124 replies to this topic

[Jazzbandit1313]

Wow well this blew up. Lol.

[Escef]

Don Ino, on 08 December 2014 - 04:57 PM, said:

]Escef, people like you are why these forums are a joke. If you seriously think it requires skillful play to get a lock on a light on any map, then your point is moot.

Skillful? I said not easy, not skillful. For that matter, can you define what you mean by "skill"? Fools like you gush about how ACs and lasers require skill. Lasers are the epitome of easy, it is literally point-and-click.

[Don Ino]

Escef, on 08 December 2014 - 05:00 PM, said:

Skillful? I said not easy, not skillful. For that matter, can you define what you mean by "skill"? Fools like you gush about how ACs and lasers require skill. Lasers are the epitome of easy, it is literally point-and-click.

Heheheheh, and I'm just here like AYYYYYYYYY LMAO

[Brody319]

make them fire as fast as SRM 4s fire for the huginn and they might be used.

[Escef]

Don Ino, on 08 December 2014 - 05:01 PM, said:

Heheheheh, and I'm just here like AYYYYYYYYY LMAO

So, you are saying you can't. Good to know.

[Scratx]

QuantumButler, on 08 December 2014 - 02:23 PM, said:

Make SSRM2s lock onto CT only.

Because we totally didn't see in the past how that worked out. Even recently, as by accident all streaks homed in on the Mad Dog's CT.

Surely this is an attempt to troll and not a serious suggestion? Because if it is a serious suggestion, I'll laugh harder.

[Pjwned]

Alistair Winter, on 08 December 2014 - 02:49 PM, said:

Been saying this since 2012.

I have learned the following answers:

• Because you should just run away from mechs with streaks if you're a light mech
  
• Because light mechs are overpowered and the poor assault mechs need the ability to wipe out light mechs with their backup weapons, when they're not busy killing real mechs
  
• Because BT rulebooks say light mechs are inferior
  
• Because SSRMs are super hard to use, while light mechs are easy mode
  
• Because medium lasers have 30 meter more range than SSRMs, so just use range against mechs with streaks.

On the other hand, when people complain that a weapon system is largely worthless unless heavily boated (and even then, not particularly good except against 1 weight class that can run away from a threat, which is what they're good at) and suggest some possible fixes, other people come in and say "nope," and when asked why the answer pretty much amounts to "because."

[Khobai]

IS SSRM2 needs a buff because its outright worse than a medium laser.

1) less dps
2) less range
3) more tonnage and crits
4) uses ammo
5) requires lockon time
6) can be jammed by ecm
7) cant be aimed and hits random location

The damage used to be 2.5 per missile and Streaks were in a nice place compared to lasers. IS SSRMs and IS SRMs need their damage increased back to 2.5 per missile.

[occusoj]

Even boating SSRM2 is bad.
I stuffed a Cat-A1 with 6xSSRM2 and tried going after lights. It is not very effective. In fact, its plain bad.

If you encounter a heavy/assault your ears - and the streaks in them - will come off instaneously.
Better avoid them. Damage against heavier mechs isnt even noticeable but thats not what streaks were made for.

Lights do receive some damage but due to the low damage per launcher and the random spread of multiple launches its far from one or two shotting them. More like 20 shotting. Not really dangerous. Since lights are a good deal faster than the streakboat they can escape this threat (lol) easily.
Builds like SPL FS get the boat down long before their armor has even come off.

Verdict: A wasted heavy slot.
A useless weapon system to me, same class as the flamer.

Maybe a light or KTO-18 can do it better, anyone tried it?
A C-SSRM36 boat on the other hand can cripple lights in a volley or two.

[Escef]

Here's an experiment that think Streaks are easy mode weapons.

Take a Mad Dog with A variant side torsos and load it up with 6xSSRM6. Fire at a fresh FS9 or JR7. You have 36 missiles spread across 8 hit locations. On average, each location will take 4 or 5 missiles, for a total of 8 to 10 damage. A fresh Firestarter or Jenner should be able to tank two salvos of 36 Streaks, often without losing body parts. That's over 140 damage. almost 3/4s of a ton of ammo. With no kill.

Streaks are great for intimidating light opponents, but you can't rely on them because they spread the damage around. They're great little sandblasters, you can get good damage numbers out of them. But unless you are trying to intimidate light pilots or go after someone with a couple of locations with the armor stripped off, they aren't great.

