's have min range, a warning, travel time, a strict max range, ECM and AMS working against them. To balance the in-direct fire.

[Sephlock]

This is exactly what's wrong with the game- its not the Devs, its the whiners.

This same bunch is going to cry and cry when Clan tech hits, when Clan mechs hit, whenever anything good or fun is introduced, and they will get it nerfed into blandness and inferiority.

Then they'll refuse to see reality and insist that everything is JUST FINE.