128 replies to this topic

[Martin Conrad]

here the issue is simple:
all weapons are good alone, all weapons run OP if stuck.

Lrm, ALL the lrm of the map, stack together so easily thet it always happens
the only viable defence is ECM, cover dont work cause u have no time to get in

when the lrm speed were 120 m/s, you had time to hide, brake line of sight, and avoid the rain.
you can even stay there at your risk, but it's a great risk, you MUST run, you must left your team mate alone in the battlefield.


you want to increase that risk? increase the damage of the missile but allow us to avoid them, just like before, even more? increase the effect of the AMS, which is now quite useless (and the damage of lrm as well), to force mechwarrior to mount at least one.

[Tesunie]

Martin Conrad, on 26 April 2014 - 08:57 AM, said:

here the issue is simple:
all weapons are good alone, all weapons run OP if stuck.

Lrm, ALL the lrm of the map, stack together so easily thet it always happens
the only viable defence is ECM, cover dont work cause u have no time to get in

when the lrm speed were 120 m/s, you had time to hide, brake line of sight, and avoid the rain.
you can even stay there at your risk, but it's a great risk, you MUST run, you must left your team mate alone in the battlefield.


you want to increase that risk? increase the damage of the missile but allow us to avoid them, just like before, even more? increase the effect of the AMS, which is now quite useless (and the damage of lrm as well), to force mechwarrior to mount at least one.

And then watch as people proclaim LRMagadon version X again...

I understand the force multiplier. More LRMs on the field, more LRMs that can rain on a single target (direct or indirectly). However, the speed did need to go up, as Atlases could out run the LRMs (and by out run, I mean, lazily walk from side to side perpendicularly from the LRM's origin, and dodge most of the LRMs as they hit the ground).

I still feel that one of the best suggestions I've see yet have been increasing LRM spread when it is fired indirectly, making it spread out more, and making more missiles miss when fired without line of sight. Then, it could still be a viable weapon for indirect, but still better with direct fire making direct fire more preferable.

[Koniving]

ShinVector, on 26 April 2014 - 12:21 AM, said:

Higher damage at the expense of longer cool down could work.. But must remember to think about Clan LRMS though with the 75M min distance.

Welp.
LRM-20 has a 4.75 second cooldown. So with the longer cooldown = once per 9.5 seconds.
Besides Clans have always used LRMs as a brawling weapon as well. That'd just be even more lore friendly. Honestly though, SRMs are supposed to deal twice the damage of LRMs on a per missile basis.

So you could do the same with SRMs once they are fixed.

[Tesunie]

Koniving, on 26 April 2014 - 11:09 AM, said:

Welp.
LRM-20 has a 4.75 second cooldown. So with the longer cooldown = once per 9.5 seconds.
Besides Clans have always used LRMs as a brawling weapon as well. That'd just be even more lore friendly. Honestly though, SRMs are supposed to deal twice the damage of LRMs on a per missile basis.

So you could do the same with SRMs once they are fixed.

Question: Have you thought about the heat part of balance for these weapons?

If they cause twice the damage, and have twice the cooldown (roughly), than wouldn't they need to deal close to twice the heat as well per launch? Otherwise they would run even cooler than they do now, instead of at the same DPS/Heat/etc?
(Just something to consider with your suggestion.)

I think if they did the same to SRMs, people would either take them for a one hit POP, or would not like them for brawling as they would take too long to recycle then... Not sure which way it would go. Guess it would be dependent on if you missed or not!

PS: Twice the heat would make LRMs very hot weapons to field suddenly... which might be a larger problem...

[Koniving]

Tesunie, on 26 April 2014 - 11:29 AM, said:

PS: Twice the heat would make LRMs very hot weapons to field suddenly... which might be a larger problem...

No real need; ghost heat does plenty there. No one ever said to touch the heat.
Think PGI did anything to reduce the heat of an AC/2 when they changed it from 2 damage per 10 seconds to 2 damage per half a second or 2 damage per 0.699 seconds?

Tesunie, on 26 April 2014 - 11:29 AM, said:

I think if they did the same to SRMs, people would either take them for a one hit POP, or would not like them for brawling as they would take too long to recycle then... Not sure which way it would go. Guess it would be dependent on if you missed or not!

Ghost heat. Plus the scatter problems. Besides, you'd get one pop in 8 seconds out of 3 SRM-6s for 72 damage. Most likely PGI will give them a wider spread or tighten ghost heat restrictions if they did do it.

But smarter players would likely chain fire them to have more reliable firing rates.

[Tesunie]

Koniving, on 26 April 2014 - 11:38 AM, said:

No real need; ghost heat does plenty there. No one ever said to touch the heat.
Think PGI did anything to reduce the heat of an AC/2 when they changed it from 2 damage per 10 seconds to 2 damage per half a second or 2 damage per 0.699 seconds?



Ghost heat. Plus the scatter problems. Besides, you'd get one pop in 8 seconds out of 3 SRM-6s for 72 damage. Most likely PGI will give them a wider spread or tighten ghost heat restrictions if they did do it.

But smarter players would likely chain fire them to have more reliable firing rates.

But they didn't change the damage per shot of AC2s... Just the rate of fire.

I'm just thinking that LRMs with a slower cooldown and higher damage wouldn't overly work. It will bring more complaints of "LRMs are OP because they can kill so much faster now" even though they are shooting less. If the heat didn't get adjusted to match the higher damage output per shot, I'd be a little surprised. Plus, with same DPS, larger burst damage, and less heat per burst of damage... I think they'd run too cool then for what they would be doing. (And they can run fairly hot as it is right now, but not as hot as lasers. They are between ACs and Lasers for heat I find. With more burst damage and same heat, they would probably be better for heat to damage to ton than ACs are now, even with ghost heat.)


My question is, why do you think less, but higher, bursts of damage from LRMs would be a good thing? I think I can see the point, make single (large) launchers more viable. Stop the quake and blind. AMS would also become more viable too I guess, as they can take down an LRM10 on their on (just about)... AMS might then have to be changed as well...

I think the complaint with LRMs is not the damage potential, or even the lock on mechanic. I think the complaint is "They can shoot me and I can't shoot them back" indirect fire abilities. Thus why I, personally at least, am leaning towards a larger spread for indirect fired LRMs...


As for SRMs, you realize if you doubled damage and cool down times, 2x SRM6 would cause (4 damage a missile instead of 2) 48 damage per alpha (24 damage each). We'd probably see a return of the face hugging Cat... (And would this concept spread over to SSRMs? Cause 5 damage a missile that seeks in... um... ouch? Especially for light mechs!)

Addition again (being zealous with my post button again):
A single 3 ton (4 for a single ton of ammo) SRM6 launcher would hit like an LBAC20x... just as a side note. (Unless I am really far off on my math, which is possible. Not feeling too great today...)

[ShinVector]

Tesunie, on 26 April 2014 - 12:25 PM, said:

But they didn't change the damage per shot of AC2s... Just the rate of fire.

Actually they kinda did... You are forgetting there is a big difference between using AC2 at 1000M when the max range was 2160M versus 1440M.

Quote

I think the complaint with LRMs is not the damage potential, or even the lock on mechanic. I think the complaint is "They can shoot me and I can't shoot them back" indirect fire abilities. Thus why I, personally at least, am leaning towards a larger spread for indirect fired LRMs...

Also against light and mediums... They tends to destory our legs first which is a death sentence. But that a minor... Hopefully PGI is able to increase the skill required for LRM indirect fire... And hopefully that will desuade people from boating it so, much.

Edited by ShinVector, 26 April 2014 - 12:33 PM.

[Koniving]

Easy. One, the problem isn't with LRMs. They work fine. But the complaints are mostly about the spam. Endless spam. It never stops. Just hold down the trigger and it rains non-stop. It reloads missiles faster than the autocannons reload if you count rounds/missiles fired per second. These are Highly Explosive munitions being funneled around the mech at impossible speeds. I worked artillery, specifically 13 Mike is my MOS and I worked MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems). One mistake and it could go boom in your face. Average reload time for 8 missiles was 30 seconds and that was rushed. And this is inside a walking machine under heavy fire. Impossible to jam missiles into launchers that fast.

Here, after the change it rarely rains. When it hits it is deadly and if it doesn't, well that is a heck of a waste and now you're vulnerable for 8 to 9.5 seconds. Another thing is that this actually puts it closer to lore.

In Battletech a Shadowhawk with 4.5 tons of armor had 72 points of armor. 1 missile of the LRM category did 1 damage. Fires once every 10 seconds. LRM 20 = 20 damage = 72-20 = 52 armor remaining. Devastating. But rare to fire with frequent misses.

In MWO the same Shadowhawk with 4.5 tons of armor has 144 points of armor. 1 missile does 1.1 damage. Fires once every 4.75 seconds. LRM 20 = 22 damage = 144-22 = 122 armor remaining. It dings, but in 10 seconds it is devastating. Problem is since the effects are not 'fast' enough we boat them and SPAM fire like crazy in groups preventing the target from seeing and neutralizing the mech's ability to move. It literally halts gameplay and deprives Fun from the game.

In MWO with the changes: the same Shadowhawk with 4.5 tons of armor has 144 points of armor. 1 missile does 2.2 (or even just 2) damage. Fires once every 9.5 seconds. LRM 20 does 44 (or 40) damage = 144 - 44 = 100 armor remaining. Devastating, identical DPS to MWO now, but cannot be spammed. This means more fun for both parties. LRMs are feared, but not impossible to beat. Dodging is easy and even considered a skill. And when you do hit with the missiles, you feel rewarded instead of sitting back with 4 LRM-20s firing back to back drinking coffee because you're bored.

This is essentially what the game looks like right now.

Imagine that number of missiles cut in half... Sure they are deadly, but the SPAM stops and you have time to advance and slaughter the missile boats.

Edited by Koniving, 26 April 2014 - 02:53 PM.

[Tesunie]

If you asked me, most of our weapons recycle too fast... especially to lore. However, at the same time, not everything can be translated 100% from one game format (or even lore) to a videogame...

And I think you might be surprised how much LRMs could still be spammed even with a slower reload time. Just would be a little slower spam.

I get what you are saying, I'm just not sure it would provide the desired results. If we could freely try changes, I'd certainly be up to trying it and see how it feels/works. However, I don't think your change was/is intended for the way I use my LRMs, and how my builds are created in general. (I don't boat them, so I don't spam them really. I also tend to get fairly close, and get my own locks, unless I can't risk it anymore/too heavily damaged.)


AC2 range nerf was... strange... It reduces it's long range damage, but it didn't actually reduce it's damage per shot per say...