50 replies to this topic

[Pjwned]

Foxfire, on 22 February 2014 - 11:36 AM, said:

A single streak isn't scary but when you have streak boats such as Shadowhawks and Kintaros, they become very deadly.

Anyways, there has to be some penalty for picking streaks over standard SRM's.. and while streaks right now are limited to 2packs, that will be changing in a couple of months.

They're already heavier and all but require additional equipment to not be countered into uselessness by ECM and that's even more weight in addition to SSRM damage being heavily spread out, so I'm kind of thinking it has enough penalties as far as the equipment itself goes. I could see its homing effect and/or travel speed being reduced a little bit though so that (relatively) fast light mechs could stand a chance at avoiding them.

Edited by Pjwned, 22 February 2014 - 12:20 PM.

[Foxfire]

Pjwned, on 22 February 2014 - 12:19 PM, said:

They're already heavier and all but require additional equipment to not be countered into uselessness by ECM and that's even more weight in addition to SSRM damage being heavily spread out, so I'm kind of thinking it has enough penalties as far as the equipment itself goes. I could see its homing effect and/or travel speed being reduced a little bit though so that (relatively) fast light mechs could stand a chance at avoiding them.

If you don't want significant spread with SRM's, you have to use the Artemis system which makes the SRM weigh more(in the case of the SSRM 2). Otherwise you have significant levels of spread on a weapon that you have to manually aim.

[Cyborne Elemental]

How about this penalty, SRM hitreg is terrible, and the only way to kill the hordes of lights is with.. bum bum bum.. streaks, and with the recent S-SRM change they randomly hit body locations 1 at a time so its a shotgun effect that spreads that damage slowly over the entire body of a mech.

If Hitreg was better, I would take regular SRM4's and SRM6's all day long, but its so bad that streaks are really the only option to effectively deliver damage to these lights.

So not only is a 1.5 ton piece of equipment totally nullifying anywhere from 1.5 up to however many tons of LRM's or streaks AND their ammo you can pack onto any mech, if you have 2 of them its also nullifying the other 1.5 ton B.A.P. and making the only option to kill fast scouts is with direct fire weapons which can be dodged and avoided easily.

Meanwhile, as you're chasing down a couple lights with your few lasers or whatever since your SSRM's are disabled, the lights can just chew you up, and your teamates are probably chewing you up too trying to shoot at them in the chaos, and you die horribly by OP lights with no hitreg and friendly fire.

Its just a math game.
If one team has 1 more ecm than the other team has BAP, every single lockon weapon will fail in close combat.

Or how about the odds of perfectly synchronized PPC strikes on both ECM targets at the same time, to get a 2 second window to fire 1 salvo of missles..
Are you kidding me?

There has to be a better solution to balance things out..

Edited by Mister D, 22 February 2014 - 12:52 PM.

[Foxfire]

The better solution is to rework the way that electronic warfare as a whole works to make it more fair and yet more useful as a utility.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Electronic Warfare in MWO is currenlty all about a series of hard counters, which mechanic is toxic to good gameplay.

What it should be is a series of interacting soft counters.

ECM - +50% lock-on time with LRMs/SSRMs, -50% detection radius for sensors. Protects all mechs inside 180m.
TAG - -25% lock-on time with LRMs/SSRMs.
Artemis IV - -30% lock-on time with LRMs, -25% group size for missile volleys.
NARC - Reveals the target as a lockable signature to friendlies inside 700m. ECM cuts that in half to 350m. Lasts 45s.
BAP - +20% sensor range. -10% lock-on time with LRMs/SSRMs. -10% Target Info Gathering time. Detects all mechs inside 180m, regardless of LoS or reactor status. ECM reduces the LoS-free detection capability to 90m.

Everything stacks addatively (+50% for ECM protection, -30% for Artemis, -25% for TAG, -10% for BAP, you get a net modifier of -15% to lock-on timers).

Numbers subject to change.

Edited by Levi Porphyrogenitus, 22 February 2014 - 01:00 PM.

