64 replies to this topic

[Invictus51]

I know a lot of you players love your LRMs. I understand that. They take the least amount of skill and can rack up great damage totals and assists which = cbills. I don't mean that as an insult either. I also know thats not the reason some people play them. I guess people like hitting targets they can't even see and that's fine.
But it is again time to take a break due to the fact that I rarely get into a game since the "pinpoint" on missiles was added, that does not have a ridiculous amount of missile boats or mainly missile mechs.
Lets face it LRM pilots. People do not play mechs in great numbers if they are difficult to play or if you have to be a great pilot or need great strateegery ( hey a president said it so I can as well).
The last few games I was in with a friend we were spectating a clan mech that had 2 LRMs as part of his makeup. The amazing thing was the time required to lock on was nearly non-existent. So we spectated another together and the same was true. Also, in the last game , early on at just over 900 meters an LRM boat from opposing team fired on me as I just peeked out from tall cover and he just got a visual as he ascended a ramp. I immediately went back (my mech travels at 72.4kph top end) the missiles actually bent around the mountain and traveled 25-30 yards to hit me(not all hit me though). Literally I was exposed for maybe a second as was he. And no, there were no other enemy mechs in that area yet.
My point is, that's just a little to much flexibility and intelligence for a weapon to have. Yes I could get lock deteriorate thing and I do have ecm on my Cicada but as you know most mechs don't have ecm available. I was on a mission to get 500 assists in each weight class I have 72 more to go in assault and then just Lights to finish. Don't ask me why I just decided to do it.
Anyway that's my point.

[Lightfoot]

They did not add Pinpoint to LRMs. LRMs still track the same as ever. They removed Splash damage from them.

[Lightfoot]

I just don't understand the LRMs are OP threads either. I have been killed by LRMs about 8-9 times this year. They are too easy to spoof even before Radar Deprivation. You just run behind something and power down while still moving and the LRMs hit the dirt where you powered down, but no longer are. A complete miss every time. You would have to just rush madly into them from a good distance away to take major damage from them.

[Lyoto Machida]

You got hit by LRMs fired from a mech 900m away?

[Naduk]

Invictus
what your are describing is impossible, missiles cannot turn around objects
they have a purely up and down arc
the only time they get lateral movement is when you lock an enemy, fire, lose lock, they move a fair bit and you re-lock
the missiles readjust their flight path or will try at least, most the time they fail to do anything useful

you claim you were behind high cover and enemy LRM unit could not see you
sounds like you were spotted in some manner
a different enemy may have been behind you providing target data
you may have been narced

you cannot know what the enemy knows
you may have been lit up like a beacon for 10mins and he was just waiting for LOS to fire so he got full Artemis benefit

the pinpoint change to the LRM is kind of a nerf , you should be happy
due to the explosion code missiles were not doing their damage a lot of the time
this fix was discovered during SRM investigation as they rarely did their proper damage
this fix has now been applied to LRM and SSRM weapons
LRM never really suffered from missiles not causing damage, likely due to travel distance and speed
even if they were affected and are now doing "full" damage, the loss of splash damage still makes this a nerf

[Zerberus]

Oh wow, this thread is new and refreshing!

[OneEyed Jack]

Naduk, on 17 July 2014 - 03:05 PM, said:

Invictus
what your are describing is impossible, missiles cannot turn around objects
they have a purely up and down arc

Not really true. Any time a target moves laterally to the shooter while missiles are locked and in flight, the missiles turn. It may not be a hugely blatant and sudden turn, but it's not "purely up and down", either. Depending on the angles, they may hook a short bit around the end of intervening terrain

[Hobgoblin I]

They are the slowest traveling weapon and you get a warning when they are coming at you, yet this one weapon is too much for you to deal with? And you say LRM boat pilots suffer from lack of skill...

[Dracol]

Missiles can also turn when a lock has to be re acquired. Before the speed buff, I'd be able to launch volley one at mech A, lock onto mech B and launch volley two, then reacquire mech A to guide them in... and I've seen missiles do some crazy things.

