Okay, this whole thing is just bass-ackwards thinking, completely wrong. Going above and beyond what Wintersdark has said, much to his credit and my gratitude,
1) LRMs are MORE highly skill-based than any other weapon in the game, because you're sticking beyond your 180 meters and, typically, much further than that. If I can start lobbing LRMs at 1100 meters, with buffs, you better believe I will, because it will soon be the bloody stinkin' stupid lights coming to kill me. So, while I'm moving around with my team, I'm actually using them as shields against other incoming fire, and waiting for the worms. It's not my level of skill, or lack thereof, that keeps bad guys away from my position, it's going to happen, no matter what, and I'm not a brawler. Believe you-me, I've tried to become a brawler, to very limited success.
2) When I start throwing LRMs, they are only semi-guided, and I have to keep my reticule on target the entire flight of missiles, I cannot simply switch to another 'Mech, lock and fire. If I am unable to keep my reticule on the target I'm trying to hit -if they move behind cover for long enough, have Radar Deprivation, come under ECM protection, and/or shut down for a few seconds to clear me off, I can't hold that lock- my LRMs go to the last location I was firing into, not into the 'Mech I was aiming at. This can be a fairly maddening experience; it's really maddening when NARC is negated because of Radar Derp.
3) The ONLY item, from the four I just listed, that I have ANY control over whatsoever, is terrain. If a bad guy is locked for Incoming Missiles -which you actually get a warning about, because you DON'T get that warning with ANY other weapon system inbound, which is unfair to LRM boat drivers, actually- and steps behind most cover, that reduces the number of missiles that hit, on top of their own, and any friendly AMS in the area, especially since the AMS range has now been tripled from what it's supposed to be. There are two things I can do about this... I can lock a new bad guy and try to help out where I may, OR I can change positions to continue hitting the target I was working on. This latter one is not just a few degrees off my present station, but up to several hundred meters in one direction or another, which invariably puts me in-line with other opposition 'Mechs.
4) When you try to tell me that LRMs are not skill-based at all, I have to laugh at you, because if you think laser's or ballistic's are skill-based, you're smoking crack. You are looking at your opponent, you don't have to clear obstacles on BOTH ends of the missile's path to-hit, you just point-and-click. So, when Wintersdark tells you that you have DIFFERENT skills, that's precisely what he means... you get on-target, look at them, point-and-click, and that's ALL you do. The use of LRMs requires DIFFERENT skills than you, but it requires far more skill than you have obviously dealt with.
When I'm using my LRMs, I am not in the game with a kill-based mentality, because for me LRMs are about suppressive fire. If one of my compatriots in the drop NARCs an opponent and calls them out, I'm right on them, but most of the time I will find an opponent, wait the fifteen seconds it takes to get through the amazing ECM bubble they have over them -which means fifteen seconds of waiting to die- and then work on putting them behind cover, so my guys can advance more closely and beat the snot out of the bad guys.
LRMs are not only as viable a weapon as any other in the game, but they are the ultimate teamwork weapon. Those who fail to get and/or maintain locks are making a request for their own doom. If I can help you, the brawler or sniper, on the field trying to get to an opposing 'Mech and splash them, to do so, then I've done my job. However, I need you to lock your target, stop the stupidity of rolling your torso to spread damage around, keep the lock, and communicate with me, I will help you splash that zero. Alternately, if you, or one of your PUG compatriots are not working to keep a lock so I CAN help you, then you guys are hiding and not doing your jobs. It's up to you... trust and help your LRM boat drivers, and they will help you, or don't and die on the field.
These were numbers from my own direct experience over two years of playing this game -I took a year off.
It's the same thing with LRMs. If I am moving, I have a smaller chance to hit due to the physics of the game, and a greater chance at breaking my lock, due to elevation changes, sudden drops, etc., which sees the LRMs hitting where I lost my lock, not the 'Mech I was aiming at. IF I'm sitting still for too long, I'm dead. If there is too much ECM on the enemy team, or ECM around me, or both, that I am unable to negate, for whatever reason, I lose locks, and my missiles go where the lock was lost, not to the 'Mech I was aiming at. All weapons have their pro's and con's, but I also have to worry about intervening terrain if I'm not seeing my target directly. Oh, and Artemis on my missiles doesn't work unless I have direct LOS to my target, so no bonuses there much of the time. I have to make sure I clear up and over any obstacle I'm firing at and, more often than not, I do not know if my missiles are exploding against the environment or a 'Mech, especially if others are firing at that same 'Mech, unless the paper doll is changing colors. That's yet another skill, knowing when to fire and when not to fire, and trying to discern whether friends are firing at the same target, or not.