[Cyborne Elemental]

I think what you got there Levi is pretty close to how I would prefer it to be as well.

Reduced sensor range for the source mech and any friendlies inside the ECM bubble is a good play, and fair balance IMO.
Keeps scouting by lone mechs important.

Tag should reveal targets, but lock-on timers stay reduced, a PPC or NARC hit is still required to disable the ECM for normal or bonus (personal mech equipment dependent) lock-on speeds

I'd like to see NARC disable ECM for a good duration as well, like an extended PPC EMP hit, they're expensive and hard as hell to aim.

But I'd like to see B.A.P. disable any # of ECM once inside that 90 meter range, if you're that close, you're either up against a group of atlas, or a combination of atlas and lights and deserve that breif few seconds of firing SSRM's while you're alive.

Stacking bonuses for more than 1 ECM module I'd like to see gone, its overpowered as a single device on the field, and redundancy while nice and logical doesn't serve gameplay that well in many situations.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

I should clarify stacking in my proposal: everything stacks with everything else, but multiple iterations of the same thing do not stack (only one TAG bonus, only one ECM penalty, etc.).

[Livewyr]

Mister D, on 22 February 2014 - 08:56 AM, said:

Why does ECM stack?
If there are 2 ECM's by eachother, you can't cancel them out with B.A.P. ?

seriously?

Oh look.. another ECM topic. (BAP and ECM shouldn't have to have a cancel out effect in the first place..)

Sorry Bro.


(I don't disagree with you at all.. but I know the futility. (ECM problems = "Let them eat cake" + "The cake is a lie.")

[TB Freelancer]

Khobai, on 22 February 2014 - 10:14 AM, said:

Then fix that on ECM itself. Dont add goofy counters and create a ridiculous system of one thing absolutely countering another. The whole way ECM and its counters work is asinine.

You remember who's making this game right?

When PGI makes a mistake they never correct it. Standard PGI operating procedure is to attempt to fix it with even more mistakes...err...I mean soft counters.

[Foxfire]

Anyways, just to point out... if you make BAP cancel an unlimited number of ECM, you might as well remove it from the game completely.

A rework is needed but making it useless isn't.

[Pjwned]

Foxfire, on 22 February 2014 - 12:30 PM, said:

If you don't want significant spread with SRM's, you have to use the Artemis system which makes the SRM weigh more(in the case of the SSRM 2). Otherwise you have significant levels of spread on a weapon that you have to manually aim.

That spread is still less than what you get with SSRMs but that's a fair point.

Foxfire, on 22 February 2014 - 05:14 PM, said:

Anyways, just to point out... if you make BAP cancel an unlimited number of ECM, you might as well remove it from the game completely.

A rework is needed but making it useless isn't.

Until PGI actually makes significant changes to ECM the way it is now is best, and I agree that making BAP counter any number of ECM would be ridiculous.

[Khobai]

Quote

LRM's as they are implemented in the game are actually using tech that, in the game time, wouldn't be available until ~3055.

What tech is that?

LRMs could always indirect fire even in 3050. The only tech LRMs get in 3055 is semi-guided LRMs which allow LRMs to ignore the to-hit penalty for indirect fire.

Besides I would say LRMs are penalized way more in MWO than they ever were in tabletop. I dont recall getting a grace period of several seconds to duck behind cover before LRMs hit me in tabletop.

[Foxfire]

Khobai, on 22 February 2014 - 06:07 PM, said:

What tech is that?

LRMs could always indirect fire even in 3050. The only tech LRMs get in 3055 is semi-guided LRMs which allow LRMs to ignore the to-hit penalty for indirect fire.

Besides I would say LRMs are penalized way more in MWO than they ever were in tabletop. I dont recall getting a grace period of several seconds to duck behind cover before LRMs hit me in tabletop.

Yes, LRM's could always fire indirect if someone was targeting(and had a C3 system to distribute the information).

My point about the LRMs are about the guided nature of them. Guided LRM's didn't come along until 3057 it turns out.

http://www.sarna.net...Semi-Guided_LRM

LRM's before that point were fired on ballistic trajectories.

