373 replies to this topic

[Bishop Steiner]

Ultimatum X, on 31 March 2014 - 08:56 AM, said:

Hi,

I've been using LRMs in the way you described in the other post, just an addition to an assault mech that has a standard payload of other items (AC20 + ER LLAS or AC5x2 + PPC).

I'm not trying to be rude, but you really can't call it "aiming" when it's time to get your own locks.


You don't have keep it locked on the target, you don't have to lead, you don't have to worry about intervening terrain that could be as small as a hill. You just need to make sure your target isn't behind a huge structure or in a tunnel.

You can do it while moving at full speed.



I know a lot of people like LRMs. I don't really like the concept of IDF, but I've resorted to them because I pug alot.

It's basically LRM or be LRMd, so if this is what the devs feel is working as intended - so be it.


But I won't for a second pretend it's aiming, or that it requires as much effort & positioning as trying to fire weapons like ACs/PPCs.

Yes they are pinpoint, yes they are deadly, but you eat more return fire when using them than you do using IDF weapons.

you have to keep your crosshairs on the target LONGER to get that lock than I do to snap fire a Gauss or PPC into a target. All that time, you are getting shot by that insta fire.

So yeah, sorry, I call that aiming still. Yes, once you HAVE a lock it lasts longer, but then it also takes 4-10x longer for your shot to arrive. And you drop that lock, you miss. I point at a pixel, click and the damage is done with other weapons.

Sorry to disagree.

[Roland]

Bishop Steiner, on 31 March 2014 - 06:09 PM, said:

you have to keep your crosshairs on the target LONGER to get that lock than I do to snap fire a Gauss or PPC into a target. All that time, you are getting shot by that insta fire.

But you're holding your reticle, not over a specific location on the mech, but rather a huge box that is bigger than the entire mech's body. That's what makes aiming with LRM's require no skill. It's barely even aiming at all. And moving off target doesn't cause you to LOSE lock immediately.

And you're not necessarily getting shot by anything, since you can fire on targets which don't have LOS to you.

H Seldon, on 31 March 2014 - 05:06 PM, said:

I must really suck. My hit% with LRM10+artemis is 39% after 49 matches. I thought LRMs were supposed to be easy mode. All of my other weapons are around 80% or above.

Oh really? You have a higher than 80% accuracy rate with all of the other weapons in the game?

I find that hard to believe.

[Asmudius Heng]

LRMs are only OP fire en mass indirectly with no risk to the LRM users.

The fix is to make direct an indirect fire different because indirect fire is not that difficult to co-ordinate when you stack your team with LRMs.

Make the spread of indirect fire very poor and you will see it being used as an ammo expensive sandblaster that will not smash an enemy inot the ground when 200 missiles hit it, as many will miss and they will hit all over a mech.

Make direct fire much tighter in spread as you are risking your armour when you are firing direct as you can take return fire so your risk is higher and so your reward should be higher with better hits for missiles and more concentrated damage.

This is the only way i can see them being able to make LRMs balanced ... the fight is between indirect and direct fire not the damage or arc or anything else.

ECM is rediculous on a whole other level of course but at least make indirect fire less effective and it will still be very useful and force repositioning by the enemy while causing damage but it will not be like the fist of the gods form the sky when every LRM boat on a team hits a tagged target.

Make direct fire of LRMs worthwhile and make the lower risk version less rewarding and you will have balance pretty much in its current state.

[Bishop Steiner]

Roland, on 31 March 2014 - 06:14 PM, said:

But you're holding your reticle, not over a specific location on the mech, but rather a huge box that is bigger than the entire mech's body. That's what makes aiming with LRM's require no skill. It's barely even aiming at all. And moving off target doesn't cause you to LOSE lock immediately.

And you're not necessarily getting shot by anything, since you can fire on targets which don't have LOS to you.


Oh really? You have a higher than 80% accuracy rate with all of the other weapons in the game?

I find that hard to believe.

Cool. Stop skipping the point.

