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The talk of the forums prior to the last CC post has mainly been alpha strikes and SRMs, with a sprinkling of LRMs. I've been trying to think up a very simple way to buff SRMs and LRMs without introducing the insta-core white ball of hate business that happens from LRM and SRM (prior to damage nerf anyways) boating. I feel that a new system (or 2 in this case) needs to be introduced in order to achieve the following:
- Promote chain fire instead of only alpha strikes
- Allow small numbers of missiles to hurt (in accordance to their size) without making large amounts of missiles to hurt too much.
- Promote more of a "sandpaper" quality to missiles. Just a higher grit than currently.
If we look at the behavior of single SRM packs, we can see an increase in spread as we go up in missile count:
This is great. Except once you factor in multiple packs of missiles fired at once, often from the same firing port. Instead of getting a bigger spread pattern with more missiles being fired, we get a pattern that is as tight as the biggest single pack. Compare this 3xSRM2 pattern with the SRM6 pattern:
6 missiles is not that frightening, especially at today's damage. However we all remember what it was like with the 36 missiles of the SRM cat. Builds like that are the ones that ruin SRMs for everyone, as they are capable of firing their missiles with 6x the area density of a single launcher of any size (even a single SRM36 if it were to exist, assuming it follows the same patterns).
This same issue also works with LRMs. In the case of the A1 again, it is capable of stacking 6 LRM5s, creating the ball of heat we all loathe (except for the firer of course). Not to mention, we are also capable of using the same missile tubes for multiple missiles simultaneously, which brings me to my first suggestion.
Suggestion 1: Create a Missile Queue
This seems petty at first, but it is necessary for the second suggestion to function. Essentially, this will treat all simultaneously fired missile weapons from a single hardpoint function like a single launcher of an identical missile count. For example, anyone can fire 15 LRMs from a CN9-A's left torso using 3 LRM5s, not only increasing the damage impulse but its spread (as there's not 5 missiles lagging behind).
The method on how this is implemented would be up in the air. It could either have a cooldown for each missile tube that affects every launcher, or it could lump all fired weapons into a single launch pattern. Just so long as it's not exploitable by really tight macros (firing 0.1s apart or something). And now the big boy...
Suggestion 2: Active Missile Diffusion
The core of this thought is that no two missiles of any flavor (sans streaks) should be within a certain distance of each other. This would mean that no matter how many missiles you fired, the ratio of surface area to damage would remain roughly the same. A way of thinking of this is that there is a bubble around every missile during their flight. If there are any bubbles overlapping each other then they will move apart so that they do not overlap anymore. This would also mean that the bubble's volume to missile damage ratio would have to remain constant for both SRMs and LRMs, allowing LRMs to be slightly more packed than SRMs. The following picture will be exaggerated to illustrate this.
As you can see, the three missiles have their "bubbles" overlapping, so they will experience forces directly away from each other. The sum of all forces on a single missile is illustrated in blue. The main issue with this solution would be the amount of calculations required. In real life, diffusion force is nonlinear with respect to distance so that would require a fair amount of calculations. You would need N!/(N-2)! calculations which gets to be 380 calculations per frame for an LRM20.
This would need to be simplified heavily. First, instead of calculating the force experienced on each missile a velocity vector could be calculated using a linear approximation with no variable dependence. The end goal of this system is not to accurately mimic real life but to make sure that the missiles are spread out by the time they hit an enemy. Then missiles that have no overlap in their bubbles need to be completely ignored. They are not too close to any other missile, so they have no reason to move. Then of course, the bubbles themselves need to be very simple geometric shapes. A rectangular or even triangular prism would be sufficient.
Another part of the bubble would be the back of the missile. This is to prevent players from quickly stagger firing a mess of LRMs so that they line up one behind the other, and essentially bypassing the system put into place here.
Overall Effect
No matter what platform the missiles are fired from and no matter the amount of missiles fired, the damage to surface area ratio remains the same. This means that there are natural diminishing returns for firing tons of missiles at once. The token LRM-60 or even LRM-80 stalkers would be unable to produce the white hot ball of hate and will instead create large blankets of missiles, of which most will miss the target. However if the player were to stagger this missiles so that they are firing one pack of missiles every 0.5s, they will condense into roughly the same spread that we have currently, just over the course of 1.5s from initial hit.
This also works in a reverse fashion. Small amounts of missiles will be in a tight area, likely the CT for LRMs and wherever you decide to aim for SRMs. Light mechs that are incapable of boating large amounts of missiles will not be at as large a disadvantage as currently.
Once this system is introduced. It will be safe to mildly increase the damage per missile on both LRMs and SRMs, though slightly more drastic with SRMs.
TL;DR
Introduce a missile queue, introduce active missile diffusion, and slightly increase damage of both SRMs and LRMs. Desired effect is to increase spread with the number of simultaneous missiles fired so as to curb boating while keeping missiles effective.
Thanks for reading, and feel free to comment.