Op, in regards to the more numerous LRMs on the field, people are testing out the new changes:
-No more splash damage / each missile does its full damage to the component that it its (old way, a percentage of total dmg was divided between components covered by the splash radius)
-Clan LRMs now do damage under 180m

My only advice: Bring AMS and keep track of your ECM mechs for a while.

[Aim64C]

The skill required to engage a pilot with LRMs is roughly equal to the skill that pilot has in evading LRMs.

They are the only weapon in the game where you get to dictate how skilled the player must be to hit you with them (spare for a few exceptions).

If you see a CPLT C-4 walking around with the realization that it has legs, keeping up with the team, then you might want to pay attention to that pilot and watch how he both deals and receives LRMs through the match. He'll probably give you a good indication of how to avoid the 'skill-less' LRMs.

About the only time you're up a creek through little fault of your own is when you get NARCed. It's not that there is nothing you can do - but if the enemy team is spread out well enough, it will be hard to find cover and it's going to hurt trying to move out of range (of course, so is standing still). Getting NARCed on the crater in Caustic (with the enemy team having much in the way of LRM support) is about as close to a death sentence as it gets.

I can't wait for the ComStar iNARC - as there is a particular module that makes -all- LRMs fired within range home to the NARCed mech.

That would be so much fun....

[Lynx7725]

OneEyed Jack, on 17 July 2014 - 03:43 PM, said:

Not really true. Any time a target moves laterally to the shooter while missiles are locked and in flight, the missiles turn. It may not be a hugely blatant and sudden turn, but it's not "purely up and down", either. Depending on the angles, they may hook a short bit around the end of intervening terrain

A-yup. LRM deals in three dimension. DF tends to deal in two.

Dracol, on 17 July 2014 - 04:01 PM, said:

Missiles can also turn when a lock has to be re acquired. Before the speed buff, I'd be able to launch volley one at mech A, lock onto mech B and launch volley two, then reacquire mech A to guide them in... and I've seen missiles do some crazy things.

Not quite true. You cannot do this if you acquire Mech B. This only happens if you acquire A, launch, loses A, then later reacquire A. But otherwise:

[Lynx7725]

Invictus51, on 17 July 2014 - 02:00 PM, said:

They take the least amount of skill and can rack up great damage totals and assists which = cbills. I don't mean that as an insult either.

*Raises eyebrow*

Invictus51, on 17 July 2014 - 02:00 PM, said:

The last few games I was in with a friend we were spectating a clan mech that had 2 LRMs as part of his makeup. The amazing thing was the time required to lock on was nearly non-existent. So we spectated another together and the same was true.

Do you know you have to build your mech in a specific way in order to get "nearly non-existent" lock times?

Do you know that in order to get "nearly non-existent" lock times, it's probable that the LRM boat has already acquired the target previously and lost it, and was working to position to get the target lock back?

Invictus51, on 17 July 2014 - 02:00 PM, said:

I immediately went back (my mech travels at 72.4kph top end) the missiles actually bent around the mountain and traveled 25-30 yards to hit me(not all hit me though). Literally I was exposed for maybe a second as was he. And no, there were no other enemy mechs in that area yet.

Did you know, going in reverse in anything other than light mechs halves your speed? 72.4 kph isn't terrible fast by norm standards, and 36.2 kph is even worse.

Did you know, mech acceleration and deceleration, not top speed, dictates how fast you can reverse from accidental exposure into cover?

Did you know, with Advance Target Decay, the shooter has 2~3 extra seconds of lock time, such that you need to reverse faster AND further to avoid the LRMs?

Did you know, that the shooter has to deliberately choose ATD over other possible modules to take advantage of this?

Did you know, since LRMs are a tracking device, their vector changes by homing into your locked mech, and as such a moving locked mech would cause LRMs to turn, potentially around corners?

[Dracol]

Lynx7725, on 17 July 2014 - 07:27 PM, said:

Not quite true. You cannot do this if you acquire Mech B. This only happens if you acquire A, launch, loses A, then later reacquire A. But otherwise:

Like I said, haven't done it since the speed buff, I'll have to retry it within a private match to see if they secretly changed it.