You bring LRMs. Not a team with LRMs and Spotters, but you PUG, with LRMs. I'll bring a Poptart. While you are holding that mech sized box for 2 seconds, and waiting the next 3-4 for the missiles to get there, I'll core your CT twice, dodge back behind hard cover, and take minimal damage, spread over many locations.

Direct fire still owns LRMs in any decent Elo bracket. The Tournament winners were almost entirely in direct fire mechs for a reason. LRMs have some things in their favor, and a TON of limitations. The only time LRMs are easy mode is when you are in a premade, facing inferior competition. There's a reason they see little use in serious 12 man play.

So let's stop obfuscating thing with "church of skill arguments", and actually try to present the arguments, bot ht for and against in an objective manner?

[Roland]

Quote

You bring LRMs. Not a team with LRMs and Spotters, but you PUG, with LRMs. I'll bring a Poptart

So you want to compare LRM's to other weapons, but you want to ignore the single greatest advantage of LRM's, and imagine that they must be fired with direct line of sight from the shooter.

Does that even make sense to you?

Quote

Direct fire still owns LRMs in any decent Elo bracket.

I'm not saying that it doesn't.

I'm saying that it does, and SHOULD.

LRM's aren't supposed to be equivalent to weapons which require more skill and more exposure to use. Because in past cases when they DID have the same killing power, then they became ridiculously dominant.

[El Bandito]

Roland, on 31 March 2014 - 06:48 PM, said:

I'm not saying that it doesn't. I'm saying that it does, and SHOULD.

Then's there is clearly no LRM problem to argue about, since it is inferior to direct fire.

By the way, a 65 ton Catapult-A1 should have as much killing power as a 65 ton Jager-DD, otherwise the game will not be balanced.

Edited by El Bandito, 31 March 2014 - 06:59 PM.

[Krinkov]

There is no point in arguing over LRMs in this thread. LRMs suck and if you think they don't then you aren't good enough at this game to understand why your opinion is wrong.

[deadlykleenex]

Bishop Steiner, on 31 March 2014 - 06:36 PM, said:

Cool. Stop skipping the point.

You bring LRMs. Not a team with LRMs and Spotters, but you PUG, with LRMs. I'll bring a Poptart. While you are holding that mech sized box for 2 seconds, and waiting the next 3-4 for the missiles to get there, I'll core your CT twice, dodge back behind hard cover, and take minimal damage, spread over many locations.

Direct fire still owns LRMs in any decent Elo bracket. The Tournament winners were almost entirely in direct fire mechs for a reason. LRMs have some things in their favor, and a TON of limitations. The only time LRMs are easy mode is when you are in a premade, facing inferior competition. There's a reason they see little use in serious 12 man play.

So let's stop obfuscating thing with "church of skill arguments", and actually try to present the arguments, bot ht for and against in an objective manner?

Missing the point, but then you're so intent on telling everyone how awesome you are at a video game so it's easy to see why. 99% of matches played are PUGs where people don't sit behind the best cover on the map and take potshots at each other from range. People like to, you know, capture objectives, move around and most importantly, have fun.

If you don't have ECM or aren't an LRM boat, most of the maps are no longer fun. These days PUGs are full of people who just hang back at max range and blast away with LRMs and anyone that doesn't want to do this (because it's boring and lame) gets to spend the entire map trying to dodge missiles.

Oh well, I came back to get the free mech bay and I'll stop playing this broken game again, until it starts being fun again for us non-l33t people.

Edited by deadlykleenex, 31 March 2014 - 07:43 PM.

[Corwin Vickers]

Ultimatum X, on 31 March 2014 - 08:56 AM, said:

I know a lot of people like LRMs. I don't really like the concept of IDF, but I've resorted to them because I pug alot.

It's basically LRM or be LRMd, so if this is what the devs feel is working as intended - so be it.

A lot of us aren't seeing the idea that you need LRMs to win. In my opinion it feels like the more LRM boats you have the more likely you are to lose.

Quote

But I won't for a second pretend it's aiming, or that it requires as much effort & positioning as trying to fire weapons like ACs/PPCs.

Yes they are pinpoint, yes they are deadly, but you eat more return fire when using them than you do using IDF weapons.