Overall, I think Streaks are in an ok place right now. The trade-off for their combination of homing and damage is fine.

[Khobai]

Quote

Take a Mad Dog with A variant side torsos and load it up with 6xSSRM6.

yeah but the topic is about buffing IS streaks.

we know the clan ones are fine. theyre half the weight.

[Jazzbandit1313]

Escef, on 08 December 2014 - 05:37 PM, said:

Here's an experiment that think Streaks are easy mode weapons.

Take a Mad Dog with A variant side torsos and load it up with 6xSSRM6. Fire at a fresh FS9 or JR7. You have 36 missiles spread across 8 hit locations. On average, each location will take 4 or 5 missiles, for a total of 8 to 10 damage. A fresh Firestarter or Jenner should be able to tank two salvos of 36 Streaks, often without losing body parts. That's over 140 damage. almost 3/4s of a ton of ammo. With no kill.

Streaks are great for intimidating light opponents, but you can't rely on them because they spread the damage around. They're great little sandblasters, you can get good damage numbers out of them. But unless you are trying to intimidate light pilots or go after someone with a couple of locations with the armor stripped off, they aren't great.

Overall, I think Streaks are in an ok place right now. The trade-off for their combination of homing and damage is fine.

As said above, we are talking about IS streak 2's....please read OP

[Escef]

Jazzbandit1313, on 08 December 2014 - 05:40 PM, said:

As said above, we are talking about IS streak 2's....please read OP

My point was performance in battle, not on tonnage and range.

As for IS Streaks, what they really need is for the timeline to advance so we can get 4 and 6 packs.

[Khobai]

Quote

As for IS Streaks, what they really need is for the timeline to advance so we can get 4 and 6 packs.

which still doesnt fix them because theyd still have terrible dps to weight ratio and only 270m range.

assuming the IS ssrm4 and ssrm6 do the same dps as clan ssrms...

x1 IS SSRM4 = 3 tons, 1.6 dps
x1 IS SSRM6 = 4.5 tons, 2.0 dps

x1 IS ML = 1 ton, 1.28 dps
x2 IS ML = 2 ton, 2.56 dps

See the problem now? medium lasers are outright better. why use streaks when you can just use medium lasers instead? its not like theres a shortage of energy hardpoints either.

The problem is the dps of streaks is friggin AWFUL for their weight (I didnt even include the weight of ammo) plus all the other disadvantages as well (needs ammo, can be jammed by ecm, can be shot down by ams, shorter range, cant be aimed, etc...)

The most straightforward fix is to increase the dps by increasing the damage per missile from 2.0 to 2.5 for all the IS short-range missile systems.

That creates the following balance dynamic for streaks:
Clan SSRMs would do less dps but also weigh less and have better range
IS SSRMs would do more dps but also weigh more and have shorter range

Edited by Khobai, 08 December 2014 - 06:59 PM.

[Alistair Winter]

Pjwned, on 08 December 2014 - 05:21 PM, said:

On the other hand, when people complain that a weapon system is largely worthless unless heavily boated (and even then, not particularly good except against 1 weight class that can run away from a threat, which is what they're good at) and suggest some possible fixes, other people come in and say "nope," and when asked why the answer pretty much amounts to "because."

Huh? There's some pretty definitive answers to that question, some of which have already been mentioned in this thread, and they're posted quite often. If you reduce them down to "because", then that's pretty much on you.

Adiuvo, Roland and FupDup pretty much laid it out already. (Incidentally, I do believe Adiuvo and Roland are two of the players who were most frequently recommended for the player's council, when that idea was still being discussed. I guess a lot of people felt those two had a particularly keen understanding of how the game works. And if anyone wants to pull the skill card, we all know how that works out.)

It's absurd that we're discussing whether it's hard to get missile locks against light mech like that's a serious question. Like we didn't already have ample empirical evidence, just by looking at earlier stages of the game, when streaks were more dominant. The only question that needs to be discussed is whether people want a game where light mechs are at the bottom of the foodchain. People have some rather eloquent arguments on both sides of that question. The only problem is that PGI is sticking its head the sand, trying to take a middle ground between two viable options and failing miserably at game balance. This results in light mechs being the least popular choice. The solo queue is a good indication of that. Another indication is how few people are planning on using assault mechs in CW, because that inevitably forces them to pilot "worthless light mechs".

