10 replies to this topic

[Death0511]

I just got my Locust-V(P) up to having speed tweak. It now runs 169.3 kph. I've run quite a few matches with it to test the ability of outrunning LRM's. All of my trials have been unsuccessful. How is it that LRM's traveling at 120kph are able to keep up with an "un-tagged" and "un-narced" Locust traveling at 169.3 kph away from the path of the missles on flat ground?

This issue has been addressed before, and by the numbers that are given should not be happening.


i.e. LRM Balancing on lights is still broken.

[PhoenixFire55]

Its 120m/s not 120kph. 120m/s ~ 430kph.

[Ironwithin]

Yep, projectile speed is shown in m/s. You will never outrun LRMs (or any other projectile).

[Death0511]

Fair enough.

[Doctor Proctor]

PhoenixFire55, on 22 January 2014 - 03:38 AM, said:

Its 120m/s not 120kph. 120m/s ~ 430kph.

What I would like to know is why, if they're traveling at 430kph, a line of LRM's homing in on an Atlas moving away from me will tend to impact his legs? Even with Artemis and TAG? I'm not saying that they all need to magnet to his CT, just not understanding why they don't primarily hit in a cluster around the central mass of the target, instead of going lower and losing many potential hits to eating the dirt.

[Ironwithin]

They only change course at certain points of their flight path, if the target moves even slightly after the last correction the missiles strike odd places. That's why light 'mech, even when locked the whole time, can avoid a good chunk of the bigger LRM-clouds, they just move too fast.

[PhoenixFire55]

Doctor Proctor, on 22 January 2014 - 03:30 PM, said:

What I would like to know is why, if they're traveling at 430kph, a line of LRM's homing in on an Atlas moving away from me will tend to impact his legs? Even with Artemis and TAG? I'm not saying that they all need to magnet to his CT, just not understanding why they don't primarily hit in a cluster around the central mass of the target, instead of going lower and losing many potential hits to eating the dirt.

Its a matter of the trajectory, and the fact that they 'follow' the target not 'leading' the target. Lately I hardly ever had issues with LRMs (I don't use em much tho), they do tend to spread the damage all over as they should.

[Doctor Proctor]

Ironwithin, on 22 January 2014 - 04:06 PM, said:

They only change course at certain points of their flight path, if the target moves even slightly after the last correction the missiles strike odd places. That's why light 'mech, even when locked the whole time, can avoid a good chunk of the bigger LRM-clouds, they just move too fast.

I get that with the Light mechs, which is why I never waste ammo on them unless I have direct visual targeting at relatively close range and they're currently not moving at top speed (ie - hardly ever). But with big honking Assault mechs? Interestingly too, the missiles seem to impact about the same point regardless of the height of the mech, which means that what would hit the legs in an Atlas might be hitting the torso on a Hunchback. It just seems that they're programmed more to go after a point in space, rather than the center mass of the target mech, which would make sense to me. Then your Lights would still be able to avoid some of the damage and have it miss the CT due to their high velocity, whereas big lumbering Assaults would take more to the upper body, and mechs standing still would just get pelted as they do now.

I dunno, it just seems that there's some more tweaking that needs to be done with LRM's to make them work a bit better. If you're boating 50, 60, 70 missiles in a salvo they work great. 30? Not so much. And smaller launchers seem to conversely target better than larger launchers, which is why we see so many mechs boating the LRM5's (well, that and the troll effect...but my LRM5 Trolltaro surprisingly seems to get more kills than my 2xALRM15 Catapult). Or rather, their effective spread seems tighter.

To me, I would think that an LRM5 and LRM20 should have similar total spread patters, with more missiles packed into the same general area with the larger launcher. This would mean that all mechs are similarly accurate with LRMs, but dedicated missile mechs like the Catapults would have an advantage due to their large number of tubes available. I think this is what was originally intended to happen with the max tube counts, so that while something like a Stalker had a lot of launchers it's missiles would all be spread out and not as powerful as a concentrated LRM40 blast from a Cat. What seems to have happened though is that now the Stalker is the premier LRM boat because there's just a continual flood of tightly packed missiles streaming to the target, whereas half of that LRM40 from the Cat doesn't even hit the mech and instead lands all around it wasting damage. Eh, but that's a bit off topic for this thread...

[Corvus Antaka]

you can dodge them if you use the right vectors, youll just take some minor splash damage. not so minor on a locust unfortunately.

[RadioKies]

Death0511, on 22 January 2014 - 03:06 AM, said:

Spoiler

I just got my Locust-V(P) up to having speed tweak. It now runs 169.3 kph. I've run quite a few matches with it to test the ability of outrunning LRM's. All of my trials have been unsuccessful. How is it that LRM's traveling at 120kph are able to keep up with an "un-tagged" and "un-narced" Locust traveling at 169.3 kph away from the path of the missles on flat ground?

This issue has been addressed before, and by the numbers that are given should not be happening.

i.e. LRM Balancing on lights is still broken.

LRM balancing on lights might indeed be broken, but not in the way you think...
Shooting at Jenners, Commando's and spiders (even Ravens sometimes, no idea with Locust) who are running get almost 0 hits with my 3*LRM15 2*LRM5 Stalker. Fireing on lights with LRM is a waste of ammo, unless they are bumping into things.

Also LRM needs another look at. The LRM15 has a way higher hitratio than the LRM20 has.
Allmost all of LRM15 hit a mech while 60/70% of LRM20 hits a mech (unless you targeted an Awesome).
The LRM20 has relatively more slots, heat and weight in use than the LRM15. Why would anyone use LRM20 unless it's for bombarding groups and overwhelming AMS?

Doctor Proctor is on to something, but nerfing the smaller LRM's will make them useless to mount in mechs with only 1 or 2 slots like the Ravens, Quickdraws.

[Doctor Proctor]

RadioKies, on 23 January 2014 - 08:15 AM, said:

LRM balancing on lights might indeed be broken, but not in the way you think...
Shooting at Jenners, Commando's and spiders (even Ravens sometimes, no idea with Locust) who are running get almost 0 hits with my 3*LRM15 2*LRM5 Stalker. Fireing on lights with LRM is a waste of ammo, unless they are bumping into things.

Also LRM needs another look at. The LRM15 has a way higher hitratio than the LRM20 has.
Allmost all of LRM15 hit a mech while 60/70% of LRM20 hits a mech (unless you targeted an Awesome).
The LRM20 has relatively more slots, heat and weight in use than the LRM15. Why would anyone use LRM20 unless it's for bombarding groups and overwhelming AMS?

Doctor Proctor is on to something, but nerfing the smaller LRM's will make them useless to mount in mechs with only 1 or 2 slots like the Ravens, Quickdraws.

Therein lies the problem. Nerf small launchers too much, and some of the smaller mechs won't be able to do much of anything with LRMs, but buff the larger launchers to have the same accuracy and you might give too much of an advantage to the big boys, thus invalidating the smaller ones again.

Also, I've noticed the same issues with LRM15's and LRM20's, which is why I don't use a single 20 in any of my mechs. ALRM15's are the largest thing I will run, and even then, I kinda feel that ALRM10's might actually be better still provided you can mount 4 of them. My weapon stats seem to bear this out as well, as the smaller launchers are both more accurate and do more damage per hit (with the exception being the LRM20 doing .01 more damage per hit than the LRM15, but they're essentially the same).

Edit: Hmm, couldn't get the table to post right, so here's a link to a Google Doc version - LRM Weapons Table

Edited by Doctor Proctor, 23 January 2014 - 08:35 AM.