If you eat more return fire while pop tarting than you do while you're using LRMs then you're doing it wrong.

Roland, on 31 March 2014 - 10:12 AM, said:

The big problem really is that the fundamental mechanics of LRM's currently preclude any effective balancing.

But if you have mechanics which allow you to dump damage on targets that can't shoot back at you, and don't require you to actually aim, then those LRM's effectively HAVE to be weak.. because otherwise they are crazy OP.

Corwin Vickers said:

LRMs need not just a buff but a fundamental change.

Roland, on 31 March 2014 - 03:42 PM, said:

LRM's are clearly, clearly superior to the LBX10.

Now, that's not saying much, as the LBX10 is total trash.. but folks who are trying to argue the laughable idea that LRM's are equal or on par with the LBX10's garbageness are totally fooling themselves.

Some people think LBXs are good though. Just the same as some people think "LRMs are OP!"



I wrote a post over a year ago during some other set of LRM changes. I read it over the other day and I still think they are good ideas. It's still in my Sig below and has been there since I wrote it.
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[Abivard]

For Psy-Ops LRM's are OP, just think, a single LRM5 can cause a whole team to turn tail and run for cover, or even disco and rant on the boards.

What other weapon can do that?

[Roadkill]

Roland, on 31 March 2014 - 06:48 PM, said:

LRM's aren't supposed to be equivalent to weapons which require more skill and more exposure to use. Because in past cases when they DID have the same killing power, then they became ridiculously dominant.

You might have better luck, Roland, if you'd stop calling LRMs "no skill" weapons.

They aren't no skill weapons. Using them well requires a lot of skill, and no not all of it is applicable to FLD weapons. There are different skills involved in being a master of LRMs than there are in being a master of PPCs/ACs.

That said, it does take less twitch skill to be good with LRMs. If twitch skill is your only criteria, then LRMs are lower skill weapons. But still not no skill weapons.

I think a lot of the issues would go away if LRM indirect fire required Narc or Tag. It's the indirect-by-teammate-LOS fire that causes issues because there's too much of it.

[Joseph Mallan]

Roland, on 31 March 2014 - 06:14 PM, said:

But you're holding your reticle, not over a specific location on the mech, but rather a huge box that is bigger than the entire mech's body. That's what makes aiming with LRM's require no skill. It's barely even aiming at all. And moving off target doesn't cause you to LOSE lock immediately.

I don't know the monitor you are using Roland, but that Hit box is around a 1/2" or less on my Monitor... Huge...

[topgun505]

Roadkill, on 01 April 2014 - 08:04 AM, said:

I think a lot of the issues would go away if LRM indirect fire required Narc or Tag. It's the indirect-by-teammate-LOS fire that causes issues because there's too much of it.

THIS. No more automatic targeting info (not just for LRMs, I'm talking about in general). In order for a target to appear on your map then YOU must have LOS to it or a friendly needs to be TAGing it or NARC it.

[Ultimax]

Bishop Steiner, on 31 March 2014 - 06:09 PM, said:

you have to keep your crosshairs on the target LONGER to get that lock than I do to snap fire a Gauss or PPC into a target. All that time, you are getting shot by that insta fire.

So yeah, sorry, I call that aiming still.

You have to keep the red circle roughly inside the big red box.

You can actually stray outside of that box. If you stray so much as a hair with AC, PPC, Lasers you can miss or glance the target.

You don’t need to keep the significantly reticule trained directly on a portion of a mech that you actually have to be able to see.


But for the sake of common ground, OK let’s call one “general aiming” (like grenades and horseshoes) and call the other “precision aiming”.

This brings us closer to the fundamental discussion between the two: one requires significantly more precision than the other.

Bishop Steiner, on 31 March 2014 - 06:09 PM, said:

Yes, once you HAVE a lock it lasts longer, but then it also takes 4-10x longer for your shot to arrive. And you drop that lock, you miss. I point at a pixel, click and the damage is done with other weapons.

It takes longer for the shot to arrive while you are safely behind cover, and most likely were behind cover while you fired.

