88 replies to this topic

[Trauglodyte]

Going to break this down:

• We need a standardized spread for all LRM launchers. The LRM5 has been too tight for too long while the LRM20 is getting hosed. I've suggested putting all launchers at the 15 spread value and calling it a day but I'm open for a different value. But, when it takes less ammo to core a stock Atlas from the front at 270m with 4x LRM5s vs 1 LRM20, something is inherently wrong in a major way.
  
• We need an additional boating penalty, along with GH, for LRMs and even SRMs. You can easily get away from GH with ripple firing your wracks. Plus, for the betterment of the game, there needs to be something that will prevent people from looking at a weapon and going ape shit ****** with it.
  
• I disagree with your Artemis fix ONLY because I've mentioned in more than a few threads that all LRM launchers need to be coded with a ghetto Artemis LOS check so that when you've got a target in LOS, you don't send your payload 100s of meters in the air to get there. Yes, it really only cuts down the flight time by maybe a second at most but that is still crucial and definitely needed for the true LRM warrior (ie, those that fight when they see their target's cockpit lights).
  
• Your TAG change is something that I'd support but it is contingent with an ECM change. As that isn't likely to happen, it can stay as is.

Nicholas Carlyle, on 09 April 2014 - 07:49 AM, said:

At some point you need to recognize that and cut your losses. Start over, and learn from the earlier mistakes.

For the sake of discussion and possible arguement, how do you go about reworking LRMs? The lock-on function is really needed because PGI is basing weapon speed on current real work missiles (most aren't very fast) and any system worth it's salt has guidance. So, we start from the base of a lock and guidance and then go where?

Edited by Trauglodyte, 09 April 2014 - 09:18 AM.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Trauglodyte, on 09 April 2014 - 09:15 AM, said:

We need an additional boating penalty, along with GH, for LRMs and even SRMs. You can easily get away from GH with ripple firing your wracks. Plus, for the betterment of the game, there needs to be something that will prevent people from looking at a weapon and going ape shit ****** with it.

I can't get behind this until you do the same for FLD weapons.

In the end, under normal circumstances, you aren't really ever looking at much more then an LRM60 as being viable. And even then LRM60 boats are so easy to take advantage of, because they give up a lot to fit in that payload.

Also an LRM 60 boat is not a direct fire style boat, at least in the sense that due to speed it can't dictate an encounter.

So that means you are looking at a sub 30% hit rate.

IF you were going to penalize that, you sure as hell better be willing to penalize PPC's/AC's when used in packs of 3 or more.

[Joseph Mallan]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 09 April 2014 - 09:26 AM, said:

IF you were going to penalize that, you sure as hell better be willing to penalize PPC's/AC's when used in packs of 3 or more.

Ok that excludes me with a PPC AC10 right!

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Joseph Mallan, on 09 April 2014 - 09:35 AM, said:

Ok that excludes me with a PPC AC10 right!

Everything excludes you, Joe.

[Almond Brown]

Quote

BAP:
Remove counter to NARC.
Be informed of being ECM jammed within 180m. (Be the only one who's informed.)

Reads as: for NARC to work against an ECM carrier, the shooter of the NARC would also need to carry BAP and stay within 120m? (or have a second unit with BAP)

Clarify please.

[Dirus Nigh]

Livewyr this is an excellent suggestion. It stream lines some of best suggestions for ECM, info war fair, and targeting for the past two years.

[wolf74]

How about after a LRM wave is Lunch give them 2 sec to get a 1ft or .3m range from each other, not letting the LRM get closer that 1st to each other so the Larger the LRM alpha the bigger the spread.

[Joseph Mallan]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 09 April 2014 - 09:38 AM, said:

Everything excludes you, Joe.

Excluding that!

[Nicholas Carlyle]

wolf74, on 09 April 2014 - 09:43 AM, said:

How about after a LRM wave is Lunch give them 2 sec to get a 1ft or .3m range from each other, not letting the LRM get closer that 1st to each other so the Larger the LRM alpha the bigger the spread.

They already basically work that way.

It's why no one likes using LRM 20's, and LRM 5's are the best LRM.

5's basically tend to go center torso, whereas 20's tend to spread across arms and all torsos.

[Trauglodyte]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 09 April 2014 - 09:26 AM, said:

I can't get behind this until you do the same for FLD weapons.

In the end, under normal circumstances, you aren't really ever looking at much more then an LRM60 as being viable. And even then LRM60 boats are so easy to take advantage of, because they give up a lot to fit in that payload.

Also an LRM 60 boat is not a direct fire style boat, at least in the sense that due to speed it can't dictate an encounter.

So that means you are looking at a sub 30% hit rate.

IF you were going to penalize that, you sure as hell better be willing to penalize PPC's/AC's when used in packs of 3 or more.

Hey, he suggested it. I just agreed with it. Joe will come up with half a dozen mechs sporting 100 missile tubes cause he's more versed in post 3050 mechs than I. But, what I will say is that having a couple of LRM60s on one side isn't good for the game any more than having 12 mechs running PPCs and ACs is good. You're right in that such monsters aren't direct fire prone cause they're too slow and too easy to kill. That just brings us to the problem of indirect fire which everyone agrees is absolutely horrible. I'm ok with a spread nerf to indirect fire and adding in an additional modifier to said spread once you exceed 40 tubes. SOMETHING is better than nothing.

