158 replies to this topic

[Solis Obscuri]

Missile systems trade a high damage/weight and good damage/heat for the inability to precisely target body sections to concentrate that damage. It's a fair trade IMO, though it'd be nice if they traveled a little faster to be more useful against fast targets.

[Xeno Phalcon]

I always thought it was weird SRMS were dumbfire, I sorta imagine them how streaks are being treated at the moment: Lock on and scatter damage randomly across the mech. Toss in a per missile plus per meter traveled chance to go ape and fly off into nothing and bam. (So a point blank shot would be nasty, but near max range might have multiple misses)

[Solis Obscuri]

Xeno Phalcon, on 13 February 2014 - 03:00 PM, said:

I always thought it was weird SRMS were dumbfire, I sorta imagine them how streaks are being treated at the moment: Lock on and scatter damage randomly across the mech. Toss in a per missile plus per meter traveled chance to go ape and fly off into nothing and bam. (So a point blank shot would be nasty, but near max range might have multiple misses)

Yeah, I was hoping they were going to have limited guidance as per canon like MicroProse did in MW3.

[MERC Mournblade]

SRMs need to not be so damned hot. For the quintessential brawling weapon it can't last more than a couple of shots before shutting down a mech. I'd still use SRMs today despite their hit detection, but I find they run too hot.

[SaltBeef]

Tycho von Gagern, on 13 February 2014 - 09:13 AM, said:

We definitely need something for close in. Make SRMs the Brawler's go to... Heck, take the damage up to 3. Give players a reason to run SRMs again, Give brawlers back the power to close with a poptart and shove that PPC up their [REDACTED]. This game is getting so boring, PGI.

Fix the missiles.

Brawling is way funner than jump sniping or corner peeking these are huge Battlemechs lets smash Faces, bring in the axman with his ax , show em what for!! I agree with a earlier posting LBX should be a close in shredder! SRM's sure do sounds sweet in the headset, and man are they loud when they bang at the backside of your cockpit. LOve the SFX!

Edited by SaltBeef, 14 February 2014 - 03:13 AM.

[Hauser]

Joseph Mallan, on 13 February 2014 - 11:42 AM, said:

I beg to differ. My AC10 or 20 or Gauss was a point of impact weapon. It hit all its damage where it was pointed. Lasers drew lines across the enemy like a scalpel and Missiles blasted the enemy to peices. As the three types of weapons should do. SRMs never competed with ACs and lasers in the past. They were used as crit seekers as a SRM6 could do 2 points of damage to 6 different locations if the dice were feeling frisky. SRMs don't do mass damage to one location. They never should.

No. Unless you had an extremely low ping, before HSR you could not reliably hit the same body part of a mech in the way that can be done now. While your AC's might do all damage in a single point, those points would be spread out. That has changed. It is now possible to hit accurately with lasers and acs.

For SRMs you can control the spread, because of this every other weapon is better in the hands of a skilled player. Simply boosting their damage is not a solution either hence need for to influence the effectiveness of SRMs more through skill.

Almond Brown, on 13 February 2014 - 12:06 PM, said:

When did Lasers become Pin point damage dealers? It was written repeatedly and is a misnomer. To determine why they are not even close to pinpoint, save for stationary targets, Select Profile on this page, select stats, weapon stats and then the Medium Laser stat.
Now take the total Damage generated and divide that by the total number of Hits recorded. Guess what? That pin-point ML is not even close to a PIN POINT weapon. The thing takes a full second to burn in that 5 points of damage. Same with all Laser based Energy weapons. Pin-point lasers? wtf with the dis-information?

The premise of the original post was that lasers and ballistics are both influenced by skill. Aiming and, leading or tracking. If you're good at those skills you can make your lasers and ballistics hit the right spot rather then spreading damage across your target or missing all together.

SRMs lack that ability. No matter how well you aim, the damage will always be spread out.

Solis Obscuri, on 13 February 2014 - 02:59 PM, said:

Missile systems trade a high damage/weight and good damage/heat for the inability to precisely target body sections to concentrate that damage. It's a fair trade IMO, though it'd be nice if they traveled a little faster to be more useful against fast targets.

Well the problem with that is that trade of depends on how good you are at lasers and ballistics. At some point you can be good enough for SRM's to become dead weight.

[Raso]

IceSerpent, on 13 February 2014 - 09:03 AM, said:

They do need a fairly large damage buff though (on a side note, LBX needs a similar buff).

This. A thousand times this.

As it stands an SRM6 not only deals more total damage than the LBX10 but divides it into less projectiles dealing superior pinpoint damage per missile. This is compounded by the fact that 2 SRM6s and 2 tons of ammo are far lighter than an LBX10 with a single ton of ammo.