Bishop Steiner, on 31 March 2014 - 06:36 PM, said:

Cool. Stop skipping the point.

You bring LRMs. Not a team with LRMs and Spotters, but you PUG, with LRMs. I'll bring a Poptart. While you are holding that mech sized box for 2 seconds, and waiting the next 3-4 for the missiles to get there, I'll core your CT twice, dodge back behind hard cover, and take minimal damage, spread over many locations.

I am PUGging. That’s why I’ve resorted to LRMs. Not an LRM boat, LRMs.

What you are saying is that in the upper Elo bracket where you are playing that the players are all good but actually sit there in the open so you can: “point at a pixel, click”

I can’t wait to get to that upper Elo bracket then, the crummy bracket I’m in now sees people hiding behind cover a lot when other people fire AC/PPCs at them or they are always shooting back at my pixels when I pop out to shoot at theirs.

Corwin Vickers, on 31 March 2014 - 08:07 PM, said:

A lot of us aren't seeing the idea that you need LRMs to win. In my opinion it feels like the more LRM boats you have the more likely you are to lose.

Need is a strong word. It’s more like a low skill investment with a medium to high output.

I don’t recall myself even once using the word “need”.

If focus fire makes sense to you, then focusing fire indirectly should also make sense with regards to its force multiplicative effect.

Corwin Vickers, on 31 March 2014 - 08:07 PM, said:

If you eat more return fire while pop tarting than you do while you're using LRMs then you're doing it wrong.

1) If you are pop-tarting there must be someone in your LoS after you jump for you to shoot. If you can see them they can see you.

2) If you are firing LRMs from behind cover while someone on your team manages to find the "R" key, how do you take more return fire than you would pop-tarting?


One requires you to expose yourself, the other does not. This isn't rocket science.


Or are all of your targets when poptarting always bad players looking in the other direction standing out in the open?

Edited by Ultimatum X, 01 April 2014 - 10:06 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Ultimatum X, on 01 April 2014 - 10:04 AM, said:

One requires you to expose yourself, the other does not. This isn't rocket science.

Correct... It's military science. And in combat killing your enemy from relative safety... is the smart way to do things.

[Bishop Steiner]

Ultimatum X, on 01 April 2014 - 10:04 AM, said:

It takes longer for the shot to arrive while you are safely behind cover, and most likely were behind cover while you fired. This point is also irrelevant to “aiming”.

Odd, you see, as I noted earlier, when I go behind cover, I lose LoS. When I lose LoS, what happens? Target lock breaks.
Funny how that works.

Under 500 meters the missiles MIGHT get there fast enough to matter. Past 500 meters? You got to be a crap lousy pilot, or in the middle of an open field to not be able to break LRM locks.

So yes, wow, sub 500 meters those LONG range missiles might be dangerous, especially to people who blithely wander into the open in big, fat, slow mechs. (Can we just call them "Murican" Mechs for future brevity?) Shame they are still almost totally useless as LONG RANGE SUPPORT WEAPONS against any type of decent competition.

[Roadkill]

All of you who are so worried about LRM boats firing safely from behind cover... have you ever actually tried it?

If you aren't using Artemis - which requires line of sight - LRMs do pathetic damage. Frankly that only upgrades to "meh" if you're using Artemis. Furthermore, if you can't see your target you can't tell how well your LRMs are hitting. Sure, you get the red reticle flash, but that could have been 1 missile out of an LRM-20 actually connecting while the other 19 exploded harmlessly on top of the hill that your target is behind.

Yeah, sure, a well-coordinated group using an ECM light as a TAG/Narc spotter can wreck face. But that's a spurious argument - ANY well-coordinated group will wreck face, and I'd argue that a well-coordinated group of poptarts will be significantly more difficult to beat than the aforementioned LRM group, even if/when the LRM group is using a clever spotter.

LRMs just aren't that good in and of themselves.

What really makes LRMs different from other weapon types is that they depend far more on the skill of the target than on the skill of the firer. It doesn't matter how good I am at maneuvering against a skilled poptart - those 1200+ m/s FLD bolts are still going to hit me. But against even the best LRM boaters, I can still void a significant portion of their damage just using my own skill.

C'mon, people. LRMs are barely 40% accurate, and that's for the better boaters. Even an average twitch gamer like me is in the 65-70% range with PPCs and AC/5s. The really skilled poptarts are well over 80%.

LRMs are not good. If you're getting abused by LRMs, it's not because LRMs are overpowered. It's because you screwed up.

[Damocles69]

Regardless, they have been nerfed back to the garbage pile. All is right with the world. Back to learning to aim LRM bads

Edited by Damocles69, 01 April 2014 - 11:50 AM.

[El Bandito]

Damocles69, on 01 April 2014 - 11:49 AM, said:

Regardless, they have been nerfed back to the garbage pile. All is right with the world. Back to learning to aim LRM bads

Yep, this is the type of immature brats that got the LRMs nerfed again. Since no game is so well done that it won't attract blowflies like him, I suppose we should just deal with it.

You disappoint me, Paul.

Edited by El Bandito, 01 April 2014 - 08:27 PM.

[Ultimax]

Joseph Mallan, on 01 April 2014 - 10:09 AM, said:

Correct... It's military science. And in combat killing your enemy from relative safety... is the smart way to do things.

Actually this is a video game, that's why we have balance discussions.

Bishop Steiner, on 01 April 2014 - 10:10 AM, said:

Odd, you see, as I noted earlier, when I go behind cover, I lose LoS. When I lose LoS, what happens? Target lock breaks.
Funny how that works.

Under 500 meters the missiles MIGHT get there fast enough to matter. Past 500 meters? You got to be a crap lousy pilot, or in the middle of an open field to not be able to break LRM locks.

So you are saying that in your higher-than-my Elo bracket, many players still haven't found the "R" key?

Considering I get team-assisted locks all the time right now, you'll forgive me if I simply don't believe that.

Bishop Steiner, on 01 April 2014 - 10:10 AM, said:

So yes, wow, sub 500 meters those LONG range missiles might be dangerous, especially to people who blithely wander into the open in big, fat, slow mechs. (Can we just call them "Murican" Mechs for future brevity?) Shame they are still almost totally useless as LONG RANGE SUPPORT WEAPONS against any type of decent competition.

You've appealed to your own skill level a few times now. "Decent Elo bracket", "decent competition".

Yet you also present scenarios where your team is not generating team assisted locks (i.e. pressing the "R" key) nor are your opponents wise enough to keep their heads down when there are poptarts about.

These scenarios you are presenting are contradictory to your appeal to LRMs being useless against "decent competition" as these decent players seem unable to perform fairly basic actions.




I have no problem with LRMs being long range support weapons, I think their LoS (self-generated locks) firing mode is fine.

I think IDF + Force Multipliers (TAG, NARC) creates a balance issue that allows too much focus fire that doesn't require as much risk and doesn't require every user to have LoS or even a decent attack vector - particularly for PUG teams.

The scalability of focus fire with IDF is something that is clearly problematic in a lot of PUG matches.

Does that make sense? I don't want them to be nerfed into the ground but I think their IDF mode needs to be tweaked down a few notches.

Roadkill, on 01 April 2014 - 11:42 AM, said:

All of you who are so worried about LRM boats firing safely from behind cover... have you ever actually tried it?

Yes, this entire weekend starting last Thursday.

Pretty fast XP and Cbills (averaging about 8 to 10 assists per match).

I think the boats have the potential to be sometimes devastating and sometimes easily neutered - it's the teams that happen to have several LRM toting mechs with mixed weapons that seem the most effective (I've seen mostly a number of Highlanders, Battle Masters with LRMs, some non-full boat Stalkers & Catapults, and a few DDCs with ECM + LRMs).

Nothing like having a few guys pop out of the tunnel on Forest Colony thinking they're going to wreck the LRM boats only to eat a few AC 5/10/20 rounds the moment they poke their heads out.

Edited by Ultimatum X, 01 April 2014 - 08:25 PM.