Personally, I'm ok with smart use of LRMs. It is when the horribads, upgrades from terribads , get a hold of more than they're capable of using correctly. That is a problem.

[Joseph Mallan]

Trauglodyte, on 09 April 2014 - 09:46 AM, said:

Hey, he suggested it. I just agreed with it. Joe will come up with half a dozen mechs sporting 100 missile tubes cause he's more versed in post 3050 mechs than I. But, what I will say is that having a couple of LRM60s on one side isn't good for the game any more than having 12 mechs running PPCs and ACs is good. You're right in that such monsters aren't direct fire prone cause they're too slow and too easy to kill. That just brings us to the problem of indirect fire which everyone agrees is absolutely horrible. I'm ok with a spread nerf to indirect fire and adding in an additional modifier to said spread once you exceed 40 tubes. SOMETHING is better than nothing.

Personally, I'm ok with smart use of LRMs. It is when the horribads, upgrades from terribads , get a hold of more than they're capable of using correctly. That is a problem.

Not that Many Mechs (to my memory)... But could be that many Vehicles!

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Trauglodyte, on 09 April 2014 - 09:46 AM, said:

Hey, he suggested it. I just agreed with it. Joe will come up with half a dozen mechs sporting 100 missile tubes cause he's more versed in post 3050 mechs than I. But, what I will say is that having a couple of LRM60s on one side isn't good for the game any more than having 12 mechs running PPCs and ACs is good. You're right in that such monsters aren't direct fire prone cause they're too slow and too easy to kill. That just brings us to the problem of indirect fire which everyone agrees is absolutely horrible. I'm ok with a spread nerf to indirect fire and adding in an additional modifier to said spread once you exceed 40 tubes. SOMETHING is better than nothing.

Personally, I'm ok with smart use of LRMs. It is when the horribads, upgrades from terribads , get a hold of more than they're capable of using correctly. That is a problem.

I'm just over this whole thing. There are a lot of underlying problems with the mechanics in this game.

Until we start taking good strong looks at the heat system (no, not ghost heat, but the actual heat system), convergence and hardpoints. We can't really even begin to balance weapons properly.

And I still think ECM has to go at the same time LRM's get redone. Both systems are a total mess.

[Trauglodyte]

Joseph Mallan, on 09 April 2014 - 09:49 AM, said:

Not that Many Mechs (to my memory)... But could be that many Vehicles!

You're letting me down, Joe. I figured you'd at least post a picture of the LRM Kraken.

Nicholas Carlyle, on 09 April 2014 - 09:49 AM, said:

I'm just over this whole thing. There are a lot of underlying problems with the mechanics in this game.

Until we start taking good strong looks at the heat system (no, not ghost heat, but the actual heat system), convergence and hardpoints. We can't really even begin to balance weapons properly.

And I still think ECM has to go at the same time LRM's get redone. Both systems are a total mess.

Well, ECM and the lock-on mechanism are tied together. Change one and you change the other. And that essentially requires a rework of the very fabric of the game. That is why we're in teh problem that we're in.

[Prezimonto]

Livewyr, on 08 April 2014 - 06:19 AM, said:

UAV:
Counter ECM within range.

BAP:
Remove counter to NARC.
Be informed of being ECM jammed within 180m. (Be the only one who's informed.)

TAG:
Drop range back down to 450. (If it isn't required to lock an ECM mech, it doesn't need the 300m range boost. It can just provide that accuracy bonus at 450m.)
Be required to activate Artillery/Air Strike LoS.

I can dig it.

UAV's do also provide LoS for locks/targeting information.... since they also current counter ECM (and you list that as a change, I'm not sure which way you'd like to go.. full info, or a different change?)

I would add to BAP that they can see the ECM bubble on the HUD map if it's within their sensor range. I would also add that if a mech in range has a command module they can share that information to the command mech, who can share it out to all mechs in range.

I might suggest that instead of really huge spread, LRM's remove indirect fire as an option without a signal from a target with a TAG/NARC/Command Module equipped mech with targeting information within range.

This actually would severely limit the upper potential of LRM mechs and discourage boating LRM's without heavy support. It would also allow for LRM's to get tweaks to damage/speed/path to help smaller launchers. I still agree, more spread is good at the base, and something to deal with boating needs to be done. Your solution there is as good or better than most I've heard.

[Prezimonto]

Volthorne, on 08 April 2014 - 07:44 AM, said:

Literally not able to like this enough, because the forum won't let me.

EDIT to contribute: The only suggestion I would make is link the boating/alpha penalty to number of tubes the 'Mech comes with. That way, natural boats don't get penalized for their stock configuration. IE: an LRM-60 DDC would have a much higher spread vs. an LRM-60 C4.