[Escef]

Alistair Winter, on 08 December 2014 - 08:03 PM, said:

This results in light mechs being the least popular choice. The solo queue is a good indication of that. Another indication is how few people are planning on using assault mechs in CW, because that inevitably forces them to pilot "worthless light mechs".

And yet at the same time people have been calling Firestarters overpowered since day 1. And while pre-quirk there was no Tier 1 medium mech for Inner Sphere, there were two Tier 1 lights. Go figure, huh?

This community has shown a strong tendency to disagree on almost everything. Lights are overpowered, lights are weak, clan is overpowered, clan isn't overpowered, mediums suck, mediums are good, hero mechs are P2W, hero mechs aren't P2W...

And I really don't care which players are popular. Having a cult of personality only proves that you have a cult of personality.

[Alistair Winter]

Escef, on 08 December 2014 - 08:15 PM, said:

And yet at the same time people have been calling Firestarters overpowered since day 1. And while pre-quirk there was no Tier 1 medium mech for Inner Sphere, there were two Tier 1 lights. Go figure, huh?

Well, some people have been calling the Dragon overpowered lately too. As for "the same people", that's a comment that often gets thrown around without any evidence. On the internet, hypocrites appear to be everywhere.

AFAIK, the lack of Tier 1 IS medium mechs isn't really any kind of argument in favour of the light mechs. It just means that none of them are able to compete with the Stormcrow, whereas the best IS light mechs are equal to or, in reality, much better than the best Clan mechs. In other words, the Clans have a medium mech that no Inner Sphere mech can compete with. With Clans and Inner Sphere mechs supposed to be equal, the term "Tier 1" applies equally to both sides. I'm sure we'll see that there are no Tier 1 Clan light mechs.

Escef, on 08 December 2014 - 08:15 PM, said:

This community has shown a strong tendency to disagree on almost everything. Lights are overpowered, lights are weak, clan is overpowered, clan isn't overpowered, mediums suck, mediums are good, hero mechs are P2W, hero mechs aren't P2W...

Making it all the more important to identify the smart people on the forum and pay attention to them.

Escef, on 08 December 2014 - 08:15 PM, said:

And I really don't care which players are popular. Having a cult of personality only proves that you have a cult of personality.

They weren't being nominated on account of their charisma. You don't even have to take my word for it, go back and read the nominations. A lot of people explained the reasoning behind them, because the most popular poll only allowed 5 nominations.

Edited by Alistair Winter, 08 December 2014 - 09:23 PM.

[Adiuvo]

Escef, on 08 December 2014 - 04:49 PM, said:

Well, I suppose at whatever low ELO you guys see light mechs at that don't dodge, move in straight lines, etc., it must be painfully easy.

Escef, on 08 December 2014 - 04:52 PM, said:

He must if he thinks it's so damn easy to get a streak lock on a cagey light pilot in bad terrain.

You're telling me this?

hahahahahahahaha

[QuantumButler]

FupDup, on 08 December 2014 - 02:29 PM, said:

No. We used to have Streaks do that, and it was dumb for the game. CT-homing Streaks were pretty much an "lol I win" card against lights and mediums back in the day, and could be fairly powerful against heavier targets as well.

Streaks could use reform, but those reforms should focus on increasing their skill floor in exchange for higher effectiveness.

Pjwned, on 08 December 2014 - 02:34 PM, said:

No, that's exactly what they should not do, for the same reasons that nothing else should do that.

[mailin]

I think IS streaks are fine. Escef, sorry, but a Commando is way more maneuverable than a Raven. You honestly should have had no problem getting on his 6 and staying there. If you were talking about a 5D or maybe a Jenner, I'd be willing to agree with you, but not a Raven. Also, streak locks depend on which module(s) you have equipped. If you take target info, I believe you will get a lock faster. Also, if you take target decay, a lock will last longer unless he has radar deprivation.

For whoever suggested IS streak 4 and 6s, the weight on these may make them prohibitive to mount on lights, which is where the streaks are really beneficial, so many lights will still mount streak 2s.

One other note, someone said that you have to keep pressing R. That is incorrect. As long as you do NOT press R again, it will lock on to your last target whenever that target is under the reticle.