The keys to doing this where:
Distance of over 800 meters
Direct Line of sight

This I was able to achieve on Forest Colony, high side start if the enemy went water.

At least previously, it didn't care whether a set of missiles were inbound to a second target. As long as I hit R and re-aquired a solid lock on the first mech, I'd be able to guide them in.

The second salvo would continue to the last spot I had a lock on to the second target. This salvo was used mostly to make the mech move. If I was lucky, they wouldn't move and they'd get a splash of missiles. If I was really lucky, I'd direct the first salvo to target, hit R to get that second target, and still had enough time to re-acquire the lock.

Oh, and nice diagrams Lynx

Edited by Dracol, 17 July 2014 - 07:48 PM.

[Lynx7725]

Dracol, on 17 July 2014 - 07:46 PM, said:

Like I said, haven't done it since the speed buff, I'll have to retry it within a private match to see if they secretly changed it.

The keys to doing this where:
Distance of over 800 meters
Direct Line of sight

This I was able to achieve on Forest Colony, high side start if the enemy went water.

At least previously, it didn't care whether a set of missiles were inbound to a second target. As long as I hit R and re-aquired a solid lock on the first mech, I'd be able to guide them in.

The second salvo would continue to the last spot I had a lock on to the second target. This salvo was used mostly to make the mech move. If I was lucky, they wouldn't move and they'd get a splash of missiles. If I was really lucky, I'd direct the first salvo to target, hit R to get that second target, and still had enough time to re-acquire the lock.

If true, it's another tool in my LRM toolbox. Very hard to pull off though, since you need to do acquisition while the flight is still in the air, so your 800+m is to allow for the re-lock. I think I've seen it happen within a 600~700m, but any closer and the flight time is insufficient.

My current thinking is that each flight remembers the target it is supposed to hit, so if you reacquire the same target, the flight would resume tracking. So if your Flight 1 is tracking Alpha, your Flight 2 is tracking Bravo, you can switch locks between the two and guide both in to both targets, but it's practically not very possible (due to flight and lock times). Very hard to test this in combat conditions, of course.

Oh, Direct LOS is not relevant. You can pick this up with a spotter's help and the missiles would reacquire IIRC. Missiles don't care where the lock came from, just that it has one.

[Lynx7725]

Oh, since we are discussing LRMs in a civil manner in this thread, does anyone know of a way to unlock target locks?

The reason why I'm asking this is, there are times I want to rapid dumb-fire into a whole pack of enemy mechs to break them up and/ or push them back, particularly true on Therma PugZapper doorways and Forest tunnel exit chokepoints. Having locks sometimes prevent me from dumb-firing into exactly where I need the munitions to go.

Hitting 'R' (I mapped mine to 'E' actually) cycles your target locks and usually is good enough, but there are some edge cases where it doesn't work, so I'm asking if there is a specific key to drop the target locks immediately.

And please don't suggest 'P'. Or 'Alt-F4'...

[TheRealAbray]

My troll senses are tingling.

Y'all got trolled hard.

LRMs are balanced.

move on.

[Johnny Reb]

[color=#959595]Heh, lrms don't need to be nerfed. Arty/Airstrikes do., I think having up to 24 of them in a single match really negates lrms, in 12 man play (care less about leagues). I'm no where near comp level, but have played against comp teams (in group, your safe pugs), when down early, they just unload one arty/air strike after another(think in lesser group matches its when not threatened, so they dont unleash the full fury). All this gripe about lrms in the newer ppl is cause thats what they see, however arty isnt used on you. I am fine with arty/air as is just feel it should be limited to uses per match.[/color]

Edited by Johnny Reb, 17 July 2014 - 10:48 PM.

[El Bandito]

Edited by El Bandito, 17 July 2014 - 11:06 PM.

[Sephlock]

El Bandito, on 17 July 2014 - 11:04 PM, said:

I see your paperdoll and raise you one actually made out of paper!

[Johnny Reb]

The lrms touched me in a bad place! However, the Arty/air strike, touched me an all my bad places! Multiple times!