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Now, pretend if you will, the small circle of dots in the center of those targets is the center torso of a mech. the two outer circles represent the left right torso. In most of the other Mechwarrior games Ive played. Guided missiles, no matter what type would always try to hit the center of the target, in our case the center torso. However, the flight patterns were such that the missiles did not all hit the center torso, they spread thier damage over the left, right, and a little in the arms. Little or no damage was applied to the legs or head or other extremities. Whats that you say? that would be OP? NO, it wasnt, because you could still roll the damage around a bit and spread it out, preventing all the damage from pelting just the torso, and in some cases only damaging the arms if they were big enough to eat the whole savlo. Also the missiles flew at a speed and were not always able to match the evasive actions of the mechs...Strafing sideways at a 90degree angle to the launching mech would cause most streaks and lrms to fly behind the target, however dude to the speed and tracking power of the streaks currently in the game that isnt possible. Also the random limb targeting that guided missiles do in this game, and the wide spread of the Srm launchers really bork the damage you can put out from these missiles.
Prior to all the missile changes, Srms and lrms had a tight "X" flight pattern. in the case of the streaks at short range, the shot grouping would look much like in Figure "V" in the attached picture. Concentrated, Brutal damage. At long to max range, the pattern was wide and would hit much like pattern "I" as I would expect Srm launchers TO behave..nasty at short range, less useful at long. Lrms would not randomly target sections of the mech, they just flew towards the center of the mech and impacted all over the place Using tag, and later artemis would tighten up your "X" Pattern and have most of land on the torso. While this could arguably be abusive, if they were using a simple shot grouping pattern as the other games have, even this damage could be reduced somewhat by rolling your damage and presenting fresh armor to the incoming salvoes. If you are in a position to get tagged and pummeld repeatedly by artemis Lrms, you are probably in bad shape anyway. When Lrms were ungoldy overpowered it was because of splash + that lame random targeting...The splash absolutly cooked your torso armor and spread the damage to the thinner armored sections of your mech, along with the random targeting ment that you got legged and headshotted by the rain of artemis lrms everyone was using at the time.
My suggestion to help out with the Srms and lrms, and later the streak 4's and 6es when clan tech hits is to remove the random limb targeting....Have the streaks and lrms simply fly towards the center of mass of the mech instead of randomly targeting different sections. Adjust the fight pattern of streaks, so when they impact their target, the shot grouping is wide, like figure "I" in the picture. The same can be done with Lrms. Boosts like Tag, and artemis or narcs can impove your LRM groupings from something like figure "I" To figure "VI" Srms could have thier Hit dection worked on and the flight pattern tightened up so that it is actually USEFUL to close up the distance with these weapons
Here is a video from living legends which I think did a pretty good job with the implementation of the different types of missiles. Pay special attention to the streaks at the end of it and notice how wide the flight pattern is, and how much the damage was spread over the targeted mechs...and that was the Cheese Streak vulture he was using, the absolute worst case scenario. Also note how even with the clan lrms, at short range the missiles still arcked over the enemy mechs head, he had to Rush up to him and point his nose down to take advantage of the lack of minrage on clan Lrms....could be a useful balancing feature for the upcoming clan lrms. Also note how the streaks and atms move at such a speed and turn in a way that they dont always connect with moving targets..