If we are going to continue to portray the LBX10 as some sort of AC shotgun (and lets face it, that mechanic is here to stay) then the LBX10 needs to be scary up close. It's not enough that you can hit things beyond the maximum range of SRMs. Those hits need to count and the ones up close need to be scary.

I believe that part of fixing SRMs rests on ensuring that other weapon systems are viable. Until every weapon in the game is useful in a role we will always have a meta dominated by the same 2 or 3 weapon systems.

[Joseph Mallan]

Hauser, on 14 February 2014 - 04:04 AM, said:

No. Unless you had an extremely low ping, before HSR you could not reliably hit the same body part of a mech in the way that can be done now. While your AC's might do all damage in a single point, those points would be spread out. That has changed. It is now possible to hit accurately with lasers and acs.

you actually say that like it is a bad thing? Not hitting the same the same body part is a CBT tradition! SRMs were not intended as short range brawling weapons. They were Crit seekers. Medium lasers were the Short range brawling weapon for a generation and a half.

[Joseph Mallan]

MischiefSC, on 13 February 2014 - 12:31 PM, said:

No, they broke damage up into 5 point increments over the target.

Also you didn't have everyone on the field in a completely custom mech with Targeting Computer.

Group-fired MLs never did mass damage to the same location in TT but 6 MLs on my Battlemaster do. They all hit the same location along with my AC10. That's not how TT worked at all, don't be obtuse here.

SRMs however don't hit what I'm aiming at. That's fine - so long as they get some form of scaling up to match the scaling up everything else has gotten. Range doubled (or tripled) and perfect Targeting Computer accuracy, if not a bit better.

SRMs were not crit seekers any more than an LB10X was or any other weapon. SRMs didn't have an advantage save BOOM for the weight. Also everyone was in stock builds ergo not every mech in every match was optimized for armor, endosteel, DHS and XL where most useful.

Armor got doubled to compensate for pinpoint damage. Everything except SRMs have gotten buffs to fit them into the MW:O environment from tabletop. I'm saying give SRMs their equivalent buff. Tighter cluster (at least all on the torso at 270m on a moving mech. With Artemis not same location but enough to spread across LT/RT/CT or CT/RT/RA if you get what I mean, without Artemis about what Artemis gives you now) and then widely failing accuracy (about what we've got now with no Artemis) after that. Make them faster - 400 or 500.

Not pinpoint by any stretch but at least viable. That or give them back splash damage so each missile is technically doing more than 2 points, 2pts at target, 1pt to adjacent locations.

Otherwise they're just a novelty now. They're not part of stock builds you pretty much have to take and adjust to, they're optional. There's no reason to take them now, hitreg issues or not. They're flavor text sort of weapons, which makes them a pointless waste.

Yes Missiles did break into 5 point clusters (single missile for SRMs though. and Actually, Every mech on My gaming table was Modified as I was a HeavyMetal Pro playtester. I have over 2,000 Modified Mechs, Vehicles and Aerospace.

[pbiggz]

Standard SRMs are supposed to be guidable by narc, but otherwise they exhibit a small amount of partial guidance. They are not totally dumb fire, but not lock on either. This is what they should be in mechwarrior online.

[Mister Blastman]

Like. One time SRMs. Like. They actually worked.

Really!


:-|

MWO was 1000% more fun to play back in closed beta.

Edited by Mister Blastman, 14 February 2014 - 07:38 AM.

[Charons Little Helper]

I'm still of the opinion that fixing the prevalence shouldn't be done of the shooting side of things - but on the target side. Make it so that every non-cored part next to the target absorbs 10% of the damage.

This would

1. Keep pinpoint targeting as an effective skill - while buffing the survivability of mechs.

2. Instantly make weapons that spread damage buffed somewhat in comparison.

3. Make taking off arms & legs easier than center - as they have fewer touching components absorbing damage for them. I believe that most players would consider it a plus if peeling off arms & legs becomes a viable strategy as opposed to just something that happens when you miss.

[Joseph Mallan]

Mister Blastman, on 14 February 2014 - 07:38 AM, said:

Like. One time SRMs. Like. They actually worked.

Really!


:-|

MWO was 1000% more fun to play back in closed beta.

Less whine less Underhive.

[Nick Makiaveli]

Read the first page and just going to make some general observations/point out a few things...

In TT, Streaks are guided and thus an upgrade for regular SRMs. Making SRMs guided in MWO would mean they are all Streaks and screw with the time line, not to mention remove an entire weapon system from the game.

Second, hit reg. Sometimes it looks broken but actually worked. The point is for it to register hits when they SHOULD hit, and not that doesn't always match up with what you saw on the screen. If they moved and your PC didn't register the move, then you should miss, even though your client rendered the shot as dead on.

Also, everyone here advocating a position is operating blind. We don't have the data on how useful they are, how accurate etc. The devs do, and when they do another balance pass I'm sure they will pick the worst offender of the bunch to fix.

[pbiggz]

Nick Makiaveli, on 14 February 2014 - 08:09 AM, said:

Read the first page and just going to make some general observations/point out a few things...

In TT, Streaks are guided and thus an upgrade for regular SRMs. Making SRMs guided in MWO would mean they are all Streaks and screw with the time line, not to mention remove an entire weapon system from the game.

Second, hit reg. Sometimes it looks broken but actually worked. The point is for it to register hits when they SHOULD hit, and not that doesn't always match up with what you saw on the screen. If they moved and your PC didn't register the move, then you should miss, even though your client rendered the shot as dead on.

Also, everyone here advocating a position is operating blind. We don't have the data on how useful they are, how accurate etc. The devs do, and when they do another balance pass I'm sure they will pick the worst offender of the bunch to fix.

Not entirely false, but not entirely true. Standard SRMs in TT exhibit limited guidance, meaning that they will curve towards the target slightly, but not much. If the target moves too much, they may aswell be dumbfire. Also, Standard SRMs are receptive to narc, so if you use narc, your standard srms are effectively streak srms. This is what we should have in MWO now.

As for hit reg, yea its off, that's the number one offender for SRMs. They have alot of trouble hitting anything going faster than 80kph.

Edited by pbiggz, 14 February 2014 - 08:20 AM.

[Sephlock]

Nick Makiaveli, on 14 February 2014 - 08:09 AM, said:

Read the first page and just going to make some general observations/point out a few things...

In TT, Streaks are guided and thus an upgrade for regular SRMs. Making SRMs guided in MWO would mean they are all Streaks and screw with the time line, not to mention remove an entire weapon system from the game.

SRMs are guided too, they just can be fired without a solid lock...

Quote

Second, hit reg. Sometimes it looks broken but actually worked. The point is for it to register hits when they SHOULD hit, and not that doesn't always match up with what you saw on the screen. If they moved and your PC didn't register the move, then you should miss, even though your client rendered the shot as dead on.

I sense a great disturbance in the force. As if thousands of European and Australian players all cried out in dismay, and were suddenly dismissed.

Quote

Also, everyone here advocating a position is operating blind. We don't have the data on how useful they are, how accurate etc. The devs do, and when they do another balance pass I'm sure they will pick the worst offender of the bunch to fix.

[Vidarok]

No, SRMs need to be FIXED. Give it a year or two.

[stjobe]

MischiefSC, on 13 February 2014 - 12:31 PM, said:

No, they broke damage up into 5 point increments over the target.

That was LRMs. SRMs did damage individually for each missile that hit.

That's the reason people refer to them as "crit seekers", not that they're especially good at getting crits, but because you got more to-hit rolls with them than with e.g. a laser or an autocannon. Remember that a 2 on a to-hit roll was always a chance to crit, no matter if the target was completely fresh, and that a hit on an unarmoured section was always a crit.

So how to make them useful? Well, I think a good start would be a damage buff and a speed buff. I find it ridiculous that the auto-aim SSRM does more damage than the manually-aimed SRM.

Edited by stjobe, 14 February 2014 - 08:37 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Nick Makiaveli, on 14 February 2014 - 08:09 AM, said:

Read the first page and just going to make some general observations/point out a few things...

In TT, Streaks are guided and thus an upgrade for regular SRMs. Making SRMs guided in MWO would mean they are all Streaks and screw with the time line, not to mention remove an entire weapon system from the game.

Second, hit reg. Sometimes it looks broken but actually worked. The point is for it to register hits when they SHOULD hit, and not that doesn't always match up with what you saw on the screen. If they moved and your PC didn't register the move, then you should miss, even though your client rendered the shot as dead on.

Also, everyone here advocating a position is operating blind. We don't have the data on how useful they are, how accurate etc. The devs do, and when they do another balance pass I'm sure they will pick the worst offender of the bunch to fix.

Guided yes but on average hit with 50-60% of it's salvo and that would normally hit multiple sections as a roll was required for each SRM. Missiles are a RNG weapon.

[Mcgral18]

I'm starting to wonder if it's possible to re-implement splash damage, but make it so only one component will receive that damage. That would hopefully make them start registering more often across all chassis, and possibly a speed boost as well.

Anyone know if that would be feasible?