Edited by Foxfire, 22 February 2014 - 06:19 PM.

[Foxfire]

Nature of turn based vs live action.

[Khobai]

Quote

Nature of turn based vs live action.

Not really. They didnt have to have a flashing missile warning or slow missiles. Missiles couldve given you no warning and moved fast.

[Foxfire]

And imagine just how powerful missiles would be if you had no clue they were heading for you. That is the benefit for ballistic trajectories... no pinging the target to alert them of an active search.

[Khobai]

Quote

And imagine just how powerful missiles would be if you had no clue they were heading for you

Still not as powerful as ppcs: which give you no warning, travel pretty fast, and do pinpoint damage unlike the spread of lrms.

Lrms really would not be that bad if they removed the missile warning and increased the speed slightly.

[Foxfire]

PPC's and front load damage weapons are an issue in general.

I think that if they make LRM's ballistic that there wouldn't be an issue with removing the warning.. but as long as they are guided, then removing the warning from them will make them too powerful.

i agree about increasing the flight speed completely though.

[Cyborne Elemental]

Foxfire, on 22 February 2014 - 05:14 PM, said:

Anyways, just to point out... if you make BAP cancel an unlimited number of ECM, you might as well remove it from the game completely.

A rework is needed but making it useless isn't.

Why would allowing 1 BAP the ability to jam ECM's at 90 meters break the game and make ECM useless?

If you're that close to the enemy mechs, their positions are already given away and can be seen on screen to your teamates and their minimaps.

IMO Tag alone should be able to defeat ECM and allow a missile strike thought any number of ECM's as well, you have LOS and are painting the target with an IR hotspot which should bypass any kind of electronic interference anyway.

When its a group of Atlas-DC, they can't be toutched by the very weapons designed to counter them when there is ECM overlap unless you NARC each of them at least once, or have PPC's constantly striking each target perfectly for the time thats needed to lockon with SSRM or LRM, which is pretty close to impossible.

If a scout is lucky enough to survive being within 90 meters of a group of atlas & their support for any length of time, that window should be open for the short amount of time that its alive.

Mechs specifically designed to counter lights, such as Kintaro ,ShadowHawk, Jenner-OXIDE, Trebuchet with their high speed and ability to carry a decent load of SSRM racks, become pointless when their main weapon can't even fire.

I have to laugh when ECM is defended so much, and posters defend how OP it is, because they know it and don't want to give up their invincibility cloak.

I don't like being pounded by LRM's either, but LRM are pretty ineffective weapon as is and ECM makes it even harder, and stacked ECM makes it near impossible.

BAP only counters at 90 meters which is pretty much instant death when you're talking about a Kintaro or an Oxide facing off against a couple Atlas.

[Lykaon]

Khobai, on 22 February 2014 - 10:05 AM, said:

Not sure why BAP even counters ECM. It makes ECM suck pretty bad when everyone with streaks has BAP. Hopefully when NARC is buffed theyll remove BAP as a counter to ECM.

You do know that even with BAP an ECM suite has a negative effect on streak missiles?

Here is the break down.

Streaks max range 270m.

Any mech with an ECM or under friendly ECM's bubble is immune to being locked onto by streaks.

An ECM projects this jamming effect 180m in every direction.

BAP nullifies one enemy ECM within 150m of it.

So,say you are using streaks with no ECM present.You would have an effective range of 270m.

But let's say you were trying to use streaks against an enemy with ECM on board you get nadda no locks wasted tonnage no way of ever making this 2.5 tons of weapon (1.5 ton launcher 1 ton ammo) work because the enemy has 1.5 tons of nanny nanny doo doo your streaks are total poopoo plugged in.

Add a BAP and now you have a max effective range of 150m with your streaks so even when "countered" by a BAP an ECM nerfs streak range by 120m or.nearly half it's max range.

So no sympathy from me because even "countered" an ECM provides a benifit against streaks.


Hopefully someone over in the Development team will grow a brain and realize the ECM feature is monsterous mess and needs to go back to the drawing board.