I would go a slightly different route: Look at the racks the mech has, and if they're meant for SRM's keep the tube limit to 2, 4, or 6, and if stock is an LRM keep the tube limit to the stock missile rack. None of this LRM15's in SRM2 slot business like on the arm of the battlemaster. If they want to fire 10LRM2's and have AMS destroy the whole LRM20 salvo... okay by me. For those extra hard points like on the C4, limit them to one or two sizes less that the stock configuration: so the LRM60C4 is still doable, but it's a difficult build to get working as you give up so much ammo to pack the launchers in. Alternatively, for the catapults, limit the total tubes to the total tubes in the arms. So you can pack 40 tubes in... any way you want. 20, 15/5, 10/10, but if it doesn't fit, it gets the spread.

The exception I suggest is the AWS-8R the true large but boat in the game, give it a real limit higher, just like the 8Q deserves the 3PPC ghost heat exception. The AWS is a bad mech and it could use the love as the model with make it a bad mech always.

DaZur, on 09 April 2014 - 06:01 AM, said:

My contribution:

• LoS target-lock decay period needs to be decreased. In short, lose LoS, lose lock.

The speed increase + the present duration the lock stays active once the LoS is broken makes avoidance extremely difficult. Also reducing the grace-period makes both BAP and the decay module a far more important and viable commodity.

They're already a really important piece of an LRM boat's equipment. I fear if you do this small launchers on non-boat LRM's are the ones that will be affected the most. What I might suggest instead is that without the ability indirect fire(without TAG/NARC/Command Module data) as I suggested above there's enough of a nerf to LRMs that this wouldn't even need to be touched. I would also never consider this if ECM stayed in its current format.

Randalf Yorgen, on 09 April 2014 - 07:27 AM, said:

the advanced target decay module is what causes this problem. Personally I think the mods and the pilot trees are a complete step in the wrong direction and are completely not needed in the game, but that's just me, wanting to pit player skill against player skill, with no augments.

I don't mind them, but I wish they were tied to building your mech and equipment much more tightly. So instead of a side screen of random additions you had multiple pilots (mini-accounts within your overall acount) who each could play for a faction, had their own bank account, and had a largish branching pilot skill tree where you had to focus that pilot into a specific class, specific chassis, and eventually specific variant to get real benefits. Then you've got a much higher long run cap to max out any individual mech, as you essentially have to start a new pilot to work up to really great bonuses.

In addition the modules could be tied to actual mech areas. So every mech head has:
1slot cockpit
2slot life support
2slot sensors
So what if mech variants had different slots on these positions open to fill with modules: the Raven 3L might have 1 sensor slots open for sensors and 1 slot in the cockpit for a "general or any" module. One of it's mech unlocks might be that it enables another module slot on the sensors for a sensors modules when a BAP is equipped.

In a similar fashion modules like Hill climb could go to a gyro on certain mechs/mech variants.
The command module might itself contain 2 "general" module slots in addition to whatever else it does.

Weapons might contain slots for modules as well... so instead of single blanket upgrade, you instead can upgrade each weapon. Large weapons might take more than one slot/upgrade even. As each of these modules comes with a perk and a penalty, I think they could be reasonably balanced.

All told, a giant feature of this game is building mechs: why don't they give us a lot more options for tying this into the setting?

[Joseph Mallan]

Trauglodyte, on 09 April 2014 - 10:00 AM, said:

You're letting me down, Joe. I figured you'd at least post a picture of the LRM Kraken.



Well, ECM and the lock-on mechanism are tied together. Change one and you change the other. And that essentially requires a rework of the very fabric of the game. That is why we're in teh problem that we're in.

Only do that when someone says that 60+ LRMs don't have a place in a MechWarrior game...

[Trauglodyte]

Joseph Mallan, on 09 April 2014 - 10:33 AM, said:

Only do that when someone says that 60+ LRMs don't have a place in a MechWarrior game...

I'd hope that isn't the case. I was always a big fan of the LRM Carrier (vehicle). I tried running a couple in my merc unit in the campaign that a couple of us WAY back in teh day used to play. Then, I upgraded them to Sturmfeurs w/ a C3 network. Was amazing what a lance of Cicadas, 2 Lances of Warhamers, and a Command lance with 3 Warhammers and a Cyclops could do with vehicle backup. /drool

Back to the discussion, I was always a favor of a forced lock-on delay based on the number of systems being tied into the targetting equipment. Artemis, TAG, and NARC would, of course, continue to drop the lock-on time but tying in more than two such guided systems would force an information overload. It is the reason why we run drones and AWAC systems in theater today.

[Joseph Mallan]

Pair of LRM Carriers teamed with a Pair of SRM carriers for the win Bob!

[Lyoto Machida]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 09 April 2014 - 07:49 AM, said:

Yeah, I know.

I just don't understand why it's not obvious that LRM's in MW:O are just not working.

Too many variables involved in balancing them at this point.

At some point you need to recognize that and cut your losses. Start over, and learn from the earlier mistakes.

It's because the people in charge of this game don't play or understand their own game (to put it gently).

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Lyoto Machida, on 09 April 2014 - 11:09 AM, said:

It's because the people in charge of this game don't play or understand their own game (to put it gently).

Very frustrating.