No, and no. In the first place, LRMs are only semi-guided; that means I have to stay in place and keep my reticule in the target box for the full-length of flight of the missiles. As long as I'm a long way away from any opposition, that's fine and it works; however, if not, I'm a sitting duck, a dead 'Mech, and there's NOTHING I can do about that. Second, do you know how hard it is, when I have no NARC or TAG on my team and we're playing with a group of PUGs, to get someone to do NARC'ing, TAG'ing or spotting of any kind from anyone not affiliated with my friend's and I; it's friggin' impossible and, more often than not, I end up dying with over half my missile payload still in the bay because of the lack of coordination. I know the only nights I'm going to have a good combat night in are the ones where there are six or more of us in TeamSpeak and working together; my people are AWESOME!!! Without them, I'm pretty useless. Third, and most important, it doesn't matter if there's a UAV up or not... I still have to get locks, and I still have to get through ECM not covered by the UAV bubble. The UAV might see a lot of the bad guys, and relay it to me, but if an ECM 'Mech is outside of the signal denial effects range, I still have to use between 8 and 15 seconds to lock onto them and, by then, the UAV is down. UAVs have a very limited effectiveness involving LRMs.
Ah, the trajectory change argument... LRMs can only change a few degrees per second. If I lose a lock to a 'Mech I'm aiming at, my LRMs continue in a straight line from that point, to impact where the target WAS, not against the target itself. If I re-establish my lock before they arrive, however, my LRMs may still miss, especially if the target is a Light 'Mech moving quickly, and my LRMs land harmlessly, anyway.
Look, it's a dog fight out there, much like you can see in World War II dog fighting videos, and there's not much that can be done about it. LRMs are designed more to be a suppression tool rather than a killing weapon. Have I killed my fair share of 'Mechs with LRMs? Yes and no... no, because if I were actually playing in tabletop, around 60% of my LRMs would hit as opposed to the 25 - 30% I get in this game, but yes because I've had some really good pure kills with my boats. Have I had my fair share of assists in this game? Damn skippy, and I intend to continue doing so, and it's the reason why assists are worth more in C-Bills and experience than straight kills; as it should be. Do I have fun running my LRM boats, even with all of the things that can negate the crap out of hitting ANYTHING with LRMs? Yes, I do. Why? Because I have to figure out how and where the enemy are going, what enemy is best to hit, rapidly decide where my buddies who need my assistance are, and do something to help them out. It is a NICE bonus when I get kills. I got four in my second game played last night, with my KTO-18 Angry Typewriter, one of which was a pure kill of my own; I should drink when I play more often, hehe. It's not been NECESSARY for me to get kills in-game for a long time, now, and when I gave up the notion of getting kills, that's when I started getting more kills. Nice, huh?
So, the moral of the story is this... you cannot shoot through rocks or buildings, so you have to keep moving to keep on targets and keep from getting killed as much as possible, so LRM boat drivers are more highly skilled than direct-fire weenies. Every time I hear direct-fire weenies, who take a 25% of actual damage point-for-missile hit, scream and yell about LRMs, I have to giggle, and then I have to work harder to piss them off even more. Stop complaining about missiles, they're semi-guided but much weaker than a direct hit from a laser or ballistic weapon, which do full damage much of the time, and learn to play.
This has to be satire. Have you tried running a light or a gauss sniper lately? Everything you talked about (cover, reduced effectiveness while moving, etc.) also applies to direct fire weapons. To be truly effective with direct fire weapons means hitting SPECIFIC PANELS repeatedly, not just the mech in general, which requires practice and skill. Lasers are hitscan? No, they aren't, if you have any idea what you're doing. If you're SWEEPING your lasers across your enemey, you're accomplishing next to nothing. Lasers need to be held on a specific panel, repeatedly, to truly be considered effective. You cannot tell me that a Mechwarrior who uses LRMs has more skill than one who is truly effective as a light pilot (I'm quite good myself, but I'll refer you to Atkinson and Coburn of House of Lords and Grayfox of SJR who are as good, likely better than I am) or one who has truly mastered the art of gauss sniping (again, I'm pretty damn good there). Most of the skill involved in LRMs is the people who are out getting locks for you.
Exactly. See the above statement.
If I had time I would sit and dissect your post in far more detail, detailing exactly how any other pilot in any other chassis deals with the same issue and quite a few more as well, but I simply don't. I refuse to run LRMs because I can go out with a Kintaro-18 LRM boat and wrack up 5+ kills, 800+ damage without thinking about it, without ever directly viewing an enemy, without being at much of any risk of return fire except other LRMs.
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The Bagel, on 22 November 2014 - 12:44 PM, said:
